...and I've recently figured out how to embed Soapbox videos in posts, this just makes me laugh every time I watch it. Never fails. 100% success rate. Technorati Tags: nonsense

Now published on the MSDN Nuggets site so you can enjoy them in their original high res format with Dobly surround sound etc :-) http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/nuggets Technorati Tags: office , open xml , nuggets

The "real" gadget I've created has now been published on Windows Live Gallery (quite a lengthy process but good to see that updates get approved very quickly) so I can share my gadget with the world! It's a mapping / driving directions gadget. Simply...

I've added some functionality to the gadget we've been building in part 1 and part 2 but I think it's going to be very difficult to share this in a blog posting. Partly this is because I've tweaked things all over the place and to record the chronology...

Link to video on Soapbox (from here you can watch full screen) Technorati Tags: office , open xml

Link to video on Soapbox (from here you can watch full screen) Technorati Tags: office , open xml

Okay, slight problem publishing to the MSDN nuggets site currently so instead of waiting around, I'll embed a Soapbox version here and follow up with Parts 2 & 3. Expect them to appear on the MSDN site in the fullness of time... Link to video on Soapbox...

I blogged back here about what is required to handle repeating data with dynamic documents (ie Word documents using content controls to bind to custom XML). In the meantime I've had numerous emails from people with very similar problems all asking how...

There really are a very limited number of tickets for Mix:UK remaining. I know because I'm having to set expectations with a lot of internal Microsoft folks who'd like to attend but we simply wont have space. (Usually we can squeeze a couple of extra...

This is where you can let your creativity loose. You have lots of options here; you can change the size of the gadget, the flyout, the undocked gadget as well as defining your UI and styling. Go crazy... As I haven't got much creativity, I've stuck with...

I've spent a bit of time building a SideBar gadget recently and had a lot of fun doing it. I thought it might be worth sharing some of the stuff I learned along the way by building out a gadget that does something. Maybe not something useful but something...

I'm a bit late with this news but if you haven't seen it already it's worth checking out http://www.tafiti.com , a Silverlight front-end to Live Search. The description in the FAQ is: What is Tafiti? Tafiti, which means "do research" in Swahili...

Beep beep! Am I mad? Technorati Tags: vw , camper , money-pit?

I've seen the same question a few times now about how you can create a Silverlight 1.1 project that doesn't run from the filesystem. By default, when you create a Silverlight 1.1 project in Visual Studio 2008 and hit F5 (run), IE will fire up with a filesystem...

NxtGenUG have just announced they're adding a new region to their already extensive collection (Birmingham, Oxford and Coventry) - Cambridge this time. The new regional group will be run by Chris Hay and Allister Frost and they've managed to secure a...

I noticed this morning that the article I wrote about Office Open XML is now available on the VSJ website . Hurrah! I get lots of questions about Office Open XML as often people find it difficult to get up and running with it and get to grips with the...

Well I confess that I perhaps underestimated just how good a feature the JavaScript debugging in Visual Studio 2008 is. I've been building a Vista Sidebar gadget over the last couple of days and was surprised (and impressed) with the support I got from...

I did save up for Guitar Hero II and it arrived last week. I did the tutorials, played half a song and then my Xbox fell over. I was gutted. There I was with my "guitar", ready to rock n roll and instead I found myself staring at three red lights...

A long time ago (and I do mean a *long* time ago) I posted that I was having problems with this combination . I've been chatting on and off with the ASP.NET team about this as we tried to track down the issue on a simple repro I'd set up in the office...

I know Steve's blogged a bit about Facebook recently but this story about how willing Facebook users are to add "friends" they don't know really made me sit up and take notice. 43% of the sample accepted a friends request from someone they didn...

Okay so it was (relatively) cheap but the reviews were, well, mixed. Still I splashed out £9.99 (down from £16.41) as I was buying some stuff from Amazon anyway (this limited my choice a little) and it seemed like a good deal. The horror stories...

There's been a lot of talk about Silverlight 1.1 controls ( or the current lack thereof ) so I thought I'd highlight something I stumbled across on Tim's blog which you may find as useful as I did. He's shared a couple of presentation decks in this blog...

Gem and I went to see the Simpson's Movie the other night (hurray for Orange Wednesdays - half price cinema!) and I was pleasantly surprised. I do like the Simpsons, I just haven't watched them for a long time (this corresponds with a number of reviews...

The most frequently asked question I receive on Word content controls and databinding goes along the lines of "That's great. No really it is. But you see I've got this list of data and I'd really like to populate a table in Word with it. How do I...

I've published another two Office Open XML nuggets. Actually I published them a couple of weeks ago but they got "stuck in the system" somewhere so I republished them again today. One's on document inspection (it happens to focus on PowerPoint...