Neil Terry's Blog

IPhone 4GS - Stephen Frys take

2011-10-12T09:14:00.000+01:00

Just stumbled accross a review from Stephen Fry on the Iphone 4GS

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/12/iphone-4s-stephen-fry-review-steve-jobs

Windows 8 - Indepth review of Start Menu

2011-10-12T09:08:00.001+01:00

There is a lot of people talking about Windows 8 since the launch. I've stumbled accross this link from Microsoft Engineering which details a more detailed / indepth review of Windows 8

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/11/reflecting-on-your-comments-on-the-start-screen.aspx

Tweet your Questions via Twitter

2011-06-10T09:43:00.004+01:00

Twitter is becoming one of the largest and most used Q&A applications, with approximately 3 million questions being asked in the form of Tweets every month.

The questions range from tech support, product enquiries and advice.

The below infographic from Q&A service InboxQ contains a lot of information about how Twitter is being used by businesses and people to answer questions.

Apple announce iOS5 with huge feature set

2011-06-07T10:39:00.002+01:00

Apple unveiled the latest major release of it's mobile operating system yesterday.

iOS5 is set to contain over 200 new features, many which seem to mimic features already available on the Android platform.

Key features:
Notification Centre
Alerts
iMessage (Dedicated messaging service for iOS Devices)
Newsstand

For an indepth look at iOS5 take a look at the following blog

http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2011/06/06/everything-you-need-to-know-about-ios-5/

It is expected to be available Fall 2011.

Social Media Mission Control

2011-06-06T12:33:00.002+01:00

I was hunting the internet to try and find some statistics on how Social Media is affecting the contact centre and stumbled on this great blog entry by Jeremiah Owyang.

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/10/14/social-media-mission-control-the-contact-center-must-evolve-socialsupport/

It looks like several companies are employing people to sit infront of PC's termed Social Media Mission Control to monitor in real time details on their products or company.

Windows 8 - Previewed

2011-06-02T12:12:00.008+01:00

Microsoft has given demonstrations of Windows 8 at separate conferences in the US (D9) and Taiwan (Computex).

The operating system has gone tile based and focuses on touch interaction. Windows 8 has been refreshed with a Windows Phone 7 (WP7) look and feel. It would seem that the Start Menu is the key area where the WP7 style has come into affect. Like the WP7 tiles are LIVE aso they keep upto date with information from the application.

Microsoft have acknowledged that the operating system is based around a new generation of touch centric hardware. They have also claimed that the operating system will run on everything from Laptops & Desktops through to tablets.

From the press conference video (found online) it would seem that the WP7 Start Menu is running as an application in the same way as the Media Centre Client. It will also be interesting to see how the WP7 interface works between touch gestures and mouse and keyboard when covering both Laptops/Desktop and Tablets.

The operating systen can only help encourage software houses and designers to design their applications for the future of touch based interaction.

There is currently no word on the release date of Windows 8, however it is expected to be available before October 2012 (according to comments in the media).

IIS Express

2010-06-29T13:59:00.002+01:00

Microsoft have today released a new way of testing web applications by creating a half way house between IIS and ASP.NET Dev Server.

Previously you can test web applications on IIS or the VS ASP.NET Development Server.

Quote from Microsoft

"We have been working on a new flavor of IIS 7.x that is optimized for developer scenarios that we are calling “IIS Express”. We think it combines the ease of use of the ASP.NET Web Server with the full power of IIS. Specifically:

•It’s lightweight and easy to install (less than 10Mb download and a super quick install)
•It does not require an administrator account to run/debug applications from Visual Studio
•It enables a full web-server feature set – including SSL, URL Rewrite, Media Support, and all other IIS 7.x modules
•It supports and enables the same extensibility model and web.config file settings that IIS 7.x support
•It can be installed side-by-side with the full IIS web server as well as the ASP.NET Development Server (they do not conflict at all)
•It works on Windows XP and higher operating systems – giving you a full IIS 7.x developer feature-set on all OS platforms
IIS Express (like the ASP.NET Development Server) can be quickly launched to run a site from a directory on disk. It does not require any registration/configuration steps. This makes it really easy to launch and run for development scenarios.

VS 2010 Integration

We are enabling IIS Express so that it can be easily used with Visual Studio 2010. You’ll be able to configure VS 2010 to use it instead of the ASP.NET Web Server as the default web-server on ASP.NET Projects. Like the ASP.NET Development Server today, you won’t need to register a site or virtual directory to use IIS Express. It will support the same usage-model as the ASP.NET Development Server today – just with more feature support.

When you press F5 to run an ASP.NET project, Visual Studio can automatically launch IIS Express and use it to run/debug the application (no extra configuration required). Like the ASP.NET Web Server, IIS Express will show up in your task-bar tray when running: "

For more information please see ScottGu's blog
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/06/28/introducing-iis-express.aspx

Call Hierarchy is only available in c#

2010-04-28T12:52:00.003+01:00

Annoying Discovery :(

Just a helpful bit of information for any VB.NET programmers trying to use the new Call Hierarchy feature in VS2010 and wondering why they cannot see it in the Popup Menu.

I have been working on some old VB.NET Code in VS2010 and attempted to make use of the new Call Hierarchy feature and unfortunately discovered the painful way that this feature is only available in C#

I thought this would be an IDE feature of .NET rather than something specific to a language. Hey silly me.

I guess that is just another reason why I need to port this code to c#. Now a handy little plug in from Microsoft would make that useful??? Maybe something for VS2012 guys.

UK Techdays Content and Resources are available

2010-04-22T14:45:00.002+01:00

The highly sought after Videos and Resources are now available for the UK Techdays Event.

You can find them all here : http://www.microsoft.com/uk/techdays

Click the Resources link and away you go.

Thanks Microsoft :)

Techdays 2010 - Windows Phone WP7

2010-04-21T08:19:00.003+01:00

Microsoft announced the Windows Phone 7 at the Microsoft MIX show in Vegas earlier in the year. During the week there were severial sessions where the Windows Phone 7 was demonstraighted and there was a special day allocated specifically to this on the Friday.

The phone supports the following applications:

XNA
Silverlight
HTML

Microsoft are encouraging programmers to embrace the Windows Phone 7 and start developing for it now. The SDK is available and comes with a WP7 Emulator - basically this should be all you need to start producing applications for the phone.

To release an application to the WP7 you will need an account with Microsoft, the application will be uploaded and will go through a validation process before it will then appear on the application store.

In terms of a release date, it looks like Microsoft are targetting f Q4 2o10 - possibly in time for Christmas sales.

Microsoft Techdays 2010 - Silverlight 4.0

2010-04-21T07:57:00.008+01:00

The following is a summary of points I collected during the Techdays event in London.

Silverlight 4 - Microsoft are pushing this platform and emphasising an awful lot. Huge emphasis given to flexibility and reach.

Platform Flexibility, however this comes with restrictions and the need for platform aware code.

Microsoft have a rapid development schedule for Silverlight 4.o. This can be seen from the following time line.

The following slide shows some highlighting technologies available in Silverlight 4.o

There are now three types of applications in Silverlight:

Browser Based

Out of Browser

Trusted

Trusted applications can access the local file system.

Should I write a Silverlight application or a WPF application?

I guess the answer is down to you, however if you can accomplish your "Application" requirements in Silverlight without the need of WPF additional capabilities then you would be daft to rule Silverlight out as it provides you with additional flexibility and reach which you just won't get with WPF.

A quote from the event was "Make Silverlight the default for your business applications unless you require specific WPF features"

A good checklist for Silverlight app development, if your app needs the following silverlight has a tick in the box:

Data Access

Data Binding

Easy Styling & templating/layout support

Rich Control Set

Charting

Printing

Tooling & Productivity

Easy of Deployment

Reach

The following slide shows some of the companies currently using Silverlight for their business needs:

Microsoft Techdays 2010 - Key Headlines

2010-04-21T07:46:00.004+01:00

I was fortunate to attend the Developer section of Microsoft Techdays 2010 in London last week.

Having attended and collected a large amount of notes I went about putting together a presentation for our company on the things discussed during the event.

This section is a brief summary of some of the key headlines during the week

Visual Studio 2010 Release to Manufacture

Improvements for c/c++ programmers. VS2010 was what VS6 was for c/c++ programmers
Productivity Improvements
XAML Designer has been massively improved
Visualization - Ultimate Edition
Intellitrace
Test Manager and Lab Manager

.NET 4.0

Silverlight 4.0

Released on 15th April 2010
Microsoft were pushing Silverlight technology

Windows Phone

JQuery

All the techdays material will be published to the Microsoft Techdays website in the coming week. The videos and slides will all become available. http://www.microsoft.com/uk/techdays

Attempting to prepare for TechDays 2010 London

2010-04-09T14:10:00.002+01:00

I find myself preparing for the Microsoft TechDays event in London today on this wonderful sunny afternoon.

Hotel - Check
Location - Check

Event Tickets - Unable to find email. I didn't print the ticket or details off at the time as I didn't have a printer handy!

Having searched my inbox I remembered that I havn't seen an email. Having searched around the microsoft websites, tech days site and others I have found it increasingly difficult to locate the view all my events I have registered option on my Microsoft Passport.

Eventually located it, for anyone who is also struggling here is the link:

Link

Will the Windows Phone 7 (WP7) work in an Enterprise model?

2010-03-19T09:16:00.002Z

There has been a lot of talk about the sort of market Microsoft are aiming the WP7 at. Currently it is lacking in features which would support the Enterprise market place compared to the Iphone and other key devices.

Good article on some of this. Read Here

More details are due to follow in the coming weeks.

MIX10 Day 2 Keynote Summary

2010-03-17T07:45:00.004Z

The Microsoft MIX10 Day Keynote had the highly anticipated Internet Explorer 9 details as it's headline.

I must say it looks like Microsoft our keen in getting back in front with the Web Browser market.

IE 9 looks to be Microsoft's most sought after release for quite some time, offering all the features which people are after. Standards based, performance, ease of use and debugging. The keys to IE9 are it has been designed from ground up to perform fast without the need for developers to develop multiple path code to support cross browsers. Any code written with HTML5 and standards in mind should look and behave the same on different browsers. Microsoft are working hard at improving Javascript performance by providing a new Javascript engine designed from new which pre compiles code on multiple threads, performance is also improved by utilizing the machines GPU. Various demonstrations show how IE9 compared to other browsers on the market - results were fascinating, logon to MIX10 and see for yourself.

The other interesting area to IE9 is that Microsoft are fully backing SVG which has been a technology which for quite some time. This should allow a much richer experience on client side web applications.

Internet Explorer 9 Summary

Platform Preview announced and available for download.
Designed and built from ground up to support HTML 5
Performance is key to the requirements and design
New Javascript engine which precompiles code on multiple threads, named "Chakra"
GPU Based acceleration
Standards Support, meaning that you shouldn't need to have special code for different browsers.
ACID Test of 55/100 currently
HTML 5 Video supported. Great example of youtube without a flash plugin.
SVG1.1 Support
Updated developer tools including a network monitoring tab

Serviced powered experiences

API layer on websites, not just browser based access. Publish data through the API layer (RIA, AJAX etc) for public use
OData solution
SQL Azure will support OData
OData SDK and Clients available Download

Other

Visual Studio 2010 still coming in April
ASP.NET 4, MVC2.0 coming in April with VS2010
Commited to support jQuery
jQuery based templating

Codename Houston

Silverlught based SQL Server managment studio for SQL Azure

For more details and to watch the keynote please goto http://live.visitmix.com/

MIX10 - 1st Day Keynote

2010-03-15T16:16:00.003Z

Microsoft MIX 10 launched on Monday 15th March with it's first key note:

The following is a summary from the Key Note:

Silverlight 4 RC with the final release coming very soon.

Demontration of Silverlight by Ebay

Microsoft have annouced they are releasing the source code their 2010 Winter Olympics Player

Expression Blend 4 RC is available from today with a free upgrade from Expresion Blend 3

Development platform for Windows Phone 7 announced.

Demos of several applications for the Windows 7 Phone

Demonstrations of Silverlight applications on the Windows 7 Phone

Windows 7 Emulator fully mimics the phone including low battery conditions.

Game development with XNA was demonstrated.

Demonstration by Shazam for their music service on the Windows 7 Phone.

Keynote 2 will be later today with more details expected on Internet Explorer 9.

This blog has moved

2010-03-13T10:38:00.001Z

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McLaren Website offers LIVE Telemetry

2010-03-12T08:14:00.003Z

The 2010 F1 season has just started.

The McLaren site is offering LIVE telemetry on their cars from the website. You can view data from the engineers and comments from the drivers. The current car positions and car data is all updated in real time on the website.

Rather cool if you are interested in all the statistics and stuff.

http://mclaren.com/home

Roll on qualifying and race day.

David Plummer - Wildlife Photography Course

2009-10-04T20:33:00.003+01:00

This weekend I took part in David Plummer's "Beginning Wildlife Photography" course at the Arundel Wetlands in Sussex.

The course was over the two day period and is aimed for anyone who has a SLR camera and wants to get the most from it, essentially getting away from the camera's program buttons and "AUTO" mode. You will learn all aspects, Exposure, White Balance, Depth of Field, Metering Modes, Composition and some information on Lens & Tripods. During the course you will be able to put to practice all the snippets you learn out on the WWT Wetlands.

I certainly got a huge amount out of this course and would recommend it to anyone who wants to get away from the camera controlling the picture, therefore meaning I can now control the control the camera rather than most things being on auto to get the best picture out of your subject.

It was an excellent course, well presented and David is an extremely good teacher. I now look forward to the challenge of putting everything I learnt to practice to get some really good shots.

I have placed some of the photos I have taken on the main site under Macro and Wildlife. www.sceniceye.co.uk

For more information on the courses please see Davids Website. He has a vast range of courses, through to photo tours. http://www.davidplummerimages.co.uk/

Live Streaming Video on the Apple IPhone (Akamai)

2009-07-14T08:19:00.002+01:00

There have been times where I have been sat on a train where it would be nice to watch the News or catch some live event as it is happening, however up to now I've not found an application which allows you to watch streaming video on the IPhone. You can download radio applications and things for example WunderRadio but not LIVE as it is happening streaming stuff.

Yesterday I came across a website powered by Akamai. I came across the website when looking for current news on the NASA Shuttle launch. The website allows you to a couple of LIVE video feeds, one of which was NASA Tv.

Hopefully this technology will be used more by other websites in the future for the IPhone like BBC News etc. It seemed to work really well.

Link iphone.akamai.com

Mobile Phone Directory Service 118800 to launch

2009-07-09T08:07:00.004+01:00

From early next week a company (118800) will begin offering a directory service which will allow you to find mobile numbers for people they don't know.

Anyone will be able to type in the name and location of a person into the 118800 website and locate a number.

Currently it claims to have over 15m numbers in its database.

Connectivity - the company operating the 118800 service - said that privacy is paramount to them, and thatit's easy to withdraw your mobile number from their databases should you choose to do so.

Why would you want to do this? To stop lots of unsolicited calls and txt messages to your phone like you get with your landline.

For most of the 20th century, the landline was the only phone around. With the mobile you're always available, so its the number most would dial first. So it is perhaps not surprising that a directory service is starting up that allows people to find out someone else's mobile number in the same way we've always been able to do for landlines.

So the choice is yours - but it's easy to unsubscrive but it must be done before the beginning of next week to makse sure that you are ex-directory.

To remove your number click on the link below:

http://www.118800.co.uk/

Click on "ex directory" and from there follow the instructions

Bing Photography competition

2009-07-07T20:18:00.003+01:00

Microsoft has announced a competition which runs from the end of 29th June to the end of July to find a new photograph for Bing.

All you need to do is upload your photos via

http://apps.facebook.com/bing_photo_contest/

The photos must be based around a summer traveling theme.

Via the same website you can also rate the pictures which have been submitted. You rate 8 at a time based on a 1-5 star rating.

The winning photograph will be placed on the Bing Homepage on August 3rd.

Good luck.

Microsoft set to launch Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 (July 10)

2009-07-07T14:08:00.002+01:00

Microsoft has set July 10th as the date to launch Silverlight 3 and Expression 3.

Silverlight 3 was originally annouced as MIX09 and brings over 50 new features from its predessor, including support for running silverlight applications outside of the browser, enhanced video performance and quality and tools to improve developer productivity.

To follow the launch visit http://www.seethelight.com/

Goodwood Festival of Speed 2009

2009-07-05T20:55:00.002+01:00

I visited the Goodwood Festival of Speed on the Friday along with my trusty SLR. I managed to capture some reasonable pictures from the hill run, although some of my favourite photos were taken of the Red Arrows doing the afternoon air display.

To see a selection of my best shots please goto the main website http://www.sceniceye.co.uk/

IPhone acting as a SLR Remote

2009-06-19T14:06:00.003+01:00

If your into photography and have a Canon EOS SLR or Nikon SLR along with an Apple Iphone or ITouch the the following might be for you.

onOne Software have a great application available called DSLR Camera Remote.

The software allows you to remotely fire your camera with your Iphone or Itouch. Additional features include:

ability to control the camera settings like shutter speed and aperture.

View images saved on the camera

See the cameras view finder remotely

This software is brilliant for taking remote pictures (portraits, sporting events etc)

Take a look. DSLR Camera Remote

Big corporporate demonstrating use of twitter on the day IPHONE 3GS is announced

2009-06-09T16:18:00.003+01:00

On Monday 8th June 2009 Apple announced the next version of the populour IPhone, the IPhone 3GS.

The excitement of it's release swiftly turned to anger over the expense of owning the next release.

It currently looks like O2 are in danger of alienating existing customers and also not doing much to attract new ones. The new iphone 3GS will cost new customers £34.26 a month along with the cost of the handet at £185.98 (16gb) or £274.23 (32gb). There are not that many phones around that cost you that much to purchase?

Internet forums are currently buzzing, and their call centres are inundated with calls regarding the annoucement - however 02 are currently making great use of Twitter to help answer peoples questions and listen to the consumers needs.

Could we see a U turn or improvements on the upgrade path as a result of the feedback they are currently receiving via twitter. Tweets can be extremely virul and typically can help encourage change.

Follow @o2 on twitter for more detail.

Exceptioneer - wow much nicer than WinQual

2009-05-14T16:02:00.006+01:00

I have recently been given an invitation to try out Exceptioneer which is a new online service aimed at Microsoft .NET developers and currently supports ASP.NET & Javascript and WinForms, Consoles and Services.

The service provides the ability to track and manage unhandled exceptions in your .NET developed products via a secure website portal. The website portal details each product that has had an unhandled exception raised against it which you can then tunnel into and display a list of each unique type of fault which has occurred. The fault will contain in most cases a stack dump along with the exception to help identify the cause of the problem.

First you are required to create an account, you then need to implement a small .NET library in your application and invoke it when a "Unhandled Exception" occurs. I had an existing project implemented and had the code up and running in minutes, my code already trapped unhandled exceptions collecting them in text files and DMP files so this was a great addition and helped compliment the code I already had providing a much richer set of features and function.

So how does it work?? When your Exceptioneer integrated application is released and fails, the exception is captured along with further details surrounding your application like version and assembly details is submitted to the Exceptioneer Web Site for processing. This is transmitted via http so in theory should always reach it's destination if running on an Internet accessible PC. Upon receipt Exceptioneer processes the Exception with data and presents this on a nice Web Portal for the application developer to view. It will also raise email alerts and twitter alerts to the account owner to advise of a new failure.

Exceptioneer currently supports ASP.NET & Javascript and Windows Forms/Consoles and Services but they plan to release a version for WCF in future.

Exceptioneer is a great online asset to improving your products quality and understanding more about failures that you might never get to hear about from your customers.

Great work Phil and thanks for the invitation.

I look forward to more updates and further support.

Please note Exceptioneer is currently operating on an invite only basis - but this will hopefully change in the not to distant future.

Blerp - New Web 2.0 application launched

2009-05-13T14:28:00.006+01:00

Today a San Francisco startup RocketOn has launched it's second product named Blerp.

It's ambition is to turn the Web into a giant interactive message board by making it possible for visitors to annotate websites they visit with their own personal comments and post multimedia pictures and video.

Blerps motto is "Layer the web!" - basically allowing it's users to create a virtual layer or space on top of any website that you visit. The layer will be in the form of sidebar or header and is likely to even conatin a rating section for the site being viewed.

Users will have to create a Blerp account, once created they will get their own homepage which will be named "My Stuff" allowing them a overall dashboard of what is currently being discussed by their friends online, allowing further comments to be added. The larger the discussion the more chance it will get featured on the Blerp homepage.

Discussions are going to be in two forms - user based or community based. Community based discussions will be created by Blerp system and will not be owned by anyone. Each web site will contain a community discussion board.

Blerp is currently in Alpha mode so expect a few teething troubles if you attempt to use it.

I'm currently not sold on the idea - and yet to think how useful this could be in the industry, but it's another Web 2.0 or Social Interaction application which has sprung up.

Blerp - http://www.blerp.com/browser/welcome

Microsoft TechEd USA Week

2009-05-11T09:12:00.002+01:00

This week is Microsoft Tech Ed USA Week. May 11th -15th.

I'm awaiting to see what the KeyNote is at 10:00 AM PST Time. Shame it's an 8 hour timezone difference (doh)

You can catch everything that happens here http://www.msteched.com/online/home.aspx

Tech Ed Homepage

Tech Ed Online

.NET Glass Button

2009-04-30T10:26:00.004+01:00

I was looking for a nice colourful, rounded, animated lozenge which I could use in Callmedia for some new code I'm currently writing. I'm not particularly graphically minded to say the least - however I stumbled across this code on CodeProject

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/buttons/glassbutton.aspx

The small project provides you with with a fancy looking vista like button and is available in c# and VB.

Well worth a look.

Strelitzia or Bird of Paridise

2009-04-29T07:54:00.006+01:00

My folks have been growing a Strelitzia plant or can be known as Bird of Paridise for years now and finally this year it has flowered.

I've been taking pictures of it over the last 7 days as it has been changing. Some of the first images are posted in the gallery section of the website. (http://www.sceniceye.co.uk/)

I will be posting more over the next few days as it is still changing.

This picture was taken with a 300mm lens and aperture of f/5 to help blur the background.

Twitter increasingly used by business

2009-04-21T15:15:00.010+01:00

There are some huge companies currently taking advantage of "Twitter" for customer service.

Today Azzurri Communication's (the parent company of Callmedia who I work for) is about to start communicating with customers via the use of tweets.

I have started to build a list of companies embracing Twitter for providing customer service and communicating information:

Dell
Ford
Samsung
Whole Foods Market
Starbucks
Jetblue
Virgin Atlantic
Southwest Airlines

More to follow........

WCF - Creating Endpoints in Code

2009-04-20T13:40:00.004+01:00

Here is an example of how you can define a WCF Server in code without having to have the configuration in a config file.

Private Sub StartServiceFunction()

Dim host As ServiceHost

Dim tcpBaseAddr As Uri

tcpBaseAddr = New Uri(ReturnTCPUri())

Dim httpBaseAddr As Uri

httpBaseAddr = New Uri(ReturnHTTPUri())

Dim baseAddresses() As Uri = New Uri() {tcpBaseAddr, httpBaseAddr}

host = New ServiceHost(GetType(ChatService), baseAddresses)

Dim metadataBehavior As ServiceMetadataBehavior

metadataBehavior = New ServiceMetadataBehavior()

metadataBehavior.HttpGetEnabled = True

host.Description.Behaviors.Add(metadataBehavior)

Dim tcpBinding As NetTcpBinding

Dim mexBinding As System.ServiceModel.Channels.Binding

tcpBinding = New NetTcpBinding()

tcpBinding.ReliableSession.Enabled = True

tcpBinding.Security.Mode = SecurityMode.None

mexBinding = System.ServiceModel.Description.MetadataExchangeBindings.CreateMexTcpBinding()

host.AddServiceEndpoint(GetType(CMExpertAssistanceServer.IChat), tcpBinding, ReturnTCPUri())

host.AddServiceEndpoint(GetType(IMetadataExchange), mexBinding, "mex")

Try

host.Open()

Catch ex As Exception

m_oCMLog.SendLogEx(cmLogAPI.Callmedia.CMLog.cmLogType.cmLogError, ex.Message)

End

End Try

End Sub

Public Function ReturnTCPUri()

Dim sURI As String

Dim sIP, sPort As String

sIP = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("BindIPAddress")

sPort = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("TCPPort")

sURI = String.Format("net.tcp://{0}:{1}/chatservice", sIP, sPort)

Return sURI

End Function

Public Function ReturnHTTPUri()

Dim sURI As String

Dim sIP, sPort As String

sIP = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("BindIPAddress")

sPort = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("HTTPPort")

sURI = String.Format("http://{0}:{1}/CMChat", sIP, sPort)

Return sURI

End Function

Oracle buy Sun for $7.4

2009-04-20T13:22:00.002+01:00

After less than a month after IBM walked away from a $7 billion merger with SUN Microsystems, Oracle have now entered an agreement to merge with them for $7.4 billion subject to approval from the Sun stockholders. Until the deal closes each company will continue to operate independently, and is business as usual.

The Sun Solaris operating system is the leading platform for the Oracle database. With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle can optimize the Oracle database for some of the unique, high-end features of Solaris.

Therefore I hope that good things continue for MySQL considering when Siebel was acquired by Oracle it seemed to go downhill.

Booked a wildlife photography course

2009-04-17T09:59:00.013+01:00

Just booked a course at the Arundel Wetlands Centre in October on learning how to take spectacular wildlife images with an SLR Camera.

The course is October 3rd and October 4th at the Arundel Wetlands Centre.

The course covers exposure; manual controls; composition; depth of field; making a good shot better.

In theory after the course I should be able to know some more in depth stuff on my SLR and improve some of my photo's. Most of my photography up until now has really been through self learning and help from others.

I'm really looking forward to taking some great shots. Lets hope the weather is good in October.

Course Information

Microsoft Virtual Tech Day 2009

2009-04-01T10:23:00.003+01:00

This is well worth a visit today. This is a one day event across the world - 24 hours of live presentations on various different subjects from Silverlight, WCF, WPF, exception handling and clustering web servers.

Link

Impressive start at a Silverlight Commodore 64 Emulator

2009-03-31T13:47:00.002+01:00

I stumbled across a great start to a Silverlight 3 Commodore 64 Emulator today.

The emulator is the work of Pete Brown. You can find all the files you need and help on his section on codeplex.

The emulator currently only runs a small set of games, and supports a basic set of commands. There isn't any sound support yet and it a tad CPU intensive if you don't have a high spec PC.

Give it a go - it's a great example of what can be achieved with Silverlight.

Please Visit CodePlex for full details.

SLR outting at Arundel Wetlands

2009-03-29T21:01:00.004+01:00

This afternoon I visited the Arundel Wetlands Centre armed with my Nikon SLR. It's a great place to spend an afternoon in the sun and experiment with the camera in amoungst some lovely wildlife, ducks, birds and water voles.

Spring is here and the centre was full of Mallard Ducklings, I was fortunate enough to find a family that were extremely photogenic and brave. They litterally allowed me to sit inches away from them - I think they were actually posing for the camera!! With Macro on and my 200mm lens I was able to capture some great close up images. I have added a few of my favourite pictures to the main website gallery - www.sceniceye.co.uk . More pictures will follow soon.

Great afternoon out and managed to get some good snaps - well worth a visit if you havn't been before.

Skype to launch SIP Support

2009-03-23T14:43:00.003Z

There are reports emerging that the popular VOIP Client (Skype) will today announce support for the SIP Protocol. This in turn enables corporate IP based phone systems to connect to the Skype network and could lead application vendors to integrate Skype into their contact centres - watch this space.

The new service is believed to be name "Skype for SIP" and will be aimed at small and medium businesses looking to keep costs to a minimum.

Skype are offering for companies to participate in the BETA, the requirements are an IP Based PBX. Join Beta Trial

Skype claim that the economic downturn was the main reason for this initiative, claiming that now even relatively big businesses are looking at Skype to help reduce their phone costs.

FOX News cover Twitter for Customer Service

2009-03-23T09:34:00.002Z

FOX News have covered the growing trend of companies adopting Twitter for Customer Service. Well worth a view.

http://www.rexburggeeks.com/2009/03/22/customer-service-via-twitter/

Salesforce integrates with Twitter

2009-03-23T08:55:00.005Z

Social Networking "Customer Service" is now becoming a massive thing with large organizations beginning to use sites like Twitter and Facebook to keep in contact with their customer base.

One of the most popular CRM applications "Salesforce" has now integrated with Twitter. The integration allows customers to monitor Twitter for message that contain their company name and aggregate the replies and conversaions surrounding those messages, then response as necessary.

Alex Dayon, Salesforce CRM's senior vice preseident of customer service and support, said that with the abundance of social-media tools on the Web, people are turning to "crowdsourced" help with customer-service issues. I don't blame them. When was the last time you spent ages on the phone with your TV manufacturer only to have some random Twitter follower provide you with the solution in five minutes?

"While $20 billion of software is being spent on call centers, the customers are somewhere else" he said.

Internet Explorer 8 Features - straight from MIX09

2009-03-19T16:17:00.002Z

Some key benefits of IE8

Address Bar - The address bar updates to filter from previous pages visited.
Web Page/Application Crashes - These are now contained and only affect the current process or page. Not the entire browser. This means if one tab crashes the rest can continue to run.
Improvements to malware protection. Please see www.nsslabs.com
More standards compliant. CSS 2.1 more compliant.
More CSS Test Sites work with IE8
Improved performance
One step further away from IE6
Accelerators
Web Slicing - great little feature for IE8 only

Web Slicing - how many times do you check for news, email updates, footy scores? We all needed to do this manually before, checking individual sites using either links or favourites. Using Web Slices we can now keep up to date with new information from a new bar within IE8. If a Web Slice is supported in a site then a green icon appears in the upper right hand corner of the browser. Click on this icon and you can then subscribe so you can keep up to date with that "slice" of information. Means it's always quickly availabe and only one click away. When new information is available the Web Slice becomes highlighted. Give it a try. I guess the only down side is this new feature now needs to become adopted by other browsers ?

Microsoft is about to launch IE8 Final Release at MIX09

2009-03-19T15:41:00.002Z

Microsoft has made available its next major release of the Internet Explorer product (IE8) today. It is currently about to be launched at MIX09.

Internet Explorer 8 concentrates on User Experience, Security, accelerators and also standards consistancy.

IE8 will be included as part of the Windows 7 OS. However, for the first time since adding browser technology to its operating system, Microsoft will give users the ability to turn off IE8 as a feature in the system. This decision was outlined in a blog post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog. Microsoft is under pressure from an ongoing antitrust case in the European Union to give users more browser choice in Windows.

Link to download IE8

SuperPreview - Update

2009-03-19T10:40:00.003Z

Been continuing to look at SuperPreview and they have some really cool features in this tool. It's going to be a great asset in Web Development for testing multi browser support.

They offer several different modes for testing/previewing your web pages.

Side by Side Mode
Over Lay Mode

The over lay mode is really great. You can overlay two different browers over each other and the tool will highlight the subtle differences between the two browsers. This allows you to make your site look identical on all browsers.

Super Preview is currently available as a standalone installation in BETA form today which allows you to currently compare IE6, IE7 and IE8 compatibility but doesn't offer support for firefox or chrome yet. I'm currently unsure if this will become available in standalone mode after GA release.

Link to download SuperPreview BETA for IE6, 7 and 8

Microsoft announce new translator API at MIX09

2009-03-18T20:30:00.003Z

Microsoft have today announced a new Language Translation API named Microsoft Translator Widget at MIX09 which will allow developers build in the ability to translate their website into another language without leaving their site.

From reading the basic articles it sounds like the API should make the production of multilanguage web applications easier and quicker and in theory without the need for multiple resource files.

Currently it appears the API is on trial and I'm keen in trying it out. I will try and post some examples ASAP.

Link to Microsoft Translator Details

Microsoft announce SuperPreview at MIX09

2009-03-18T20:08:00.002Z

Microsoft have today launched a new tool called SuperPreview at MIX09 which could speed up the testing of web applications on a multitude of different web browsers.

The tool will allow developers and designers to preview how their sites will look and work on various different browsers and versions.

SuperPreview will be released as part of Expression Web 3 but have currently released a version which will allow developers to preview their code on IE6, IE7 and IE8.

The final release version is expected to provide the ability to visualise web sites on Firefox, Sarari, Chrome and more.

Link to some screen shots and more detail on SuperPreview

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090318/expression-web-superpreview-cross-browser-testing/

Robozzle - Great and very addictive Silverlight puzzle

2009-03-12T17:18:00.004Z

Stumbled across this very addictive Silverlight puzzle today called Robozzle. Well worth a play, but remember to reserve some time before you start.

Link : http://robozzle.com/

This game reminds me of a 80's retro toy called Big Trak.

Big Trak was a six-wheeler toy tank that could be programmed to drive forward, backward, turn and fire a 'photon canon' in the sequence you entered.

To program the tank you needed to type the commands into the brightly coloured keyboard at the top of the vehicle. Big Trak could remember up to sixteen commands at any one time, but you needed to program in the movements in sequence.

Big Trak was quite advanced for its time being one of the first programmable robotic toys and it became extremely popular among children and adults alike.

It served no real purpose other than novelty but many people became addicted to improving their Big Trak programming to the point where they could get Big Trak to circumnavigate their homes.

Google branches out to voice market

2009-03-12T16:34:00.001Z

Google has today branched out today and launched a new service named Google Voice which could rival the likes of Skype and other online phone applications by offering customers more fuctionality.

Google has managed to provide this service by acquiring a company called Grand Central who offer customers a lifetime phone number. The benefit of the lifetime number to customers is that you can then route or divert all your other numbers (home, work or mobile) to it.

The service also offers a single unified voice mail access point which provides the additional benefit of allowing a speech to text service. Customers can then opt to have their voice mails presented in their standard google mailbox with their email.

Other features include:

The ability to SMS the single number which will result in your SMS messages being presented in your google mailbox.
Cheaper International Calls
Ability to conference upto six calls together.
Advanced call routing facilities. The ability to block calls at certain times of the day or only accept calls from certain numbers.

This is yet another attempt by Google to reach out beyond online searching and advertising.

Remebering selected rows after a refresh on a .NET DataGridView

2009-02-03T12:48:00.000Z

Have you ever tried using the .NET DataGridView Control bound to a datasource which is refreshed periodically along with the benefit of being able to select rows? It seems to be a common request - also some of the 3rd party grid controls support this by default.

When attempting to do this it becomes quickly apparent that immediatly after a refresh on the datasource the selected row jumps back to the first row in the grid - quite annoying. I'm not quite sure why there can't be a degree of separation between the datasource and the grid user model - it would make the use of the control much better.

Anyhow enclosed is the work around to resolving this problem

Prior to refreshing your datasource store the index of the selected row for safe keeping and then restore it after the refresh.

iRowIndex = dgData.CurrentRow.Index

dgData.DataSource = myDataSource
dgData.Refresh()

dgData.CurrentCell = dgData.Rows(iRowIndex).Cells(0)