Okay – the ones who are frequently using a keyboard know that they are getting faster and faster as time goes by – so it’s normal to type fast but FAST is not enough to compete in the national speed-typing contest in the states:

“Who’s the fastest typist in the land? If you’re talking about the Land of Lincoln, it’s arguably Melanie Humphrey-Sonntag, who has won the Illinois court reporters speed contest for the past three years. At last year’s event she transcribed the contest’s blazing dictation—averaging 245 words a minute—with a 99.193 percent accuracy.
That’s about 4 words a second.”

Source: Chicago Tribune speed typing (with video)

If you got a Mac (and that’s the platform it’s only running on) and if you’re using iTunes to listen to your music you probably want to give this Dashboard Widget a try – it automatically searches the music video which supposedly belongs to the music you’re currently listening to and plays it in a small window on the dashboard:

“YouTube has stacks and stacks of music videos on their website. I have written a little dashboard widget called iTube. iTube gets the artist and title of the song you are playing in iTunes. It then performs a search on youtube and plays the first hit in the widget window. Once installed iTube works by itself in the background, so start a song up iTunes then look at your dashboard and with a little luck you’ll be watching what you are listening to.”

Source: http://philipandrews.org/blog/itube/

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/

Since we are working hard and therefore – NO TIME – I just want to inform you:

“we were noticed that the INTERNET WORLD Business newspaper has nominated SONES as one of the most important (german) start-ups. As a reader of this newspaper you can vote for SONES till 30. September 2008. The winners of the contest will receive an Onlinestar during the INTERNET WORLD Congress in Munich in October.”

Source 1: http://www.pressebox.de/pressemeldungen/neue-medien-ulm-holding-gmbh/boxid-191947.html
Source 2: http://blog.ahzf.de/index.php/2008/07/22/internet-world-business-nominates-sones/

The answer is: 2 Terabyte.

“You can see physical memory support licensing differentiation across the server SKUs for all versions of Windows. For example, the 32-bit version of Windows Server 2008 Standard supports only 4GB, while the 32-bit Windows Server 2008 Datacenter supports 64GB. Likewise, the 64-bit Windows Server 2008 Standard supports 32GB and the 64-bit Windows Server 2008 Datacenter can handle a whopping 2TB. There aren’t many 2TB systems out there, but the Windows Server Performance Team knows of a couple, including one they had in their lab at one point. Here’s a screenshot of Task Manager running on that system:”

P.S.: Thx boonkerz.

Source: http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/07/21/3092070.aspx

Wer schon immer mal wissen wollte wie die Karten eigentlich erstellt werden die in so ein Navigationssystem den Weg weisen der sollte sich mal folgenden Artikel und höchst interessante Bilder anschauen:

“Navteq fährt mit speziell ausgerüsteten Fahrzeugen rund 7,5 Mio. Kilometer ab, und das Jahr für Jahr. Denn auch wenn auf der Verpackung steht: 7200 neue Kilometer, dann bedeutet das nicht, dass der “Rest” nicht auch unter die Räder genommen wurde. Und das lohnt sich immer: Hier steht mal ein neues Schild, da ist eine neue Einmündung und dort wurde vielleicht die Straßenführung geändert.”

Source: http://www.ksmichel.de/?p=289

So nachdem ich heute den Abend zusammen mit der Verwandtschaft einige Bugs im Switcher gefunden und – so denken wir – auch beseitigt haben will ich heute mal alle auf einen Stand bringen und ein Gesamt-Kunstwerk-ZIP File für an die Öffentlichkeit zerren.

Download FFN-Switcher-Release-1.zip (1,47 MB)

I seriously don’t know why they are doing that – it’s not as if any material released previously came to any notice so far – but what the heck – Radiohead decided to put their current music video (which isn’t bad) and the raw data that was used to create it to the public using the Creative Commons license:

“The animation data used to make the video are licensed to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license at Google Code. This means you are free to use the data to make your own video projects, as long as you abide by the CC license’s conditions. (To be clear, the song and its accompanying video are not under CC license; the data used to make the video are.)”

Source: http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/

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/

If you got a digital SLR camera you probably do RAW shoots from time to time…so this could probably be interesting:

“Many photographers—especially those with digital SLRs—shoot in ‘RAW’ mode, which outputs a file format that is proprietary to their camera make and model (for example, .CR2, .NEF). These RAW formats preserve more of the original information from the camera than the JPG file that most other cameras output. This extra information provides greater quality, but it comes at a price of convenience. JPG is a universally supported image file format, but as anyone who has used RAW files can tell you, they are anything but universally supported.

In the past, RAW shooters had to either rely on RAW conversion software provided by their camera manufacturer, or put their fate in the hands of the myriad of software makers who have attempted to reverse-engineer these formats for support in their software applications. This led to a number of problems: compatibility issues, varying quality or inconsistent results from one application to another, and holes in the user workflow where RAW support is lacking.

Windows Vista attempts to solve these problems by providing an extensible platform that allows support for these (and other) new file formats to be added to Windows by the owner of the file format. This support comes in the form of a codec, which users will get from their camera manufacturer, either by downloading it, or provided with a new camera body. The Photo Gallery will even detect the presence of these files and help you download a codec when it exists.

Microsoft has been working with the major camera manufacturers so that they can provide codecs for their various RAW formats to their customers. Once these codecs are installed, users will find that they can view their RAW files and thumbnails throughout Windows Vista.”

There are Codecs available for Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Pentax and ArdFry

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/codecs.aspx

Wenn man den Quelltext nun dann mal auf der Festplatte hat wäre es natürlich nicht schlecht wenn man ihn auch einigermassen komfortabel ändern könnte: Nichts leichter als das!

Es gibt ja die segensreichen Express Editionen von Visual Studio – und genau die ist vollkommen ausreichend um den Quelltext auf sehr komfortable Weise (Onlinehilfe, Syntax Highlighting, usw.) zu erkunden und zu ändern.

Benötigt wird die Visual C# 2008 Express Edition und bekommen kann man sie hier.

Und weil ich gerade so gut bei Laune bin ein kurzes Video:

P.S.: Die Fehlermeldung die beim Öffnen der FFN-Switcher.sln Datei erscheint ist darauf zurückzuführen dass ich mit einer “größeren” Version von Visual Studio arbeite – man braucht sich davon nicht verrückt machen zu lassen.

P.P.S.: Natürlich gibt es auch das Video in HD – einfach zu Vimeo gehen.

Source 1: http://www.microsoft.com/germany/Express/
Source 2: http://vimeo.com/1329422

Da im Moment schon einige den FFN-Switcher verwenden dachte ich ich schreibe mal wie man sich den Switcher selbst kompiliert ohne dass man eine ganze Entwicklungsumgebung installieren muss. Das hat den Vorteil dass man sehr schnell Änderungen am Code vornehmen kann und sich mal eben fix eine eigene Version daraus übersetzt – sollen die Änderungen allen anderen Nutzern auch zur Verfügung gestellt werden sollten sie natürlich an mich geschickt werden – ich werde sie dann nach Prüfung in den Quelltext einbinden bzw. auch in Einzelfällen Zugriffsrechte auf den Quelltext direkt verteilen. Idealerweise kann man per Skype (siehe Kontaktinformationen rechts) oder per Kommentarfunktion an diesem Artikel Kontakt mit mir aufnehmen.

Zuersteinmal braucht man folgende Dinge:

1. installierter .NET Framework 3.5 und .NET Framework 2.0
   Um den Switcher zu benutzen reicht 2.0, nur zum kompilieren braucht man 3.5.
2. einen Subversion Client um den Quelltext zu downloaden
   Im Beispiel verwende ich TortoiseSVN

Das war es eigentlich auch schon. Wenn man das alles installiert hat verwendet man den Subversion Client um von der Adresse http://www.dotnetcommunity.de:6667/ffn-switcher den Quelltext zu downloaden.

Mit TortoiseSVN geht das so:

1. Verzeichniss erstellen
2. Rechts klicken auf Verzeichniss
3. im Kontextmenü “SVN Checkout…” wählen
4. in die Adresszeile die obige Adresse eintragen
5. OK klicken

Nach dem Klick auf OK downloaded TortoiseSVN dann den kompletten Quelltext in das angegebene Verzeichniss.

Der nächste Schritt ist nun schon das eigentliche kompilieren – das Übersetzen des Quelltextes in ein lauffähiges Programm. Hierzu muss man wissen dass das notwendige Tool namens “MSBuild” zusammen mit dem .NET Framework installiert worden ist. Das Tool selbst befindet sich normalerweise im Verzeichniss: “C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\MSBuild.exe”.

Im Grunde besteht das Compilieren nur daraus dass man die Kommandozeile öffnet und in das Verzeichniss wechselt in dem die FFN-Switcher.sln Datei liegt.

So nun wie gesagt – in der Kommandozeile sieht das dann so aus:

Nach dem Druck auf Enter wird der FFN-Switcher kompiliert und im Unterverzeichniss bin\Debug abgelegt. Um das ganze komplett zu machen habe ich ein kleines Video (720p, am besten per Vollbild zu betrachten) erstellt in dem alle Schritte gezeigt werden:

FFN-Switcher selbst kompilieren from Bietiekay on Vimeo.

P.S.: Um das Video in HD zu schauen einfach “HD” einschalten…Leider kann ich es nicht in HD hier auf der Seite direkt einbinden.

Source 1: http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/
Source 2: .NET Framework 3.5
Source 3: http://vimeo.com/1329156

That’s the best news for months!! After TVR being out of business for some time they seem to be back in business now – they even presented the new Sagaris 2008 modell yesterday.

“Announced this morning by TVR Managing Director, David Oxley, at an exclusive preview event held at the new TVR development works in Lancashire, England – TVR Production has resumed!

Upon the momentous occasion, which included invited members of the TVR Car Club, TVR staff presented the TVR Sagaris model year 2008. Exterior design has remained the same except for new 5 spoke wheels, while the interior receives a new center console with satellite navigation.

As promised back in 2006 by TVR owner, Nikolai Smolenski said “My intention is to expand the sales and distribution of TVR cars throughout Europe, the rest of the world and USA markets is a key part of the business strategy of the company.” Built as a left hand drive model, the 2008 Sagaris confirms it will be exported internationally.

Preliminary pricing puts the 2008 TVR Sagaris just below 85.000 Euros.”

So now the only thing I need is the money to buy one of these beasts… I’ll have one in black or white

the re-designed interior included satnav…touchscreen…

…and re-designed exhausts… I actually liked the side-exausts better…

the new bonnet … and the gorgeous speed six…*raaawwr*

Source 1: http://www.worldcarfans.com/9080710.012/page1/tvr-production-restarts—2008-sagaris-presented
Source 2: http://www.tvr-car-club.co.uk/tvrpreviewevent.asp

Amazingly enough OEMs could license WfW 3.11 for this long period of time…

“we recently announced that effective November 1st, 2008, OEM’s will no longer be able to license Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in the embedded channel.”

but it’s time to say goodbye.

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/jcoyne/archive/2008/07/09/it-s-the-end-for-3-11.aspx

“Following on from her critically acclaimed sets ‘Love In The Time Of Science’ and her first for Rough Trade ‘Fisherman’s Woman’, the forthcoming ‘Me And Armini’ (released 8th September) sees her working once again with her long time producer/collaborator Dan Carey resulting in what we feel is destined to be one of the albums of 2008.

‘Me And Armini’ is a hugely ambitious and aspirational pop record with Emiliana’s soaring voice centre stage, bolstered by a rich gamut of musical styles. From the summery skank of the title track to the surging, breathless, first single ‘Jungle Drum’ (released 29th September) and yearning, spine-tingling ‘Big Jumps’ and much more in between ‘Me And Armini’ is a truly fantastic album.

‘Me And Armini’ will be released as a digital single in the US exclusively via iTunes on 19th August, with the album of the same name to follow on 9th September. “

Download the song “Me and Armini” here.

Source 1: http://www.arjanwrites.com/arjanwrites/2008/07/free-download-e.html
Source 2: http://www.myspace.com/emilianatorrini

Servicepack 1 for the .NET Framework 3.5 is coming out so there are many new features and improvements… like this list of WCF Improvements:

• New Hosting Wizard for WCF Service projects.
• Enhancements in Test Client such as support for RM Sessions, Message Contract and Nullable types enables testing of broader set of WCF-based services.
• Expanding reach of DataContract Serializer by relaxing the need of having [DataContract]/ [DataMember] on types and by supporting an interoperable mechanism for dealing with object references.
• Improved Partial Trust Debugging Experience with support for Event Log.
• Support for ADO.NET Entity Framework entities in WCF contracts.
• Improvements in writing REST based services ranging from easily supporting ServiceDocuments publication and consumption to providing greater control and usability of UriTemplate.
• Significant performance improvements on large workflow-based projects in Visual Studio.
• Considerable scalability increases for hosted WCF services in IIS7-integrated mode.

Source: http://hyperthink.net/blog/we-are-pleased-to-bring-you-new-features-in-net-3-5-sp1/

Chris Craft has did a very interesting project – He wrote a new application every day. The “Application Calendar” is now available:

“I have put together a calendar of applications for the 30 Days of .NET [Windows Mobile Applications]. Here you can get a quick feel for all the applications we’ve created so far, and will write in the coming days.”

The best is – these are actually useful applications – like Trippr – a tool that displays all Flickr pictures that are tagged with your current location (gps based)… how cool is that? There are many more… Callblocker, GPS Clock, GeoCash and there’s one I sure will take a look at:

That’s a GPS based Speedo!

Source: http://www.cjcraft.com/blog/default.aspx

Like every year I want to point to the tech-ed online website where you can get many useful information around the tech-ed developer events this year…

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/techedonline/default.aspx

“Cheat sheets are helpful to have around because they allow you to quickly remember code syntax and see related concepts visually. Additionally, they’re nice decorative pieces for your office.”

There are more than 20 cheat sheets available – heck even I found several ones that could come handy in the future.

Source: http://sixrevisions.com/resources/cheat_sheets_web_developer/

As of today Microsoft offers the KB950050 update for Windows Server 2008 – which means: Hyper-V – the hypervisor of Windows 2008 is now available in the final release version.

“The update to the Hyper-V role provides improvements to security, stability, performance, user experience, forward compatibility of configurations, and the programming model. All users of the Hyper-V role should apply this update. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer. After you have installed this update, it cannot be removed. This update is provided to you and licensed under the Windows Server 2008 License Terms. With this update, you can now use Hyper-V in a production environment for supported configurations. Please see Windows Server 2008 Licensing and Support terms for more information.”

Source: KB950050

You would need:

1. an old yet powerful enough notebook to play MAME games
   
   “MAME is an emulator application designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software, with the intent of preserving gaming history and preventing vintage games from being lost or forgotten. The name is an acronym for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.”
2. an IKEA RAMVIK sideboard
3. go to the homepage of the project to get the details how to build it

Source 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAME
Source 3: http://www.ikea.com
Source 2: http://mamebook.blogspot.com/

The .NET Endpoint is a new blog of several teams inside Microsoft that work on the Windows Foundations (you know… WCF, WFF…)

“This is a Microsoft cross-team blog – meaning that multiple groups here at Microsoft will be posting, including the WF/WCF development team, testing team, .NET product management, and some of the more influential folks in our field. Additionally, this blog will be consolidating a couple smaller team blogs into one place, and adding a few link collections to help WF/WCF novices and experts alike locate content. The goal is simple: this will be the one blog to subscribe to if you want to stay on top of WF and WCF stuff.”

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/endpoint/

It’s not as many of those fance company-blogs like gizmodo have written: not the Xbox Media Center project (which makes XBMC for Windows, Linux, Xbox 1 and OSX) renamed itself – infact only the fork of OSXBMC renamed itself to PLEX.

“The one name that stuck was Plex. I like it because it evokes “cineplex” and the suffix means “comprising a number of parts” which the application certain does. In mathematics, you use the suffix to mean “ten to the power of the number” (e.g. oneplex = 10).

Because there are no four-letter domain names left (seriously, try to find one!) we decided to square the plex, so to speak. Think of either plex^2 or plex squared (the beta logo below tries to connote the word “plex” inside a square that might represent a TV screen). The domain names are plex2.com, plexsquared.com, and plexsquare.com for good measure. They are not active yet.

In the coming days, we’ll be working on the rebranding process, including the application packaging, logo, web domains, etc. In the longer term, we have some exciting things in the skin department as well. Stay tuned, and thanks for all your support; we really are lucky to have such an great community.”

Along with the new name comes a new logo:

Source: http://www.osxbmc.com/
Source 2: http://www.plex2.com

There is a new version of Notepad++ – my number 1 choice of text editor on Windows – available for download. It’s version 5 of the great tool bringing us more performance, many new features and even more fixes:

“Notepad++ is a free (free as in “free speech”, but also as in “free beer”) source code editor and Notepad replacement, which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment.”

Source 1: Download