Chinh Do

Programming

• Borland Turbo Pascal was my favorite language in my early days of hobby programming. I feel a little sad to hear that Borland recently sold their CodeGear division to Embarcadero.
• Day-to-day with Subversion is a good and detailed write-up on procedures most developers need to perform daily. By Bil Simser.

.NET/C#

• The evil sou file - fighting and winning with Visual Studio. By Brian Noyes.
• Joshua Flanagan had an interesting idea on a Readable Regular Expressions framework.
• Derik Whittaker posted a tip on how to share config files between projects.
• Jon Galloway: //TODONT: Use a Windows Service just to run a scheduled process.
• You can throw away your own TitleCase method now. Because there’s one in the framework. Via ASP.NET FAQ.
• Operator~ and BinarySearch. By Shahar Y.
• Steven Harman detailed a hack to get Visual Studio to use more than 2GB of RAM.
• Frank-Leonardo Quednau: Lazy instantiation one-liner of instance fields with the coalesce operator.

Software and Tools

• Google Maps Street View is in Richmond.

  Goo

  It looks like the Street View images were taken around September 2007 because according to IMDB, the movie Game Plan was playing in the US starting 9/23/2007:

  

• Google Maps adds user-created photos, videos, maps. Via CNET.

  Goog

Something Different

• Top 50 soccer goals (video).

.NET, C#, Programming

• ScottGui made the long awaited announcement: .NET Framework Library Source now available.
• Roy Osherove raised a attention grabbing question: Dependency Injection - Is it relevant beyond unit testing?
• From the folks who brought you Best C# Blogs, a List of best C# Web Sites. By Tim Martinn/DevTopics.
• Sandcastle January 2008 Release Available. Via John Mandia.
• James Carr’s TDD Anti-Patterns is a fun and enlightening read on of Test Driven Development.
• It’s possible to write your own ASP.NET Web Service help page. Shahed Khan has the details.
• Tobias Hertkorn posted a great tip on how to measure memory consumption of objects in C# right in the code.

Software and Tools

• Jeff Atwood shared the Top Five Browser Shortcuts Everyone Should Know. I didn’t know about the middle mouse button browser shortcut. Very useful.
• Reading Nazmul Idris’ post on Microsoft OneNote 2007 prompted me to try it myself…. and I loved it. It’s a great application to keep track of notes, journal entries, work logs, etc. It’s going to be an essential app for me from now on.

   

  I especially like offline mode support for USB flash drives. You can keep your Notebooks on a flash memory card. OneNote automatically synchronizes its local cache with the flash card when the card is inserted. When not inserted, you can still work on the local cached copy.

  What I don’t like: no VBA macro support. One of the first thing I tried was pressing ALT+F11 to bring up the VBA IDE… nothing happened. A quick search in Online Help confirmed my sinking feeling: no VBA support. Supposedly, you can write add-ins.

Windows Mobile/Pocket PC

• The coolest applications on the Windows Mobile platform, by Mike Riley.

Gadgets

• Scott Hanselman did a extensive review of Verizon FIOS TV.

Something different

• Watch dolphins blowing circles made of air bubbles.

.NET

• For Richmonders, this article on InRich.com forecasts that IT salaries in Richmond will climb faster than U.S. averages.
• Understand the Impact of Low-Lock Techniques in Multithreaded Apps by Vance Morrison, via MSDN Magazine
• Dustin Campbell wrote about F#, specifically how to borrow some of its neat features to use in C#.
• Derik Whittaker commented on the unnecessary and bad practice of leaving commented code around.
• SqlBulkCopy is a technique to insert a large number of records to SQL Server efficiently. Via .NET Tips of the Day.

Software and Tools

• Scott Hanselman shared tips on how to plan and build a new house using Google Earth and Sketchup.
• Fun with Outlook Date Fields, Kristel Leow, via Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog. Not mentioned is my favorite: “now + x days/hours/weeks”.
• Microsoft has released a free tool to count Lines of Code. Via Stefano Mapelli’s Scattered Notes.
• Mike Walker provided initial impressions of Windows Vista Service Pack 1. Via MSDN Blogs.
• More VHDs available. Ben Armstrong (Virtual PC Guy’s WebLog).
• IE to remove the annoying “Click to Activate” “feature”. Sean Lyndersay (MSDN Blogs).

Tech and Gadgets

• Dish Network enables ethernet ports on ViP622 HD DVRs. The main feature that the broadband connection brings is video on demand. The ethernet connection also allows the box to call home via the Internet instead of using the phone line.

Miscellaneous

• View popular “sightings” on Google Maps, Windows Live Maps, and Yahoo Maps at Virtual Globetrotting

And Now, Something Different

I cut a kiwi fruit in halves the other day and this was what I saw:

The i760 is now available for order through Verizon Wireless web site. The retail price is $519 but if you can take advantage of various discounts (New Every 2, 2-year contract, data plan), the price will go down to $99.

The SCH-i760 is a Windows Mobile Pro (Pocket PC) 6 phone, featuring a backlit QWERTY keyboard, 1.3 Megapixel camera/camcorder, microSD, WIFI, and bluetooth.

I still have a few more months to go before my New Every 2 discount will kick in :-(.

Related Posts

• Samsung SCH-i760

As an attempt to make this blog appears more busy:-), I will begin my "Finds of the Week" series. Each week, I will share miscellaneous finds and thoughts I ran into that are related to mostly .NET development.

Here are the finds for this week:

.NET

• Parallel Performance: Optimize Managed Code For Multi-Core Machines; by Daan Leijen and Judd Hall; via MSDN Magazine. In a few years' time, I predict that most new PCs will be multi-core. This article talks about the new Task Parallel Library (TPL) and provides code samples.
• document.f.q.focus(); The Billion Dollar Line of JavaScript (by gst, via blogstorm.co.ok) talks about how many people use the Search Box on their browser to navigate to various web sites, instead of typing in a URL, and how this practice translates into revenue for Google. Interesting read.
• alessandro pointed out that and IMG element with an empty src attribute will call the browser to make a request to the default document (usually default.aspx).
• Understanding Windows Workflow Foundation (by razi bin rais, via Codeproject.com) is a nice overview of Windows Workflow Foundation.
• Where are the basic controls in Silverlight 1.1? When I started experimenting with Silverlight recently (see my Silverlight Hello World application), the first question that came to my mind was: where are all the basic controls such as button, checkbox, textbox, etc?

  

  Don't worry! Apparently, they are not there because it's still an Alpha release. According to this post from Tim Sneath, the following controls are planned to be included in the released version of 1.1: Button, TextBox, Scrollbar, Slider, ListBox, CheckBox, RadioButton, ComboBox, and UserControl (no TreeView, RichTextBox, or DataGrid).

Tools

• Probably old news to most CSS pros, but just in case you have not heard, FireBug is a very useful extension for FireFox/CSS development. Highly recommended if you ever work with CSS. I could have saved countless hours debugging HTML/CSS issues with this tool.
• Notepad++ is a new addition to my toolset. Supports syntax highlighting, regular expression search/replace, Unicode, Macros, and is light-weight.

Windows Mobile / Pocket PC

• Windows Live Search for Windows Mobile now includes voice recognition.

Blogs

• Sara Ford's WebLog is a treasure trove full of cool Visual Studio tips and tricks.

Miscellaneous

• I am pretty bad with keeping in touch with people, and I have found that LinkedIn makes it fairly easy to keep in touch with past colleages. Last week I had some free time so I decided to look up old colleagues on LinkedIn. It was great to hear from many people I worked with years ago. I found many people by simply searching on the name of the company we worked for.

And Now, Something Different

Check out the Windows Live Maps Bird's Eye view below. See the black car entering the cul-de-sac? That's me and my car.

How do I know that’s my car? Well, for one thing, my car is black. But the real reason I know it’s me is that a moment later, my garage door opened half-way… as I was about to drive into the garage:

At first glance, it seems to be an amazing coincidence (like one-in-a-million amazing). What is the chance that Microsoft’s Bird’s Eye low flying plane would fly across my house and snap pictures just as I am about drive into my garage? However, after further calculations, it turns out that the real probability is around 1/8640 (5-second window over 43200 average seconds of day-light). Still a very small chance, but certainly not lottery-winning “amazing”.

A few days ago, my old and trusty Samsung SCH-i730 Windows Mobile phone decided to bite the dust. One moment, I pulled it out of my pocket to look at the time and it was dead… just like that. No sound. No display. It was an eerie sight. I tried a soft reset, changed battery, hard reset, nothing.

Luckily, since I had purchased insurance for the phone (the only time I purchased insurance for an electronic gadget), I called Verizon. Two days later, I now have a brand new i730.

Normally, this would be a none-event. However, something interesting happened: the replacement phone works much better than the one I used to have. Read about the problems I had with the old phone here. On the new phone, everything runs noticeably faster. There is no more unexplained slowness. Audio during phone calls now works as expected with no cut outs.

I have two theories on why:

• I had upgraded my old phone to Windows Mobile 2005 and that version of the Windows Mobile OS was causing problems on the phone
• I had a defective phone

I will never know for sure the real cause, since the old phone is no more.

Samsung i730 owners out there, if your phone doesn’t seem to work quite right and have the problems described here, either try to downgrade to Windows Mobilde 2003, or if you have not upgraded to WM2005, you just may have a defective device.

In Windows Vista, Windows Mobile Device Center replaces ActiveSync. I just found out today when I tried to set up a bluetooth link between my home PC and Samsung i730. The process to set up is easy enough. Just download the installer from Microsoft, run it, and follow on-screen instructions.

My initial impression is that WMDC looks a lot sleaker than ActiveSync:

WMDC’s beauty is only skin deep however. There appears to be no new major features. I was hoping that synchronization would work with Vista’s built-in Calendar and Contacts but no… that would make too much sense, would it? I hate to have to install Microsoft Office just to be able to look at a Calendar and a Contact list. I now only have Office at home on a Virtual PC that I fires up once in a long while when I do need Word or Excel.

Since I started using Plaxo, I can access my calendar and contacts from any Internet connected PC or mobile device so I don’t really need to have my calendar and contacts sync’ed to my home PC.

Oh, and guess what, it’s not possible to sync your music library from Windows Media Player 11 to your mobile device over bluetooth. Argg!

Point your browser to http://ytpocket.ath.cx and follow the instructions there to install TCPMP (The Core Pocket Media Player), Flash Plug-in. Complete instructions here.

Source: HowardForums.

This works great on my Samsung SCH-i730.

It looks like Samsung is finally coming out with an upgrade for the SCH-i730 Windows Mobile Phone, in the form of the SCH-i760. Major new features include Windows Mobile 6, side-sliding keyboard and a built-in camera. Currently the i760 is not officially on Verizon Wireless’ web site yet.

Don’t know about you but I think this one looks a bit on the ugly side. Still, I really like my i730 and when I will certainly consider upgrading to the i760 when the time comes.

More info:

• Samsung i760 hands-on
• Samsung’s SGH-i760 super slider
• Samsung i760 First Thoughts Review
• Samsung SCH-i760: Smartphone Has Brains, Beauty

Related Posts

• Samsung SCH-i760 Windows Mobile Phone Now On Verizon Wireless Web Site

Being a news junky that I am, I love being able to listen to the news while driving around, or even while at the beach. I have found that my Samsung i730 Windows Mobile phone, in conjunction with the unlimited EDVO data plan from Verizon Wireless, let me watch the news in glorious color, virtually anywhere. Yes, there is just something neat about being able to watch BBC World News while sitting alone on a empty beach at night. Perhaps it’s the combination of being far away from civilization, yet at the same time connected to the world.

iPhone owners, sorry… no streaming videos for you. But you’re probably too busy looking at the phone itself, admiring its beauty, to have time for anything else anyway.

(Oops, my iPhone envy is showing.)

Below are my favorite video streams for your enjoyment (updated Jan 18, 2008).

News

• CNN International - Major (original) US cable news network.
• CNN Feed 2
• CNN Feed 3
• CNN Feed 4
• BBC News - World news.
• Bloomberg TV - 24-hour business and financial news network.
• CNBC - Business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets.
• MSNBC - 24-hour cable news.
• Sky News - UK and world news.
• ABC News - Major US broadcast news network.
  

Weather

• Weather+ - US and Canada weather forecasts).

For more channels, go to:

• http://www.streamingpda.nl/
• PocketPCMedia

I only tested the above links on my i730, they should work for other Windows Mobile devices such as Verizon XV6700, or the new MOTO Q 9m.

WARNING - After further research, I found that Verizon’s EVDO policy officially prohibits video streaming, so there is a chance that if you use too much bandwidth, they may decide to terminate your account. So, use video streaming at your own risk! The limit seems to be about 10GB. You can monitor your data usage by logging into the Verizon Wireless’ My Account service. There is apparently also a way to monitor your data usage with a Verizon software application called VZAccess Manager.

Update 10/25/2007

Verizon has just settled with New York regard its practice of terminating users who exceeds "unlimited" bandwidth.