Visual Studio 2008 release

Since the beginning of this summer there have been a rumour that Visual Studio 2008 will be released in november. Yesterday on a keynote at TechEd in Barcelona it become official that Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Framework 3.5 will be released on MSDN in november.

How It All Ends?

What's the worst that could happen? Check out this webcast.



This is the followup with answers of the critique getting after the first vidow. Check out this webcast as well.

Cellphone stupidity....

Listen on the Wall Street Journals technoligy guy Walter Mossberg when he talks about the crazy cellphone industry. He talks about the cellphone vs the cellphone net and when he compares that to a computer and the internet vendor it sounds really crazy....

Thailand nya kanarieöarna

Läste på DinaPengar att Thailand nuförtiden är svenskarnas favoritresmål. I vinter kommer över 300.000 svenskar resa till Thailand och framför allt till Phuket. Till Phuket kommer i år fler än 2.500.000 turister i vinter. Hela listan med populäraste resmålen i vinter:

1. Thailand (1)
2. Spanien (2)
3. Egypten (5)
4. USA (3)
5. Indien (6)
6. Kap Verde (8)
7. Sydafrika (12)
8. Vietnam (18)
9. Australien (9)
10. Portugal (13)

[Thursday fun]: Ghost?

Amazing technology -> Must see

I was surfing around the Internet and found Photosynth. It is a collaboration between Microsoft and the University of Washington. The description on the project site is "The Photosynth Technology Preview is a taste of the newest - and, we hope, most exciting - way to view photos on a computer. Our software takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next. "

When I saw Google Earth I was stunned... when I saw this the reaction was the same. You must see the webcast by Robert Schoble when Gary Flake demo this. When you seen the demo... download the software and try it for your self in your own browser. It's amazing!!

[Song of today]: Sanningen om dig

[Wednesday fun]: Watch this video...

...it's fun...and the magic is good... and....

Thinkable about reuse

Read Nick Maliks post about "The culture of art vs. the culture of engineering".

Cool, instant start

Tired to wait for your machine to start up? Check out this. From the Splashtop web page "With Splashtop you can read e-mail, chat with friends, or surf the Web seconds after pushing the power button!"

C# Coding Standard Guidelines

Juval Lowy from IDesign has published a new version of his C# Coding Standard Guidelines. You also got the IDesing WCF Coding Standard.

[Friday fun]: American democracy

This is tragic but very funny

[Friday fun]: What will you tell the phone saleman next time

[Tuesday fun]: Life as an operator

Very funny video... the one who has locked herself IN the car.... and the one who wants to report violance in a DVD... and...

The Last Lecture

Randy Pausch is a Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. This is his Last Lecture. He has untreatable cancer and he's talking about achieving your childhood dreams. You can watch a 4 minute video here...



...AND watch the whole webcast here (1 hour 44 minutes). Read more about Randy and his story here.

[Friday fun]: ...it's never too late to give up...

130?

In Swedish (in English below): Enligt Dagens Industri överväger EU-kommissionen att lagstifta om att de bilar som är tillverkade i Europa får lov att släppa max 130 gram koldioxid per kilometer från 2012. I dag släpper den nytillverkade genomsnittsbilen ut 161 gram koldioxid per kilometer. Tydligen så har de flesta biltillverkare sagt att de kommer klara kraven. Alla utom en vill säga. Porsche har uppgett att de aldrig kommer att kunna leva upp till de nya EU-kraven. Porsche har sagt att de kommer stämma EU ifall kommissionen inför de nya riktlinjerna.

Lite lustigt att ett bilmärke som säger sig ligga på teknikens framkant inte säger sig kunna klara av att leva upp till de nya krav som ställs. Läste en artikel om en forskare som sa att hybridteknik och annan ny teknik var det största som hänt bilmarknaden sedan upptäckten av förbränningsmotorn, inte så mycket för miljöaspekterna utan mer för prestanda. Nu verkar de bilmärken som tidigare sagt sig ligga först i utvecklingen som Porsche, BMW, Audi och Mercedes vara de som tappat teknikförsprånget och märken som Toyota tagit ledningen.

According to an article in Forbes Magazine and Dagens Industri the European Commision will come with a proposed directive to cut the carbon dioxide emissions for cars to 130 grams per kilometer from 2012. Most car manufactors will be ready for the new rules but Porsche said that they "can not meet this target" according to the head of development Wolfgang Duerheimer.

Isn't this kind of funny that Porsche that has been a company on the edge of the technoligy not will bee able to deliver according to the new rules. It seems that Porsche, BMW, Audi and Mercedes are loosing their technoligy lead to companies like Toyota. I read a article where a scientist says that the new technoligies on the market like hybrid are the biggest change to the car market since the combustion engine.

Great seats

I found two videos from Singapore Airlines presenting their seats in business and first class. This is first class and this is business class. The 23" LCD screen is ok too. Singapore Airlines always gets prices for their service and comfort. In SkyTrax ranking system they are one of five airlines with five stars (all five star airlines are asian airlines).


I'm going to New York City in a couple of weeks but I have to sit in the regular cattle class :)

A new cool user interface over MS Live Search

Check out http://www.tafiti.com/ The tree view are really cool.

ComHem suger!

Ända sen vi skaffade ComHem som leverantör för IP-telefon och vårt bredband har det varit problem. För telefonen så är det många tillfällen som det inte gått att ringa till oss (den som ringer får upptagetton eller felton) eller så har vi fått meddelandet att det är problem med nätverket när vi försöker ringa ut.

När vi kan ringa är det mycket problem med uselt ljud och att samtalen bryts. Vad gäller bredbandet så förrutom ett stort antal dagar då det inte fungerat alls så bryts linjen ganska ofta. Man sitter och surfar och allt funkar bra... så plötsligt så verkar någon på ComHem stängt av bredbandet... inget händer... ibland under några minuter och ibland hela kvällen. Enormt irriterande.

Efter många felanmälningar och många timmar i kö för att prata med kund(o)tjänsten som har ett betalnummer så får man svaret... starta om modemet och testa igen... som vanligt hittar de inget fel och ofta verkar de inte ens tro att något är fel. Speciellt de konstiga felen vad gäller det dåliga ljudet i telefonen verkar svåra att förstå.

För några veckor sedan var ljudet så dåligt så inte ens ComHems kundtjänst kunde höra vad jag sa utan de bad att få ringa upp min mobil. Äntligen förstod de att något var fel. Något gjorde de för allt har funkat bra i ett par veckor.... men så idag la telefonen av igen... Jag ringde och de gjorde nåt... få se hur det funkar nu.

Jag frågade om ersättning för den usla telefon och bredband- tjänsten. De kunde inte se att jag felanmält tidigare... Jag fick reda på att ifall jag ringde in sent, på helgerna eller mailade in felet så är de inte så noga med att föra detta i loggarna. Tack för den!! Jag fick 250kr i en telefonpott. 250 kronor rabatt för något som inte fungerar! ComHem suger... ComHem suger...

Jag är inte ensam om detta påstående:
Chris
Pelles blog
Kund
Martin
Lilla Ellie
En massa folk på Privata Affärer
och comhem suger bloggen

How many inhabitants do we have per doctor

Click here to see the image.

Sweden 310:1

USA 390:1

Great Britain 440:1

Russia 230:1

Worst 50.000:1

Most doctors per inhabitant 170:1 somewhere in the caribian

Cities of paper

http://www.nickolya.net/project/its-only-a-paper-world/

Wikipedia architecture

Intrested in the Wikipedia archtecture? Read this.

Google architecture

Intrested in the Google architecture? Read this.

Google Reader Numbers

I found this page (thanks to mr Schoble) with some Google Reader.

• Google Reader uses 10 TB for storing all the raw data
• Google Reader crawls 8 million feeds
• Search requires a lot of computational resources. Google Reader uses two indexes for search:- a big tree updated twice a day (150machines, 600 million documents)- 40 small trees for recent posts, updated every 5 minutes (40 machines, 40million documents)

University course about Facebook applications

Robert Schoble writes about the course about building Facebook application at Stanford University.

I'm back...

...at work again. Two weeks vacation has done something with my memory. I don't remember anything from work. I'm updating an XSD and an XSLT but can't remember how to write XPath expressions.... hope the memory returns again.

Popfly

I just heard that Popfly will be released soon. Some weeks ago I tried out my first Popfly mashup check it out here. You will see my Flickr photos placed in Virtual Earth where they are taken. Simple.... I know but I had to try out Popfly. One thing thats REALLY cool is that if you select the 3D view in Virtual Earth and check out my photo taken on the top of Empire State Building. You will see that the photo is on top of the Empire State Building. Thats cool.

A new iPod

A YouTube video of the new iPod Touch. Looks really cool.

Entity Framework Beta 2 & the 1st Entity Framework Tools CTP Released!

Read more at the ADO.NET team blog.

[Video of the day]: Lion fight

This video is one of the most seen on YouTube. It's recorded in Krüger Park in South Africa. A group of lions attacks a little buffalo. It must be tough when you got like ten lions hanging in your neck and a crockodile is hanging in your tail but...

Resize images

This YouTube video about resize images are great. Watch it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-SSu3tJ3ns

It's about how to resize images without losing perspective and proportion in the image.

Third day...

Vacation is fantastic. I'm home and renovating our living room. Tomorrow we will start painting the ceiling. We got this week and next week to finish the room. We have also planned a trip to Sandhamn and a trip to Möja before going back to work.

[Friday fun]: Dad at Comedy Barn

I got this weeks largest laugh yesterday when I watched this video.

Thanks to Micke for his post

[Song of today]: Tomas Andersson Wij - Evighet

This cover of Evighet by Carola is fantastic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lmtn76n5sI

Reflector for Orcas

Mr Roeder has just released the Orcas version of Reflector. Find it here.

Creativity

I found two very good articles in the swedish newspaper DN about creativity (this post below is in swedish...)

Den första artikeln heter "En korkad idé kan vara helt lysande" och den andra heter "Kreativa piloter lurade döden".

Från "En korkad idé..." "Höjdhopparen Dick Fosbury hoppade över ribban med ryggen först - vilket chockade konkurrenterna. Han revolutionerade sin gren. Men vad kännetecknar egentligen en kreativ person? Galen genialitet eller ett hårt och envist arbete?". En annan intressant sak är "Kreativa personer är ofta inte några "följa-efter-personer""... "Deras inre värld är viktigare än vad andra säger och tycker, gruppens åsikter betyder väldigt lite".

Läs de här...

Facebook is da shit....

I read this very interesting article about the social networking thing called "FaceBook is the Online Hub for Connected Professionals" by Brian Solis. The article is about the Facebook phenomena and the other social networks like MySpace, LinkedIn Ziki and Plaxo. Read it.

Amazing guitar [last time...]

I just have to show this amazing 10 year old kid from South Korea that copied Canon from Trace Bundy. Amazing

Sleeping on airplanes

Lufthansa economy-class sleeping area? I don't know but when I look at the picture I don't feel like buying a sleeping ticket on Lufthansa.

iPhone games

Soon you can play games on your iPhone. Many blogs and papers talks about a possible battle between Nintendo and Apple for the handheld games market. Intresting to see whats happens with this. Read more here and here for example.

A post on my post...

I wrote a post about the future of the social networks. Michael on Front Porch Forum refered to my post on his blog. Read it here.

Amazing guitarist part 2

Check out this one-armed guitarist. Watch it here.

Trace Bundy - Pachelbel's Canon. Watch it here.

California Dreaming - Michael Chapdelaine. Watch it here.

Check your WCF Service

When your running your WCF Service you could check the service with http://localhost:8080/ImportService and http://localhost:8080/ImportService?wsdl as when you worked with a web service. But our friends at iDesign has developed a tool called IDesign Metadata Explorer to help us get some more information about our services. Download the tool with source code here.

I had to remove the bin and obj folders and compile the code before it could start. The exe file included in the zip file didn't worked.

Patterns and Practices April 2007 DVD Released

Patterns and Practices April 2007 DVD is now released in July. Download it here.

[webcasts]: impossible guitar playing

A guy playing Canon.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjA5faZF1A8

Andy Mckee - Guitar - Drifting


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddn4MGaS3N4

Michael Hedges has a new way of playing accustic guitar.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbndgwfG22k

Zack Kim plays the Simpson theme on two guitars


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFqTd-CEjHM

Do you wanna make a lot of money?

If you can code AJAX you can make $200.000. Check this out here. I almost forgot. There are one catch....

The design of the Skatteverket web

This post is in Swedish.

Här beskriver Jens Wedin som jobbar med design och funktionalitet på Skatteverkets och Kronofogdens webbplatser om arbetet med att ta fram deras nya webplats. Intressant att följa tankar och funderingar kring detta. Det skulle vara kul ifall fler företag berättar hur de gör när de tar fram system och lösningar.

Acropolis August CTP (VS 2008 Beta2 Refresh) Release available now

Now you can download Acropolis August CTP (VS 2008 Beta2 Refresh) Release. As the team writes on their blog "This release is mainly an update so that our customers can continue to evaluate “Acropolis” with the latest VS 2008 Beta".

Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1

My colleague Thomas H asked me if I had installed Service Pack 1. I hadn't. I must have missed it or something. Download the service pack here. Tonight I must check my VS 2005 at home as well.

How long will the trip take in rush hour?

In google maps you can (only in america so long) see how long your trip will take in rush hour. Read more here.

Trace in .NET

I'm adding trace functionality to a project and I had almost forgotten System.Diagnostics. It's very easy to use and to config.

Add this to the app.config file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
     <system.diagnostics>
          <sources>
               <source name="TraceTest" switchName="SourceSwitch" switchType="System.Diagnostics.SourceSwitch" >
               <listeners>
                    <add name="FileLogListener" type="Microsoft.VisualBasic.Logging.FileLogTraceListener, Microsoft.VisualBasic, Version=8.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a, processorArchitecture=MSIL" initializeData="FileLogWriter" append="true" autoFlush="true" baseFilename="ImportService" location="ExecutableDirectory" logFileCreationSchedule="Daily"/>
               </listeners>
               </source>
          </sources>
          <switches>
               <!--add name="SourceSwitch" value="Warning" /-->
               <add name="SourceSwitch" value="Verbose"/>
          </switches>
          <trace autoflush="true" indentsize="4"></trace>
     </system.diagnostics>
</configuration>

Then you use the trace like this:

public partial class MainForm : Form 
{
        private TraceSource m_traceSource = new TraceSource("TraceTest");

        public MainForm()     
       {
            InitializeComponent();
            m_traceSource.TraceEvent(TraceEventType.Information, 0, "The MainForm was successfully started.");
        }

Social networks

The number of social networks on the net has exploded. LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, Pownes, Plaxo and a million other. I remember the first network I joined was Six Degrees (I think...). The internet was kind of new and social networks were definitely new at least for me. Now I have a:

• MySpace account, to find new exiting music. MySpace feels to mainstream and tired now.
• Flickr account, to publish my photos. I really like Flickr.
• LinkedIn, to find and to keep my contacts. LinkedIn really feels like an old dinosaur.
• Facebook. I like the idea that you can build applications etc.
• Pownes. I had to try it.
• MSN account. To send files and chat. Don't use it so often.
• Skype account. Never use it anymore.

It's too many networks and ways for communication. So what will the future bring us? I have three thoughts about that.

• First of all. A community mash up. I think that Facebook has a point in the application idea. The companies and home developers could write there own add-ins and add the wanted functionality. Then the users will get the best from many networks. Today every network has a couple of good features but all together they all isn't good enough. Then the users could get music from one network, photos from one etc. Facebook has a good start for this.
• I think that the new networks will be forced (by the users) to be more open. As Robert Scoble write about Plaxo "Plaxo will come out with a social network that lets me own my own data and take it out of Plaxo and put it on other social networks". I think that Plaxo will be the first (that I heard about) but not the last. I don't think that Plaxo will be the next big thing because the timing, with Facebook and Pownes all media exposure right now, is not so good. It's so many users that just changed networks to one of "the new" ones.
• I think smaller networks with a base in your community could be the next thing. I think many users are fed up with the giant communities. I found this post from Julia Lerman that talk about an existing network that has a good idea. She writes "I realized I was losing touch with my personal friends because of my many new virtual friends". I can recornize this. She talks about Front Porch Forum. Julia describes the network like this "What FrontPorchForum focuses on is your very local community. It creates an online forum, also distributed every few days in an email, that allows you to connect to your neighbors. So the people in my town of Huntington are the only people who's posts I read and who see my posts (and my email address)".

What will the future bring us in the social networking over the Internet? Who knows....

Orcas Beta 2

I have installed Orcas Beta 2 on one of my machines, just to test the installation and to do some testing running fx2.0 stuff etc. I have tried it out and I was going to installed it on my main computer to use the Beta 2 as my only Visual Studio. Then I found this post about that the Beta 2 crashes like crazy. I think I'll wait with the installation...

XML general definition

If you are working with XML, XSD and XSLT don't forget to create and use general definitions in a specific file that you can use in all documents. If you create a XSD with the definitions you want to use.

Example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>

<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://www.utvecklargodis.com/GeneralDefinitions/1.0" targetNamespace="http://www.utvecklargodis.com/GeneralDefinitions/1.0" elementFormDefault="unqualified" attributeFormDefault="unqualified">
     <!-- GUID -->
     <xs:simpleType name="GUID">
          <xs:annotation>
               <xs:documentation>General definition of a GUID</xs:documentation>
          </xs:annotation>
          <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
               <xs:pattern value="[a-fA-F0-9]{8}-[a-fA-F0-9]{4}-[a-fA-F0-9]{4}-[a-fA-F0-9]{4}-[a-fA-F0-9]{12}"/>
          </xs:restriction>
     </xs:simpleType>
     <!-- /GUID -->
</xs:schema> 

Then you use the general definition like this:

<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:tns="http://www.utvecklargodis.com/system/2.0" xmlns:ns1="http://www.utvecklargodis.com/system/GeneralDefinitions/1.0" elementFormDefault="unqualified" attributeFormDefault="unqualified">
<xs:import namespace="http://www.utvecklargodis.com/system/GeneralDefinitions/1.0" schemaLocation="./General.xsd"/>
     <xs:element name="Objects">
          <xs:complexType>
               <xs:element name="ObjectID" type="ns1:GUID"/>
          </xs:complexType>
     </xs:element>
</xs:schema>

Rosario Aug 2007 CTP

You can download a VPC image of Rosario now. "Visual Studio® Team System Code Name “Rosario” is the version of Team System that follows Visual Studio Team System 2008. This release provides the earliest public glimpse of the work in progress on the next generation of Team System." I have just installed Orcas Beta 2... Hmmm.... The new technology isn't new so very long.

Second week...

Tomorrow the second week of work after the summer holiday will start. I was going over the holiday photos and I felt a portion of holiday spirit through my body.

First my father helped me build a white picket fence. Then we went up to my parents place for a couple of days.

We just played with my partent dog Ludde and had a great time.

The last day of our vacation we went to Marits parents house on Öland.

Wiz-kid webcast

Robert Scoble recorded this webcast about Daniel Brusilovsky. He's a 14 year old podcaster, blogger geek. As Robert writes "I’m damn impressed. Anytime you think our future is doomed come back and replay this video". I agree. Watch the web cast.

YouTube architecture

Check out this article about the architecture of YouTube.

There are some points I found more interesting:

• "Supports the delivery of over 100 million videos per day" That is 4.167.000 per hour, 69.000 per minut, 1.150 per second if I counted right. Impressive!
• The team "2 sysadmins, 2 scalability software architects 2 feature developers, 2 network engineers, 1 DBA". To handle the site? Not so many people.
• "Know what's essential to your service and prioritize your resources and efforts around those priorities"
• "Keep it simple! Simplicity allows you to rearchitect more quickly so you can respond to problems"
• "Have a good cross discipline team that understands the whole system and what's underneath the system. ..... With a good team all things are possible"

[Country For Dummies]: CD 009 - Aug 6 2007

Just before summer CD number 007 and 008 of Country For Dummies was released. In retrospect I'm not completly satisfied with them. I don't think all songs are good enough... Now after the summer it's time for CD number 009. This one I think is the best collection of horse jazz so far. You got blue grass, country pop, rock flavoured country...

Here comes the list of the songs on the compilation:

Country For DummiesCD 009 - Aug 6 2007
001 Dixie Chicks - No Readt To Make Nice
002 Dan Bern & the IJBC - Baby Bye Bye
003 Greg Trooper - little sister
004 John Michael Montgomery - Cowboy Love
005 Clark Jameson - Waitin On The Whiskey
006 Steve Earle The Dukes - Billy Austin (Live)
007 Tom Russell - What Work Is
008 Catherine Britt - The Upside Of Being Down
009 The Soggy Bottom Boys I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow (Radio Station Version)
010 Aaron McDaris Be Good to My Little Baby Girl
011 Carlene Carter - Baby Ride Easy
012 Gretchen Wilson - Redneck Woman
013 Alan Jackson - Who's Cheatin' Who
014 Brad Paisley - The Best Thing That I Had Goin'
015 Kristofer Åström - Just A Little Insane
016 Peter Mulvey - Shirt
017 Josh Ritter - You Don't Make It Easy Babe

Everybody seems to write and talk about...

... Pownce. This is New York Times article about the site.

[Music]: Dolly P launching her own Label

I really love Dolly Parton. She is a very cool lady with amazing songs. She is launching her own record label Dolly Records. In february the firs releas will be out in stores. "It's really the first mainstream country record Dolly has done in 17 years," says Parton's manager Danny Nozell.

There will be a tour begin in the first quarter next year. "We're going to definitely do a world tour to support the album, starting in March," Nozell says. "We're going to be doing Europe, Australia, America and Canada."

Read more here.

Laws of software development

The laws of software development can teach us a great deal.

I especially like the Dilbert Principle "The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management".

Other true laws are Wirth law "Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster" and ninty-ninty law "The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time".

VS 2008 multi targeting Support

I installed Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 yesterday. There was no problem to install the program and this version works fine together with VS 2005 on the same machine.

When you open a 2005 solution in 2008 a wizard will perform an upgrade of the project files and the solution file. After the wizard was finished I checked the new solution file and compared it with the old one. There was one changed row.

The first row in the old solution file:Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 9.00# Visual Studio 2005

The first row in the new solution file:Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 10.00# Visual Studio 2008.NET 3.5 project file

The project files were the same. As you know VS 2008 has a multi targeting support. If you want to be able to run the same code in both VS 2005 and VS 2008 you can create a new solution file for VS 2008 and keep the old solution file for VS 2005. Only remember to update both files when you add or remove a project.

You can see what framework you use in the project files. Compare these two parts of a project file for the same win form project.

.NET 3.5 project file

<ItemGroup>
<Reference Include="System" />
<Reference Include="System.Core">
<RequiredTargetFramework>3.5</RequiredTargetFramework>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="System.Xml.Linq">
<RequiredTargetFramework>3.5</RequiredTargetFramework>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="System.Data.DataSetExtensions">
<RequiredTargetFramework>3.5</RequiredTargetFramework>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="System.Data" />
<Reference Include="System.Deployment" />
<Reference Include="System.Drawing" />
<Reference Include="System.Windows.Forms" />
<Reference Include="System.Xml" />
</ItemGroup>

.NET 2.0 project file

<ItemGroup> <Reference Include="System" /> <Reference Include="System.Data" /> <Reference Include="System.Deployment" /> <Reference Include="System.Drawing" /> <Reference Include="System.Windows.Forms" /> <Reference Include="System.Xml" /> </ItemGroup>

You got the RequiredTargetFramework to specify the versions of the references. Clever.

[Wednesday Fun]: Amazing singer

This clip has walked (no runned) around internet a while now but I watched it again yesterday and I'm still amazed about it.

The winner of the english TV-show "Britains got talant" was a cell phone sales man from Cardiff. He has not one bit self-confidence but won the show and became a loved by the britains and a big star. Whatch the clip of his first performance on the show here.

Who are you?

A fantastic post from Scott Hanselman about the programming stereotypes. It's really funny. There are so many persons you will recognize in here. You got the copy/paste dude, the Google guy, the blogger man, the used-to-do-HTML fellow...

[Webcast]: New features in Visual Studio 2008

Check out this webcast. Dan Wahlin shows us LINQ to SQL and a little bit about creating ASP.NET pages.

Fantastic photos from Africa

Check out these photos from africa, amazing scenes and fantastic animals

Google Reader

I tried out Google Reader first when Google released it but I didn't like it. Some days ago I start using Google Reader again and I really like it. Now I don't use the built in Internet Explorer reader at all.

You can check out my Google Reader shared items here and you got the feed here. You can also see my shared items on this blog, see the frame right on this site.

Try it out. Google has really managed to develop a great feed reader.

Web stats

The quality of different visitor statistics sites are very shifting. I got a couple of web statistics for my blog. Here's the results monday lunch:

• Statcounter Unique visitors today: 7
• Blogtoplist Unique visitors today: 3
• Topblogarea Unique visitors today: 19
• Blogflux Unique visitors today: 3
• Blogrankers Unique visitors today: 14
• Bloggtoppen Unique visitors today: 6

Average is 8,7

I know that the start time for the count can be different for different sites an american site might have an other start date for today then a swedish etc but the difference are to big to explain the big difference. And even if you just compare the swedish sites there are big difference in the statistics.

HM on Facebook

The company I work for H&M has a network on Facebook with 558 members. I don't find anyone from the IT department... that's strange.

First day...

...at work. It's a strange feeling to be back. It feels like I've been away for just a weekend or so. It still very few people in the office and most restaurants are still closed but otherwise it feels good to be back.

I had some e-mails to read and some catching up on the intranet news to do. Two days before my vacation the new location for the office was official. Marievik. It is still the talk of the day. I think it will be sad to move out from the city but the office space and the location will be good.

Last day...

Three weeks of vacation is over. I'm sitting at home and reads the new posts and e-mails that I have ignored on my vacation. These three weeks has disapered so fast. I have tried not to read my e-mails and I have tried to ignore all interesting blog posts as much as posible. But tomorrow I'm back :)

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2 is released now

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2 is released now. You can download it here. Read more about the new features etc in this post from Scott Guthrie.

Facebook

It talks about Facebook everywhere.... Even the regular newspaper talks about the site today. SVD has two articles (in Swedish) today. One is about a law suite from Mark Zuckermans old class mates that says he stole the idea from them the other article is about the success of Facebook in Sweden.

Facebook has over 30.000.000 members in the world and the swedish network has 80.741 members.

If your a member search me up... utvecklargodis@gmail.com

Photography

I read Thomas Hawks blog and found this link to a very young photografer called Joey Lawrence. Check out his photos and read his FAQ. Amazing pictures and he show us that you can take fantastic pictures without fancy cameras and lenses.

It was a fantastic sunset over Stockholm...

I was on my way home and saw the sun coming down....

... over Stockholm...

Webcams

I found some nice web cams over Stockholm, my home town.

• Over Slussen and Riddarfjärden.
• Over Gamla Stan.
• Over Saltsjön.
• A good view over Stockholm.
• Sergelstorg.

New York webcams

• Time Square.
• South over Manhattan.
• South and north from an office on the 55th floor of the Empire State Building.
• Lower Manhattan cam.

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2

If you read the comments for Scott Guthrie's post about "VS 2008 Nested Master Page Support" you can read...

"Monday, July 09, 2007 10:30 AM by ScottGu
Hi Andreas,
VS 2008 Beta2 should be available for free download in the next three weeks. It will support a go-live license.
Thanks,
Scott"

So it's not so long before we can test out the Beta 2....

Launch date for Visual Studio 2008

On the worldwide partner conferense Kevin Turner, chief operating officer, presented the launch dates for Visual Studio 2008. "Turner announced that Windows Server® 2008, Visual Studio® 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2008 will launch together at an event in Los Angeles on Feb. 27, 2008, kicking off hundreds of launch events around the world. " Read more here.

VS 2008 Multi Targeting Support

I think this is so cool. The new Visual Studio 2008 has support for multi targeting. This meens that you can create solutions for .NET framework 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 in this IDE. Check out this post from Scott Guthrie about it.

Microsoft is running IIS7 live

Microsoft has the new IIS7 beta 3 to run the www.microsoft.com site. The text belove is from this post by Bill Staples from the product team.

"The www.Microsoft.com guys have been running IIS7 on some of their servers since early beta days, but I was excited to get an email this week which announced that they are running IIS7 on all of their servers! (except for a single box which they use to do comparative studies with).
Here are some interesting stats about the deployment which they forwarded along:

Availability YTD – 99.83% (Measured by Keynote Systems, Inc.)
- 0% Impact to Availability during upgrade to Beta 3
- 99%+ of hosted App’s upgraded without any change required

Audience Reach - #4 in U.S (65M UU) & #5 worldwide (287M UU)

Hosting Model –2 Internet Data Centers & 80 Web Servers
- 500+ Vroots, 350+ IIS Web Applications & 12 Application Pools
- 10,000 Requests/Sec & 300,000 Concurrent Connections"

iPhone cracked

I saw that the iPhone was cracked only three days after the release. Read more here.

Images That Changed The World?

I found this blog post about "Images That Changed The World?” The first thing that hit me is the cruelty we humans possess. And these images don’t even cover some of all cruelty there is. But I think it’s important not to forget and to be reminded of all terrible things there is sometimes.

I often think about the quote “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions” and I hope that humans aren’t evil by soul. For the victims it doesn’t matter if the perpetrator is evil or not but it is hard thinking that so many humans are evil by heart.

[Friday fun]: Your office after vacation

If you have really funny co-workers this could be your office after your vacation.

A new nice post-it feeling or...you could have your office news paper decorated or...

... a nice soccer field in your keyboard.

Trim function for XSLT

I needed a function for a XSLT that will trim a string. Here it is.

First you got an example of how to use the function.

<Cancel>
<xsl:call-template name="trimString">
<xsl:with-param name="s" select="./CANCEL"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</Cancel>

And here is the trim function.

<!-- Template for trimming strings -->
<!-- Left Trim -->
<xsl:template name="leftTrim">
<xsl:param name="inParam"/>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="substring($inParam, 1, 1) = ''">
<xsl:value-of select="$inParam"/>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="normalize-space(substring($inParam, 1, 1)) = ''">
<xsl:call-template name="leftTrim">
<xsl:with-param name="inParam" select="substring($inParam, 2)"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:value-of select="$inParam"/>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>
<!-- Right Trim -->
<xsl:template name="rightTrim">
<xsl:param name="inParam"/>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="substring($inParam, 1, 1) = ''">
<xsl:value-of select="$inParam"/>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="normalize-space(substring($inParam, string-length($inParam))) = ''">
<xsl:call-template name="rightTrim">
<xsl:with-param name="inParam" select="substring($inParam, 1, string-length($inParam) - 1)"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:value-of select="$inParam"/>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>
<!-- Trim by using right and left trim -->
<xsl:template name="trimString">
<xsl:param name="inParam"/>
<xsl:call-template name="rightTrim">
<xsl:with-param name="inParam">
<xsl:call-template name="leftTrim">
<xsl:with-param name="inParam" select="$inParam"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:with-param>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:template>

Last day

Today is the last day of work before my three + two week summer vacation. Now I will have vacation for three weeks and mostly work with our new house. Then I will work for a couple of weeks and after that I will have two more weeks of vacation. The last weeks I have really felt that this vacation is needed.

Acropolis July CTP avalible

The new July CTP for Acropolis is now avalible. Read more on the Acropolis Team Blog.

ADO.NET Entity Framework June 2007 CTP now available

The ADO.NET team was just released the "Entity Framework June 2007 CTP". They write this about what the release includes "This CTP contains updates to the ADO.NET Entity Framework since the Visual Studio Codename "Orcas" Beta 1 release, including changes in Object Services, Query, Entity Client, and the Entity Data Model Wizard in Visual Studio.". Read more about this (and read the installation instruction) at the ADO.NET team blog and read Danny Simmons list about the changes of Entity Framework.

Free MS E-Learning

I found three free E-Learnings from Microsoft. I haven't tried them out yet but I'm hoping to get some time for that soon. The three clinics are:

• Clinic 5135: Introduction to Developing with Windows® Presentation Foundation and Visual Studio® 2005.
• Clinic 5136: Introduction to Developing with Windows® Workflow Foundation and Visual Studio® 2005
• Clinic 5137: Introduction to Developing with Windows® Communication Foundation and Visual Studio® 2005

Find them here.

[Cool link]: Musicovery

I found a new(?) music site today. It is really really cool. It's called Musicovery and it got a new (for me) user interface that I found very interesting.

You select what type of music you want to listen to and then you can see realated music. Cool. Try it out right now....

iPhone vs N95

Robert Scoble compares Apple iPhone with Nokia N95 here. Roberts conclusion is "The iPhone is superior in almost every way to the Nokia N95. The battery life is better. The contact management is better. The Web browser is better. The photo taking experience is better. The screen is better. The wireless management is better." The camera is better in N95 and the Nokia phone got GPS. But.... It seems that Apple has a new success...

"How Do I?" Videos for Visual Studio Extensibility

In the MSDN series "How Do I?!" there are a couple of videos to download about Visual Studio Extensibility (VSX) now. Find them here.

15 webcasts about WCF

Michele Leroux Bustamente are going to do 15 webcasts about WCF this summer. The first one is monday 2 july and the last one is friday 7 september. Find all links on Micheles blog.

[Word of the day]: is a quotation...

Yesterday my friend and colleague Tomas Wallin came with one of the nerdiest quotation I’ve heard: “Regular expression and XML are like the wheel and the fire for our industry”. I don’t know if it’s true but it is very nerdy and very fun…

Code Snippets in Visual Studio

It seems that most people don't use Code Snippets. It to bad. Snippets are very useful to get away from the copy-paste coding. Instead of copy-paste you can write snippets for the most common copy objects. Read more about snippets here.

Rapid development

Rapid Development by Steve McConnell is a very good book I think every developer/architect should read. You can read the "Classic Mistakes Enumerated" from the book here. Check it out.

Cool app

Paul wrote a little applikation for a Windows Mobile 6 Smart phone "that automated the taking of pictures, geo-tagging them from Bluetooth GPS, posted them to my site and displayed them using Virtual Earth on my blog." Really cool read more here.

Using import and XSD.EXE

I was going to use XSD.exe on a XSD I made. The XSD was importing a XSD with general definitions
.

First when trying to use XSD.exe to generate the C# class it didn't found the imported schema. Then I added the imported XSD to the command in my bat file (that I use instead of writing in the command line every time).

Now it works! The bat file looks like this

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\xsd.exe" Object.xsd "./General/General.xsd" /c /l:cs /edb /n:Company.Project.BusinessEntities
pause

Thats all.

Flickr

I have finnaly created a Flickr account and I have just uploaded my first two pictures. Check it out at http://www.flickr.com/photos/utvecklargodis and the feed is here.

XML knowledge

I just realized that the knowledge in the developer community about XML, XSLT and XSD is very limited. I found out that I know far too little about this and then I discovered that most my colleagues didn't know much more. I borrowed a book from Tomas W to help my lack of knowledge. The XML (and surrounding X*) technique is very powerful and useful when used in the right places. In the future versions of Visual Studio there are new tools helping us in the development and debugging of XSLT. So borrow or buy a good book about X* to read in the summer. :)

Subversion for Team Foundation Server

Do you like subversion and want to use it with TFS? Now you can do that. There is a project on CodePlex called SvnBridge that will help you with that. Check it out here.

Some Inaccurate Statements About Software Factories

Tomorrow I'm going to talk about Software Factories in the developer forum we have on my company. Right now I'm writing a short PowerPoint presentation about the topic. I was searching the net for good ideas about what to say and what to show. I found this really good post from Jack Greenfield about "Some Inaccurate Statements about Software Factories". Read this post!

The first time I heard about Software Factories was in a .NET user group meeting. After that meeting I was very sceptical to Software Factories and I had misunderstood the concept the same way as the article Jack’s referring to. Maybe I misunderstood the whole thing or maybe the speaker wasn’t able to explain it right…. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. It was first when I read about Software Factories when I come home I understood the meaning and what the purpose is.

It was Jack Greenfield and Keith Shoort et.al. that wrote the book “Software Factories: Assembling Applications with Patterns, Frameworks, Models & Tools".

How many times...

One thing just hit me. How many times do you suppose to say “hello” to your co-workers? You always says hello when you come in to work in the morning. Your co-workers says hello when they arrives in the morning to. So sometimes in the morning you have greeted everybody. Then you say hello or nod every time you run in to someone all day.

You don’t want to be that grumpy guy that don’t say hello. Hmmm…. This is a tough question. Anybody that knows the right amount of hellos under a day?

Update your process explorer

"Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded".

Check out this tool here.

Really cool travel site

I found a really cool site via the travel blog Travelaid.se. You select a country and then you via links or the nice Google Maps integration they have. I think it's best for you to try it out for your self. Heres the link to the site.

T-SQL/database unit test

I found this article about T-SQL/database unit testing.

Fame and fortune

Now it's time to start developing a killer add-in for future release of Windows Home Server. You can win cash and a trip to Redmond. You can win $10.000 cash, an all-expenses-paid trip to Redmond and your solution will be premoted on Microsoft.com. Read more here.

ALT.NET

Sam Gentile has a great post about the term ALT.NET. You can also read the Hot/Not list. There are a couple of things I don't agree about when I read the list, like Entity Framework, but I really like most of the list. But I really wonder what Roy (the original list writer) thought when he put Active Record as hot. Active Records are never hot :).

Katmai June CTP released now

I just saw that Microsoft released the first CTP of Katmai (June CTP). You can register here. David Hayden has a post about some new features in SQL Server 2008. Read the post here. I found a webcast from Tech-Ed 2007 in Orlando when David Campbell has the first presentation of SQL Server 2008.

The virtual earth integration and the location data type are really cool. I don't know if I ever will need them but... it's still cool.

Fx 3.5

Daniel Moth has posted the new features in .NET Framework 3.5. Read the post here.

Code name Acropolis

I got a question from Tomas if I had post anything about Acropolis yet.... Tomas here it comes. :)

David Hill has a great post about "intruducing Acropolis". Here you can download the just released CTP and watch a really good 12 minutes webcast about Acropolis. This webcast gives you a good overview about what Acropolis is.

The description Microsoft has is "The Microsoft code name “Acropolis” Community Technology Preview 1 is a set of components and tools that make it easier for developers to build and manage modular, business focused, client .NET applications. Acropolis is part of the “.NET Client Futures” wave of releases, our preview of upcoming technologies for Windows client development.

Acropolis builds on the rich capabilities of Microsoft Windows and the .NET Framework, including Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), by providing tools and pre-built components that help developers quickly assemble applications from loosely-coupled parts and services."

Motivation...

Robert Scoble is writing about how his boss at Microsoft used to play this video (see below) to the team members when needed. When the results weren’t good enough and when the team spirit is low all teams need something for inspiration.




I think the need for motivational activities are underestimated in the IT business. Why shouldn’t we need that? I haven’t heard many speeches or seen much of these activities at all. No, we need more team building activities and inspiring “coaches”. The project manager and the lead developer must motivate and coach the team members. My friend Micke Deurell once said that the project manager should be like a shepherd, keeping the herd together, happy and safe from the outside danger. Not that I’m resemble the project team with a bunch of sheep but I think you got the picture.

So inspire each other and if you are a project manager, an architect or a lead developer, inspire your team, the team delivery is depending on you.

Sommarkollo

Ifall du vill vidarutveckla dig lite i sommar ordnar Microsoft för tredje året i rad ett sommarkollo. Kolla in alla ämnen här. Själv är jag lite sugen på WCF, WPF, SOA och min vän Mickes MSF dragning.

Google maps... again....

They have made it again. Google maps is fantastic. They have created a new feature thats just amazing. They have a new feature called Street View. You can see, zoom, turn around and go in this new view. Incredable!! I started at Madison Square Garden (right across the hotel I stayed in last time I was in NYC) and followed 8th Avenue north to Time Square.



Check it out on Google Maps.

Another cool feature in Google Maps are the new presentation of the buildings. Check this out. This is Empire State Building.

Wired has a collection of pictures and links of cool places to visit, check it out here.

[Word of the day]: Mashup

The first time I heard the word mashup was on a seminar at Developer Summit last year. After Microsoft released the alfa of popfly I heard of the first mashup editor. Thats a cool word... mashup editor... Some minutes ago I found this post when Jay Neely compares three mashup editors MS popfly (alfa), Yahoo Pipes (beta) and Google Mashup Editor (Beta).

Lists

I have never read Forbes magazine before but I found a link to Forbes list of the best air ports in the world and I got interested. I found out that Forbes is specialized in lists. I love lists myself so…

Best airports
1, Shangi International Airport, Singapore (of course… they have the best airport and the best air line)
2, Hong Kong International Airport, Hong Kong.
3, Zürich Airport, Schweiz
4, Dallas Fort/Worth International Airport, USA
5, Münich Airport, Tyskland
6, Incheon International Airport, Sydkorea
7, Central Japan International Airport Ise Bay, Japan

10 Amazing Helicopter Tours.
1, British Columbia, Canada
2, Rotorua, New Zealand
3, Iguazu Falls, Brazil
4, Great Barrier Reef, Cairns, Australia
5, Juneau, Alaska
6, Victoria Falls, Zambia
7, Hawaii
8, The Grand Canyon, Arizona
9, Sabah, Malaysia
10, Montserrat

The Best Wine Vacations in the World
1, Tunisia and the Mediterranean
2, Priorat, Spain
3, South Africa
4, New Zealand
5, Mendoza, Argentina
6, Alentejo, Portugal
7, Napa and Sonoma, USA
8, Piedmont, Italy
9, Tokaj, Hungary
10, Burgundy, France

Amazing Asian Mega-Malls
1, Starhill Gallery: Kuala Lumpur, Malayasia
2, Harbour City Mall: Hong Kong
3, Roppongi Hills: Tokyo, Japan
4, VivoCity: Singapore
5, The Siam Paragon: Bangkok
6, SM Mall of Asia: Pasay City, Philippines
7, COEX Mall: Seoul, South Korea
8, Dream Mall: Taiwan
9, South China Mall: Dongguan, China
10, Mall of the Emirates: Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Then you can read lists about Train Trips of Luxury, Forbes Traveler 50 Most Visited Tourist Attractions and many more on Forbes Traveller.

The future is here.... again....

I found this really cool tech thing. It's a "computer table" from Microsoft called Surface. Check it out here. Surface is a interactive table.

You must check out the three videos presented on the web page above.

Robert Scoble has met the team and got some answers for his questions about Surface.

If your in Sheraton Hotel in New York City or in San Diego you can check this out live.

In this webcast you can see more about Surface.

Update: Check out this webcast by Larry Larsen on10 about Surface. This webcast shows the couple of applications made for Surface.

I really like Surface. It's so cool. I want one at home.

New cell phone?

I got a SonyEricsson W750 who is about to go home any day now.... Some days I can't call out and some days noone can call me. Thats no good feature for a cell phone. I have always been a SonyEricson guy but now I'm not sure... I really like the new Nokia N95. It's got a ok size. Mp3. Video. GPS. 5 megapixel camera.

Defining the direction of LINQ to EDM

I totally agre of the suggestions Roger Jennings have for LINQ to EDM. He writes "Following are what I consider the more important actions required to make the Entity Framework, Entity Design Model, Entity Client, and LINQ to Entities a competitive object/relational mapping (O/RM) tool"

Read all suggestions here.

XML Features in the February CTP of Visual Studio “Orcas”

I found this post from the Microsoft XML Team's WebLog about the new XML features in Orcas.

There are three major areas in which you will see improved XML functionality in Orcas:

• XSLT compiler and debugger
• XML editor
• LINQ to XML

Har djurgården bytt färger???

Jag läste DN ikväll och blev mycket förvånad. Först kollar jag på AIKs tifo. Det står att "AIK:arna växlade färg till svart-vitt"....


...så lång allting som vanligt. Sedan kollar jag på Djurgårdens tifo och ser då....

... att Djurgården har bytt färger. Snurrigt....

ADO.NET Synchronisation Services

I read Mike Taulty's blog and found a post about ADO.NET Synchronisation Services. This seems like a really interesting technology if you are working with slow and unpredictable internet connections. Read more here. When I read more about this technology I became more sceptical. It seems to be very mush code for this synchronisation stuff.

I think there is a better solution to let the SQL Server do all the synchronisation/replication work instead. Read about “Integrating Data from Multiple Sites (Server)“ and “Integrating Data from Multiple Sites (Client)”.

SearchDotNet

When you search the internet for information you always got millions of hits. Google has a new service that you can do you own search engines. I got one on my blog. Check it out here or on my blog. You can do a search and only got results from .NET and development resources.

Dan Appleman has also done one called SearchDotNet. Check it out here.

[Word of the day]: REST

It seems that the word of the day is REST or REpresentational State Transfer. More or less all articles and posts is about REST. I think the boost came when Microsoft presented Astoria which is a REST technology. The term REST is created by Roy Fielding in his Ph.D. paper when he should describe an architecture style for networked systems.



His explanation of what REST is:
"Representational State Transfer is intended to evoke an image of how a well-designed Web application behaves: a network of web pages (a virtual state-machine), where the user progresses through an application by selecting links (state transitions), resulting in the next page (representing the next state of the application) being transferred to the user and rendered for their use."



Read a more reader friendly description here.

Microsoft Popfly

I found this really cool tool from Microsoft called Popfly. The description from the webpage about Popfly is "Popfly is the fun, easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, Web pages, and applications". Check it out here.

Enterprise Library 3.1 - May 2007

Now is Enterprise Library 3.1 avalible for download here. You can read what news the release includes in Tom Hollanders blog here.

Free book from the Patterns & Practices Team

On the patterns & practices Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server project site you can download the beta 11 version of the book "patterns & practices Team Development with TFS Guide" here.

GAT - Guidance Automation Toolkit

The last couple of days I've been looking into GAT (Guidance Automation Toolkit). It's a really cool and useful technique to create foundations for a project, with code generation and stuff to help the developers. It's a bit tricky to get a grip on the development environment. Most code is XML in different files like template files and project files. There is a Hands-on-lab out there but I think that one is really crappy. Take a look at this tutorial instead. It's a guy called Jelle Druyts that made a really great post series about how to begin you GAT experience.

Microsoft ESB

Microsoft is now releasing the previous partner only ESB Guidance read more on the CodePlex site.

Help.... we're doing it again

Help!!! We are doing the same mistake all over again.... A couple of years ago most companies didn't offer developers a good career possibility. There was a profession called developer, system developer or programmer and that's it. The companies I worked for had a maximum salary a developer could get and many colleagues reached that limit before they were 30 years old. To do a career or to make more money they had to switch career. They had to take a position as leader (with responsibility over personnel) or become project manager. Hmmm. That sounds good. They got a new administrative job because they were a really good developer. That makes sense. They got a passionate interest in writing code but now they writing word documents and attend meetings all day.

And now we’re doing the same mistake again. All good developers should become architects. Good developers (many of them with just experience of one or a couple of projects and no architecture training…) should suddenly become architects because they are good developers…. Most architects stops writing code. Why? How will they be able to be experts in developer- and technical issues and take decisions about these questions if they don’t know the technique? What architecture should we use for this project? How should we implement this? How does this work? Should we use.... Etc. The technique they once knew would be obsolete one day. You must keep up the learning. One architecture will be the best or even function for all projects. The non coding architects would be obsolete pretty soon them self. Sure you can read articles, read blog posts and attend Microsoft Live once a year to keep your knowledge up to date. But to be able to really build good IT-systems you need more and deeper knowledge then you can get from articles.

No, create possible careers opportunities for developers, senior developer, expert etc.
We need good developers and not just architects in the projects. One project I participated in had three architects and one developer (me). That was a good project team. And I have seen small projects with just one or two developers having one full time architect.

Enterprise Library 3.1

Tom Hollander describes the news in Enterprise Library 3.1 here. It's more or less a maintainance release.

New features in Orcas and Rosario

In Orcas there are a couple of really nice features included. I really like the XSLT debugger there you can debug with breakpoints and all that both from the XSLT file but also from the data file. A really cool feature there is that you can also debug the XSLT from your C# code.

In Rosario there will be a XSD Designer that will help alot, check it out here.

Good tips for a successful team

I found this post of a couple very good tips for a successful team lead.

SQL Server Katmai

Read more about the next generation SQL Server Code Name "Katmai" here.

We are the best programmers in the world

Sweden took all three medals in the "7th International 24-hour Programming Contest" in Budapest. Read more here.


Final result
Rank Points Team Nationality
1 11150000 Balloons'R'Us SE
2 10557500 Jon får bestämma SE
3 9010000 Team KTH Itello SE
4 8787500 Royal Air Force SRB
5 8146095 Rusty PL

VBx

The last couple of days there have been a lot talking about VBx. What is it... If you wonder read about it here "What the heck is VBx".

CSLA 3.0 avalible

For all of you using CSLA the 3.0 (test release 4) framework is avalible for download. Read more here. CSLA 3.0 uses WCF and WPF.

Must read post

Den här blogposten av min gode vän Micke är det bästa jag läst på länge. Läs den Micke har träffat rätt igen.

Session Mix 07

All sessions from Mix 07 are are published here.

Web Service Software Factory v3

I found this video from Don Smith about v3 of Service Factory. See it here.

The v3 release of Service Factory I think will be great. Now the Service Factory will use model-first. I think that model-first is critical for most to start use the Service Factory in real life project.

The realease date for v3 is set to 15 november 2007. Can't wait.

Web Service Software Factory v2 evaluation

After some tests of the Web Service Software Factory v2 it's time for my thoughts some kind of evaluation.

The whole Software Factory idea is great. You got a built in framework and built in code generation in the development environment. Your development time could decrease and the quality could increase. I say could because it doesn't matter what tool, framework or technique you use you could abuse it and get the opposite result.

I think that this version of Service Factory isn't ready to use in real life projects. There are some critical issues that must be solved first.

• The framework doesn’t quite feel like a whole. There are different wizards you must use and then there still are source code you must write manually. This work flow must be clearer and more natural.
• The code-generation is just for the first time, and then you must code changes yourself. There must be a way to do the generation many times.
• The code-generation is made from the existing database. The work flow should start with the creation of the business entity. The database should be a place for storing data and the focus should be the business entity model. If we use model-first we have a model to use for repeatedly code-generation when needed.
  

My main concern is that this version of Service Factory isn’t using a model-first perspective. By model-first I mean that the development is starting with the creation of a business entity model and a model for the service contracts. The models will be the glow that holds the whole application together, all code-generation will use the model as the truth.

Today I found and downloaded the v3 of Service Factory. It is really great. The major difference to v2 is that now we use model-first and the models are the foundation of the application. If you do any changes in the model just re-generate the source code.

Pandora closed

Pandora (internet radio) is closed for all us non-US citizens. I found Pandora a year ago and has been a devoted listener. I have found about 5 new great artists there and bought their CD from Amazon. I think the music industry are digging their own grave. They are closing down music services that people use and enjoy, they are hunting fans that playing their idols music and share chords and lyrics. I saw an old film clip on TV from the early days of Mp3 when some record company excecutives was saying that Mp3 was not a threat for them and that they don't gonna change their old strategy for this new media. They woke up when it was to late and now they fighting a fight they could not win.....

The music industry has lost yet one battle by closing down one way for people to find their way back to music.

[Friday fun]: Fainting goats

You must see the fainting goats.

Astoria and Jasper

I saw that Microsoft annonced two new data access technology on the Mix conference in Las Vegas. Both are avalible now as CTPs and they are called Astoria and Jasper.

Astoria: Read the overview document. It said for example "Astoria is an early technology for creating and executing data services. Astoria data services use the Entity Data Model to model data in terms of entities. These entities are exposed as URI-addressable resources that can be accessed using plain HTTP. Astoria also establishes uniform patterns that UI widget frameworks and libraries can leverage to provide additional services on top of the data services."

Jasper: "Project Jasper is geared towards iterative and agile development. You can start interacting with the data in your database without having to create mapping files or define classes. You can build user interfaces by naming controls according to your model without worrying about binding code. Project Jasper is also extensible, allowing you to provide your own business logic and class model. Since Project Jasper is built on top of the ADO.NET Entity Framework, it supports rich queries and complex mapping"

Read more here.

I'm looking forward to the new technologies. I will be interesting to see what happens. I'm just worried when the new technologies don't support model first. I think we must start thinking first about the domian model and not about the database model. We have to wait to Rosario to get a proper model first tool in EDM Designer.

Microsoft Data Access Strategy

I found this must read blog post from Mike Pizzo about Microsoft'sData Access Strategy, read it here. There are two new concepts released with Orcas. LINQ (with a couple of different variants) and ADO.NET Entity Framework (EF) with Entity Data Model (EDM).

Microsoft wants to get the developers to start programming against a conceptual data model instead of against a logical data model as most do today. The whole EF concept is a pieces of a large future plan including reporting, integration and applications. The first pieces of this concept will be included in Orcas but the framework is just in the beginning. In Orcas we will get an EDM wizard but I think that the real breakthrough for this isn't until the EDM Designer and more is avalaible in Rosario.

The first release in Orcas will still be a bottom up version of the EDM. We must start with the database and then use the tools and framework to link the database with the model. To get the EF to be a huge success there must be tools for the developers to start working model first and this functionallity will be included in Rosario.

When using LINQ and when using EDM? You should use the ADO.NET Entity Framework when( from the article above):

• The ability to define more flexible mapping to existing relational schema, for example:
  o Mapping a single class to multiple tables
  o Mapping to different types of inheritance
  o Directly Modeling Many to Many relationships
  o Mapping to an arbitrary query against the store
• The ability to query relational stores other than the Microsoft SQL Server family of products.
• The ability to share a model across Replication, Reporting Services, BI, Integration Services, etc.
• A full textual query language
• The ability to query a conceptual model without materializing results as objects

My interpretation of this is that if you 're using Data Table Gateways you should use LINQ if not use EDM, the name applies that to :).

The article continous with "Microsoft is defining a migration plan for customers that start with LINQ to SQL and require additional functionality, such as richer mapping capabilities or access to other stores, to migrate to the ADO.NET Entity Framework".

Orcas will be released in late 2007 and the EF is excluded from that release and will come as an add-in in early 2008. I'm really looking forward to see what Rosario brings to us. I hope that model first will be accepted like contract first is today.

Continous Integration tool

I found this tool that looks very interesting. It's called CI Factory and it is open source product for continous integration.

Packages currently bundled with the CI Factory installer:

• Visual Source Safe
• Subversion
• Assembly and product versioning
• PVCS Tracker
• .NET Visual Studio 2003/2005 solution compilation
• Unit Test execution with MbUnit
• Code Coverage with CoverageEye
• nDepend
• Deployment artifact publication
• Install Shield or VS deployment packages

Independent Packages :

• Ant
• VB6Compile
• LinesOfCode
• MSTest
• NCover
• BackUp
• Simian
• Analytics

Listen to what this is about when Jay Flowers is intervjued on Hensel Minuets here. You can get a fast starter with dnrTV here.

The CI Factory uses Visual Studio as a XML editor to edit the argument file for input to nAnt. CI Factory is a code generator to generate the build server code.

Check it out. I looks very interesning and I hope I got some time to check this out some more.

[Word of the day]: Crapplet

In NetLingo they say that a crapplet is a "A badly written or totally useless Java applet, as in, "I just wasted thirty minutes downloading that stinkin' crapplet." " I want to extend the meaning of the word crapplet to be "A badly written or totally useless applet or small program."

Great webcast about Orcas

I found this good webcast that gives you a good overview for Orcas. It is "Conversation with Soma: Orcas Beta 1 and Beyond". Soma is the vice president of the developer division. He guides us of some of the new features of Orcas.

Orcas is build with 3 pillars (Value propositions)

1. Best tool for the latest platforms: Vista, Longhorn server, Office, AJAX...
2. Increase the developer productivity. LINQ support and multi targeting (you can build apps for .NET fwk 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 with Orcas).
3. Increase the team productivity. New and better Team Foundation Server.

Soma also talk about that the Orcas developer team started using Orcas TFS live for the project about one month before the beta 1 was released. He also talk about how Orcas supports the increasing application user experience demands.

He ends the webcast by talking a little about the main focus areas of Rosario:

• Testing tools. Like test case management, code coverage tools and load test tools.
• Requirement management. Did we do what we should. Some tool for managing requirements and see what requirements are implemented, not implemented, tested and so.
• Some workflow tool throught the whole IT deparment. Product mangager - developer - operations.