May 24, 2007 • 11:24 pm 0
It’s probably meant to be a joke, but nog official statements are given yet. Someone, probably from the Zune team, has put a bin in the headquarters of the Zune team where employees can throw in their iPod so they can buy (?) a new Zune. As you can see from the photo, not that a success 
Source: Infoworld.com
Filed under: General
• 3:15 am 0
Today I saw the notice of the first official release of the freely available blogengine.net. I already installed it once when it was in the alpha/bèta phase. Back then I saw the potentials and definitly the ease of customizing and integrating it. Nowadays when I look at the features list as well as the roadmap for the next versions to come it already looks a lot more advanced. I still have to download the release version to see if they’ve managed to keep the simplicity the project had when I tested it a while ago. I hope they really do, because that will be their stronghold in compairison with other engines. Anyways enough said –>
CHECK IT OUT: http://www.dotnetblogengine.net/
Filed under: .net 2.0, Asp.net 2.0, Blog, blogengine.net
May 13, 2007 • 10:31 pm 0
Somewhere in my earlier posts I mentioned the toolbar as a bèta piece of software. Well today I’ve learned on Snowball’s Blog that is has been released as a final version.
More info: Snowball’s Blog Post
Filed under: IE
• 10:14 pm 0
As you can read on the home page:
The WindowsClient.NET Community Site Launches
Welcome to WindowsClient.net, the community learning resource for Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation.
This site focuses on all aspects of rich client development on Windows using the .NET Framework. New content from both the Microsoft product teams and from the community will be added regularly to highlight the many user experience and developer productivity benefits of rich client applications on Windows.
Everytime they launch a new site I’m amazed by the looks and the ease to navigate it. They really put in an effort to make their sites look-a-like.
Filed under: .net, Visual Studio .Net 2005, WPF
May 12, 2007 • 2:12 pm 0
Filed under: .net 2.0, .net Compact Framework, Visual Studio .Net 2005
• 9:20 am 0
Since I’m going to take a further look at the Astoria project I’ve installed the necessary pieces to get started. Here I will give a brief overview on what to install.
The pre-requisites are:
- Visual Studio .Net Codename “Orcas” beta 1 Standard, Professional or Team Suite edition.
note: The Visual Web Developer Express Codename “Orcas” edition will work as well but the experience is not optimal.
- .Net Framework 3.5 (Pre-Release version)
- Sql Server 2005 database
- Microsoft Codename “Astoria” May 2007 CTP
- Virtual Pc or Virtual Server 2005 R2 (if you are going to set up a virtual machine )
1. Visual Studio .Net Codename “Orcas” Bèta 1
For this it’s up to you to decide on which way to go. You can either download the bèta software and install it directly on your machine or install it as a virtual machine.
Since most of the software isn’t final yet I prefer to install it as a virtual machine. So I downloaded the VSCTPBASE file which is a pre-installed virtual machine by Microsoft you can use for testing purposes. The advantage is that you can re-use this image becuase it’s set up in such a way that it contains the basic needs for a virtual machine and you can install it together with other images that contain the specific technologies that you want. In this Case I downloaded the Visual Studio .Net Codename “Orcas” Bèta 1 Team Suite VPC. This is download is seperated in 9 files you can merge after download.
Tip: Use a download manager to download all these files because I’ve lost connection a lot during the downloads.
Okay when you’ve downloaded the files you can get working:
- Extract the base image (VSCTPBASE.exe) to a folder of your choice. I took D:\VM’s\Base.
- Extract the 9 files containing the bèta vs.net. For this I took D:\VM’s\vsnet orcas beta 1
- Create a new folder Astoria Environment. I picked D:\VM’s\Astoria Environment
- Copy the files from step 1 and 2 into the newly created folder. This way you won’t mess up the images in step 1 and 2 and it enables you to use them again if you want to test something else in another vm.
Issues with Differencing Disks (I’m using Virtual Server 2005 R2)
The Orcas image is a differencing disk which means that it needs a base disk to operate properly. The problem lies in the fact that the differencing disk has got it’s base disk hardcoded in the configuration and thus probably cannot find the base image because the paths you are using will differ from the ones the creator of the images was using. You should change that path using the configuration of the differencing disk
When starting the virtual machine for the first time you will probably run in the same problem as I did. What the hell is the user’s password ??? Well this is mentioned on the download pages of the images.
<<TODO insert image of MSDN download page showing login passwords>>
Finally it might be a good idea of installing the Virtual Machine addon for an optimal experience. To do this follow these steps:
- Log into the Guest Os.
- Go to the administrator site.
- Go to the configuration page of the virtual machine.
- Click on the Virtual Machine Additions.
- In the new screen you check the “Install Virtual Machine Additions” and press OK. (remember that the vm must be running.)
Okay now you are logged in and it you can proceed to part 2 of the installation. The .net framework 3.5 installation.
2. .Net Framework 3.5 Pre-Release installation
If you are using the virtual machines like I do you can skip this step because the .Net Framework 3.5 Pre-Release is already installed in the image.
If you are installing it directly onto your machine it shouldn’t be more than just executing the installer.
3. Microsoft Codename Astoria
Finally the “fun stuff” 
installing astoria. This shouldn’t be too difficult because it’s just a MSI.
1. Execute the installer file and check the License Agreement checkbox of course.
2. Press the install button and the installation will begin and after installation press the Finish button.
Well euhm to be honest, that’s it… really the effort worthy to write an article about it eh?
Okay maybe 1 last thing, check if it’s installed correctly:
If you need to install the northwind database you can download it from MSDN
Filed under: .net 3.5, Astoria, Visual Studio .Net "Orcas"
May 11, 2007 • 2:07 am 0
Since I had to look for this at work for a co-worker of mine I decided to share it. Because it’s actually an on-demand webcast which requires you to register and so on…
To save you all that hassle the webcast can be downloaded from this post.
Filed under: .net, Unit testing, Visual Studio .Net 2005, msdn
May 10, 2007 • 11:20 am 0
On the Mix 07 website you can download the session that introduced the Astoria project. It was presented by Pablo Castro. The nice thing is that you can view as a Silverlight plugin, download the WMV or if you have a Zune download on there.
Filed under: Astoria, Silverlight, Visual Studio .Net "Orcas"
• 11:04 am 0
I was reading through my feeds when I found a post of Bart De Smet that summed up some of the newly announced “stuff” at Mix 07 .
One announcement in particular caught my eye it was the project codenamed Astoria . Astoria is a technology that will expose a data store through an ADO.NET Entity model using HTTP as transport technology.
It’s called a data service which can be consumed by web clients. The advantage is the HTTP protocol that is being used. This means that everywhere where you can access the internet you can also access the data service. It will pass through proxies, firewalls and so on…
Another nice thing about it is that Astoria not only allows “Read” functionality using the HTTP GET verb, but also “Create” using HTTP POST, “Update” using HTTP PUT and finally “Delete” using HTTP DELETE.
There are 3 formats in which the data is being sent over the wire:
- XML
- RDF & XML
-JSON
The main target groups are the “new” web technologies, like SilverLight & AJAX, but you can also use it in regular desktop applications. All you need is an internet connection.
Currently they released a first CTP that is meant to give you an idea on how they see the concept of Data Services. You can download it already at the site http://astoria.mslivelabs.com . There are some other downloads as well as an online service that demos the technology in a limited form (only reading is possible).
Some links to get you started:
Whitepapers: http://astoria.mslivelabs.com/resources.aspx
Downloads: http://astoria.mslivelabs.com/downloads.aspx
FAQ: http://astoria.mslivelabs.com/faq.aspx
I’m currently busy downloading the prerequisits like the Visual Studio .Net “Orcas” bèta 1. I’m downloading the VCP images.
Filed under: Astoria, Silverlight, Visual Studio .Net "Orcas"
May 3, 2007 • 1:01 am 0
We already had a Hill Billy, but this one looks like a mexican taking a siësta. (he’s indian actually )
Filed under: General
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