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A bit of light reading while you digest your turkey sandwiches… Fabulous Adventures In Coding : Arrays considered somewhat harmful Eric Lippert argues that "In almost every case, there is a better tool to use than an array.” He argues that arrays lead to poor programming practice and are the enemy...
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Ray Ozzie delivered the keynote speech at PDC 2008 a few moments ago. He spoke about a number of interesting topics. Challenges of Virtualization & Distributed Systems Ray suggested that business continuity is a challenge not easily addressed by small and medium enterprises. The only real way to...
Posted to
Tim Long
by
Tim Long
on
10-27-2008
Filed under:
Filed under: IT, Software Engineering, Microsoft, Windows, IT Industry, News, Technology, CRM, Windows Live, Partners, .NET, Internet, Emerging Technology, Web, Windows Azure
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I was fortunate to attend a Microsoft event in London today on the topic of Software plus Services, at which the keynote speaker was none other than Microsoft CEO Mr. Steve Ballmer. He was not what I expected - I was pleasantly surprised. He comes across as genuine but direct and to the point, humourous...
Posted to
Tim Long
by
Tim Long
on
10-02-2008
Filed under:
Filed under: Software Engineering, Microsoft, Windows, IT Industry, Microsoft Partner Programme, Technology, Business, Partners, Internet, Emerging Technology, Web
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I lost my cool a little bit today, when someone on the MVP programme emailed me and asked me to try Internet Explorer 8 beta 2. They said I could try to join the beta program, no guarantee I would be accepted, but they wanted to offer me the opportunity to try. Gee, thanks. Here is my reply in full:...
Posted to
Tim Long
by
Tim Long
on
09-26-2008
Filed under:
Filed under: Opinion, Software Engineering, IE, Beta Testing, Microsoft, Technology, Internet, Emerging Technology, MVP, Bugs, Rants
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Silverlight 2.0 is going to change the web so much. I've just completed an experimental blog theme for Community Server that uses a Silverlight masthead. You can view the finished result over at Grace's blog . The Silverlight masthead was created using Expression Design, Expression Blend 2.5...
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If, like me, you're trying to get up to speed on Silverlight 2.0 beta 2, you should know about Jesse Liberty's webcast series. Jesse has a new approach to coding webcasts where instead of watching the presenter write code live (which takes time) he records himself doing the coding in advance...
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In part 1 we set the scene and created our web application project. In part 2 we began creating the HTTP Generic Handler, retrieved the CLID string from the URL's query string and knocked it into the correct canonical format ready for looking in the CRM database. In part 3, we are going to use LINQ...
Posted to
Tim Long
by
Tim Long
on
05-19-2008
Filed under:
Filed under: Software Engineering, HowTo, Telephony, Microsoft CRM, TiGra Networks, CRM, .NET, VOIP, C#, Visual Studio, Asterisk, TrixBox
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In part 1 , we set the scene and created a new project in Visual Studio and set up a few things in preparation. Now for the good bit, let's write some code! Diagnostics Throughout the code, you're going to see diagnostic trace routines. This diagnostic code is just lifted from another project...
Posted to
Tim Long
by
Tim Long
on
05-19-2008
Filed under:
Filed under: Software Engineering, HowTo, Telephony, Microsoft CRM, TiGra Networks, CRM, .NET, VOIP, C#, Visual Studio, Asterisk, TrixBox
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Following on from my last post where I discussed using LINQ to dip into a Microsoft Dynamics CRM database, here is a real-world application using similar techniques. This sample is an integration between TrixBox, an open-source IP Telephony system and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It uses LINQ to SQL to look...
Posted to
Tim Long
by
Tim Long
on
05-18-2008
Filed under:
Filed under: Software Engineering, HowTo, Telephony, Microsoft CRM, TiGra Networks, CRM, .NET, VOIP, C#, Asterisk, TrixBox
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Inspired by Simon Hutson's post and sharing his aversion to T-SQL code, I decided to have a go at re-writing his code in C# using LINQ (Language Integrated Query). Before we go any further, I need to say that the techniques used here are definitely not appropriate in a production CRM database . Only...
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Someone on LinkedIn recently posed the question: Which of the technology Open Source or Microsoft you prefer? [sic] Well that was like a red rag to a bull. My response was voted "best answer" by the original poster, so I suppose I must've said something good. So here is my take on Open...
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I've been dabbling with various different development projects recently and I've uncovered what I think is an important failing in Microsoft's support for 64-bit software. In Visual Studio, the default setting is to generate code for "Any CPU". This sounds great because it means...
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I've been learning about LINQ (a new feature of visual C# 3.0) and decided to play around with a little application. I have a VOIP PBX based on TrixBox/Asterisk. I thought it would be neat to write an application to examine the call logs, which are stored on the Asterisk/Linux server in a MySQL database...
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If you are developing ASCOM drivers or applications in Visual Studio (i.e. you are generating .NET code), there's a compatibility issue you should be aware of that could prevent your code from running on 64-bit systems. When you create a new project in Visual Studio, it assumes you want to generate...
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Poor Mike - perhaps he should have used PowerGUI . I have been catching up with Mike Ormond's blog today. Mike posts lots of stuff that will be interesting to software developers and if you're a Visual Studio user, even just a hobbyist, it's well worth checking out. Mike mentioned that Windows...