Windows Live Essentials beta

We can now grab the beta of the Windows Live Essentials beta from download.live.com. Besides the new features and upgraded versions, we get a new installer that finally runs on Windows Server 2008. It's about time!

26 Ways To Know Your Software Development Project Is Doomed

Yes, I know, not a new topic, but I just can help loving these cool lists :)

patterns & practices: App Arch Guide Pocket Guides

Here’s the Pocket Guides available so far:

• Agile Architecture Method Pocket Guide
• Web Architecture Pocket Guide
• Mobile Architecture Pocket Guide
• RIA Architecture Pocket Guide
• Rich Client Architecture Pocket Guide
• Service Architecture Pocket Guide

Thanks for the tip, Cab_ux.

Oxite

Microsoft has released an open-source content management platform targeted to blogs or large Web sites. It's named Oxite, and it is available at CodePlex.

According to Microsoft:

Oxite is an open source, standards compliant, and highly extensible content management sample that can run anything from blogs to big web sites. We know this because it runs MIX Online.

Oh, did I mention that it is an ASP.NET MVC implementation? :)

Windows 7 - burning ISOs

Here's a new one: we can now burn ISO images on Windows 7. Unfortunately, we still can't open the ISO itself, for that you'll have to rely on Daemon Tools.

Windows 7

Uhmm, I'm giving Windows 7 another try for a day or two. It has accepted all my Vista x64 drivers, some configuration features are just great, and the video experience is just awesome! With the same driver as my Windows Server 2008. Cool...

Installing Windows 7 on my Dell Latitude D830

Ok, after trashing my Windows Server 2008 with Azure .NET Services (yes, WCF stopped working), I've finally got the excuse I needed to install Windows 7.

The installed version was the PDC one, build 6801, a x64 version. Installed like a charme, asked for a serial but continue working without it.

To be honest, I didn't found much differences from Vista. Even on memory usage, on my D830 it used 848MB of mem on startup, and 15,8GB of disk.

About the new features most of them have already been written by others. About the experience, most applications that failed to install on my Server 2008 (because they were desktop apps) did install on Windows 7. I'm posting from Windows Live, without need of any hacking to install on Windows 7.

After writting this post I'll install a Windows Server 2008, or maybe a Vista just to get a better experience. So why didn't I kept Windows 7?

1. It's pre-beta material, and for much that I wanted to try it, I still have to work for a living :)
2. I've found explorer too buggy <update>Directly over a UNC path. Locally it seems to work sjust fine</update>
3. I couln'd get to sync my HTP 3300
4. I have a couple of important documents to write until next tuesday...

Until we meet again, Windows 7 :)

Apple Encourages Antivirus Software for Mac OS X

Apparently Apple started encouraging users to install Antivirus on Mac OS. Informed people did never believe on the virus-proof Mac OS theory, Mac users (me included, just using ClamAV on demand!) could afford not to use those just until the critical mass was reached. And it seem to have been reached now.

Is this a bad indicator to Mac OS? Hell, no! It's a natural consequence of Apple's growing market share. Good for them. Congratulations!

PS: if this info is confirmed Windows will receive an apology letter from Mr. Jobs, right?

Remote Desktop Manager

Here's a cool tiny utility: Remote Desktop Manager. It's the best to organize your remote connections, supporting Microsoft Remote Desktop, Terminal Services and RealVNC.

Here is the features list:

• Free
• Small size
• Easy to install, easy to deploy, only one executable
• Add name, image and description to your configuration
• Run in tray icon
• Quick access menu in the tray icon
• Support import and export of remote desktop file (.rdp) [a must!]
• Support Microsoft Remote Desktop and Microsoft Terminal Services
• Support RealVNC
• Search filter
• Auto start on Windows startup
• Auto update
• Nice UI with theme support
• Share settings between users
• Compatible with Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Windows Vista (32 bits and 64 bits)

The easiest HttpHandler ever!

Not that HttpHandler is hard to create, but it can get quite intrusive mainly because of configuration issues.

The ashx extension simplifies all this process. Here's all you've got to do:

namespace MyProject
{
    using System;
    using System.Web;
    using System.Web.Services;

    /// <summary>
    /// Summary description for FederationLogin
    /// </summary>
    [WebService(Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/")]
    [WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)]
    public class FederationLogin : IHttpHandler
    {

        public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
        {
            try
            {
                //
                // set content type to jpeg
                // TODO: consider changing to smaller footprint png version

                context.Response.ContentType = "image/jpeg";

                // dump image according to credential presence
                context.Response.WriteFile(Credentials != null ? "SignedInOnFederation.jpg" : "NotSignedInOnFederation.jpg");
            }

            catch
            {
                //
                // Oops, something went wrong: opt for a non-intrusive (but non-assertive) 
                // KISS approach: just assume no federation ticket was issued.
                // Please note: no log is being issued.

                context.Response.ContentType = "image/jpeg";
                context.Response.WriteFile("NotSignedInOnFederation.jpg");
            }
        }

        public bool IsReusable
        {
            get
            {
                return false;
            }
        }
    }
}

This is a simple SignIn on federation button. But more about it later, I'm still on an NDA on this one.

IE 8 beta 2

You can find it at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8

<update>

Oops, I'm so embarrassed, I've got it since last August... oops...

</update>

Changing your SQL Server name

Cloning VM machine's is something we usually do, but SQL Server doesn't like it's machine's name to be renamed. Here's a cool one I didn't know of - I used to re-run the setup, it really didn't installed it again, just clean it up. But here's a better way:

sp_dropserver <old_name>
GO

sp_addserver <new_name>, local
GO

Now all we have to do is:

• restart SQL instance



• delete all logins associated with old machine's name



• add them back

There you have it :)