March 2004 - Posts

• Customizing what happens when you launch Windows Media Player

  Kevin Moore has a useful post on customizing where you end up when you launch Windows Media Player here . I still feel like such a novice on Windows some times. I still need to learn all the power user tricks. Just as long as I don't have to touch the Read More... Posted Wednesday, March 31, 2004 10:50 PM by dancre | 0 Comments

• Google is launching webmail tomorrow (called gmail)

  http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4641667/ You get 1 GB of storage, and fast searching (of course). This should be interesting. Read More... Posted Wednesday, March 31, 2004 8:44 PM by dancre | 9 Comments

• Debugging Outlook Add-ins doesn't work if you have disabled add-ins

  In the feedback section of my post on a Hello World Outlook Add-in , Ron Cicotte mentioned a debugging problem he was having, and finally tracked it down after having to use an MSDN support incident. The problem is that if you have any disabled Outlook Read More... Posted Wednesday, March 31, 2004 2:38 PM by dancre | 2 Comments

• Smart pointer wrapper for IDisposable in Managed C++

  A common idiom I have come to appreciate in C++ is “ resource acquisition is initialization ”. The idea is that you acquire a resource in a constructor, and dispose of it in the destructor. Using a stack based class, you can make sure your Read More... Posted Tuesday, March 30, 2004 10:16 PM by dancre | 1 Comments

• WWDC 2004 Session Descriptions are available

  WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) is Apple's yearly developer conference. The 2004 session descriptions are now available here , although the interesting sessions usually don't appear on the schedule until the first day when they make all their big Read More... Posted Tuesday, March 30, 2004 9:03 PM by dancre | 4 Comments

• The Longhorn People & Groups platform

  As mentioned in my Introduction post , I've recently joined the team responsible for the people & groups platform on Longhorn. I was searching around to see what information is out there already on it. MSDN has a good overview article here . The PDC Read More... Posted Friday, March 26, 2004 10:47 PM by dancre | 7 Comments

• New MSDN article on WinFS

  There's a new article on MSDN about WinFS that describes many of the key concepts including the different data types. Read More... Posted Friday, March 26, 2004 10:04 PM by dancre | 1 Comments

• Avalon's Media Integration Layer

  There is a new article on MSDN describing Avalon’s Media Integration Layer . The article provides insight into some of the key architectural features that differentiate it from other technologies. Earlier this month, Ian Griffiths also wrote about Read More... Posted Thursday, March 25, 2004 9:49 AM by dancre | 11 Comments

• Great hashing info

  Michael Giagnocavo has an interesting blog entry on hashing that explains what salt values are and why you should do multiple iterations of hashing on stored passwords. Read More... Posted Wednesday, March 24, 2004 8:24 PM by dancre | 0 Comments

• XAML != HTML

  Jason Olsen has an interesting blog entry how XAML != HTML . I had some similar surprises when I first played with XAML too. At first I was expecting a cross between HTML and an XML version of something like PowerPlant's PPob format. However, what you Read More... Posted Wednesday, March 24, 2004 8:10 PM by dancre | 1 Comments

• New Office 2003 Updates available

  They include an update to the Outlook Junk Mail Filter file, an Excel fix, and a Visio fix. Download here . Read More... Posted Tuesday, March 23, 2004 10:44 AM by dancre | 1 Comments

• Hello Word Outlook Add-In using C#

  One thing I’d like to play with is extending Outlook through add-ins with C#. It’ll be a good opportunity to learn more about .NET development and the Windows tools. Plus, I can “fix” some of the things that annoy me about Outlook. Read More... Posted Sunday, March 21, 2004 10:44 PM by dancre | 33 Comments

• Windows XP SP 2 RC1 is now available

  The first release candidate for Windows XP SP 2 is available here . The changes are described here . We've made a lot of major security related changes for SP 2. We can use all of the feedback we can get before it's rolled out to everyone. So, if you're Read More... Posted Friday, March 19, 2004 10:26 PM by dancre | 0 Comments

• Danny Elfman is doing the music for the X-Box game Fable!

  Here's an excuse to write about two things I love. Danny Elfman is doing music for the upcoming X-box game Fable . Danny Elfman was the lead singer for the best band of all time, Oingo Boingo . Read More... Posted Friday, March 19, 2004 8:20 PM by dancre | 5 Comments

• Other MacBU bloggers

  Omar blogged about me! Dennis finally started a blog (or two ) that have RSS feeds. Now, I can actually read his blog. I had a lot of fun working with these guys over the years creating some awesome features! There's nothing working with a team of people Read More... Posted Tuesday, March 16, 2004 9:11 PM by dancre | 5 Comments

• Mac Office 2004 demo is now online

  There's now a slick online demo of Mac Office 2004 here . It includes a nice demo of the Project Center, which I talked about in my previous post . Read More... Posted Tuesday, March 16, 2004 10:55 AM by dancre | 3 Comments

• Another interesting WinFS scenario

  Jeremy Mazner has posted a few interesting WinFS scenarios. I thought I'd add one that's fresh in my mind. One of the exciting new features of Mac Office 2004 is simple project management. Project management is an overloaded term, so let me take a moment Read More... Posted Saturday, March 13, 2004 11:33 PM by dancre | 8 Comments

• Introduction

  I've been hoping to start a blog for a while now, but don't want to be one of those people that starts one and never posts to it... I think I'm actually ready to keep it up! I've been at Microsoft for 6 years, and until 2 months ago, I was in the Macintosh Read More... Posted Friday, March 12, 2004 10:39 PM by dancre | 10 Comments