Bill Evjen's Blog

I always look for software that has a footprint smaller than what is offered from the standard software for folks on the market. For instance, I use Foxit rather than the Adobe Reader as the software download for this is 1mb rather than 80mb and hardly has anything running on your machine while Adobe Reader (IMHO) is spyware/junkware.

I am a complete audio junkie or audiophile (as some call it) and I have never been 100% happy with the standard Windows Media Player. It is a fine piece of software for most occasions, but I didn’t like how it organized my music and it didn’t provide much information on what was being played. The big focus seemed to be on a center screen that showed a light show or something with your music – something I could really care less about.

One day I found foobar2000 and decided to give this a try.

The download for this is only 3mb and running on my machine, it was only using 10mb of memory. Not bad. When I run Windows Media Player – it consumes 50mb of memory on my Windows 7 machine.

For the audio geek, when you play songs, you also can get a ton of information on what you are playing. For instance, at the bottom, you will constantly see the bit rate that is being played (it changes from moment to moment):

You also have a lot of details about the song selected:

Some of the bad about this software is that the default install has a pretty poor layout and it takes a lot of fiddling to get the items you want displayed. You can really customize the layout of this thing and there is a small third party market of add-ons for foobar2000 as you will see from their site. I changed the color, added the Album art section and added some extra pieces in the upper toolbar. Once you set this up – every time you open foobar2000, it will maintain the same layout. The other bad part is that there is no exporting of the settings – so you have to copy over the layouts by copying over the files from the Program Files folder of the application.

You point to a Music folder and you can organize your music in the following ways:

The great thing also is that this player supports a ton of audio formats including MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Speex, AU, and SND. You can also support more formats with some additional add-ons.

I’ve tried a lot of different audio players and this one, though not perfect, has been my favorite for a lot of reasons.

Follow me at @billevjen

Last year’s St. Louis Day of .NET was so successful that we were turning away people from the registration process (we were limited on the number of bodies we could have). This year’s event is at the Ameristar Casino – so that means more space! This year it was decided to run this conference over two days instead of one. There are currently 53 confirmed sessions for this event.

Last year was so much fun – I’m looking forward to this year’s event. REGISTER TODAY!

One of the features that has been available since the Vista days and is also contained in the Windows 7 release is Microsoft’s Desktop Gadgets. Gadgets have become quite the popular set of little tools that lots of people like to completely litter their desktops with. You can think of them as mini-applications that run on your desktop for common tasks that you perform or common pieces of information that you need. Microsoft is in no way the first to the scene with this nor the most popular. Though that might change as it is now easier than before to build gadgets and it is a little more in the end user’s face in using them in the world’s most popular OS. Windows 7 makes it very easy to add some Microsoft Desktop Gadgets to your desktop.

To add some of the already installed Microsoft Desktop Gadgets, you simple right-click on the desktop and you will find the option Gadgets in the provided menu. This will bring up a dialog of your installed gadgets. An example of this dialog is shown above. There are some default gadgets you can add right away without doing much searching. One that I always add from this default collection is the Calendar gadget. This is a simple gadget and doesn’t have much in the way of settings.

You can easily hover over the gadget and you will see a few control buttons that you can work with.

The Calendar gadget has the following buttons that are the three shown on the top. Other gadgets might also have the wrench that allows for more custom options. Here are some of the gadgets I like:

• Digital Dutch Clock – Yeah, there is a default clock that is provided with the default install of Windows Vista or 7, but the Dutch Clock is better. It provides an additional digital time (with seconds) in the lower part of the face, as well as the day of the week and the date. It also allows you to name the clock – so you have multiple clocks on your desktop and you can name them for different cities or time zones. Like the default clock, there are multiple styles that you can use (the same ones).
• Weatherbug – I am a total weather nut.  This is a good weather control. Clicking on the arrows will also show a three day forecast in the control as well as a web cam from the area.
• GMail Counter – If you have Gmail. Then this is a decent control and has a large list of custom sounds it can notify you with also when you get new mail.
• All CPU Meter – This works with eight, quad, triple, and dual core machines. I am running a quad core machine and you can see the representation in the image above. I like this control a lot.
• Wireless Network Meter – Like the All CPU Meter, but for the wireless world. I put this on my laptop. Show you the SSID, signal quality, IP address, external IP address, upload speed, download speed, and more. Not bad.
• Facebook Explorer – I want to see my facebook notifications without having to go to the site all the time, so I have been trying this control. Not the greatest, but I haven’t found anything better yet.
• Full Moon – I like this cause I’m a geek. It is cool to see how full the moon is on your computer desktop!

That’s all I really have. Let me know which ones you like in the comments. I’ll give them a try. Well that is the consumer end. You, as a developer can also build your own. Check out these resources:

• Build Your Own Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget – online MSDN article.
• MSDN Documentation Forum
• Wrox’s Windows Vista Gadgets Programming

I successfully installed the RTM version of Windows 7 last night. I got a copy of an .iso file for this due to my participation in the Windows 7 beta program. It was very nice of Microsoft to provide everyone that participated in the invited portion of the beta program to a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate! Thanks Microsoft for that.

I downloaded the 64-bit version of Windows 7 and burned that to a disc and booted up my machine to this disc. I have to say that it was just a little confusing at first as I was presented with text that stated - “Choose a CD-ROM boot option” and from there, my options were a number 1) or a number 2). There were no, absolutely no descriptions of what #1 or #2 meant. It was like the old TV game show where the contestants were asked to choose their prize from what was behind door #1 or door #2. I chose #1, as whatever it was, Microsoft would probably say that the most popular choice would be the first --- so that seemed like good logic and that is what I went with.

So, after that brief hiccup, the install worked just fine. The OS install had to reboot about 2 times, so when it first did that, I hadn’t removed the DVD from the drive and it came right back up to “Choose a CD-ROM boot option”. I really thought I would be starting the entire process over again by making that selection again – so I took the DVD out of the drive, rebooted, and let it finish the install process. From there, everything went fine with the install. It was fast and it found all the drivers that it needed. I didn’t have to install not even one driver myself. The install process found everything that it needed. AMAZING! I love this OS.

I’ll try to post more about the OS as I work through it.

It has been known for a little while now that Microsoft’s latest OS, Windows 7, will be released to the computer makers to install as the machine OS for the computers they are getting ready to sell in late July. Then later in the Fall (OCT 22nd), it will be available to the public for purchase. This is welcome news for many who were not as successful with Vista and are quite tired of Windows XP.

I was definitely in that camp. I have a lot of computers that I run at home and they were all Windows XP – all but one machine. That machine was a Vista box that I used for my writing, but it really was limited to that. I tried many times to switch completely to Vista, but in all the times I tried – I failed for one reason or another. Whether it was performance or issues with my VPN software for work – I just couldn’t make the change. Windows 7 has been a complete breadth of fresh air! It is a wonderful operating system. It is fast, and is now running without incident on all my computers. I have said goodbye to Windows XP.

It was recently reported in the press that big business would be waiting till the next release (after Windows 7) till they do the big upgrade of their users from Windows XP to Windows 7. The stat given in the press that it was something like 60% or more said that they would wait for the next release of the OS.

I have to say that I find this to be not so accurate. I don’t think that will be the case myself. I really question that stat. I DO think that many companies aren’t going to rush to change all their users from Windows XP to Windows 7 because of the huge issues that Microsoft and the community had with Windows Vista. And because of these issues, I do believe that companies will wait a bit to see how the reaction in the community is with the latest OS release. They will wait to see which software in the community has issues running on Windows 7, what the main issues are, which security issues come to light, and more. Some companies may flat-out wait till a service pack for the OS is released before they make the move. I can see this conservative move to wait to see how things pan out – but a reaction to wait to the next OS? Come on. That won’t happen.

I do believe that the companies that stay on Windows XP and Office 2003 will be at a competitive disadvantage to their competitors that make the upgrade. I was a strong user of these older technologies and I am now a strong user of the next generation of these technologies (Windows 7 and Office 2007) and I do have to say that I am a lot more productive, quick, and on top of my workload using these new stars. There was a slight learning curve in moving from XP and Office 2003 to the new world of Windows 7 and Office 2007 (soon 2010), though I have to say that it was an exciting lessen and brought a new level of enthusiasm in looking at your work world in a new way – a better way to communicate your messages and ideas and a quicker way to organize your applications and tasks. Really, the companies that don’t make the move in the next year are going to be at risk of entering a stagnant plane of thought within their organization.

The new OS and Office suite will bring the new energy your firm needs. I highly recommend the move.

Microsoft just recently made some announcements that they will be releasing the new Zune HD. The new Zune HD will also support the now much loved multi-touch capabilities that has made the ITouch and the IPhone as famous as they are.

From the image above you can see that the new Zune HD is going for an advanced look with the beveled edges. I owned a Zune first generation and then I bought myself a Zune (120GB version) later. I really did like it mainly because of the very large screen that I could watch video podcasts on. This was something that wasn’t as good with the IPod and other items out there in the world. I am looking forward to the new Zune HD and would love to review it --- but it is hard to buy another device right when I got this new Zune 120 GB.

The one thing that sounds pretty exciting with the new Zune HD is the HD radio built into it. The older Zunes also have radio in them and it is nice feature to have – but now with HD radio! The other nice thing about the Zune is that you have some pretty good Zune software in working with you music collections and in getting them on the device. I hear a lot of constant complaints from friends about Apple’s software – and it is true that the Zune software was absolute garbage in its first version – but now you will find that the new software from Microsoft for the Zune is quite nice (too bad they didn’t write it in WPF (my side note)).

Another nice feature you will find on the Zune is that list of games is growing and they aren’t half bad. Though, currently, they don’t seem to compare with all the new software that you can get on the Apple IPhone or ITouch. Apple is just so good at this stuff that it is amazing. You would think that putting out a device would be simple – but as everyone from Sony, to Microsoft, to Nokia and other are trying to catch up with the IPod, Apple comes along with something that makes the IPod look dumb. The IPhone and the ITouch were just simply revolutionary. From the multi-touch, to the balancing and directional capabilities, to the new IPhone/ITouch store that enable software developers to make some serious money and use Apple’s distribution network – it was outstanding and hard to beat. If anyone can catch up – it would be Microsoft.

They do need to try and people shouldn’t say that they aren’t capable of this. Nobody thought they would have a chance in the console market in that the competition was Nintendo and Sony – but they have done an outstanding job with the original Xbox and the new Xbox 360. They dedicated themselves to doing this and they made a splash.

Why did they enter this market (the console market)? It was really due to the fact that the console was something that could have become the home computer – displacing the desktop home computer as we know it today (this is still possible). Microsoft, for their own survival – need to dominate this space. When it comes to the IPhone/ITouch devices, this is another area that is threatening.

There currently is a fight between the netbook world and the device world (with the netbooks really starting to dominate), and Microsoft needs to capture both of these areas. They are doing an outstanding job in the netbook world as it looked like Linux might do well as they ran well on computers with limited capabilities – but the new Windows 7 OS is something that has been designed rather well to work on computers (such as netbooks) that have these limiting factors. So they are pretty well placed in this arena.

Well, anyway, the new Zune HD is a step in the right direction. For me – it will come to the software that people can use on these devices. Apple will be a tough catch. Let’s see what happens.

PS – it is interesting that they saw the need to name the category ‘marketplace’ (look in the above image) and not simply ‘market’, so that it would fit into the screen! Oh well.

Windows 7 RC (Release Candidate) is out and the incredible thing is that Microsoft has provided this operating system (OS) for free to the entire world. They will only let you download the OS for a limited time – so if you are thinking of getting it – you should be getting your hands on a copy of it as quick as you can. Microsoft is offering both a 32bit or a 64bit version that you can download. This is NOT the final version of the OS though – that is something to be aware of. If you install this OS, then you will have to install it again at some point. Though – it is important to note that this RC build will be valid till June of 2010 – so you have some time that you can use it.

The final version of Windows 7 will be coming out this Fall (according to all speculation) – so most of us will be doing another install in another four months or so. I have to say that my recommendation is that you make the install of the RC build. This is a great release – even better than the Beta release.

If you were working with the Beta release of Windows 7, you will find that there are new additions to this release of the operating system. Some of the first things you will notice is the UI changes that have occurred. It is even more cool (IMHO) than before in this regard. In the beginning, when you need to login to the machine – you will see the following screen:

This includes a burst of streams and a bird, a couple of branches, etc. A little like Twitter IMHO. You will find that there is a lot more themes and backgrounds that you are able to work with as well.

When you personalize the appearance of the OS, you will find a lot more options as is shown in the following image. You are able to select larger themes such as Architecture, Characters, Landscapes, and more. This will change the colors, sounds, and the screen saver. You can modify these further and you can then save that as your own theme.

One nice new feature is that Windows 7 now includes the ability to change the wallpaper on a set interval. By default, each theme has a series of wallpapers assigned to it, but you can also point it at any set of photos that you might have. You are then able to change how often the wallpaper should change and if it should be shuffled or not.

NOTE: The Windows team has a great post about the wallpapers that they came up with here.

For those that are new to Windows 7, you will also find that there is a new taskbar on this OS.

You will find that the Quick Launch toolbar is now gone and this new toolbar is meant to replace the previous (obviously). Seeing an application on the taskbar doesn’t mean that there is something there. It could mean that the application is “pinned” to the taskbar for quick access to that application. You can then open multiple versions of this application and you will see a “stack of cards” in the taskbar to signify that exactly. Then you can hover upon that stack and you will get little thumbnails of each open instance (as shown in the above figure). You are in total control of the toolbar (what is pinned, order, and more). One cool hotkey for this toolbar include the Windows key + number for opening the position of the application in the taskbar.

Some interesting items on Windows 7:

• Microsoft’s Windows 7 Page
• Paul Thurrott’s Windows 7 Supersite
• Windows 7 Channel 9 Videos and Blog Posts
• What’s New in Windows 7 RC
• Windows 7 Feature Walkthroughs
• Windows Search
• Engineering Windows 7 Blog
• Windows Team Blog

Good news for us all is that the RC build of the much-anticipated Windows 7 is going to be made available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers on April 30. For the rest of the world, you won’t have long to wait, as the Windows 7 RC will be available on May 5^th as I previously reported on my Twitter account.

For those that are not aware, RC means Release Candidate, as this is the pre-final version of the operating system and it is supposed to include everything that will be in the final shipping version of the application. As I understand it, this version of the OS will be valid for one year.

Microsoft has been saying that they are going to provide the final release of Windows 7 sometime in early 2010 – but all the forces on the Internet have been suggesting a Q3 2009 release of this OS. The reasoning behind this is twofold (in my opinion). The first is that Microsoft has surely taken a beating on Windows Vista – its early compatibility problems and the on-going performance issues that Vista was giving end users. Because of this, Microsoft as a company cannot afford to wait much longer and let other OS venders take market share from them. You will notice that Microsoft seems to want to put this OS release behind them and get to talking again about the “wonders” of Microsoft and the technology they provide rather than constantly being put in a defensive position when it comes to their OS. If they release is going to be ASAP, then the time to do this is in time for college students to get their new computers for their upcoming school year – thus, the reasoning for the Q3 release.

I have to say that I was a big voice of complaint against Vista. I installed Vista on my computer on three separate occasions over the last few years in order to give it another chance and in all cases; I uninstalled it as it was preventing me from doing my day-to-day job at Thomson Reuters. However, I have been running Windows 7 now some time on many machines and I am the biggest fan of this OS. It is FAST, works well on netbooks (computers with limited memory and CPU capabilities), and it a wonderful experience all around. Once I spent some time with Win7, I released that my XP days were no behind me. I have converted many of my machines to Windows 7 and was simply waiting for the RC release before I get rid of XP all together.

The only issue that I have experienced with the Beta release is when my 4 year old (who has an account on the same machine) plays one of his game DVDs (an ooooooold game) that takes the resolution down to 800x600, it won’t revert back without a reboot of the computer.

I also had an issue with the Internet Explorer 8 version that was running on Windows 7 and had to switch to Firefox in order to work with many of the sites I was trying to run. This will be corrected in the RC release as I am quite sure that we will have the production version of IE8 in this release.

For those that are questioning whether to wait for the final release of the OS or to install this RC-version of the OS – my suggestion is if you know how to install an fresh OS and install all your favorite applications and doing this every six months is a non-issue for you – then you should make the switch. You’ll be glad that you made this jump from XP or Vista to this OS – it is quite a wonderful piece of technology.

My latest bookwas just released new and improved and with a fresh mint taste! Last month my AJAX bookcame out and this month is it a book that is a continuation of a great series of ASP.NET books. This is an update to the best-selling Professional ASP.NET 3.5 book that the three of us put out about one year ago (time flies).

If you are an ASP.NET developer, I (no doubt) advise you to get this book as there has been plenty added to it to bring it up with the latest release of ASP.NET. This service pack (SP) release of ASP.NET is not a bug fix SP – but it is a release that include a lot of new features! So for us in doing this book, it wasn’t simple a matter of going back and making some corrections – but this was release of the book that covered all the new and exciting features that got packed into this service release. I have to say that this is an exciting release of ASP.NET and you will find some powerful items included in this version of ASP.NET.

This new edition of the book is more than 1800 pages – enough to knock you out if it falls off the shelf and hits you in the head! Because of the size – the book is available as a hard cover edition. You’ll find new chapter on the ADO.NET Entity Framework, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, and ADO.NET Data Services. There is also a new appendix on Silverlight 2.0 as well as an ‘ASP.NET Is Greater Than ASP.NET MVC’ appendix. You will also find that many of the chapters have been expended in one way or another to include new controls or capabilities.

Something different than my previous books is the inclusion of a CD-ROM that includes the entire book in PDF format. You will also find 7 (seven) complete PDF Wrox Blox books that normally sell for $6.99 (US) each. Currently, this book is only around 44 dollars on Amazon, so this is a great deal all around. Enjoy and happy coding!

I think that Microsoft is missing a large opportunity with the Microsoft Office product. I’ve been thinking about this for some time now. To me, it has been evolving in the wrong manner over these last few releases and it has bothered me greatly. You might be saying, “what is Bill talking about here, they just did a major and well-received upgrade to Microsoft Office with the Office 2007 release!”.  I do have to say that you are right in that regard – but what I am talking about is Microsoft Office for Developers!

I do like the new Office (2007) in regards to the new workflows – the Ribbon and some of the new Excel features. It is a wonderful product for the end user that works wonderfully with the types of documents that you would expect from the Office product. But what we are missing – and greatly missing – is an Office platform that is easy for the developer to work against.

When you look at the types of applications that you are able to build, you typically build either web applications or thick-client applications using Windows Forms or WPF. Web applications are by far the most popular as they are *very* easy to create, release, and make available to end users. Though, if you think about what you are doing here, you are still working with a thick-client application. The thick-client portion is the browser that has the ability to remotely pull in other core pieces of the application for the end user to work with. You, as a web developer, are taking advantage of this great (thick) client application to do thinks like display images, text, interpret JavaScript, or to make use of the XmlHttpRequest object to do some of the newer things like Ajax work. Also as a web developer, you don’t have to worry about much changes to this thick client application as it is usually built to be backwards compatible to the code that you send it and it is continually being enhanced to handle your code in a better manner each and every year.

I work with a large company in the finance space and I work with a lot of major financial institutions. One series of applications that is always on everyone’s desk is Microsoft Office – and more importantly – Microsoft Excel. Like the browser, you can be sure that there are enterprise/business users with Excel and Word on their computers. Yes, IE and Firefox are amazing applications – but I have to say – Excel is a powerful (if not more powerful) container on the client. Excel is *the* container in many regards and many people spend their entire days in this application.

But ….

Have you ever tried to develop to this container? What container is easier to build to – Microsoft IE or Microsoft Excel? Well, I can quite strongly say it is IE. Excel and the other Office products are a complete pain to build to. I am also a big web developer and I see a lot (I mean A LOT) of investment from Microsoft being made into building better web applications faster than any other time before. The ASP.NET team at Microsoft is one of the world’s outstanding example of how to service a market as they are continually doing dramatic and powerful releases and even out-of-bound releases. They have a powerful roadmap, they bring in the developers to this wonderful world that they created through community outreach, involvement and presentation.

What we need is a revolution in Office. Excel can be one of the most powerful clients on the computer for developers. But today, coding to Microsoft Excel is difficult and cumbersome. Why is it so difficult? The difficulty needs to be completely obfuscated and a much simpler API needs to be made available. Why can’t I just drag and drop chart objects onto a design surface, connect web services, show grids of data – do all this with no coding required. Why isn’t it easier to work with web services, data providers, charts, conditional formatting, the Ribbon, and more. Why can’t we easily use peer-to-peer, file transformations, imports, exports, etc in code? Why can’t we easily have a more modern version (and safer) form of dynamic linking? Obviously much of the work will have to be done within Visual Studio and not just with the Excel products or the other Microsoft Office products. Visual Studio can be enhanced to make much of this required obfuscation possible. It did a great job with ASP.NET, it can do just as well with Microsoft Office.

I have such a vision for Excel. It is one of the world’s best clients and we are seeing this somewhat wasted by making it so difficult to work with for the developer. Taking the correct steps here, Microsoft can take the revolution they would bring to Excel right to the office itself!