I'm happy to announce that Dominic Sévigny has joined the .NET Expertise network of independant .NET consultants.  Dominic is a well known ASP.NET and AJAX expert here in Montreal.  He his also a great trainer and speaker (he was named best speaker at DevTeach Montreal 2007).

Welcome Dom!

http://www.dotnet-expertise.com/Default.aspx?tabid=57

Francois Beauregard: GreenPepper et la définition des exigences

Nous discutons avec Francois Beauregard de GreenPepper un outil logiciel qui propose une solution pratique à la définition des exigences en fournissant un environnement collaboratif simple et flexible pour la création de spécifications exécutables. Entre autres, nous discutons de spécifications exécutables, du cycle de développement dans son ensemble et de l'interaction entre les intervenants.

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In case you need to be reminded when Friday is, you can use this Vista gadget made by Montreal MVP Laurent Duveau:
http://gallery.live.com/LiveItemDetail.aspx?li=15ea2afe-544a-4276-a283-e2ad4a8f261f

So Apple claim is that Safari is fast, very fast.  How do you prove that?  Well, that's just another small challenge for Scott Hanselman.  Check his blog entry:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/VideoWindowsBrowserSpeedShootoutIE7Firefox2Opera9SafariForWindowsBeta3.aspx

The claim from Apple Website

Security
Now you can enjoy worry-free web browsing on any computer. Apple engineers designed Safari to be secure from day one.

The reality

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/06/11/Safari-for-Windows-released-and-hacked-in-a-day_1.html

Safari for Windows: Released and hacked in a day
Hours after the beta of the Safari browser for Windows was released, researcher Aviv Raff posted that he had found a bug -- and that it only took him three minutes to do so.

Apple is becoming a favorite target of security researchers these days. In April, there was the $10,000 CanSecWest hack a Mac contest, and on Monday, there was the Safari Web browser. Or the public beta of Safari for Windows, anyway.
Just hours after Apple released its first Windows beta of Safari, researcher Aviv Raff said he'd found a bug.

In an interview, Raff said that it took about three minutes of fuzzing to find the bug and that he hadn't tested the issue on Mac OS X. So he couldn't say whether or not it affected Safari on Windows only. The bug causes the browser to crash and "might be exploitable," according to Raff, meaning it could possibly be used to run malware on the PC.

Raff was clearly unhappy with Apple's claim that Safari was designed to be "secure from day one" (he called this claim "pathetic"), but he said he wasn't particularly going after Apple. "I don't pick just on Apple," he said. "I've posted about Microsoft and Mozilla issues too."

"Everyone has bugs, but not everyone says that they are 'designed to be secured from day one,'" he added. "I guess it's day zero now."

I was looking for a backup for my Exchange server.  Since this is a test server, I don’t have 100% uptime however I depend on it for my main email address.  The domain name was registered at GoDaddy and I was using their email server as a backup and it was working beautifully.  However, I cancelled my hosting service with them and doing that, I couldn’t manage the email accounts I had so I was looking for an alternative solution. Mario Cardinal said that Google was now offering a new service called Google Apps where they “host” your domain emails.

http://www.google.com/a/

I checked them out, registered, associated my domain with the account, manage to go thru the verification process and created the first email accounts in about an hour!  Now I have Google’s GMail as a backup service for my Exchange server for free. All I can say is Wow!

I have a love and hate relationship with GoDaddy. 

I absolutely love them as a registrar.  Registration of a domain name is fast and easy.  You have complete control over your domain name and their Web interface is easy to use.  Buying an SSL certificate is also very easy and very cheap.

However, I think that their hosting services are not on par.  You can use one of the pre-installed apps like Community Server and DotNetNuke but it’s almost impossible to tweak them because you don’t have access to the installation directories.  If you want to install CS or DNN yourself, not using theirs, good chance, you’ll encounter many problems, many being database related.  Speaking of databases, you can’t back them up.  Of course you can generate T-SQL scripts via the GoDaddy database admin tool but it’s not as useful as a true backup.  Finally, GoDaddy uses a third party tool to filter out spam.  That’s fine and I’m all with that until I stopped receiving emails from some of my customers.  Looks like the third party is quite aggressive when they discover a spammer so if they find one, they blacklist the whole IP range!  I tried to contact them explaining the problem but they would not listen at all saying that I’m on a public range (that’s false because I use Videotron’s commercial services). 

At least you have total control on the domain name you register at GoDaddy so you can host your Website and email somewhere else.

Doing Objects in Visual Basic 2005

Author: Deborah Kurata
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN-10: 0321320492
ISBN-13: 978-0321320490
Retail Price: $44.99 US, $61.99 CDN
Publication Date: February 2007
Softcover: 519 pages
Online information: Table of contents, sample chapter, source code
URL: http://www.awprofessional.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=0321320492&rl=1

Deborah Kurata’s name must be familiar for any VB4-5-6 developer on the planet. Her “Doing Objects” series of books were bestsellers but “Doing Objects in Visual Basic 2005” marks the first version for the .NET platform. This book is targeted at Visual Basic 6 developers and novice developers who are jumping in .NET development, have learned a little bit about VB 2005 but want to go further developing applications the right way so a little knowledge of VB 2005 is required before reading this book.

Since this is an object book, you’ll learn about Object-Oriented design in the first chapter. The second chapter covers how to design software from how to gather the requirements to the design of a dataset structure. Kurata explains how to build an application in layers so you’ll read about how to create you project and how to build the user interface layer, the business logic layer and the data access layer using the tools available in Visual Studio like the class designer.

This is a fantastic, well written book that is spot on for the targeted audience. I especially love the fact that each chapter ends with a summary and a list of additional readings. This is great if you want to further explore a topic. The “Doing Objects” title might be a little misleading. Sure you’ll learn about objects but you’ll learn more than that. The force behind this book is the fact that Kurata has gathered a set of best practices for novice developers that novice developers can understand and apply right away and that’s what make this book outstanding.  High praises for “Doing Objects in Visual Basic 2005”.

Motherboard: ASUS P5B

I upgraded a server from 2GB to 4GB but the BIOS would only see 3GB.  For an ASUS P5B motherboard to "see" more then 3GB, you need to set this switch in the BIOS:

BIOS > Advance > Chipset > North Bridge > Enable Memory Remap Feature

OK, here's some Acropolis info taken from:
http://windowsclient.net/Acropolis/Default.aspx

The Microsoft code name “Acropolis” Community Technology Preview 1 is a set of components and tools that make it easier for developers to build and manage modular, business focused, client .NET applications. Acropolis is part of the “.NET Client Futures” wave of releases, our preview of upcoming technologies for Windows client development.

Acropolis builds on the rich capabilities of Microsoft Windows and the .NET Framework, including Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), by providing tools and pre-built components that help developers quickly assemble applications from loosely-coupled parts and services. With Acropolis you will be able to:

• Quickly create WPF enabled user experiences for your client applications.
• Build client applications from reusable, connectable, modules that allow you to easily create complex, business-focused applications in less time.
• Integrate and host your modules in applications such as Microsoft Office, or quickly build stand-alone client interfaces.
• Change the look and feel of your application quickly using built-in themes, or custom designs using XAML.
• Add features such as workflow navigation and user-specific views with minimal coding.
• Manage, update, and deploy your application modules quickly and easily.

Brad Abrams wrote in his blog that Acropolis won't ship with VS2008 but sometimes after that.
http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/default.aspx

In the fall, Devteach will take place in Vancouver for the first time and Jean-René Roy, the conference owner, asked me to do the speakers selection for the .NET tracks.  I'll be working with Scott Bellware (Agile track), Mario Cardinal (Architectre track), Richard Campbell & Roman Rehak (SQL Server tracks) along with Rob Chartier who will help us select local speakers.

More info here:
http://www.devteach.com/TechChair.aspx

I bought this:

and this:

And I look like this:

But my wife said no to this:

My good friend Etienne Tremblay received a great news today: he was selected to be a judge for the Imagine Cup in the Software Design category.  This year, the Imagine Cup will take place in Seoul, Korea.

http://imaginecup.com

TechEd 2007 day 2 & 3 announcements:

Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, well, nothing!

Some announcements...

Visual Studio Orcas is now know asVisual Studio 2008.

SQL Server Katmai is now known SQL Server 2008.  A June CTP is now available for download.
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/futureversion/default.mspx

Microsoft acquired Dundas Software data visualization products to incorporate as the charting tools of Reporting Services 2008.
http://www.dundas.com/Company/Media/PressSQL2008.aspx

Visual Studio 2008 Shell is targeted at companies creating development tools.  Instead of starting from scratch, these companies could use Visual Studio as the shell for their products. 
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-ca/vstudio/bb510103.aspx

Microsoft Code Name "Acropolis" Community Technology Preview 1.  Not sure abut this one.  Looks like a CAB for WPF.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=72386CE5-F206-4D5C-AB09-413B5F31F935&displaylang=en

Yeah it sucks but I not attending TechEd this year.  This is the first TechEd I skip since I started attending in 2000.  However, I'll keep an eye on the announcements watching these sites:

http://www.virtualteched.com

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/teched/default.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2007/default.mspx

If you read Jamie Cansdale's "Microsoft vs TestDriven.Net Express" blog entry you must read Dan Fernandez response.  Dan is the Lead Product Manager for Visual Studio Express at Microsoft.

http://weblogs.asp.net/nunitaddin/archive/2007/05/30/microsoft-vs-testdriven-net-express.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/archive/2007/05/31/visual-studio-express-and-testdriven-net.aspx

In this case, the 800 pound gorilla was gentle enough for a very long time before showng his teeth.