Microsoft

REVIEW: Zune 2.0 - the best player on the market!

Bill Evjen — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 02:50:30 GMT

I got one of the first Zune players when it came out. There were things that I liked/disliked about it. The worse thing about it was the software that it came with. It was clunky and not to practical so I really didn't end up using it that often. Though, with that said, Microsoft recently released the new 2.0 version of the Zune software which was basically a complete new software package. With the new software and the changes to the firmware that was made to the Zune player along with the client software upgrade - the Zune player is the best player on the market! It is better than IPOD and any of the other players out there. Here are some of the cool Zune features:

BIG Screen! Look at the size of this screen. You might be looking at this and think that the screen size is oddly shaped to watch a movie or something, but the video that is played in this plays sideways so that you turn the Zune player to the side and it is like a widescreen view of what you are looking at. You will find that this is one of the biggest screens for a media device on the market. Especially compare the size of this video screen to what you see for the IPOD and there is no comparison!

One thing that I didn't like about the IPOD was that you are working with non-MP3 files - you couldn't just take your .mp3 files that you already have all over your system and just move those files to you player. The Zune player does make use of the .mp3 file extension - so moving over your already pre-existing files is a quick and easy thing to do.

So, what kind of media can go on your Zune? - MP3s, movies (.mp4), podcasts, pictures, and there is even a radio. I have become completely addicted to the podcasts:

There is a directory of video and audio podcasts for you to subscribe to. You can also find your own podcasts and add them to your subscriptions. The Zune software will keep the latest number of versions available for you synced up to your player. So, for me, I have the latest three episodes of all my podcasts synced up to the player and can watch them on my computer (with the client software) or on my Zune player. It has become a kind of Tivo for me as I watch the NBC Nightly News and other news programs (the complete video program) on my computer in the morning with the software. I have never been so caught up with the news (from around the world as I love the BBC newscasts as well).

Another nice thing about the Zune player is that with version 2.0 - it now has an exposed MAC address which is nice as the Zune player has wireless. This means that you can sync your Zune over your wireless network and also share items with other Zune players nearby.

IIS 7.0 Rocks the House!

Bill Evjen — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 12:55:33 GMT

Yes, we have Windows Server 2008 coming. Yes, also SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008, the .NET Framework 3.5, and more - but probably one of the more exciting new items to come at this same time is IIS 7. As Scott Guthrie states in his recent blog post on IIS, this is a major update to the technology.

IIS 7 will allow for a plug-in architecture and allows you to take out all the pieces of the IIS stack that your applications don't need. It also allows you to build your own extensions and plug those directly in the stack. Before this, when Microsoft came out with enhancements to IIS, they usually had to wait for the next release of IIS. With the new IIS 7, new enhancements can be sent out as extensions and easily plugged in. If you work with IIS in anyway, you really should start getting up to speed on this.

IIS has just hit RC0 and here are some good sites to start taking a look at:

Word Issue - Couldn't Select Text

Bill Evjen — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 16:36:46 GMT

I woke up yesterday morning, I noticed that Vista had installed three different security updates overnight. Opening Microsoft Word, I noticed that I was unable to use my mouse anywhere within the document anymore. I couldn't select any text. I couldn't right-click. I could only move my cursor around with the arrow keys on my keyboard. For me, this made Word completely useless.

The problem was with a SnagIt add-in to Microsoft Office that was installed on my machine. It all of a sudden seemed to have issues running in the new environment (even though I had this add-in for quite some time on my machine). If you don't have the SnagIt program installed - then it most likely is another add-in.

To fix the problem, you can try to go to the Word Options dialog. You get to this dialog by pressing the Office Start button in the upper-left hand corner and selecting Word Options (a button at the bottom). You will then get a dialog where one of the options will be a Add-Ins page.

From here, you can highlight your add-ins by clicking on the Go button and unchecking all the add-ins. From there, start adding them back in till you find the one that is the problem. If you are like me and couldn't even navigate to this screen, then you are going to want to make the add-in changes to the registry yourself. For this, press the start button and type regedit in the search box to get to the regedit.exe program. BE CAREFUL IN HERE AND DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING BUT WHAT I MENTION HERE OR YOU WILL TOTALLY MESS UP YOUR MACHINE. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE TO ANYTHING YOU DO TO YOUR MACHINES!

In the regedit tool: navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins

Go to the LoadBehavior item in the right-hand pane and double-clicking on it will allow you to change the value from 3 to 0. A value of 0 (Zero) means that the add-in is disabled.

This should work for you - worked for me.

Microsoft Releases XML Schema Designer CTP1

Bill Evjen — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 22:02:55 GMT

As noted to me from Scott Hanselman, Microsoft just released the CTP1 of the XML Schema Explorer. Seems that there are a lot of changes coming in the XML space for the .NET 3.5 release and the XML tools that are currently present in VS2005 will be no more as they are replaced by some new XML tools - the XML Schema Designer being one of them.

Here is a screenshot of the new XML Schema Explorer. You can see from this screenshot that the schema is open on the left-hand side of the shot, while the schema explorer is open on the right. The big items that Microsoft seems to be making note of is the ease of visually dissecting your schema document from this explorer. You can see the search capabilities across the document and the highlighting in the explorer to quickly point you to the correct places in the document.

Quite interesting that they are using the "ticks" on the scrollbar showing places in the document that the search results are found. Clicking on one of these scrollbar ticks will bring you to that place in the document. This is a style of navigation that I am a big fan of ever since using the ReSharper tool from JetBrains. Navigating large documents through visual signifiers in the scrollbar is an something I would think we are going to see a lot more of in tools coming forward.

Overall - I like it. Haven't played with it - but you can see the video about it here. You can also read the XML team blog about it here. And you can download the new XML Schema tool here.

Silverlight Book

Bill Evjen — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 22:14:16 GMT

While I am thinking about Silverlight, I am looking forward to Devin Rader and company's new Silverlight 1.0 book from Wrox that is coming out this Fall!

Devin is one of the main characters from Infragistics and due to the nature of his job of building controls for this company - he is usually neck deep in all the latest and greatest stuff coming out of Redmond. Stay tuned. Buy today:

http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-0470228407.html

http://www.amazon.com/Silverlight-1-0-Devin-Rader
/dp/0470228407/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/002-2349574-6000851?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187734404&sr=8-3

Microsoft Tafiti as a beta

Bill Evjen — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 22:03:58 GMT

Microsoft just launched a beta version of an application called Tafiti. A nice test application from Microsoft that demonstrates - probably most importantly - the use of Silverlight.

For those new to Silverlight - Microsoft's official one paragraph description of this technology is:

"Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows."

Basically Tafiti is not a new candy (the name is Swahili meaning "do research") but it is a way of looking at search that is different than a straight list of links (which it does also). You can look at the links in a tree view fashion. Though I have to say that I can't see any relationships between the elements that make up the leafs or the branches - so I am unsure if they are random or not.

I'm not sure how many will use this a search - I really think in the end - people want a list of elements and I don't think a tree is the quickest and surest way for a human to consume the data. Though, again, it is a nice showcase for Silverlight.

ReSharper on Visual Studio 2008

Bill Evjen — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 18:40:03 GMT

If I were to pick one tool to add to Visual Studio for my day-to-day coding, it would be ReSharper by JetBrains. I have been using the tool since version 2.0 and it is currently in version 3.0. It provides a ton of tips/corrections/advice as you type code. It provides better tooltips, better Intellisense, and extremely better refactoring than what you get out of the box with the default Visual Studio.

For those of us out there that grab hold of the latest betas as soon as possible, you might be wondering about how to install ReSharper onto Visual Studio 2008. I, myself, am running Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 on the same box (with no issues I might add). Installing ReSharper 3.0 on the box will default to install it to work with Visual Studio 2005. Though, if you are also going to want to install it on Visual Studio 2008, then you are going to have to take some extra steps.

The first step is to go to your command prompt and use the following command:

msiexec /i ReSharperSetup.3.0.1.msi VSVERSION=9.0

From there, it is a little confusing, but you will be asked to Remove/Reinstall/Change the current install. This is due to the fact that I already have ReSharper installed on the VS2005 version of the IDE. You can easily get around this by selecting Reinstall and it will then install the tool for VS2008 as is specified by the parameter in the command line VSVERSION=9.0 …. which is 2008.

So far, no problems.

UPDATE:

JetBrains just released the latest version of ReSharper 3.0.2 Build 517 and they now include a specific install for VS 2008.

So, if you are running both VS2005 and VS2008 on your box - you would need to download both versions of ReSharper and you will be good to go.

Welcome to Fellow Blogger Kevin Grossnicklaus

Bill Evjen — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:21:14 GMT

I've known Kevin for a number of years as a friend and more recently as a co-worker. "G" has just started his blog at http://geekswithblogs.net/kgrossnicklaus and is one of the .NET voices of St. Louis. Kevin's focus is on the Smart Client and especially in the area of Smart Client frameworks. In fact, he is giving a presentation on a framework that he has been working on for some time. It is quite worth the look. Glad to see you blogging finally Kevin.

Windows Vista Updates for Performance and Reliability Issues

Bill Evjen — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 18:48:36 GMT

Some folks are lovin their Vista machines while others are cursing as they are having problems (mostly with the drivers and some lockup issues). It really does only depend upon what you are using your machine for. Though, Microsoft has just released some performance and reliability patches out there:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938194
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938979

The first one takes care of the following issues:

This update resolves the following issues:

• The screen may go blank when you try to upgrade the video driver. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
932539 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932539/) The screen may go blank when you try to upgrade the video driver on a Windows Vista-based computer
• The computer stops responding, and you receive a "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" error message. You can restart the computer only by pressing the computer's power button.
• The computer stops responding or restarts unexpectedly when you play video games or perform desktop operations.
• The Diagnostic Policy Service (DPS) stops responding when the computer is under heavy load or when very little memory is available. This problem prevents diagnostics from working.
• The screen goes blank after an external display device that is connected to the computer is turned off. For example, this problem may occur when a projector is turned off during a presentation.
• A computer that has NVIDIA G80 series graphic drivers installed stops responding.
• Visual appearance issues occur when you play graphics-intensive games.
• You experience poor playback quality when you play HD DVD disks or Blu-ray disks on a large monitor.
• Applications that load the Netcfgx.dll component exit unexpectedly.
• Windows Calendar exits unexpectedly after you create a new appointment, create a new task, and then restart the computer.
• Internet Connection Sharing stops responding after you upgrade a computer that is running Microsoft Windows XP to Windows Vista and then restart the computer.
• The Printer Spooler service stops unexpectedly.
• You receive a "Stop 0x0000009F" error when you put the computer to sleep while a Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) connection is active. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
931671 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931671/) Error message when you put a Windows Vista-based computer to sleep while a PPP connection is active: "STOP 0x0000009F"

While the second one takes care of the following:

This update resolves issues that may affect some Windows Vista-based computers. These issues have been reported by customers who are using the Error Reporting service or Microsoft Customer Support Services.

By applying this update, you can achieve better performance and responsiveness in various scenarios. This update also improves the reliability of Windows Vista.

This update resolves the following issues on a Windows Vista-based computer:

• You experience a long delay when you try to exit the Photos screen saver.
• A memory leak occurs when you use the Windows Energy screen saver.
• If User Account Control is disabled on the computer, you cannot install a network printer successfully. This problem occurs if the network printer is hosted by a Windows XP-based or a Windows Server 2003-based computer.
• When you write data to an AVI file by using the AVIStreamWrite function, the file header of the AVI file is corrupted.
• When you copy or move a large file, the "estimated time remaining" takes a long time to be calculated and displayed.
• After you resume the computer from hibernation, it takes a long time to display the logon screen.
• When you synchronize an offline file to a server, the offline file is corrupted.
• If you edit an image file that uses the RAW image format, data loss occurs in the image file. This problem occurs if the RAW image is from any of the following digital SLR camera models: • Canon EOS 1D
• Canon EOS 1DS
For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
932988 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932988/) Files from a Canon EOD 1D or 1DS camera may be corrupted after you use Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Live Photo Gallery, or Windows Explorer to edit the file metadata in Windows Vista or in Windows XP Service Pack 2
• After you resume the computer from hibernation, the computer loses its default gateway address.
• Poor memory management performance occurs.

UPDATE: There does seem to be some measured results in applying this fix. http://www.aeroxp.org/index.php?categoryid=23&p2_articleid=114. This site is seeing 2x faster results in the perf.

New Version of ODP.NET for .NET 2.0 Released as Beta Today

Bill Evjen — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 21:26:22 GMT

Oracle has released a new version of ODP.NET as a Beta today. You can find it here. This release offers some outstanding features ODP.NET developers have been waiting for. The new feature list is as follows:

Oracle Data Provider for .NET Features
Instant Client Support: Smaller ODP.NET client installation
User-Defined Types: Map Oracle objects and collections to .NET custom types and support REFs to object types
Process Database Down Events: ODP.NET automatically frees connections of a downed Data Guard instance
Windows-Authenticated User Connection Pooling: Windows-authenticated connections can now be pooled.
Connection Pool Performance Counters: Monitor connection pool status

Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio .NET Features
Visual Studio 2005 integration with Server Explorer, Data Sources Window, Dataset Designer, TableAdapter Configuration Wizard and more
Improved ASP.NET web developer support
Oracle Database script project to provide source control of Oracle scripts
SQL script editor
Built in support for executing SQL*Plus scripts
Explain plan support
Integration with Query Designer
New designer for granting/revoking privileges on schema objects
User-Defined Types: Create, explore, modify UDTs; custom class code generation for .NET applications
Data Window and Query Window enhancements

Oracle Providers for ASP.NET Features
Membership Provider: Stores and retrieves registered user information in the Oracle database
Role Provider: Stores and retrieves user role information in the Oracle database
Site Map Provider: Stores and retrieves site map information in the Oracle database
Session State Provider: Stores and retrieves session state information in the Oracle database
Profile Provider: Stores and retrieves user profile information in the Oracle database
Web Events Provider: Stores and retrieves ASP.NET health monitoring event information in the Oracle database
Web Parts Personalization Provider: Stores and retrieves personalization data in the Oracle database
Cache Dependency Provider: Automatically invalidates ASP.NET cached data based on changes made to the base data in the Oracle database

Some big things that excite me are the new providers for ASP.NET! The new provider model in ASP.NET 2.0 is a must utilize for most applications that are being built today. It is an easily extensible system that allows for you to plug your controls and the application into built up and thoughtout systems that are commonly used in all web applications today. This includes items like membership, role management, instrumentation, personalization, and more. The wonderful thing about the provider model is that it is rather extensible and the new providers available in this new release of ODP.NET is testament to this extensibility.The other big feature that I am excited about is the UDTs or user defined types. This allows you to push your .NET custom types up into Oracle and get away from cursors if you wish. Nice!

The smaller Oracle Client installation is also a wonderful new feature as those that work on large web farms are aware! :)

There is quite a bit more - the main point is that if you are working with Oracle - take a look at the new release.