July 2006 - Posts
Download and evaluate Commerce Server 2007. The Commerce Server 2007 evaluation software is the Development Edition and contains the full functionality of Commerce Server.
Commerce Server 2007 Evaluation Software.
This is something. A free dev version with apparently no time limitations.
Planet Scale Software Updates.
Interesting research paper, from Microsoft Research, based upon windows update data. Leverages trace data for a year with billions of queries from millions of computers. There’s nothing else out there on this scale and truly gives us a unique perspective using technology to handle the load.
.NET Framework 3 News and Announcements : .NET Framework 3.0 July CTP.
I swear I just downloaded the June CTP….
This is good, iterations are getting more consistent. We’re getting ready for RTM I can just feel it.
Qusers.com - Topic :: MOTO Q USB native Tethering is here!.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Verizon left this out. I don’t care if I have to pay more, just let me have 1 phone number, contract, etc. and I’ll use one device for both phone & broadband PC access.
I’m sure Verizon is doing everything they can to disable this workaround.
Sprint with the Treo advertises it can be used as a broadband modem, why can’t Verizon figure out that’s what we want?
TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Disk Encryption Software for Windows XP/2000 and Linux.
Microsoft has withdrawn Private Folders apparently due to criticism from enterprise customers on supportability. There’s alot I’d like to say about that, but I’ll keep it PC.
So, TrueCrypt (www.TrueCrypt.org) is a nice replacement.
I’ve been looking into a new notebook lately and while “some” of the hardware configurations should make it Aero Glass compatible and potentially pass the Vista Upgrade Advisor muster, there’s just no guarantee that all device drivers will be updated.
When speaking to Dell sales personnel on the phone they made verbal guarantees that the configuration I setup would be Vista Premium Capable – but they can’t (or wouldn’t) put that on the final configuration that would become my “contract” with them.
I also put together another configuration with 64Meg Video and the sales guy said “Yes, that will support Aero”. So, clearly they have no clue either. Buyer beware.
It boils down to driver support and updates from the OEM’s to support Vista.
So, I’m waiting.
Brad Abrams : WinFX: Now Better than Ever.
The comment is from “David” who states”
Ok, I am going around preaching this on every blog, I think: PLEASE call it .Net 3.0! Drop the WinFX name. ONCE show sanity with your naming. Remember "ActiveX"? Right...
Guess he had some early insight.
Very cool tool that will at least let me leave the Regex book at home…
Regulazy is a visual Regex Creation tool for beginners.
Easy point and click user interfaces, predictive technology and much more!
Still in alpha, but more features are coming!
Regulazy - Point And Click Regular Expressions.
Microsoft Private Folder 1.0.
Here’s a tool, unsupported, from Microsoft that allows you to create an encrypted file store on your machine.
I’d opt for PGP software for my needs, but this gives most people a MSFT way of getting the same thing done.
Updated: June 12, 2006 - I had some debug code in there, basically a sleep for a second statement - doh! - I've removed it and Zip file updated
There have been numerous times that I’ve needed the ability to rename a set of files based upon a pattern, something regular expressions could easily take care of if the old DOS rename command, or something built into the Windows OS could do. However, there’s nothing in Windows base set of command utilities that can provide this. I haven’t delved into Windows PowerShell (fka Monad) enough to see if this capability exists already. But, I had a bunch of pictures that I wanted renamed in my library and just needed a utility to do it.
So, I built this utility to help me rename files, by directory, based upon Regular Expression patterns.
A Zip archive of the Solution files are File Rename Utility Zip File solution that contains the following:
- Visual Studio Solution
- Windows Installer
- Program Executable
The following is a screen shot of the tool after reading a directory and running a trial.
This version doesn’t have batch capabilities. It does leverage the BackgroundWorker class for handling both the trial and actual renaming of the files so the UI doesn’t block during long processing. So, that means it can be used on a network directory. Below is a screen shot of it running against a UNC name.
About
Shawn Cicoria is a Consultant with Avanade (www.Avanade.com) the leading Systems Integration Consultancy focused on the Microsoft Platform. Shawn is also a MCT training instructor with SetFocus (www.Setfocus.com) located in Parsippany NJ. Focused on distributed technologies such as COM[+], J2EE, and for the past 5 years .NET, SOAP, BizTalk, and Database technologies -- and now WinFX – err, I mean .NET 3.0.