frankarr - an aussie microsoft blogger

Aggiorno – a Smart Search and Replace

I got a note from my friend Gilbert, aka SAMIQ about a neat app called Aggiorno

Aggiorno automates a number of code improvement tasks that frankly should not be performed by humans. We all know that source is a nuance that we need to bear with because there are no better ways to deal with the behavior of the site. Modifying source code is error-prone and does not really add value to the web user; however it is necessary to change source code to improve a number of properties in your side.

What I really like about the tool, is how it understands HTML Markup, and how it integrates into Visual Studio.

But, if you don’t want to use VS, there is a Aggiorno Standalone Edition, as well as the free Aggiorno Express Transformations for Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, which automates the process of inserting the IE8 compatibility flag throughout a site.

It’s a cool useful tool which should help prepare sites for the release of IE8

NYT: The Online Search Party: A Way to Share the Load

Excerpt from New York Times Article:

The Online Search Party: A Way to Share the Load
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/business/23novelties.html

OPPORTUNITIES for social networking abound on the Internet, but not when it comes to one standard job: using a browser and search engine to comb the Web for information. That task is still typically done solo, because browser displays and search procedures have traditionally been designed for a single user.

Now tools are being developed by Microsoft and other companies that let people at different computers search as a team, dividing responsibilities and pooling results and recommendations in a shared Web space on the browser display as they plan a family vacation, for instance, or research a medical problem.

MY COMMENT:
Give it a try from Microsoft SearchTogether (Beta)

To download the Times Reader, click here.

The One About Crocodile Wrestling

We had a busy day on Thursday.

It’s time for the first round of Parent/Teacher Conferences and we had 3 of them on the same day at different locations!

As we met with each of Billy’s teachers, they asked us about Billy’s Crocodile Wrestling.

What?

Seems like our young fellow has been spinning a few yarns!

He was interviewed for an article in the local school newspaper and he let rip with a couple of doozies!

The ultimate Rugby player, the future star member of the Wallabies (the Australian Rugby Union): Billy Arrigo has joined The Bear Creek School.

Arrigo came to Kirkland last year and attended Kirkland Jr. High. He plays with the Axe Men in Marymoor, demonstrating what it means to be a master rugby player by showing amazing skills and impressing his coach, quickly becoming a very trusted member of the team. In his previous school, Knox, back in Sydney, Billy’s team was undefeated for the two years he was in the team.

Rugby is an odd sport, unpopular in the U.S., something only few countries in the world favor. However, something even more strange and unique to Australia is crocodile wrestling. Arrigo did just that. Back in his home town Sydney, he placed first in the Sydney 18 and under Crocodile Wrestling Tournament.

Picking up rowing this past summer, he wanted to keep in shape during the rugby off season. Arrigo rows 6 km (3.73 miles) daily. After school, he can be found in the pickup area wearing his Chinook rowing shirt saying, “I better get rowing now!”

LOL!  Nice one Bill. You’ve been found out!

XLV for me!

I’m celebrating another birthday today.

It happens every year, around this time.

I’ve been overwhelmed by all the best wishes from my friends via email, twitter, facebook – however folks can get in touch, they have. Makes me feel all warm inside. Thank you to all who left me a note – I will get back to each and everyone of you!

So, some trivia about my age:  3x3x5, XLV, half way to a right angle, the atomic number of rhodium, not to mention a triangular number, a hexagonal and 16-gonal number, a Kaprekar number, a Harshad number and a Størmer number.

I also happen to share a birthday with Ted Stevens, Brenda Vaccaro, Linda Evans, Graham Parker, Kevin Nealon, Oscar Nunez, Elizabeth Perkins, Kim Wilde, Owen Wilson, and Merrick Watts just to name a few.

What else happened on this day? : Wikipedia – NYTimes - BBC

Anyways, time for "Brimful of Asha" by Cornershop

Sobees – so WPFee!

At the PDC, I met up with Vincent Rithner, who is the man behind Sobees. I wrote a post about bTwitter, which was another neat WPF app from the team. Now the full platform is done!

So what is Sobees?

It’s a social desktop aggregator. sobees organizes and integrates Web applications and services onto the desktop and offers an easy user experience to you and your social network.

With sobees, you can easily share photos, news and videos with your friends, you keep track of your friends, follow the Elections or any other topic which interests you, search web and more

It has just been recently released in beta and has had some good coverage

• Social Desktop Aggregator Sobees Launches Public Beta
• Hands on: Sobees, the social desktop aggregator
• Sobees desktop widget engine launches public beta
• Sobees wants to socially aggregate your desktop

I’ve just gotten around to installing it, and I will give it a test run this weekend

First impression is that it is a slick WPF app.

Behind the scenes, it is 100% WPF 3.5 sp1, the server DB is SQL2008 and they are using LinqToEnties for both SQLCe and SQL2008 to manage the data, and they using FileStreaming of SQL2008 to manage the update of both platform and modules. I hope we will find out more behind the scenes info from the Sobees Blog, 

I <3 MIX09

As soon as the PDC ended, the team has begun work on MIX09.

You know, March isn’t that far away! Time for me to find a job on the crew again! and I need to decide which piece of bling do i put on my blog

The Web Belongs to You. <3 Your Web at MIX09.

Explore the future of the Web with fellow developers and designers at MIX09, March 18 - 20, 2009 at The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.

Now in its fourth year, MIX is a unique technology conference that connects web professionals with industry thought leaders to explore the future of the Web together. It’s true – your Web needs you, and MIX is where you’ll get access to the tools, knowledge, and vision to create the next generation of UX, applications, and web design.

What’s New for MIX09?

· Learn from and connect with more external speakers than ever before. View latest speaker list. More speakers and sessions to be announced in December.

· Register for pre-event workshops designed to provide in-depth focus on practical skills and topics for both developer and designer professionals.

· MIX09 sessions will focus on key topics for web professionals ranging from user experience design methodologies and standards-based web development techniques to creating rich internet and client applications. More sessions and speakers to be announced in December.

· Compete in the inaugural MIX10K or Restyle challenges and win a trip to MIX09 on us! For the first time in MIX history, the community will help select winners. Contest details to be announced in November.

· Learn about the future of Microsoft’s web platform and tools, including Silverlight™, Internet Explorer®, Expression®, ASP.NET and others.

Space is even more limited this year at MIX, so register early to secure your spot. You’ll receive $200 off the conference price when you register by January 15.

MIX09 Dates and Location

WHEN:
March 18 - 20, 2009
Pre-Event Workshops: March 17

WHERE:
The Venetian Hotel (http://www.venetian.com/), Las Vegas, NV

REGISTER NOW http://2009.visitmix.com/Registration/

Join/Follow the conversation at Facebook Twitter Flickr

What's My Windows 7 User Agent?

I made the leap to the "PDC release" of Windows 7 on one of my machines.

Relatively painless install.

I was curious about the User Agent, so I went to UserAgent.org and found out

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.2; MS-RTC LM 8)

What a monster!

BizSpark : Sparks New Businesses

Another big day of announcements.

Today, BizSpark has been announced. This a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage software Startups. BizSpark is the result of seven years spent getting feedbacks from ISVs, startups and competitive ISVs.

• Software:  fast and easy access to Microsoft’s current full-featured development tools, platform technologies, and unlimited production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions with no upfront costs and minimal requirements. Startups will also get access to the community technology preview (CTP) of the Microsoft Azure Services Platform.
• Support:  professional technical support from Microsoft (MSDN) and community support from BizSpark Network Partners around the world who provide a wide range of support resources for software startups.  Network Partners are incubators, investors, advisors, government agencies and hosters who are vested in software-fueled innovation and entrepreneurship.
• Visibility:  a dedicated online startup directory, BizSparkDB, on the Microsoft  Startup Zone website (www.microsoftstartupzone.com) which will highlight promising companies from around the world, including the “BizSpark Startup of the Day”. Through their relationship with Microsoft and BizSpark Network Partners, startups will achieve global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients and partners.

This program lasts 3 years. There are no upfront costs. No Commitments. Startups just have to pay 100$ at graduation.

Startups get access to BizSpark either through a Network Partner (e.g. TiE, NVCA, select Venture Capitalists, and over 300+ entrepreneurial-focused organizations with a strong track record to helping young and promising technology companies success  or through Microsoft BizSpark Program Leads (called “BizSpark Champs”). Startups can find both at Microsoft.com/bizspark.

Program Details:

Eligibility: BizSpark is available to startups that fit the following criteria.

• A private company building a software-based product or service
• In business for less than 3 years
• Less than USD $1M in revenue (2-4 local variants exist)
• Participation lasts up to three years

Availability:

• BizSpark is immediately available worldwide in most countries
• 82 countries have a BizSpark Program Lead (“BizSpark Champs”) to provide support

www.microsoftstartupzone.com/bizspark  has all the detailed program information

On a personal note, I have play a small part in working on this and I am a very fortunate to be “BizSpark Champ”. Drop me a comment if you would like to get connected.

Microsoft /web : Web AI & Web PI

There were two announcements from a few weeks back, which may have been missed amidst the news of Azure, Windows 7, etc

Microsoft Web Platform Installer

The Web Platform Installer Beta (Web PI) provides a single, free package for installing and configuring Microsoft's entire Web Platform, including IIS7, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, SQL Server 2008 Express Edition and the .NET Framework. Using the Web Platform Installer’s simple user interface, you can select specific components or install the entire Microsoft Web Platform onto your computer. To help you stay up-to-date with product releases, the Web Platform Installer always contains the most current versions and new additions to the Microsoft Web Platform.

Microsoft Web Application Installer

The Web Application Installer (Web AI) is the smoothest way to install the freely available PHP and ASP.NET applications on the IIS Web Server. Simply select the applications you want, enter your personal configuration, and click a button. Web AI provides support for popular ASP.Net and PHP Web applications including Graffiti, DotNetNuke, WordPress, Drupal, OSCommerce and more. With just a few simple clicks, Web AI will check your machine for the necessary pre-requisites, download these applications from their source location in the community, walk you through basic configuration items and then install them on your computer.

Pretty big, and this isn’t the end of the news…

PDC2008 – Sessions, Sessions, Sessions

PDC 2008 was only last week, but it already feels like an eternity ago!

Mike Swanson has created a very useful list of all the PDC 2008 Sessions, with links to the video of the presentation, the slides and where available, the code

My favorite session? It has to be Day Two Keynote - Chris Anderson and Don Box

Want to do What If?

The US election is a few days away. Here’s a cool tool to make electoral vote predictions like Chuck Todd of MSNBC has on air, using Microsoft Surface.

From your desktop, using the richness of WPF, you can make your own predictions, compare them with Chuck Todd and manipulate based on voter trends, poll surveys and any other relevant data.

Download  NBC Decision 08 Electoral Map

Instructions on the App

• After the install, go to Start->Programs->MSNBC->NBC Decision 08 Electoral Map
• The “i” logo has the Information on the app and how to use it
• The initial load is Chuck Todd’s Predictions as of this week
• You click on a candidate and then on a state to give them the state
• Ex: Click on Obama and on WA to make it red.
• If you click WA again, it will turn light red and “leaning Obama” 
• If you click WA again, it will turn grey and will become a toss-up state
• You can Save your Prediction as an XML file

Getting Sorted for PDC2008

The PDC kicks off on Monday, but it starts for me on Saturday morning as I am involved in one of the pre conferences - WomenBuild

I’m trying to get organized before my trip, so I’ve been looking for tips online to help me get sorted and there is plenty :

• Packing for the PDC
• The Devil’s Field Guide to the PDC
• Downloadable PDC2008 Session List.
• Mobile Version of PDC Site is Now Available

For those of you who can’t make it to LA, watch it live on www.microsoftpdc.com

Keynote 1 – Ray Ozzie, Amitabh Srivastava, Bob Muglia and David Thompson

8:30-10:30 AM Pacific Time Monday, October 27

Keynote 2- Ray Ozzie, Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie and David Treadwell

8:30-10:30 AM Pacific Time Tuesday, October 28

And do what Mitch Denny will be doing and get the Twitter Ticket to PDC2008

Can’t wait!

How do you do your status updates?

I was asked the following question, ”How do you do your status updates?”,  this week by one of my work colleagues who is also one of my “online” friends. Seems my frequency of updates is overwhelming his quite digital existence.

I do use a bunch of different tools to keep my status up to date, so to answer that question for my friend, here’s what I do.

When I am out and about, I like to take photos and I use ShoZu to tag and post the photos I take to all my favorite destinations, such as flickr, brightkite & twitpic.

So uploading one photo causes a flurry of status updates.

I have brightkite setup to cross post to my twitter stream, which also updates my facebook status. One upload, 3 status updates!

Speaking of status updates, I have \been trying out some services which can update across many social networks – two which I use are ping.fm and hellotxt.com. All are easy to setup and use, and come in handy when I want to synchronize something across *all* my social networks.

In terms of other applications I use, I wrote about TinyTwitter a while back, and I have the latest version which can include data from a GPS in the tweet, and it actually updates the location field in twitter. That’s kinda funky.

I also stumbled across GPSTwit which has a simple Windows Mobile app and I have been giving it a try. It creates “breadcrumbs” of your travels, which I kinda like.

But, my favorite status update site is http://m.slandr.net – because of one killer feature – SEARCH. It’s a browser based app, but it’s fast and super easy to use.

So, there you have it. A run down of some of the things I use to keep my status up to date because I so want to tell the world what I am doing….

10552 songs and it’s still half full (or half empty)

The following tweet came across my screen yesterday and it made me think…

I also looked and found an article from a few years back - Most MP3 players 'barely half full' which said

The average user fills only 58 per cent of their music player, leaving the average player with more than 4GB of free space

Curious, I check out my current music player – a Zune 120gb which I recently picked up. The stats show I am about 49% full, which means I have another 60GB available. That’s what I call an infinite digital jukebox!

Speaking of Zune – here’s my zune profile and zune card

{You shape} it

I got sent to {You shape} it, a new site that focuses on all Microsoft things related to design, development and IT management.

It’s full of silverlight goodness, with a snappy theme song and some fun activities, including adding your name to the Shape City billboard

As I was wandering the site, I got flashbacks of The Neverhood – anyone remember that ?

It was a claymation adventure game from the fertile mind of Douglas TenNapel, who also fathered Earthworm Jim

The Neverhood was just sooooo good! I loved that game!

Just watch a video of the intro to see what I mean.

How awesome is that!

Anyways, {You shape} it is pretty cool and I am sure we will see more cool stuff appear over the next few months.