Is it October yet?

Although, here in Kansas City, it still feels like October (kinda chilly), we are many months away. Still, I am anxiously awaiting for October 2008 to arrive because that is when the Southwest Fox 2008 Conference will take place. Last year's Southwest Fox 2007 Conference (featuring EVERYTHING you ever wanted to know about Microsoft Visual FoxPro) was the most attended ever; bucking the trend of reduced attendence at VFP conferences. There is no reason why this year's conference can't be even better. It was HIGHLY received by the attendees last year, and first time organizers, Tamar Granor, Rick Schummer, and Doug Hennig are in the process of building upon last year's success.

There are several ways in which the conference can be improved and one of them is to spread the word throughout the FoxPro community about the conference. It is in that spirit that I am pointing you to one of the pages on the ( Southwest Fox website ) that is specifically designed to assist community members in publicizing the conference, the ( "Promote the Conference" ) page. On that page, you will find several ways to help promote the conference and spread the VFP "Word".

I am particularly directing your eyeballs to the section displaying two animated banner ads. One (or both) of these banner ads will easily fit onto a page of anyone's website and/or blog. You can cut and paste the HTML code provided to easily display the banners. It would be a genuinely unselfish gesture if each and everyone of you reading this blog would take the time to post an ad (as well as pass along the URL to the promotion page to others likely to post an ad). Incidentally, if you don't, it will reflect on your parents and a big, black checkmark will go on your permanent record. Seriously, anyone who loves Fox and wants to see it continue to flourish is encouraged to post an ad banner. Your help in making the 2008 conference the best one yet will be greatly appreciated.

Lastly, if you are interested, the call has gone out to all those interested in being a speaker at the 2008 conference.  Details are on the Southwest Fox website.

A Promise is a Promise

Back in October, I promised to elaborate on the Southwest Fox 2007 conference and review some of the sessions. Well, Santa is checking out who has been naughty and who has been nice, and frankly, I need as many of the “nice” checkboxes checked as possible. I apologize for the delay, but for those of you who are still awishin’ and ahopin’ I would come through, here ya go.

Before I begin, I would like to regurgitate (what a revolting word; but fun to say) what you have undoubtedly read on many occasions in the past. Namely, if you have never attended a developer conference, what the heck are you waiting for?  15 years ago I was in the same boat.  I read (almost) those exact same words and thought a developers’ conference can’t be that good.  Well, I was wrong and every time I think I am right, I attend another conference and prove to myself that I am, indeed, wrong, wrong, wrong. Believe me; if you are in the trenches and do application development (i.e. write code) on a daily basis, you owe it to yourself to attend a conference specializing in the coding discipline of your choice. While I am partial to Visual FoxPro, other conferences for other languages are just as rewarding. You get shortcuts, tips, tricks, traps as well as renewed enthusiasm for your work. You get the chance to meet with people who are in the same “development boat” as you.  You are not an island.  OK, you may be an island, but in a chain of islands that, together, form a beneficial archipelago. Bottom line,.. Consider attending a conference of your choice. I wax poetic, but I also digress, so on with the show.

The two sessions I will address in this blog are the two sessions given by Cathy Pountney.  Some of you may know that a few years ago I was a technical editor on a Hentzenwerke book, “The Visual FoxPro Report Writer – Pushing It to the Limits and Beyond” written by Cathy. It was written in the days when Microsoft swore that the report writer would never be improved. It is still a very viable book for those of you who have not upgraded to VFP 9. However, with the release of VFP 9, many of the enhancements were to the report writer.  So much so, that it is almost a totally different animal. While I have been hibernating in a cave mainly doing maintenance work on applications written in VFP 8 and earlier, Cathy has been leading the charge to push the VFP 9 report writer past its limits and right into the 5^th dimension. So while she is on the cutting edge of the report writer enhancements, I have made a comfortable home on the coagulating edge. I still have a few years of coding energy left in me and I felt it high time that I get on the VFP 9 report writer band wagon. I was reluctant to do so because I felt so at ease with the “old way” and besides, it was a bit intimidating, but biting the bullet, I attended both of Cathy’s sessions with the express purpose of getting over my fears and intimidation.  BOY, am I glad I did!

“Getting Your Head Around the VFP ReportListener” was the first session. This was the session that I was hoping would remove the mystique from the newest version of the report writer. It did, or I should say, Cathy did. She knows her audience. She can speak to her audience so that the “difficult to grasp” is “graspable”. This was a good thing. When I walked out of this session, I had been (practically by hand) taken through the basics of the reportlistener.  One of the revelations, at least for me, was how the various components worked together to produce the report. In the old days (pre-VFP9) there was just the report engine.  With VFP 9, you not only have the engine, but the listener object, the preview container (separate from the report engine) and the extension handler. This fact, in and of itself, was a key to understanding the “new and improved; whiter than white” report writer. Each component was explained and placed in its proper environment as it relates to creating reports. Next came all of the new properties, events, and methods. Cathy’s practical, real-world examples using several of the methods and properties made the task of creating the reports seem easy.  It was at that point that she dangled the carrot in front of me that by knowing the basics and understanding the fundamental concepts, developers could then use them to their advantage to create reports the way the user has requested (instead of being forced into a pigeon hole of “this is the ONLY way it can be done”).  Extensibility.  What a concept!  Unfortunately, those tricks will be shown in her OTHER session.  For now, she continued with the basics. It was just like having to take Chemistry 101 to learn the periodic table BEFORE you could take Advanced Chemistry and blow things up. Also, she is correct. Learning the basics of the methods, events, and properties is what will allow us to (in a nice way) blow things up when we need to print out those mind-boggling reports.

OK, now for the cool stuff.  With the basics out of the way, I later went to the “OutFox the VFP Report Writer: Printing on My Terms” session. I am really glad that I went to the basic session first because this session built upon those concepts. Rather than tell you about the session, I am going to list just a few of the new abilities that users of VFP 9 have at their disposal. How about being able to select which pages of the report they want to print?  Or printing only the odd pages, or only the even pages?  You can now specify how the report is collated and how many pages print on a sheet of paper (ideal for printing “mini pamphlets”).  You can specify the margins. Perfect when you want a wider margin for three-hole punching. You can shrink to fit the page.  How cool is that?  Haven’t you ever printed out a report and ONE detail line printed on the second page?  If only you could have shrunk the report enough to get it all on one page.  NOW, you can. You can rotate the report; you can specify different size paper for different pages. You can create your own printer dialog to allow for user input as to all of the specifications mentioned above. Using the extension handler, you can customize the preview container toolbar or modify the print dialog box.  I haven’t even added the use of GDI+ to the equation. BOTH sessions were eye-opening. BOTH sessions did exactly what I had hoped; namely removed the mystique and pointed me in the right direction and allowed me to say to myself, “This isn’t so tough.”  Of course it isn’t when someone else has done the heavy lifting.  Cathy would be the first to acknowledge that she gained valuable insight in certain areas of the VFP 9 report writer from others more informed than she. THAT is the beauty of these conferences. Developers sharing and passing down information so that the less informed can be educated. THAT is another reason why you should consider attending a conference if you never have.

Lastly, and realistically, there is no way one person could walk out of those sessions, sit down to the keyboard, and put what they saw into immediate use. Fortunately they don’t have to, but when they are ready, Cathy provided (as did all speakers) examples, code samples, and white papers about the topics so that you could review later and take the time to master this facet of Visual FoxPro.  Two sessions; tightly coupled, but giving me the basic fundamental understanding and the wherewithal to decide how to move forward in the manner that most benefits me when attempting to tame this beast. Time well spent.

Sometimes, It Is the Small Things In Life That Count

Has this ever happened to you?  It happens to me a minimum of once a week, but NOT ANY MORE!  Most often it happens when I am copying a directory (yes, I am “old school” and refuse to say “folder”) full of files from a hard drive to a thumb drive. I know that the process will take a few minutes so I begin the copying and go get a drink refill.  Adding fresh ice, topping off the glass, and meandering back to the computer, I notice a message on the screen.  Have you seen one similar to this before?!?!

                    

While not completely wasted, the time getting my refill wasn’t as productive as I thought it would be because the copying process did not complete, but, instead, paused waiting for my input. I said “Yes”, but then had to wait for the process to complete. What a pain. Oooh, thank you Microsoft. I certainly wouldn’t want to overwrite a file that I can recreate any time I want to (usually whether or not I actually want to). The fact that it is referred to as a “system file” makes it seem that much more important, too. Well, in MY opinion, (I use the phrase, “in MY opinion” so that if I am wrong in anything I say, I can just say that “MY opinion” was based on MY experience) there is very little upside by even having these Thumbs.db files hanging around all over the place.  If there was only a way to prevent them from propagating like tribbles in heat.  Hey, there is!

I ASSume that the main purpose for these files is to have a way to easily (and quickly) see thumbnail images of any graphics files.  Nice concept, no problem. It does take some amount of overhead to create the file, but to me, the time is insignificant unless you had a couple thousand .jpgs in a directory (and then, I would question THAT behavior). At any rate, you can prevent the OS from automatically creating (AND THUS, ELIMINATING THIS ANNOYING “FEATURE”) as follows:

Open up Windows Explorer, go to the menu Tools|Folder Options| click on the “View” tab, and under the “Files and Folders” section, look for the checkbox with the caption, “Do Not Cache Thumbnails”. Stick a big, old, fat check in that box and from now on the Thumbs.db file will not be written to your hard drive. Yes, you WILL still be able to select Thumbnails as a format to view the directory’s files, but since it is not written to disk, it is never copied, and you will never see the above message again. As I mentioned, there is a very minor, minor, minor performance hit each time you request a thumbnail view, but it is a small price to pay (again) in MY opinion. Ah, life is good.  Sometimes it’s the small things in life that count.

Too Cool for School!

Last October, when I attended the Southwest Fox 2007 conference, Rick Borup of ITA Software, showed me a pretty slick tool that he recently discovered. I have been using it for about a month and although I do not use it often, when I need it, it really comes in handy. I thought it was cool enough to pass it along so that you could evaluate it for your own personal use.

The product is called ZoomIt and is available at: http://tinyurl.com/2xv7eu. It is, essentially, an easy way to magnify your screen. It is much easier to use than the magnifier that Microsoft routinely provides under the Accessories|Accessibility options. On top of that, it has a couple of features that are pretty cool. Before I go any further, I will tell you that it will be worth your time to read the accompanying documentation (it’s only one page) to save yourself some startup time.

If you read the documentation, you will find that ZoomIt has the capability to display a countdown timer on the screen so when you are giving presentations and take a 10 minute break, the countdown until the break is over is displayed so that all attendees are aware of the “official” time left before the presentation will continue.

Additionally, ZoomIt allows the user to (crudely) use the mouse as a pen to circle a specific area of the screen for emphasis. In fact, (again, mentioned in the documentation) the user can draw straight lines, using the proper keys, to “box in” an area of the screen. Like I said, I don’t use it often, but it is definitely the “right tool for the right job” and comes in real handy when you need it. Give it a shot.

Porters! Presort!

Most of the applications I write are data-centric. People put data IN, the application manipulates the data in some way, and people take data out. Nine times out of ten, the data is taken out by putting it into some readable format.  I like to call that readable format a report; oh, wait, so do 100,000 other developers. Nothing new there, but the 100k number is greatly reduced when those developers are asked if they actually like to CREATE a report.

For the most part, creating reports is not glamorous. Creating reports (much of the time) is not very challenging. Let’s face it, creating reports is quite boring. However, just as I would like you to look at the title of this blog in a different way, looking at reports from a different perspective may allow you to gain respect for this much, maligned aspect of application development. So, looking at the title from a different perspective… you might see… Reports!  Reports!

Many senior developers just pass off the task of creating the reports to the junior developers.  If that is your M.O., so be it. At the very least, I am suggesting that you take on the additional responsibility to review all of the reports that are produced from within your various applications. Here are a few reasons why.

1. Quite often the person who ends up reading the report is the same person that approves the check that is given to you for your services. i.e Middle to upper management. The “grunts” enter the data, the application processes it, and the data flows uphill to management. It is often the case that management bases the success of the application development process on the physical output – namely the reports they read.

2. If those reports are clear and concise this is a good thing. If they are easy to read and understand, this is even better. Even nicer is the fact that columns line up, fonts match, data is accurate. In other words, it gives the management-type a “warm and fuzzy” feeling in their tum-tums.  That is definitely a good thing.

3. A group of reports that are “standardized” is a factor in making the overall application appear to be professional. Using similar formats for cover sheets, using similar (if not identical) fonts, and standard headers and footers go a long way in allowing the reader to interpret the report. Much like following a standardized menu design that is similar to other menus in Windows-based applications, a standardized set of reporting design features enhances the overall application.

Give the design and format of your reports the same care you give your code and it will pay dividends. Give reports the respect they deserve. You will be glad you did.

Denial Isn't Just a River in Egypt

A little over a month ago, the Microsoft Corporation officially announced that they will not be releasing any new versions of its relational database software, Visual FoxPro (VFP). The news came as a surprise to many of the developers in the FoxPro community, but those developers must have been in denial or had their heads buried in the Hentzenwerke “Hacker’s Guide” because the handwriting has been on the wall for months.  Years!  Decades?
 

To paraphrase Garrett Morris’ Chico Escuela persona from “Saturday Night Live”, “FoxPro has been bery, bery good to me”. It has provided me with an above average income and a comfortable life style (once I kicked all of my kids out of the house). More importantly, Visual FoxPro and before it, FoxPro for Windows and FoxPro for DOS, has been VERY, VERY good to thousands of small to medium sized business as well as some Fortune 500 companies. A VFP application is used to run the operation of the Chunnel (the underwater link between England and France). During the first Gulf War, FoxPro was an integral part of the military’s JFast application which managed the deployment of troops and supplies. There are many other high profile applications, but my point is that mission critical applications created by FoxPro developers provided reliable, efficient, and economically sound solutions to real world problems. ECONOMY is one of the reasons that Visual FoxPro is one of the best selling application development software tools IN THE WORLD. It is reasonably priced and is “self-contained”. i.e. For the most part, it has it’s own reporting capabilities, user interface capabilities, and data storage capabilities. Those are the basics of most data-centric applications. Of course, it has many, many more features than just those basic capabilities. I could go on about my devotion to VFP and why I (as well as many other developers, world-wide) love it so much.  Nevertheless, the fact is that Microsoft is going to support Visual FoxPro only through 2015, so there is no sense in denying it any longer. VFP is on its own.

Notice and this is very important, I did NOT say that VFP is DEAD.  I just said it is on its own. Why? Because 2015 is eight years away.  Who knows what will happen by then? I, personally, am still maintaining applications written in the mid 1990s that the clients love and couldn’t do without.  I expect to see applications, being written today, around for another twenty years.  The applications do EXACTLY (another key word) what the client wants them to do and they have no plans of abandoning them.  Isn’t that the bottom line? So, if you are in need of custom applications and plan on being in business for the next 20-25 years, there is no compelling reason why you shouldn’t consider (or at the very least, do not summarily dismiss) having those applications written in Visual FoxPro. An honest, ethical developer should offer you all options, explain the pros and cons of each, and then help you to decide upon the approach that is best for you.

Shaking Things Up

We talk a lot about our experiences in this column about our agile software development practice...so much so, that perhaps it sounds a little self-serving at times. After all, we're heavily invested in agile methodology. So here's a link to another developer's (Russ Nemhauser's) blog...a developer who joined an agile team at a Large Software Company Somewhere in the State of Washington. His background was in BUFD (big up-front design) and he therefore approached this Scrum project (in .NET) with a great deal of skepticism. Read about his conversion here. He also gives an example of test-driven development and talks about why he's now a believer...so much so that he's uncomfortable writing code before he writes the test(s)....and how (at least in this example) it was a time saver. (YMMV, of course.)

An interesting idea:

This doesn't solve the problem of some clients requiring large functional specification documents, but it does offer at least one potential change to the way they're written: the functional specification can be written AFTER the majority of functionality has been developed and delivered. This is a huge step toward an accurate specification and it also drastically reduces the amount of time it takes to write the document.

Office 2007 delayed to match Vista

It's official, Office 2007 has been delayed to better match the launch of Vista in January 2007.  According to a Microsoft release, Office 2007 will be available in October of this year to volume business licensors and OEM distributors.

What I really wonder is, though, if Office 2007 is going to leverage Vista features, why would you bother buying it before you get Vista?  The logic escapes me.  And frankly Office has one of the slowest uptakes of any MSFT product.  Come on, how many people really notice a difference between Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003.  Having run all three ... I can't really see much, at least from a day-to-day standpoint.

It's going to be a tough, uphill battle on both these fronts.  Frankly, I hope Microsoft seeds the tech community, liberally, with free copies of Vista and Office 2007.  I'm not going to lay down the cash myself until I see/hear some real tangible benefits.  Okay at least until the first service pack comes out ;-).

Tags: Microsoft, Vista, Office 2007

The Vista saga continues ...

Continuing on the "Vista is delayed" theme, there was some discussion today the 60% of Vista has to be re-written for launch.  Given what I've personally seen and talking with Vista testers, I agree with Robert, it's rubbish.  I guess it's not surprising that people might jump to this conclusion.  My take is this.  XP hasn't done awesome in the sales and upgrades department.  On top of that, Microsoft always takes it on the chin when a new OS comes out (the refrain I hear is ... wait until the first service pack).  So why not delay it and maybe boost people's security that it's worth upgrading sooner rather than later?

Makes sense to me.

Tags: Microsoft, Vista

.Net and C# coming to the Mac?!?

Wow, this could be huge ... if it stays on track, of course.  This actually hits pretty close to home.  When we were looking at the next version of Qumana we knew we needed a PC and Mac version.  Then, the only viable option was something based on Mozilla (sounds great, lousy documentation) or Java (well supported, but rather sluggish).  Rumours and whispers of something like this were tempting but far too vaporware to base a real development plan on.

The big question is, will this matter?  Will a lot more apps be written so that Macs can use them?  That's tough.  As much as this is touted as a "cross-platform solution" I know from the Java experience, you will have to tweak for Mac and PC.  It will come down to ... is there a large enough user base to warrant the additional development?

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Oh, the image above?  That's a test widget in this new programming tool ... in Firefox ... (credit to Adam Kinney)

Discussion: Wired, MSDN

Tags: .Net, C#, Mac development, Microsoft

Are fingerprint scanners better for security? Better not have Silly Putty around

From Coding Horror, Jeff talks about a problem we all have ... what is my login name and/or password.  If I had a dollar for every time I had to request/reset a password on a system and two for the number of times I needed the username too ... I'd be a wealthy guy.  Right now people are talking about (including IBM/Lenovo with some new ThinkPads) using fingerprint scanners.  Carry your password with you they say ... sounds great but ...

   

One particular pitfall is the idea that your fingerprint is a secure substitute for your password. This review of a typical USB fingerprint reader illustrates just how foolish that misconception is:

   

The jelly fingertip peeled off the putty very easily, as you'd expect - clean, cold Silly Putty doesn't stick very well to anything but itself. The gelatine was full of bubbles from my stirring, but the jelly thumb nonetheless had a pretty good complement of print-ridges on it.

   

       

Ugly and bubble-y the jelly thumb was, but the scanner loved it. It thought the jelly finger was a real one more than 50% of the time. And since you can attempt recognition about once a second, that means it'd be trivially easy to log in with a thing like this, even with people watching. Trim the jelly so it fits over the end of your real finger, and some very rudimentary prestidigitation will keep your fakery from the attention of onlookers.

       

I also found it was possible to enroll the jelly thumb as a new finger. It took me four attempts to do it, and its recognition rate wasn't any better than when I was trying to match it to my real finger. But that's still quite good enough to be useable in an, um, covert situation.

   

Oops.  Jeff hopes new InfoCard solutions will help.  I hope so, because my piece of paper is getting might crowded.

Tags: passwords, security, InfoCard

Are we really surprised Vista is delayed?

There are some days I'm really glad something keeps me from getting online first thing in the morning, today is one of those days.  While I was off-island getting some needed business supplies (I'm not going to rant about the cost of inkjet cartridges) I guess Microsoft announced that Vista isn't coming out until January.  Frankly, I'm not surprised.  Look Vista is a huge undertaking.  Lots of under the hood stuff being done from scratch ... would you really like them to rush QA?

That being said, saying there has been a little discussion about this on the blogosphere is like saying, of Mt. Everest is just a  mountain.  I have a small selection of the discussion below.  For more discussion than is probably healthy to read check out tech.memeorandum.

To put this in perspective, and close things off, here are a couple great quotes.

My friend Mark Evans writes:

Folks, it's just a new version of Windows. It's not the world will come to a sudden and abrupt halt if we have to wait another three or four months for it.

And this other friend of mine named Robert said this:

That all said. I’ve learned that dates in the software industry are likely to slip and I’m glad that our management is still paying more attention to product quality and customer and partner feedback than trying to meet some date. Yes, it’s painful. Yes, it’s embarrassing. But we have been through product slips before (before I was a Microsoft employee I was a beta tester on Windows 2000 which slipped years after the first test CDs arrived) and I’d rather have a slipped date than a cruddy product.

Commentary:

• Gearlive
• C|Net one and two

Tags: Windows Vista

Information Technology

As with most technology firms, growth at Visionpace (since 1992) has occurred, in part, based on direct client demand. Our clients ask us to help them with certain aspects of their information technology needs and in most cases, when it made sense for both parties, we've done it. We're always careful to balance our competencies and resources with the client's desires so we make good decisions for our clients and good decisions for our business.

One of those areas has been in Information Technology which typically relates to infrastructure services such as anti-spam, security, networking and server configuration and maintenance. Visionpace-IT is now it's own entity designed to serve Kansas City businesses in the areas of anti-spam, security, networking and server configuration and maintenance. In addition, we've leveraged a service from our Kansas City software development and consulting business in our concept of Coaching that we also apply for our clients' IT staff members as IT Coaching.

As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and representing partners such as Citrix, Sonicwall, Barracuda, Dell and HP, Visionpace-IT offers a broad range of services and related products.

I saw Vista at Northern Voice ... very interesting

Those of us attending MooseCamp about a week ago at Northern Voice got a good look at Vista. Robert Scoble and Chris Pirillo did the demo.  While the UI changes are slick and cool, it's the under the hood stuff that I'm really looking forward to in this upgrade.

Let's take sound and video.  In Vista ... well multitasking (e-mail, browsing, etc) isn't going to make your work music playing start to sound like a 45 played a 33 (yeah I'm dating myself).

Networking.  The whole networking stack was written from the ground up.  End result?  IPv6 support and better (like 20x better) throughput.

Memory.  This is very interesting.  RAM is more dynamic.  In fact you could slap in your handy flash drive and use that as RAM.  Yeah, cool.  I talked with both Robert and Chris while it isn't going to be a feature that is given a lot of attention, it is going to be there.  I can see this being used a temporary "gee I need to export this large file to MP3"  tool.

One note I did pick up ... Vista is going to be a video card intensive OS.  So if you're looking at a new machine, look at a good amount of RAM (I'm glad I have a gig), above average video card (ATI for me), and well a nice processor isn't going to hurt (64 bit for me).

How close is it?  Some members of the Windows team are already using it day to day.  Beta 2 is going to be "dog food" soon ... meaning that they are going to have to use it.  RC2 ... not long from now.

I'm really hoping to get my hands on it soon.

Tags: Northern Voice, Moose Camp, Vista, Scoble, Chris Pirillo

IE 7 Beta 2 ... it's public now

Latest word from InternetNews.com is that IE 7 Beta 2 is going public today.  Tabbed browsing, anti-phishing measures, security improvements ... all on tap for this release.  While Beta 1 was private (I had a CD of Beta 1 and left it behind at the Blog Business Summit, actually), Beta 2 is public.  No word yet on whether is this is for the faint of heart or beta.

For web dev folks like me, MSFT has tried to strike a balance of old and new, so not as too break IE 6 tweaked sites.  I think AJAX is going to make serious headway now that IE 7 is in the fray.  RSS?  Well now that it's public, I will try it for the RSS features are there.

Will this be a Firefox killer? That is the million dollar question.

Tags: IE7

Don't hide these buttons ... save yourself some time ...

I came across this tip on SecretGeek.  A couple buttons in Visual Studio .Net that make your life easier in programming.  The first is View Code, the other is View Designer.  It seems that Microsoft hid these buttons from view in  Visual Studio.  So ... take two seconds and customize your toolbar.

Tags: Visual Studio, .Net

IE 7 starts to leak out

Rumor is that IE 7 is getting close, so close that it's starting to leak out.  Still not going to make me switch, but the feature set below looks promising.

Among the new tools shown in the pictures, while relatively low resolution, are some of Microsoft's security-related additions to the dominant browser, including its anti-phishing controls and its recently announced Delete Browsing History function. Also highlighted in the available screen shots is Microsoft's attempt to mirror the so-called tabbed browsing controls popularized by alternative products such as Firefox and Opera, which the software giant has dubbed as QuickTabs.
eWeek

Tags: IE7, Vista, Microsoft

Why Vista?

Thanks to Scoble I came across Manuel Clement's blog with outlines the key features of Vista and why you should upgrade from XP including videos (by Scoble) on each feature ... worth a look!

• All new networking stack
• All new audio stack
• New search integration and file management
• New fonts and readability technology
• New kernel changes
• Performance, security, and all that
• New features for international users
• New print technology
• New installer technology
• New sidebar and gadgets
• New sideshow (external monitor for laptops)
• New updated applications like Windows Mail
• New crypto technology
• New RSS platform
• New sound experience by Robert Fripp

Tags: Vista, XP, Microsoft

Live Messenger 8 hardware will be ready when LM8 is ...

Clearly Microsoft is seeing the success that Skype has enjoyed and the relative slowness of getting hardware out, especially inexpensive hardware, to integrate VoIP into your day-to-day life.

From the Live Messenger blog (via Liveside) here are some high-level details of an upcoming phone that you can use for both your standard land-line and Live Messenger 8.

Who will make it?
We have partnered with Uniden in the US, and Philips in Europe, Asia, and Latin America to produce these devices.  The Uniden phone is a 5.8GHz digital wireless model, designed for the Canadian, US, and Mexican markets, and the Philips is a 1.9GHz DECT model.  Suggested prices for both are under $100.

Do people like it?
The Windows Live Messenger Phone was a big hit at CES. As we showed off how well it ties together phone and internet experiences, it was great to see peoples' eyes light up.

When can I get it?
Look for these to become available soon after the final release of 8.0.

No, this isn't earth-shatteringly new or news.  What is worth noting that Microsoft planned early on to have hardware available to coincide with the launch of Live Messenger 8.  Another thing to go head-to-head with Skype and give it a run for its money.

Tags: Live Messenger 8, VoIP, Skype

On a lighter note ... Microsoft Max

Scoble and his Channel9 blog takes a look at a new character to greet us soon (for Vista I gather) ... Microsoft Max.  I guess Max is breaking a few rules for naming and such, but perhaps it's something often missing from computing ... fun.

Tags: Microsoft Max, Channel9, Scoble

SQL Server and ObjectStudio

From Smalltalk Tidbits ...ObjectStudio and SQL Server

Microsoft has sent out an advisory about the old DB-Lib and SQL Server that should push developers to update their DB calls ...

What does this mean for ObjectStudio developers using SQL Server? You would be better off using the ODBC DB wrapper that comes with ObjectStudio than with the SQL Server wrapper (which, at present, still uses DB-Lib).

Tags: SQL Server, DB-Lib

OneCare Live is in public beta

Once I started trying the new MSN Messenger 8 beta (Live Messenger) started looking for news and info on this new initiative from our palls in Redmond.  I found LiveSide which states it isn't associated with MSFT, but will be reporting on the whole Live product process.

I tried OneCare recently and wasn't too impressed, but from LiveSide it sounds like an update has come out.  While I'm not too comfortable with Microsoft holding the keys to my computer's security if Microsoft makes it free or cheap, it could really do a lot for improving online security overall.

Oh, and yes I have invites for MSN 8 and yes I will share.

Keep up on Vista (nee Longhorn) and .Net

The LonghornBlog  is a cool place if you'd like to keep up on the latest on Vista ... you know I still like the Longhorn name and logo (heck I even have a Longhorn RSS jacket from Gnomedex).

Tags: Vista, Longhorn, .Net

Could JotSpot tackle Excel?

Ever need to crunch some numbers with someone who isn't right there with you?  Of course.  It happens all the time.  Now, zapping an Excel sheet back and forth isn't the most efficient thing in the world.  JotSpot is releasing, in beta, an online, collaborative, spreadsheet.  They say it's not supposed to replace Excel ... but you have to wonder if this is a sign of things to come.

Startup JotSpot has a new spin on Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet with its JotSpot Tracker hosted online service. The Tracker service enables users to cut and paste an Excel spreadsheet directly onto a secure JotSpot Web site so that anyone within an organization can view and edit the information contained in that spreadsheet.
JotSpot describes itself as an application wiki company. The "wiki" term describes Web sites that can be accessed and changed using a browser-based user interface. JotSpot specializes in turning wikis into Web-based applications so that users can change the applications in the same way that they'd alter wiki pages.
Tracker entered public beta testing Monday and is due to appear in a final 1.0 version within the next two to three months, according to Ken Norton, JotSpot's vice president of products. Missing from Tracker's public beta are the Excel formulas needed to perform calculations on the spreadsheet, but the company plans to offer them in the final release of the product, he says.
"We don't intend to replace Excel," Norton says. "We're removing some of the friction when you try to use it in ways it wasn't intended for [such as collaborative work]. Excel is a single-user product." From: PCWorld.com

Other sources: InformationWeek

Tags: JotSpot, JotSpot Tracker, Excel, collaboration

MSN Messenger 8 (aka Live Messenger) Beta ... sorry no invites yet.

A friend of mine let folks know that he had MSN 8.0 beta and I jumped on the chance, of course.  I've been using it for about a day now and I've noticed a couple cool features.  First one, and the one that will likely get the most attention, is the shared folders.  Activate it and your buddies can get files from a directory of your choosing.  Seems like a good idea for small workgroups.  I don't know many other people using the Beta so I haven't been able to try it yet.  The other cool feature that I just found was then when you go busy ... MSN doesn't ping or pop up.  It does flash so if you get a message so you're at your machine you can answer.

Before you ask me for an invite ... I don't have any.  I don't know when they give them out.

Now think about this ... Microsoft has taken a nice cue from Google, eh?  Build a buzz.  Get people clamoring for invites very cool.

Now we'll have to see how the new features pan out.

Tags: Microsoft, MSN 8 beta, Live Messenger

The WMF saga continues

This must be a rough time in Redmond.  If the WMF flaw wasn't bad enough.  Then users (and bloggers) are screaming for Microsoft to fix it.  Security companies went as far as recommending third-party patches.  Then in a very uncharacteristic move Microsoft released their patch last week, very early by their standards.

Folks started chiming in that this was great, a new, good sign. Larry Seltzer had this opener to his piece:

Opinion: Everybody's happy that Microsoft expedited the patching of the WMF flaw, but that aspect of the episode raises more questions than it answers. Why aren't one-week patch cycles S.O.P.?

Then ...

Updated: Just days after the release of Microsoft's out-of-cycle WMF patch, researchers publish details—and exploit code—for two new denial-of-service vulnerabilities. Redmond is investigating.
Just days after rushing out an emergency fix to counter a spate of zero-day attacks, security researchers claim there are at least two new flaws in the way the Windows graphics rendering engine handles WMF (Windows Metafile) images.
The latest warning was posted to the Bugtraq mailing list Monday by a researcher known simply as "cocoruder."
A few hours later, the first sign of what appears to be proof-of-concept exploit code was also published.
A Microsoft spokesperson insists the publicly released code can simply cause a denial-of-service crash.
"As it turns out, these crashes are not exploitable but are instead Windows performance issues that could cause some WMF applications to unexpectedly exit. These issues do not allow an attacker to run code or crash the operating system. They may cause the WMF application to crash, in which case the user may restart the application and resume activity," said Lennart Wistrand, lead security program manager in the MSRC (Microsoft Security Response Center).
From; eWeek

What's the lesson here?  Well Microsoft, I think, could have relaxed things a bit.  Maybe "unofficially" endorsed one of the third-party fixes and let their engineers study the flaw and the patch more closely.  Hey maybe if they waited then this new problem could have been included.  Don't know, but it goes back to the old software problem ... when the heat is on, it's hard to take it slow, but sometimes it's important.

Tags: Microsoft, WMF

New preview of Vista ... security enhancements rule

According to Silicon.com, a new preview version of Vista is out this week .  This go round it's interface, performance,and security on the must-try list.  Here are some of the newsecurity features:

• Windows Defender, an update to Windows AntiSpyware, is designed toprotect Windows PCs against spyware, rootkits and other threats.Windows Defender has improved detection and removal capabilities as well as a new user interface which, according to Microsoft, is simpler and fits better with Windows Vista.

• BitLocker Drive Encryption is meant to protect data on computers when lost or stolen. The full disk encryption featureis designed to work with a chip called the Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, which offers protected storage of encryption keys, passwords anddigital certificates.

• Tighter control over removable storage deviceslets system administrators centrally block the installation of, for example, USB flash drives and external hard drives. This feature is designed to help prevent corporate intellectual property or sensitivedata from being compromised or stolen.

• Parental controls designed to let parents limit and monitor computer usage, including setting time limits, restricting websites that can be visited and generating reports on computer usage.

Nice.  Very nice.  Clearly Microsoft is trying, at least, to make computer security an important facet of Vista. My gut tells me that it's going to be security and performance, not really other features, that will be the marketing push for Vista.  Personally, I think that it isn't goo-gaws that people are interested in, it's making their machines easier to use and safer.  One friend I know needed to have a computer expert (not me) spend four hours cleaning spyware off her machine.  Bets are on the teenage daughter for being the culprit.

Personally, my daughter is restricted to Firefox on a restricted (no IM, no installs) account.  I'm looking forward to better parental controls in Vista.  Next question ... how much will it cost and can my current machines handle it?  That's a good question.

Technorati Tags : Microsoft, Windows+Vista, Vista

Ready, set, Scrum!

In rugby the Scrum is like the huddle in American (or Canadian) football. It represents the team frequently coming together discussing common goals and then going off to achieve them.  Agile software development concepts are having great success in developing software rapidly and with high quality.

Discussed as part of this eWeek article, the Scrum method is winning advocates across IT, including Microsoft itself.  Steve Ballmer feels that Scrum and agile development in general are ways for Microsoft to turn out final products faster.

I found this section of the eWeek article to be a very good explanation, at a high level, of Scrum:

Robert Galen, principal consultant at RGalen Consulting Group LLC, Cary, NC, said Scrum "comes from the rugby notion of the scrum, which is to have the entire team get together and huddle, and then break and do their individual tasks."

Galen said a typical scrum team is made up of between five to 10 people, although there could be more. The team then works in Scrum "sprints" of about 30 days to complete a particular task or set of tasks for a particular milestone.

The team meets daily for 15-minute standup meetings and then they go off to work on their portions of the project. And although there is a "scrum master" or project manager-like position on the team, "self-organization is key to scrum," Galen said.

Scrum efforts do not work well with "a General Patton, but more of a Bill Belichick," Galen said, speaking of the New England Patriots head coach who is known for fostering teamwork.

Meanwhile, at the Software Test & Performance conference earlier this month in New York, Galen said he has used the Scrum process not only for developing applications, but also to test them for quality assurance sign-off.

Interestingly, I think I've been scrumming for years.  In past efforts my teams would often share responsibilities for key portions of development giving each person ownership of the entire project. It works extremely well at shortening timelines (or making up lost time when something has gone off the rails). Regardless, this kind of distributed team effort certainly appears to have a lot of promise.

Technorati Tags : agile, agile+software+development, Microsoft, .Net, scrum

When the Titanic turns ...

Gee, think something has been going on at Microsoft lately?  Naw, just a sea change.  Breaking news earlier today (following my standard let the news sit before I blog it policy) was the release of by Dave Winer of internal e-mails from Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie.  Mark Evans of the National Post (Canada) had some great commentary first thing (the benefit of being on the East Coast) and Scoble just gushed his enthusiasm ... which is a really good sign.

So, what's the fuss about?  Essentially Microsoft is embracing "Web 2.0" and it seems like the age of giant super apps is drawing to a close.  Ray Ozzie recognizes that the small, light app is key.  That extensible applications like Skype and Google Earth and Flickr are winning the day.  Why?  Because they are agile.  Rapidly deployed.  Slick.  Ray even said that the days of the complex app are over.  They suck up too much dev time.

I think this is truly the watershed moment of 2005.  I think this is similar to the announcement of IE getting serious attention.  Netscape ruled the day.  No one thought the first versions of IE were anything but dreck.  Now.  Now IE is top of the heap.  It's taken years for Netscape to come back to a point where they aren't Netwho?  But Microsoft saw the writing on the walls with Firefox.  Small, light, extensible app.  Doesn't try to do everything.  Let individuals and other companies go beyond the core functions.

Clearly Microsoft is betting on the .Net and related technologies horse.  AJAX and browser-based applications are going to be more and more common.  How about a "light" version of Word that does pretty much just the core stuff, but you can add on other functions like outlining or something?

Yeah, we're going to look back at this next year and think that this was a big moment.  Either that or we're going to think we were all nuts.

Technorati Tags : Microsoft, .Net, software+development

Exchange and IHateSpam error with Internet Explorer version

Personally I perfer a hardware device for spam blocking , but as a consultant you have to move and shake with what the customer has or is willing to purchase. The issue was when we had to re-install IHateSpam and it gave an error that we needed version 5.5 or higher for Internet Explorer to install and it would not. The server was on version 6.1 of IE. After trying all the basics, updates, etc.  We found a key in the registry that was causing the problem.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Ole]
"DefaultLaunchPermission"

Problem description: You received Windows Installer Error 2731 or an Error 1720. There is a problem with this Windows Installer package.

In both cases, there were references to "A script required for this install to complete could not be run."You also noticed that RSOP.MSC and drag and drop of files did not work correctly.Copy and paste of files worked fine.

CAUSE: BackupExec requires a user level account be added to Default DCOM Security.Creating this account causes the "DefaultAccessPermission" value to be created.Removing the BackupExec DCOM entry does not seem to alter the "DefaultAccessPermission" in any way.

RESOLUTION: We removed the "DefaultAccessPermission" registry value (which does not exist by default) from the HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Ole Registry branch.Removing this entry also resolved the RSOP.MSC and Drag&Drop issue

The tech at Sunbelt said that BackupExec is known to register that key.  Since BackupExec is not installed on this server, it must be something else.  The only thing other than Exchange is McAffeeGroupShield for Exchange and an HP array diag utility.  I checked some other servers and the key was there and it is also on my XP workstation. After deleting the key IHateSpam installed with no errors.

I think the error is completely misleading, but - I am THRILLED that it's fixed. 

The Perfect Network

I have been doing network consulting for over 10 years now and I keep hearing from clients and network admins of the “Perfect” network. Where all the servers are name brand, fault tolerant, and run smoothly. I hear that the purse strings of the CFO are wide open, training is provided and bonuses for everyone. The users are also trained and a maintenance schedule is enforced. I have yet to find it, but I keep hearing about it. It is mostly at someone’s ex-employer that was getting close. I have yet to find two networks that are even the same, much less ones that need no tweaking or re-configuration in some way. I hear a lot of “We need real servers for this, can you believe that it is running on a whitebox?”. I spend a considerable amount of time trying to fit the customer's needs to what they have in hardware and software. Most times it works quite well even with the ever-changing requirements of most companies and the ever-changing purse strings of the CFO. If anyone sees this perfect network let me know!

Microsoft or Disneyland?

Last week I registered for the Microsoft Global MVP Summit hosted by Microsoft in Redmond near the end of September.  Microsoft puts on this event annually for MVPs from all over the world, and this is the first year I've been an MVP in quite a while.  It's an honor to be an MVP, of course, and the Summit is an opportunity to learn more about the future of VFP and Microsoft software in general, so I'm looking forward to it.

But I just have to disagree with Arfa Karim Randhawa, the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional in the world.  In this Seattle newspaper article, Arfa is reported to have put Microsoft first on her personal wish list of places to visit in the US, ahead of Disneyland.  Arfa's father brought here all the way from India to the US for a visit recently, but while her tour of Microsoft made the news, there wasn't time for a stop at Disneyland.

I've been to both.  Like I said, I'm looking forward to the upcoming MVP Summit, but I still have Disneyland ahead of Redmond on my list of places to go.

How to recover a corrupt Master MSSQL database

I am by no means a SQL expert but due to the life of a network engineer I get to see a little of everything. If anyone has any suggestions or comments on the steps I used feel free to make them. Recently we had an issue with a client that their master database was corrupt and MSSQL would not start. We had an old backup of the master database and the .mdf and .ldf of the client databases only. Below I have listed out the steps we took to recover the master database and the client databases.

- We started sqlservr.exe as an application using the trace flag -T3608 and it gave the error:

Error: 9003, Severity: 20, State: 1.

Cannot recover the master database. Exiting.

- We then proceeded with reinstallation of sql server for a named intance:NEW. and also applied sp3.

- Started sqlservr.exe -c -m -snew

- Restore database master from disk = 'D:\SQLDATAold\mssql\BACKUP\master_db_200503130200.BAK' with replace

- Started sqlservr.exe -T3608

- Checked the consistency of the Master database using: dbcc checkdb ('MASTER') - zero consistencies

- Next detached the Model database :sp_detach_db 'model'

- Renamed the new instance model db files

- Attached the Model database using: sp_attach_db 'model','D:\sqldata\MSSQL$NEW\Data\model.mdf','D:\sqldata\MSSQL$NEW\Data\modellog.ldf'

- Then took care of the Temp db by : Alter database tempdb modify file (name= 'tempdev', filename = 'D:\sqldata\MSSQL$NEW\Data\tempdb.mdf')

Alter database tempdb modify file (name= 'templog', filename = 'D:\sqldata\MSSQL$NEW\Data\templog.ldf')

- Detached the MSDB database: sp_detach_db 'msdb' and attached it back pointing to the right location:

sp_attach_db 'msdb','D:\sqldata\MSSQL$NEW\Data\msdbdata.mdf', 'D:\sqldata\MSSQL$NEW\Data\msdblog.ldf'

- Then changed the server name by executing the following commands

- select @@servername

- sp_dropserver 'BTLAPP'

- sp_addserver 'BTLAPP\NEW', 'LOCAL'

- Attached the DOCUWARE database and checked its consistencies: dbcc checkdb ('DOCUWARE') - zero consistencies

Windows Vista Beta 1

Microsoft has released Beta 1 of Windows Vista (the Operating System Formerly Known As Longhorn).  It's available as an MSDN download.  If you just want to know what Vista is all about, I recommend these two pages.

For a very brief overview: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/28/_vista_beta1/

For a pretty good in-depth review: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,,1840816,00.asp  Don't miss the SlideShow, which you start by clicking its icon near the beginning of the article.

I am looking forward to any and all improvements to my operating system.  I see lots of good stuff in what I've read on the above web sites.  I do find it interesting that:

• Microsoft has had to scrap so many features originally slated/announced for Longhorn.

• Microsoft released Beta 1 of a product for which the UI is apparently not at all finished and so many other features that aren't available/don't work yet.  I thought that was more the definition of an Alpha release.  But I can see Microsoft wanting to get something out there to generate excitement; they have plenty of nay-sayers/detractors that are quick to read something negative in everything they do.

Kansas City Visual Studio 2005 Dev Con

Visual Studio 2005 Dev Con in coming to Kansas City - June 1st - Sheraton Hotel, Overland Park, KS Registration Details

Visual Studio® 2005 and the Microsoft® .NET Framework 2.0 represent the next step in the evolution of the Microsoft developer platform. Be one of the first to dive deep into its many new features including improved Web and Smart Client development, advanced Web Services functionality and improved deployment and management features.

Come and see the all new Visual Studio Team System Suite — a set of highly integrated tools that creates a collaborative team development environment. These tools address the needs of the application architect, infrastructure architect, project manager, tester, and developer.  Learn how Team System will change the way your organization de