Cryptography and security experts bruce Schneier dug up this little gem: Photographer Matt Brandon was posting a worried blog entry about the future outlook of transporting valuable goods in airplanes. Think expensive photo equipment or laptops. Being...

Heard this a lot recently - in the meantime, ease the pain with Kevin's Bag-O-Tricks aka Kevin Moore's collection of WPF controls and samples . Kevin has updated his sample collection so it compiles and runs nicely under .NET Framework 3.0 RC1 (both on...

I've seen flexible rubber USB keyboards before, but this is a true novelty: Based on a British technology called ElekTex fabric, finally we have the rollable keyboard, made of electroconductive cloth. It's wireless, it has drivers for Windows Mobile 2003...

In case you have not seen Jensen Harris' announcement, you will be able to download Microsoft Office Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR) by the end of this day. Office B2TR is a huge improvement in terms speed and memory consumption. In fact, running on Windows...

Windows Vista RC1 comes with inbox support for those neat new graphics cards, but if you care for the very latest drivers or exended control panels, both big vendors have released new drivers: ATI: Catalyst Beta Driver for Windows Vista RC1 NVidia: ForceWare...

Michael Swanson posted the contest today: If you create and submit a file converter to XAML, you can win one of three Dell XPS M1710 laptops. Here's the catch: It must be one of the following file formats, and you must submit your entry by October 29th...

Depending on who talk to, people will tell you how happy/unhappy they are with current Windows Vista performance. Like most of my colleagues, I have installed the July 2006 CTP (Build 5472, available from the MSDN subscriber download). On the machines...

The new Excel File Formats. Like all "new" file formats coming along with Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007, these file formats are really ZIP containers. Excel however, offers a choice of XML-based or binary files inside such a container. The...

I hope to see many of you at Tech·Ed: Developers Europe Nov 7-10 in Barcelona, Spain. I am one of the people responsible for the content there, taking care of "Windows Desktop and Mobile Development" sessions to be more exact. We'll cover an exciting...

According to a famous "New Yorker" cartoon by Peter Steiner, " On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Dog ". That's no longer true. In fact, today we can tell you're a scotch terrier, live north of London, enjoy chewing up your owner's shoes (including...

Occasionally people are questioning those fancy 3D Vista examples , or anything beyond today's 2D graphical interfaces will easy man-machine interaction. And, to be honest, it is not always - or even close to impossible - to predict how most...

10 years ago, JavaWorld was wondering if JavaScript has a future . Today, JavaScript has emerged as the most widely deployed form of a "runtime" available. Nevertheless, most of the of the criticism raised a decade ago still applies. Despite the ECMAScript...

Tim O’Reilly recently published a truly insightful analysis of the computer book market . Looking at the second quarter 06 computer books market provides clues what is hot. Obviously the real-world distribution of computer languages cannot be determined...

I've always had this uneasy feeling about WEP secured wireless networks, so when I moved to my current apartment a year ago I purchased WPA enabled devices. Unfortunately this means I cannot use and will not buy a number of nice devices (such as digital...

If you have seen a recent presentation on Windows Vista, you may have noted that fully using new hardware is a recurring theme. So is the use of flash memory. The presenter might have also mentioned “hybrid hard disks with flash memory”. So how can...

Something completely different: Did you know there is actually a Microsoft Robotics Group? Today, at the RoboBusiness 2006 conference they announced Microsoft Robotics Studio. Microsoft Robotics Studio makes it possible to program both real world robots...

I almost overlooked it: Stephen Toulouse posted it last week in the Microsoft Security Response Center Blog : As part of our ongoing security efforts, several talks have been submitted for the Black Hat Security Conference 2006 , and a total of 5 have...

Grant, working for the Platform Adoption Center, has come up with a method to capture Windows demos . Several people discovered the hard way that software-based methods can no longer capture all the GPU powered graphical greatness of the UI. Also, most...

I’ve tested my recently purchased a Nikon Coolpix S5 compact digital camera. I’ve played with the Macro /Close Up feature and for testing I took a photo of a printout (done on a HP Color Laserjet 3700 ). To my astonishment, the photo cleary shows...

Daniel Lehenbauer has posted an update for his 3D tools for WPF on GotDotNet . This version is compatible with WinFX Beta 2 and Windows Vista Beta 2 and adds a community-owned implementation of "ScreenSpaceLines3D". ScreenSpaceLines3D are 3D line...

Bookmark this page: Here you are going to find a wealth of webcasts on WinFX and Windows Vista development . The one I have noted is the level 400 session on modifying your application for Windows Vista . As for the chicken: Our marketing folks...

Programs that do not meet the requirements of a well behaved Windows Applications (as defined in the Application Compatibility Guidelines for Windows XP will have a hard time when Windows Vista ships. An easy way to find out if an application will...

Beta 2 of Windows Vista is just out, and this is reason for the major hardware vendors to offer updated Beta 2 drivers, or drivers with extra utilities. ATI offers new Catalyst Drivers for Windows Vista Beta 2 and NVidia has released ForceWare Drivers...