You might want to do this:

This will spawn a nice little dialog looking like this:

There you go – you can add, remove, edit, backup and restore your stored passwords. I didn’t know that was possible until now – amazing B-)

I tried to install a Data Protection Manager 2007 Remote Agent remotely and on the machine locally. Trying to install it remotely will always fail with this error message:

Since “tfs” is the only x86 server we have and everything else including the DPM 2007 Server is x64 this is my only bet – but so far even the local installation (which worked) did not change anything. I installed the remote agent and did the console setup setting the dpm server. I then added the production server to the DPM 2007. But the error message remained. I just don’t know what else to do.

Any ideas?

I had the chance to interview Steve Teixeira – the Product Unit Manager for the Parallel Developer Tools team in Microsofts Developer Division.

So here is the video of this (my first) interview:

If you click here you can watch it in HD.

Unexpected news: Obiously the first CTP of the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 is available for download.

“Welcome to the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Community Technology Preview Feedback page! You can now get an early look at the new features we are working on for the next release by downloading the CTP from the Download Center. The CTP release is available in English only as a Virtual PC image.”

Source: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/content/content.aspx?ContentID=9790

Microsoft just released a small tool with the name “Small Basic”. It’s a all-in-one programming environment for beginners:

“Small Basic is a project that’s aimed at bringing “fun” back to programming. By providing a small and easy to learn programming language in a friendly and inviting development environment, Small Basic makes programming a breeze. Ideal for kids and adults alike, Small Basic helps beginners take the first step into the wonderful world of programming.”

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx

Microsoft did a fairly good job hiding the end user license agreement in the .NET Framework 3.5 installer dialog:

Since I had to fix it for more than hundred times before – here is once and for all the solution:

Add to the httpRuntime section of the web.config file of your ASP.NET application or webservice:

and you’re done.

“Mono 2.0 is a portable and open source implementation of the .NET framework for Unix, Windows, MacOS and other operating systems.”

• Compiler
• C# 3.0 compiler implementation, with full support for LINQ.
• Visual Basic 8 compiler.
• IL assembler and disassembler and the development toolchain required to create libraries and applications.
• API
• ADO.NET 2.0 API for accessing databases.
• ASP.NET 2.0 API for developing Web-based applications.
• Windows.Forms 2.0 API to create desktop applications.
• System.XML 2.0: An API to manipulate XML documents.
• System.Core: Provides support for the Language Integrated Query (LINQ).
• System.Xml.Linq: Provides a LINQ provider for XML.
• System.Drawing 2.0 API: A portable graphics rendering API.

Source: http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page

I virtualization heaven! I am currently using VMWare Server on most of the machines I am doing virtualization on – but the fact that the Microsoft Hypervisor “Hyper-V” is available for free now is really cool:

“Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, a bare metal hypervisor-based server virtualization product, is now available as a no-cost Web download at http://www.microsoft.com/Hyper-VServer. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 provides a simplified, reliable and optimized virtualization solution for customers to consolidate Windows or Linux workloads onto a single physical server or to run client operating systems and applications in server-based virtual machines in the data center. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 allows customers to leverage their existing provisioning, updating, management and support tools, processes and skills.”

Source: http://hypervoria.com/

It seems that today it’s the freebie day (well… for some of us). Because today the next Windows Vista Ultimate Extra is available: Tinker.

Tinker – to shorten up things – is a Sokoban interpretation with some interesting twists.

“Being a small robot isn’t always easy. Being a small robot marooned in a surreal world of clockwork, obscure mechanisms and infuriating puzzles, even less so. In Tinker, a puzzle game that pushes the boundaries of robot frustration, you’ll guide your robot through switches, lasers, teleporters, and a host of other contraptions to reach the exit. He’ll only do what you command. He’ll only go where you tell him to. Will you lead him home, or will you doom him to eternal confusion?

Featuring captivating visuals, an original music score, and 60 levels that range from the facile to the infuriating, Tinker is an isometric, two-dimensional puzzler published exclusively as an Ultimate Extra for Windows Vista Ultimate Users. Tinker features tutorial level, and will include regularly released level packs to expand the experience. Want even more? Download the level builder, and create masterworks of ingenuity to keep your friends scratching their heads. What are you waiting for? Start Tinkering.”

It’s good looking, fun, the music is great and it’s free…

And it’s got it’s own Level Editor:

Source: http://www.fuelgames.com/

There was the Digital Image Suite and several other tools like Hugin and Cool360 which I used over the last years to create panoramic images. Now there’s a new tool available in 32 and 64 bit (for really really huge images!) from Microsoft Research. It’s free at this point and if you’re on Windows it’s definitely worth the try.

“Microsoft Image Composite Editor is an advanced panoramic image stitcher. You shoot a set of overlapping photographs of a scene from a single location, and Image Composite Editor creates a high-resolution panorama incorporating all your images at full resolution. Then save your stitched panorama in a wide variety of formats, from common formats like JPEG and TIFF to multi-resolution tiled formats like HD View and Silverlight Deep Zoom.”

Source: http://research.microsoft.com/ivm/ice.html

A new version of the great XAMLpadX is available. It’s an editor with many features you want to have in Visual Studio and Blend but you don’t get them.

Source: XamlPadX 4.0

…take the XML Notepad.

“Handy features include:

• Tree View synchronized with Node Text View for quick editing of node names and values.
• Incremental search (Ctrl+I) in both tree and text views, so as you type it navigates to matching nodes.
• Cut/copy/paste with full namespace support.
• Drag/drop support for easy manipulation of the tree, even across different instances of XML Notepad and from the file system.
• Infinite undo/redo for all edit operations.
• In place popup multi-line editing of large text node values.
• Configurable fonts and colors via the options dialog.
• Full find/replace dialog with support for regex and XPath.
• Good performance on large XML documents, loading a 3mb document in about one second.
• Instant XML schema validation while you edit with errors and warnings shown in the task list window.
• Intellisense based on expected elements and attributes and enumerated simple type values.
• Support for custom editors for date, dateTime and time datatypes and other types like color.
• Handy nudge tool bar buttons for quick movement of nodes up and down the tree.
• Inplace HTML viewer for processing xml-stylesheet processing instructions.
• Built-in XML Diff tool.
• Support for XInclude
• Dynamic help from XSD annotations.
• Goto definition to navigate includes and XSD schema information. “

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=72d6aa49-787d-4118-ba5f-4f30fe913628&displaylang=en

So..in 2009 Windows Mobile 7 will start and some things point towards an AppStore equivalent called Skymarket for the Microsoft mobile operating system… hmm… Why not… earlier? Like before Apple… way to go Microsoft.

Source: Skymarket @ Computerworld

Photosynth is publicly available and it’s time to give it a try and play with the technology. Before starting you should be aware of some facts about the public photosynth technology-preview:

1. all synths are uploaded and only available online (broadband needed)
2. all synths are public, everyone can access them
3. the synther tool runs only on Windows
4. you’ll need a Live ID

When everything is checked you can go and upload up to 20 Gbytes of image data – my test synth takes up 200 Mbytes of the available space – so you have plenty of space to play with.

To start just install the photosynth application to view – and click “create” on the website. After the obligatory login you immediately can upload your pictures. Give it a name, ssome tags and a license and select your pictures.

Your pictures should show the same scene from different perspectives – photosynth is all about matching perspectives. After clicking on “Synth” the process starts.

And after a surprisingly short period of time your synth is done. Click on “View Synth” and you’re taken back to the website and you can browse your synth. That’s it – easy!

Source 1: my first photosynth
Source 2: Photosynth is open for the public
Source 3: create a synth

Believe it or not – it’s been 2 years since I first wrote about Photosynth technology. Today Microsoft made it available to the public. It’s not a tool (yet) – like I wanted – right now but it’s built into this website – so you have to upload your pictures, they are processed and then you can browse on this website… well it’s a start for a really great technology.

“We’re pleased to announce the first full release of Photosynth, available now at photosynth.com. Photosynth takes a collection of regular photographs and reconstructs the scene or object in a 3-D environment. For those of you who have seen the videos or tried our tech preview, you could experience synths that we made in the lab and get a feel for what Photosynth is and how it works. But now, for the first time ever you can create synths from your own pictures and share them with your friends. Explore great synths from others or create a few of your own.”

It’s not going to work on anything different than Windows. So stick to the movies if you’re on anything else. But as far as I know it’ll run o

Source 1: http://photosynth.net/Default.aspx
Source 2: http://www.schrankmonster.de/PermaLink,guid,fdc3d1fb-4966-418b-83ea-1e0c12aae833.aspx

There’s a new free tool available from officelabs:

“pptPlex is a plug-in that explores an alternate method for presenting a PowerPoint slide deck. Using pptPlex, you can present your slides as a tour through a zoomable canvas instead of a series of linear slides.”

Source: http://www.officelabs.com/projects/pptPlex/Pages/default.aspx

I often read in the MSDN Forums but I will read more often because now there’s a client application available:

“After many months of hard work we are proud to announce the availability of our first CTP of the Microsoft Forums Client. Much of the work for this CTP is in foundational code that will let us build the rest of the application, but we hope that this first preview will let you see what direction we’re heading in, and also give you a chance to give us feedback!
Things that work in this CTP:

• Getting the list of available forums
• Subscribing to forums you’re interested in
• Manually (by right click menu) synchronizing the Question and General Discussion threads in a forum
• Reading posts that have been synchronized
• Hierarchical (threaded) view of conversations”

Source: http://www.codeplex.com/msdnforumsclient

If sometimes you need to just create your own font… well maybe that’s a bit too much theoretical – but it’s interesting to play with a tool like VOLT. It’s out now in a new Version and I suggest taking a look:

“The Microsoft Visual OpenType Layout Tool provides an easy-to-use graphical user interface to add OpenType layout tables to fonts with TrueType outlines. It is licensed free and can be downloaded from the online community set up for it. The community hosts an active discussion forum, version history information, a wish-list and related downloads. Links to VOLT’s release notes, as well as tips and tutorials are also posted.”

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/typography/VOLT.mspx

Das wunderbare Leipziger Team tritt nun bald wieder mit dem .NET Open Space 2008 in Erscheinung:

“Die besten Gespräche hat man fern ab von einer festgelegten Agenda, bei einem Kaffee und beim “du”. Dort gibt es keine Rollenaufteilung in Sprecher / Zuhörer und die Themen finden sich vor Ort ganz von selbst. Das ist die Idee vom .NET Open Space. Hier sind alle gleich. Auch die Organisatoren halten sich im Hintergrund und moderieren nur ab und an etwas. Die Verantwortlichen der Themenfelder sorgen mit Einladungen für Teilnehmer darin.
.NET Open Space besteht derzeit aus den drei parallelen Themenfeldern:

• ALT.NET
• Mobile Computing
• Soft Skills”

Eine Agenda gibt es nicht, dafür aber einen Zeitplan:

Source: http://netopenspace.de/

Ever since we started writing a complete and cutting edge filesystem in C# and only managed code we are confronted with questions like

“Why C#? Why .NET? Why not in a more low-level language? Why a filesystem after all?”

I don’t want to talk just yet about our reasons but we can’t be that wrong if even Microsoft Research is trying to get their .NET Operating System research project Singularity ready for customers:

“Midori is an offshoot of Microsoft Research’s Singularity operating system, the tools and libraries of which are completely managed code. Midori is designed to run directly on native hardware (x86, x64 and ARM), be hosted on the Windows Hyper-V hypervisor, or even be hosted by a Windows process.”

This would be an Operating System 100% in managed code – hey Microsoft – maybe you want to talk with us about our 100% managed code filesystem?!

To prevent rumors: no – we are not working on anything Microsoft related, yet.

Source 1: Microsoft Research – Singularity
Source 2: Codename Midori

Since I am a bit familiar with graph theory and building technologies around graphs I came across this neat little library originally developed by Marc Smiths Team at Microsoft Research. It’s now up on Codeplex for your own study and research:

“.NetMap is a pair of applications for viewing network graphs, along with a set of .NET Framework 2.0 class libraries that can be used to add network graphs to custom applications.

A network graph is a series of vertices (sometimes called nodes) connected by edges. See this Wikipedia article for an overview of network graphs.”

It even integrates into Excel…well if you need that… more interesting is:

“The Windows Forms control is one of several graph “visualizers” that are packaged in a Microsoft.NetMap.Visualization assembly. There is also a Microsoft.NetMap.Adapters assembly for reading and writing graph data in various formats, a Microsoft.SocialNetworkLib assembly for analyzing social networks, and a Microsoft.NetMap.Core assembly that implements the low-level vertex, edge, and graph classes. The framework for a Microsoft.NetMap.Algorithms assembly is also provided, although most of the graph algorithms are still work items as of May 2008.”

Source 1: http://research.microsoft.com/~masmith/
Source 2: http://www.codeplex.com/NetMap

a similar tool is available for Windows Server 2003 and now for 2008:

“Probably you are thinking at the moment: “Why the heck should I use Windows Server 2008 as my Workstations Operating System?? Vista works fine for me…”.

The answer is clear: Windows Server 2008 has almost exactly the same features as Windows Vista (SP1), but is remarkably faster and more stable!“

I cannot talk about the “more stable”-part since my Vista machines do not crash but if you’re one of those who just cannot live without the newest cutting-edge kernel version go ahead install Server 2008 and convert it into a useable workstation with Sound and stuff

Source: http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/2008/07/17/windows-server-2008-workstation-converter/

Michael O’Donovan has a great benchmark-comparison of the brand new Hyper-V and the older Virtual Server 2005 R2:

“I have done a fair amount of SharePoint demos and developement over the past few years, and have always done this on my laptop using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 or Microsoft Virtual PC, to host and run a SharePoint environment. Last year at Tech-Ed, while I was doing a demo, I had a comment from someone in the audience “Why is SharePoint so slow?” To some degree it makes sense, the specific SharePoint virtual environment which I was using at the time had almost every product known to man installed (the virtual hard drive size was 40GB), as well as being a domain controller and running on a laptop which only had 1GB ram assigned to the virtual machine. However, with the RTM release of Hyper-V (on Windows Server 2008), I wanted to see if performance was better now.”

One graph from his article:

Guess now – which color is which product?

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/modonovan/archive/2008/07/09/sharepoint-under-hyper-v-versus-virtual-server-2005-r2.aspx

Channel 9 has the bits and pieces:

“What’s the C# team up to these days? Who’s on the C# 4.0 design team, anyway? With the looming problem of manycore facing developers now and certainly in the near future (to a much greater extent – programming for 80 core (asymmetric to boot) processors, anyone?). I thought it was time to find out what Anders et al are working on to get a clear sense of C#’s near (and not-so-near) future so I asked if I could come to one of their design meetings to have an informal chat (are we ever formal on C9?) and meet the people behind the next iteration of the most popular .NET programming language.”

Source: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/C-40-Meet-the-Design-Team/