Scott and Carl talk about digital identity and related technologies. Hanselminutes is a weekly audio talk show with noted Web developer and technologist Scott Hanselman hosted by Carl Franklin. Scott discusses utilities and tools, gives practical how-to advice, and discusses ASP.NET or Windows issues and workarounds.

All major web companies are pushing APIs or mashups to try to gain more input on what people are interested in and how people use and consume information.

Check it out. The folks from Borland Dev Tools, now called CodeGear are gearing up to release Delphi for PHP. A RAD IDE for PHP. I’ve been chatting with Michael Swindell, The VP of Products at CodeGear and I’ll be kicking the tires on the product shortly. Full review here soon ! Read More......(read more)

I found this tidbit on Steve Riley’s blog. Windows Vista vs. hotels At many TechEds this year I've presented information about the new TCP/IP stack in Windows Vista. One of the important advances is its automatic performance tuning . With some of the early pre-release builds of Windows Vista, people were reporting problems with public Internet connections, most notably in hotels. Some of the routers used in hotels don't properly implement the specifications for receive window tuning; the symptom looks like failed DNS requests when trying to browse the Web. We made some changes to the stack and to Internet Explorer to detect non-conforming gateways and adjust accordingly. And indeed, I've seen the problem pretty much disappear. However, the gateway...(read more)

This really puzzled me. How can MY OWN pictures file be access denied. (Especially since in an admin on the box.) I asked my peers who quickly suggested that it was a parental controls thing because I’d put something naughty in my pictures folder (Not True) Turns out that Vista creates a link in your documents folder to your Pictures folder so that legacy applications that expect such a link will work, but the Windows Explorer coughs on the link and throws this security error if you try and use that link to navigate TO the folder. (… and I thought that’s what links were for.) Now, I’m sure this makes sense to somebody – just not to me Read More......(read more)

I wanna like Windows Vista, really I do. But, like a loud child, I have to WORK at liking it. After finally turning off all the redundant Security Dialogs…. – Do you wanna do this ? – Are you SURE you wanna do this ? – It might be dangerous, are you really really sure ? I’m settling down to really work on Vista and I’m finding lots to complain about. Today’s complaint is this. I downloaded and installed the AJAX Control Toolkit and tried to open up the Toolkit Solution and I get this. Well, it turns out that the files contained in the Zip file are not trusted because they came from the internet. So I can do this…. I can “Unblock”. My problem is that there doesn’t appear to be a way to do it at the directory level, so I have to do it for each...(read more)

Last week we shipped the March CTP of our Visual Studio and .NET Framework "Orcas" release. It is available as a free download by anyone, and can be downloaded as as both a VPC (allowing you to run it in a virtual machine) as well as a standalone setup install (note: if you are running Vista you want to make sure you only use the VPC version). You can download it here . A few weeks ago I blogged about some of the major improvements coming for ASP.NET developers with the "Orcas" release. If you haven't already read this blog post, I highly recommend reading it here . I think you'll really like the new features it covers. In addition to all the great new framework and tool features, one of the things that I think developers (of all .NET application...(read more)

PS3 Home. ?Wow, this looks amazing. ?While I would not put this in the same category as Second Life with respect to openness, extensibility, community, etc.. it does have AMAZING graphics. (powered by IBM's cell processor)

Update: More coverage here , here




Thank you to my friend and Domino Administration guru Art Thomas whom first made me aware of this, which he read on our IBM colleague Bob Balfe's blog, which he read about on 3pointD.com ?I think that is the correct chain of credit!

Jeff King made a recent post to show off the new JScript IntelliSense feature in the March CTP of Visual Studio. Now I am going to show off the improved JScript Debugging experience in the March CTP. The first thing you will notice is that when you try to debug an IE page, VS will give you a nice little dialog reminding you to turn on script debugging in IE: Here is the Advance tab in IE: After you've turned on script debugging in IE, you can set a breakpoint in your ASPX document right away! You might notice a little diamond inside the breakpoint glyph and wonder what that means. The little diamond indicates this is a mapped breakpoint. This breakpoint will get mapped automatically to the run-time document when you debug the page (F5). Debug...(read more)

In yesterday's blog entry I mentioned that the Linux crowd had kind of taken over the Dell IdeaStorm site. Stephen Hood left a comment that:

Dell would have been better off not doing this if they aren't going to listen. Their excuse about having to pick one Linux distro... just damages their credibility further -- the opposite goal of this initiative... And then to just ignore the #2 request of installing openoffice was even worse.

So, does that make this a failed opportunity? Does that make IdeaStorm a bad idea, unless Dell chooses to follow all of the top requests on the list? (EDITOR'S NOTE: I know that's not exactly what Stephen was saying in his comment, but I'm making a point here)

No, absolutely not. This gives Dell an opportunity, and as I said in my previous post: don't fight the users, adapt the system. Here are some of the things that Dell can do in this situation:

• Clarify their marketing message (especially regarding Desktop Linux and OpenOffice)
• Post some of their own ideas (on this or another medium) about business-saavy things they can do in response to this demand
• Restructure the IdeaStorm site to bring the categories or the newest ideas more front-and-center, so that a single special-interest group can't take over the voting (because people are only going to vote for what's in front of them, and right now what's in front of them on the home page is the ideas with the top votes). At the very least, add a Linux category...
• Add a blog to publicly react to some of the "hot" ideas

If the site remains stale, it will fail (sorry for the rhyme there). Any site that allows that much user interaction will be used in unexpected ways, and if it doesn't grow and adapt it will become useless.

That's another lesson to learn when implementing all this social software stuff, I suppose: half the problem is getting people to use it, the other half is making sure it can evolve when people DO start using it. Evolve or die, and all that.

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A lot of people have asked about how to debug JScript in Visual Web Developer. You need to know a few tricks before you can set a breakpoint on an ASPX document. 1. Enable client script debugging on IE: 2. Bring up the Script Explorer window: 3. Once the Script Explorer window is opened, double click on the run-time document that you want to debug: 4. Now you can set a breakpoint in the run-time document: The script execution will stop on the breakpoint when you execute the script. You can then examine objects at this point of the execution. For example, you can bring up the Quick Watch window and examine the data of the document object. Enjoy! Barry Tang Software Design Engineer Visual Studio Web Tools Read More......(read more)

I’ve been involved in the sport of Kickboxing for over 30 years. Up until this January I owned a Gym and now am a (somewhat) silent partner in one. This guy, Jason “The Trooper” Bonacorsi is one of the fighters that I’ve trained fort about 10 years. He’s won the US Heavyweight Processional Kickboxing Championship, The North American Pro Title and lost an attempt at the Super Cruiser Weight Title (Which he had to loose 20 pounds for.) In two weeks he’s fighting for the PKF Super Heavyweight Intercontinental Championship. The Guy he’s fighting is the current USKBA World Heavyweight Champion. The reason I’m blogging this is that he’s broken all his sparring partners. So with two weeks left to go, I’m wrapping myself in rubber and going to the gym...(read more)

Do you often have to create a page filled with the same business cards, stickers etc. nicely arranged ready to go to the printer? You know you don’t have to copy and drag them “manually” on the page. There is a much smarter way of doing this…

Step 1 - Create your business card and group all objects

First create your business card with crop marks and everything all set. When finished group all objects.

Step 2 - Apply a Transform Effect

Select your business card and go to the Effects menu. Go to Distort & Transform and choose Transform. Check the Preview option so you see the effect live. Enter 3 in the copies field, -65 mm in the vertical field under the Move option. So we're duplicating the card 2 times under each other.

Step 3 - Apply a 2nd Transform Effect on top

Now, we're going to add a 2nd effect on top of this one to have this column duplicated to the right. With the original card still selected, go to the Transform effect again and ignore the alert message box, because normally you don't go to the same effect twice. You use the Appearance Palette instead and edit from there. In this case however, we ignore the warning and click "Apply New Effect". Enter 1 in the copies field and make sure Preview is checked again so you see what happens. Enter 92 mm in the horizontal field under the Move option. Woohoo! Look at that! A whole page of cards! But wait, it's not done yet :)

Step 4 - Watch the magic

Now, just to show it's magic and power, edit the name of the business card or any other data. All cards are updated automatically! Cool isn't it? If you want to move the cards. It'll move all duplicates as well, that's also very handy.

Step 5 - Create a Graphic Style for later reuse

There is more magic to show. Select the card again and drag it into the Graphic Styles palette. You've now created a style that you can apply to any other business card with the same dimensions. If you create a new card, group all objects, select the new card and select this new style you've just created in the Graphic Styles palette, it'll automatically duplicate your new card and create a full sheet of cards! What a time safer that is! :)

I've used this technique a lot for stickers and business cards and it has saved me a lot of time instead of duplicating them "manually".

All credits of this article go to Collin Smith from Adobe. To my knowledge he invented this technique a few years back. This technique works in version CS or later.

The Internet Information Services 6.0 Migration Tool is a command line tool that automates several of the steps needed to move a Web application from IIS 4.0, IIS 5.0 or IIS 6.0 to a clean installation of Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 and Windows Server 2003. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO. Read More......(read more)

I am looking to get some thoughts.

I have worked with a few companies that are running J2EE applications and have adopted an enterprise-wide

SearchDomino.com contributor Chuck Connell provides a LotusScript data export agent that allows Lotus Notes users to define any number of their own export configurations (field lists and output files) -- without programming.

My friends over at MaximumASP.net (one of my AWESOME hosting partners) is gearing up to support Longhorn server and IIS 7. As Bruce Lee said, “You can’t learn to swim standing on the beach”. So MaximumASP.net is getting their IIS 7 experience using the Betas. They have LIMITED FREE beta test accounts available. You can apply here (no guarantees, limited offer, restrictions apply, etc, etc, etc.) http://iis7.maximumaspbeta.com/ Read More......(read more)

I’m starting a new Live-From-Redmond webcast series on developing AJAX applications using 3 rd party libraries. The first one is TODAY – MARCH 8 th at 09:00(PST) / 12:00 (NOON) EST Learn about the kinds of things that you can do with 3 rd party UI libraries. In this session you’ll not only learn about how do use ComponentOne’s Web.UI library with Microsoft AJAX but you’ll learn some interesting things about building efficient web applications with the Microsoft AJAX Client framework. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP ! Read More......(read more)

A couple of years ago I metthe guys from Softricity ( http://www.softricity.com/ ) who had somne really interestering virtualization technolohy. Well, the business guys at Microsoft thought they were interesting too, so we bought thecompany. Now we’re gonna really grow that Microsoft product group. If you’ve every wanted to work at Microsoft but don’t wanna move to “The Rainy City” (Redmond/Seattle) now’s your chance. If you’re interested, contact Lauren. Lauren Day Microsoft Staffing Consultant 617-695-0336 ex. 101 EST laday@microsoft.com Read More......(read more)

Web service calls have an easy way to define a timeout handler. (After the actual web service method's parameters, it's the second parameter to the call.) For async postbacks (UpdatePanels), it's not quite as simple. You need to handle the EndRequest event on the PageRequestManager . The first parameter to your event handler is a reference to the PageRequestManager itself, but the second parameter is an instance of the EndRequestEventArgs class . When an error occurs, you can use get_error() to take a look at what happened. Here's some code that uses an EndRequest event handler to check for a timeout error and handle it: <% @ Page Language ="C#" AutoEventWireup ="true" %> < script runat ="server"> protected void slow_postback( object...(read more)