Kit Ong's News Pick Of The Day

Erroneous Bluetooth license expired message on Pocket PC

Kit Ong — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 09:46:38 GMT

I received the following lolcat 'esque message on my pocket pc the other day.

"Bluetooth can no longer be used because the license is expired."

This apparently is a known Bluetooth software bug on ppc. The way I
fixed this issue is quite drastic, what I did was I backup all my data
to my device storage, reflash my ROM with a clean windows mobile 2003
image, then restored all data from backup.
I did have problems getting my ppc to accept the image and had to
resort to mtty to initiate bootloader commands.

It seems like my trusty old ppc is coming to end of it's life, oh well let's see how much longer I can keep it running without upgrading.

MacBook AirPort and wireless router 64-bit WEP key

Kit Ong — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 10:19:08 GMT

I spent a while trying to figure out this problem so I thought I'd post this tip to help others who may have the same issue. The problem I had was trying to connect a MacBook to a wireless router which uses 64-bit WEP key. The AirPort prompt on the Mac wasn't very helpful, giving only 3 options for WEP key (WEP Password, WEP 128 bit HEX and ASCII). I chose WEP Password and entered the 64-bit WEP HEX key and unbeknownst to me, Mac did not understand this key and cannot connect to the wireless router. Eventually I discovered the syntax to enter this key, thanks to the article below, to get the WEP Password prompt to understand the 64-bit HEX key you have to precede the key by 0x. This I thought is very counter-intuitive, considering Mac's reputation for the ease of use of their OS.

HOWTO: Configure wireless with 64-bit WEP on Mac OS X
http://domster83.wordpress.com/2007/03/09/how-to-configure-wireless-with-64-bit-wep-on-mac-os-x/

SharePoint Document Libraries scalability

Kit Ong — Tue, 20 May 2008 23:49:53 GMT

Another TechNet capacity planning guidelines for SharePoint, a confirmation that you can store up to 1 million documents in a single document library.

Plan for software boundaries (Office SharePoint Server)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262787.aspx

The most useful bit I found in this article is on scaling a document library as people often ask how many documents a SharePoint document library can hold before performance starts to degrade.

<QUOTE>

Throughput differences between flat document library vs. document library with folders

Throughput for certain operations decreases as the number of items in a folder increases.

The following figure shows the difference in throughput between viewing all items in a document library with and without the effective use of folders, which is critical for scaling. As shown in the graph below, throughput performance degrades as the number of documents increases when flat library storage is used. The quickest drop in throughput occurs when the total number of documents is less than 2,000, from 151 RPS (at 200 documents) to 63 RPS (at 2,000 documents). At 4,000 documents, throughput decreases to about 13 RPS, or an overall throughput decrease of over 90% from an empty library.

The following figure shows the relative performance between folder views when folders are used to store and organize documents, and an indexed view of a flat library structure. Each folder contains 500 documents created by different users. In this scenario, there is no significant throughput degradation up to 1 million documents for either scenario, provided that the number of items in the view does not exceed the performance threshold for your system. However, performance is better when folders are used.

As the number of items in a folder increases, folder view performance will gradually degrade. Note that the above results are estimates based on our testing, and results may vary in your environment.

</QUOTE>

Robin Williams on Golf

Kit Ong — Tue, 20 May 2008 23:29:43 GMT

See genius comedian Robin Williams explain how drunken Scottish invented golf...Warning explicit language

Useful XPS and SharePoint links

Kit Ong — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 11:39:18 GMT

About XPS file - I have updated the following blog posting with additional details on XPS file
http://geekswithblogs.net/kit/archive/2005/10/31/58601.aspx

Indexing XPS documents with MOSS 2007
http://blogs.msdn.com/ifilter/archive/2007/03/24/indexing-xps-documents-with-moss-2007.aspx

XPS Viewer, printer drivers, IFilter
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/viewxps.mspx

Microsoft XPS Document Writer - a printer driver that allows you to do "Print to file" to save webpage as a XPS file
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa964988(VS.85).aspx

Microsoft Office 2007 Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4D951911-3E7E-4AE6-B059-A2E79ED87041&displaylang=en

Feel free to add to my comments with any useful XPS and/or SharePoint related links and I will include them here.

External Storing of Binary Large Objects (BLOBs) in MOSS

Kit Ong — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 10:20:25 GMT

An update to my previous post on storing SQL BLOBs in SharePoint. Since MOSS SP1 it seems that you can do this in a supported way by implementing the ISPExternalBinaryProvider COM Interface. More info can be found in the WSS SDK. Limitations around using BLOB store provider (EBS) should be noted. Thanks to Itay for blogging about this!

Gantt Chart Web Part for MOSS

Kit Ong — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 17:35:01 GMT

This is an update to my previous post on Gantt chart web part by Teun. WSS 3.0 version of this web part can be found here. Although MOSS has an out of the box Gantt view for lists as can be seen below the SharePoint Gantt view is bloated compared to the Gantt chart web part. Not only do you get the nice rounded corners for the chart but it will pick up Group by settings of the tasks list and display a black container around the grouped tasks.

Many people have reported problems activating this web part on the site, to resolve this try running the following 2 stsadm commands after you have used the install scripts, these commands will run timer jobs and activate the features on your site collection.

The web part should appear under 'miscellaneous' section in the gallery with the name 'Gantt chart'

stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs
stsadm -o activatefeature -name Duynstee.GanttChart -url http://<site url>

Get started with writing a network game using Orcas (.Net 3.5)

Kit Ong — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 14:04:29 GMT

I recently saw a very well put together code walkthrough presentation by Oliver Sturm on how he built a Connect Four network game using WCF and WPF. You can download the entire source code for his application here. If you haven't got a .NET 3 or above IDE then see below to get all the free resources to set this up. I find downloading and installing the Orcas DVD image much quicker than downloading the VPC image which can be very large. The Orcas express DVD image is 849MB (whereas the current VPC image is 5GB!)

Here's a set of materials to get started with the next generation development tool Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas) using .Net 3.5.

Go here to download a free DVD image copy of Microsoft® Visual C#® Codename Orcas Express Edition CTP. http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/future/downloads/default.aspx#files (VB.Net version is also available)

Once Orcas is installed you will need to apply a patch that will enable VB Express and VC# Express April CTP to create WPF applications. OrcasVCSAprilCTPWPFPatch.EXE @ http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=89415&clcid=0x409

Suggestions for Julian:

How about another GeeksWithBlogs Member Game Design Contest with Vector based graphics using WPF or Silverlight and perhaps network enabled using WCF with a prize such as XBOX 360, Zune, Windows Mobile, <add wishlist here>

Using SharePoint to search SQL BLOB Data

Kit Ong — Mon, 07 May 2007 11:48:14 GMT

Donn Felker has wrote a good step-by-step article on how to access and search SQL BLOB Data from MOSS 2007. SharePoint can already search Office file formats stored in the database, this article can be used as a starting point for developing a separate database that hosts binary data readable by SharePoint. In large enterprises there is always a need to put in SLAs for various data contents, it is good practice to have a separate database containing BLOBs that could amount to significant storage space and that could be taken offline without affecting the SharePoint application critical data such as templates, sites and services meta data.

MOSS Event Log Viewer Removed

Kit Ong — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 02:13:00 GMT

It seems that the web based eventlog viewer have been taken out of SharePoint Central Admin in MOSS RTM as the EventLog.aspx page is missing. It is a shame as I find it useful to see the last 25 event log message output with their full description on a single page. It is annoying when you have to click on each individual Event to see their description in Windows Event Viewer, the up/down arrow doesn't help much either since after clicking a number of times you tend to forget what the description for the previous Event was.

Although the Event log viewer in MOSS Beta is quite simple, it does have a lot of potential for becoming an essential tool. Although it's stepping into the MOM territory I feel that this feature would be very useful for cases such as checking the status of the last submitted timer job. You wouldn't want to be presented with hundreds of performance counters or logs just to diagnose a problem. The SharePoint team has already done a fine job in webifying the whole MOSS deployment experience that will revolutionarise the way server products and components are deployed, configured and monitored.

I hope the SharePoint team can bring back this feature in the next version/service pack. Here are some of my nice to haves list for a web based Event Viewer:

Search - Ability to search across all fields and all log types. Currently this can be done in Windows Vista with custom views. In Windows XP you cannot roll up different log types and you can only search certain fields at a time.
Event Log Type "All" that rolls up the latest Application, Security and System Events. It would help spotting cases where a System Event caused an Application Event or vice versa.
Increase Page Size from 25. Seeing up to 200 Event descriptions on a single page would be nice.

Feeding my PC

Kit Ong — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 11:55:00 GMT

After adding more memory and replacing some bits, my graphics card now seems a bit hyperactive.

Demetri Martin's take, on Windows Vista

Kit Ong — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 02:02:00 GMT

Warning this website can be pretty addictive, it did a good job at getting my attention, quite innovative stuff, here's a clip of what's there....

Demetri Martin is the voice behind the animation at http://www.clearification.com

UpdatePanel now works in MOSS!

Kit Ong — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 18:39:00 GMT

Thanks to Eric Schoonover and Mike Ammerlaan, we now have UpdatePanel working in SharePoint. To get UpdatePanel in your web part you can derive from Eric's AjaxBasePart (Note: In this sample Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart v2 is being used rather than the System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart v3 so you need .dwp instead of .webpart definitions if you are deploying your web part as a feature). For RAD development, head over to Jan Tielens' Blog for his SmartPart with AJAX support. It's great to see many people have caught the Ajax in SharePoint bandwagon, hopefully we'll see more flashy enterprise applications developed for MOSS/WSSv3 soon!

Windows Vista Ultimate installation

Kit Ong — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 02:09:00 GMT

I have finally reinstalled my Vista Ultimate to RTM after running RC1 for some time. The installation went smoothly and took less than half an hour for a clean installation with all the essential drivers without me having to go rummaging through my CD collection to find any drivers. I chose to install the Ultimate rather than Enterprise version since I plan to use Vista for both entertainment and work. The picture below which I've expertly copied from the Windows Vista magazine sums up nicely the targeted audience for the multitude of Vista versions.

It was my first time seeing the Vista boot up logo and sound as there where some bug in the previous version that skipped this bit before the Vista welcome screen, probably due to incompatibility with my fantastic graphics card in Vista RC1. All credits to the Vista team, I'd like to think that the bug report I spent a lot of time and effort (15mins) in compiling contributed to getting this bug fixed for RTM. It wasn't an easy job trying to capture the error during the system boot up sequence.

There's already tons of coverage on the new features in Vista but I'd like to mention the two games that appealed to me, first is Chess Titans and comes as standard with Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate edition. It is great to have an alternative to solitaire and plus you actually learn how to move chess pieces. The second game I like is Texas Hold 'Em poker and comes as a free download with Windows Ultimate Extras. The days of making a fool of yourself when you bet big and lose are over, with Vista's Hold 'Em poker you can go all-in with your chips without having to think about remortgaging your house.

Another thing I'm looking forward to is Windows DreamScene, hopefully this will be available for download soon via Windows Vista Ultimate Extras. I can't imagine I will find any thing useful with having full-motion desktop backgrounds but if Vista does somehow allow cable tv to be displayed as desktop background I can imagine people's TV viewing habit will change, especially since IPTV is gaining momentum. I really like the approach Microsoft is taking to enhance the Multimedia experience on the desktop and putting the spotlight on designers rather than just developers and techies.

Demo of Full Motion Desktop

How to tell when to upgrade your graphics card

Kit Ong — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 16:42:00 GMT