|
|
|
Recent Entries  Monthly Archives
Internet.com / blogs
|
|
|
ADO.NET Entity Framework Tutorial and Basics
Discover an ADO.NET Entity Framework tutorial covering basic data operations for
applications, including LINQ To Entities, Method Expressions, stored
procedure mapping, and a little discussion about its usage in an
enterprise environment.
Asynchronous Socket Programming in C#: Part I
This
is a simple Client-Server application developed to explain the concept
of asynchronous sockets in C#. This extends the socket program to
accept multiple clients. Because this example uses Asynchronous
methods, threads are not necessary to communicate to multiple clients
(though internally the asynchronous communication mechanism uses
threads at the OS level).
.NET Web Services Tutorial
Writing
.NET Web services without using Visual Studio can be tricky. Learn how
to create a Web Service without using Visual Studio .NET.
|
|
|
|
|
Yahoo! news reports, EU probes Oracle-Sun deal, cites open-source issue
The center of the issue coming form the EU commission is that Oracle is the largest database company and it is taking over the largest open soruce database. According to the newsreport, The EU commission has noted that the database market has 85% control in the hands of only three companies — Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft. Thus, they are weighing the risk that a high visibility, open-source database could be hurt by the Oracle purchase.
It will be interesting to see what safeguards are required to keep MySQL in the hands of the open-source community—if any
Internet.news and several other sites have reported that Windows Mobile 6.5 will be released October 6th. The changes in 6.5 include an improved user interface, better Internet browsing capability and access to the new Windows Marketplace.
Comments that I've seen around the internet have not said the improvements were bad; however, they have indicated that they aren't overly great either. One of the guest comments on WinProNews summed it up the 6.5 release interestingly. To quote:
As a developer on windows mobile this is about as useful as a poke in the eye. New front end to the tired old backend....wow. Nice one Microsoft, you'll only be a couple of years behind the pack when this comes out. Pull your finger out and get Win Mo 7 released then you will have something to shout about, but until then you've got no business trying to hock this off to anyone.
Sounds like at least a few people will be waiting for Windows Mobile 7.0.
This is not a technical entry to my blog, but I thought it was worth mentioning that a new update of Windows Live Movie Maker has hit the internet. This is a free application from Microsoft that can be used to quickly and easily create movies from your videos, pictures, and music.
Shameless Plug: I have a new book that will be releasing in about two weeks called Windows Live Essentials and Services: Using Free Microsoft Applications for Windows 7
. I devote one of the longest chapters to Movie Maker. In fact, I was able to cover the features of this newest release — which is good because the previous release was a huge step backwards from the prior Movie Maker program Microsoft had working with Windows Vista. (Note that the applications covered in my book work on Vista too.)
This new Movie Maker gives you the ability to create movies using a storyboard, using transitions, using titles, captions, and credits, using visual effects, and much more. You can also animate your photos with panning and zooming to create some really cool movie effects from what were still images. If you have video clips from a camera, cell phone, or other video device, you can knit them together, or even break them into pieces.
Movie Maker will also let you generate movie files when you are done. More importantly, you'll be able to save in a variety of sizes. This includes saving for the Internet, for television resolution, or even in High Definition (HD) including HD 480, 72, and 1080P.
I know this blog entry sounds a bit like an ad, but this is actually a very good program for the price of free. In fact, for many people this does as much as they would want when working with home movies and those clips of the kids and of vacations. If this is the standard for free applications, then as developers, we are once again going to have to step up as the bar for basic applications is again rising.
You can download Windows Live Movie Maker from the Essentials download page: http://download.live.com/
Microsoft is doing a number of events between September 24th and November 11th across the USA. If you attend the events, they say you will get a copy of Windows 7. The events are to be broken into tracks for IT Pros and developers. The cities are:
You can find more informaiton at Microsoft's "The New Efficiency" site. Word is that the IT Pro tracks are filling (or filled), but at the time of this post I was told there is still space in the developer tracks.
Of course, I'm from Indianapolis, which is not on the list. We are working on an event in Indianapolis for October 8th. Stay tuned for more information on what the Indianapolis event will be!
I am in a discussion with the owner of a local consulting company, AstraDigital. We were talking about Delphi and its current popularity. He had suggested an article on Delphi 2010 for Developer.com. I'm not sure if he was serious, but I'm sure he would write it if there is interest.
My response, however, was that interest in Delphi is not what it use to be. In fact, if you look on sites such as LangPop.com, you see that Delphi is indeed pretty far down on the "popularity" chart, although it is ahead of technologies such as ColdFusion and COBOL.
The interesting thing about these three languages/tools is that they at one time were extremely popular--so popular in fact that if you knew how to use them, you could find a job even if you weren't an expert. Today, they are obviously not as popular and you'd be much harder pressed to find a job.
The change in popularity of programming languages generally leads to a discussion on learning new stuff. Today's more popular technologies are .NET, C#, Java, and a several others. Of course, there is always new stuff to learn. Beyond that, there is always new concepts and technologies you need to know just to keep up.
In my conversation the owner of AstraDigital, he made an interesting comment. It was interesting enough that I thought I'd write this entire blog post to simply share it with you.
Jeff's words (he may have taken these from somewhere else):
Learning requires filling the void with something [the void wants to be full]
Keeping up requires dismissing old knowledge and replacing with new [much harder IMO]
The title of this blog post is a quote from the article, Microsoft’s SharePoint Thrives in the Recession; however, my quote is taken a bit out of context. In truth, however, SharePoint is doing very well. In fact, we launched a site focused specifically on SharePoint. If you haven't already checked it out, stop by http://www.SharePointBriefing.com. It is the place to find regularly posted SharePoint articles!
http://www.enduserblog.com/2009/07/windows-7-dont-discount-the-little-things.html
Want to know my thoughts on Windows 7? Check out my post at Amazon. It is interesting how it is easy to miss the little things once you don't have them!
In today's MSDN Flash that was delivered to my mailbox, it stated that the Windows 7 RTM would be available for MSDN Subscribers on August 6th. It is interesting that the link in the newsletter didn't go to a page that confirmed this. The exact wording was:
Developers will be able to complete their testing on the final version of Windows 7 by accessing the Windows 7 RTM bits via their MSDN subscriptions beginning August 6, 2009.
Pretty simple and to the point. If you were looking to replace your Release Candidate bits (that will expire) with something a little more solid, then it looks like you won't have to wait much longer.
Am I allowed to blog about blogging on a different blog? Is there blogging limit on how many times you can say the word blog in a blog or within individual blog entries?
With the release of Windows 7 to manufacturing slated for this month (per comments at Microsoft's WPC09), there is lots to blog about. Of course, I blog a lot about things here on Codeguru. I am, however, doing a bit with Microsoft Essential Applications, which is a bit more consumer focused than those of you here at Codeguru would care about. As such, I've dropped the first of a couple of blogs onto Amazon.com. You'll find my first blog entry here:
Missing from Windows 7, but Not Lost
This is a blog shared by a few Microsoft MVPs all writing on Windows 7 and related topics. My entry talks about the applications that are missing from Windows 7, applications such as Microsoft Mail, Photo Gallery, and Family Safety.
So what do you think.... Is it smart of Microsoft to move these applications like they did?
Microsoft has announced in a Press Release that Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 are now available. You can go to the Silverlight home page and download the newest version.I did this today and successfully downloaded and started the install of the new version:  Unfortunately, I soon hit a wall:  (link on dialog vanished when I did the screen capture)
Thankfully, I was given the link for more information in the dialog so that I could figure out the issue. As you can see, the help was.....:  Okay, so there was no more help. I could dig and find the answer to my issue, but I have to step back and ponder for a moment. I've had Flash upgrade on my machine through a variety of versions. I don't recall running into any issues that stopped the install. I'm this install of Silverlight 3 is an exception isolated to me, then no biggie for anyone but me. If it isn't isolated to me, then I think Silverlight is going to lose a few more point to Flash.... Did Silverlight 3 install for you without issue?
|
|
All
del.icio.us
Digg it
Furl
Google
StumbleUpon
