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.