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November 2006 - Posts

Toothpaste (or, Flyer Beware)

They took my toothpaste at Derry. The previous day, the nice people at Dublin Airport nicked my shaving foam, which I'd been accidentally concealing in my carry-on luggage as a 250ml threat to society . I attended my meetings the following day sporting Read More...
Posted Monday, November 27, 2006 8:04 PM by robburke | 6 Comments

Photosynth Screen Saver

Inspired by Photosynth's autoplay feature , I created a Photosynth screen saver this morning. :) [EDIT: I've taken this down. I've had enough people tell me that it doesn't work properly on their PCs. I have left a link to the code down below, in case Read More...
Posted Wednesday, November 22, 2006 12:44 PM by robburke | 4 Comments

Flash (SWF) to XAML converter

Mike Swanson has created a Flash (.SWF) to XAML conversion tool called SWF2XAML . Great stuff!! KarstenJ interviewed Mike discussing the utility on Channel9 . Mike's utility will be a great addition to the toolbox for artists who have content in Flash Read More...
Posted Tuesday, November 21, 2006 10:15 PM by robburke | 0 Comments

How does Windows ReadyBoost improve Vista's performance?

One of the Vista features I was intrigued by, and formerly a little confused by, is Windows ReadyBoost, which promises to improve system performance when you plug a flash drive (or even a fast enough USB 2.0 drive) into your Vista PC. Jim Allchin explained Read More...
Posted Tuesday, November 21, 2006 9:42 PM by robburke | 1 Comments

Life, Virtualized (or: 3 reasons I love the virtual machine)

One of the things that me mate Dave has written a good bit about recently is virtualization. Although I'm not an infrastructure expert, I find using virtual machines tremendously useful, for three reasons: 1. Managing my (Mini)-Infrastructure My life Read More...
Posted Friday, November 17, 2006 1:26 PM by robburke | 12 Comments

NLarge is now a CodePlex community project

NLarge is now hosted up on CodePlex as a community project ! If you haven't seen CodePlex, it's like "Team Foundation Server in the Sky": a place to host community projects, which hosts code, wikis, work items, and all the other great Team Foundation Read More...
Posted Wednesday, November 15, 2006 10:33 PM by robburke | 3 Comments

Fun with Photosynth's Autoplay - what a screensaver that would make!

The Photosynth Team describes a "hidden" switch that activates Autoplay on a Photosynth collection , triggering Photosynth to automatically advance through the images in a tour that will take you through every photo in the set. Rob La Gesse, in the comments Read More...
Posted Wednesday, November 15, 2006 5:47 PM by robburke | 0 Comments

Microsoft Press Pass on reliability features in Windows Vista - and my teeny little contribution

I'd been running test builds of Windows Vista for over a year prior to its release last week, and I wasn't alone: thousands of Microsoft employees were testing Vista to iron out the kinks. Our Partners in the Early Adoption programs also slug their way Read More...
Posted Wednesday, November 15, 2006 4:50 PM by robburke | 0 Comments

Windows Vista Availability for MSDN Subscribers: Friday November 17th. (Office 2007 available now)

I had a zillion people ask me today when the Vista release will be available for download by MSDN subscribers . Actually I had a jarbled message on my voicemail I couldn't make out, so it could have been a zillion and one. Vista is scheduled to be available Read More...
Posted Tuesday, November 14, 2006 5:08 PM by robburke | 20 Comments

Cork, Dublin, Belfast Events: Visual Studio Tools for Office with team member Donald Drake

If you're located in Cork or Dublin or Belfast, and interested in how the Visual Studio Tools for the Office System (or roughly VSTO for short) allow developers to build on top of Office as a platform, then be sure to head out to the Microsoft Technologies Read More...
Posted Tuesday, November 14, 2006 11:16 AM by robburke | 2 Comments

Try the Photosynth technology preview!

The first Photosynth technology preview has hit the web! Today, you can visit the Photosynth site to explore four different collections of photos in 3D space. Back in August, the Photosynth team announced their work at the SIGGRAPH 2006 conference, along Read More...
Posted Thursday, November 09, 2006 6:10 PM by robburke | 0 Comments

DirectX demos still get my juices flowing

On Tuesday I attended Mike Pelton's session about how to choose between WPF and DirectX for rendering 3D graphics. He began by illustrating WPF's strengths, and specifically called out data binding, the similarities between the 2D and 3D APIs, and the Read More...
Posted Thursday, November 09, 2006 12:23 PM by robburke | 2 Comments

XNA Video Montage shows nascent indie games (and XNA Studio Beta 2, with Content Pipeline!)

I'm impressed by the diversity and quality of the nascent indie games featured in this XNA Video Montage , which was released on Major Nelson's blog in a format which is optimized for the Zune.* XNA Game Studio is a set of tools based on Visual C# Express Read More...
Posted Thursday, November 09, 2006 11:58 AM by robburke | 0 Comments

Windows Vista is Released To Manufacturing

Jim Allchin said it all with two words on the Windows Vista Team blog : IT'S TIME! Here's a few more words from Nick White. Read More...
Posted Wednesday, November 08, 2006 7:00 PM by robburke | 1 Comments

Flickr pool for Tech Ed Europe photos - please add yours!

I uploaded my first set of Tech Ed Europe photos to my Flickr account in this Photoset . I also created a "Tech Ed Europe 2006" group pool on Flickr. Please feel free to add your own photos taken at the conference to that group. The shot to the right Read More...
Posted Wednesday, November 08, 2006 3:51 PM by robburke | 1 Comments

NLarge got updated (and it would have been appreciated today)

I didn't see any presenters at TechEd Europe wield NLarge today, although some of them certainly could have used my WPF-based screen magnifier. I tend to lurk near the back of the Tech Ed presentations, since I sometimes need to duck out on official evangelical Read More...
Posted Wednesday, November 08, 2006 12:23 AM by robburke | 3 Comments

.NET Framework 3.0 is completed!

It was alluded to, almost as an aside, during this morning's keynote speech at Tech Ed Europe. But let's not let today's most impressive bit of Microsoft developer news pass us by: The .NET Framework 3.0, formerly known as WinFX, has been released and Read More...
Posted Tuesday, November 07, 2006 11:57 PM by robburke | 2 Comments

ASP.NET Ajax (formerly "Atlas") goes Beta 2

They've just released ASP.NET Ajax (formerly ASP.NET "Atlas") in Beta 2 over on the ASP.NET site. (In fact, atlas.asp.net now redirects to ajax.asp.net .) They've changed the control namespaces from atlas: to asp: , so I need to do a bit of search-'n'-replace Read More...
Posted Tuesday, November 07, 2006 2:57 PM by robburke | 2 Comments

SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition - lightweight, free, flexible datastore - available as Release Candidate 1

I'm hanging out at the Visual Studio booth in the Ask the Expert area at Tech Ed Europe: Developers. I took a swing around the Ask the Experts area to see what's going on, and to meet some of the folks from the product teams. I met two guys from the SQL Read More...
Posted Tuesday, November 07, 2006 11:32 AM by robburke | 9 Comments

Hungry for ''Orcas''?

If you've got a hunger on you for a preview of the next generation of the Visual Studio development envrionment, you can download the Community Tech Preview of Visual Studio code name "Orcas" , which is the flavor of the course that will follow Visual Read More...
Posted Tuesday, November 07, 2006 11:23 AM by robburke | 5 Comments

TechEd Europe: Developers kicks off in Barcelona

It's time to get this blog back in motion, live from the TechEd Europe: Developers conference in Barcelona. I'm here for the week and will be hanging around the Ask the Experts section on the Exhibition floor, so if you're here, pop by and say hello. Read More...
Posted Tuesday, November 07, 2006 11:10 AM by robburke | 0 Comments
 
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