My Buddy WBM has release a new eBook !

Check it out !

New Features in ASP.NET 3.5 Service Pack 1

Wallace B. McClure

ISBN: 978-0-470-45734-4

Wrox Blox PDF

38 pages

December 2008

Important information about this Wrox Blox PDF download

Clint Edmonson has gifted us for the holidays with free coding standards documents for C# and VB.

[ GET THEM HERE ]

If your building web applications on the Microsoft Platform then sooner or later you're gonna have to get rich!

Rich, as in RIA :)

The Expression suite of tools really helps with this whether you are designing web pages, doing media or graphics, or designing Silverlight and WPF UIs.

I just found out the the Microsoft On-Line Store is running a 50 Percent Off Sale on Expression Studio.

Click HERE to give yourself a ho9liday present !

For some time now we've been working on a new option for ASP.NET Developers. ASP.NET MVC !

Phil Haak and the crew have been furiously at work on ASP.NET MVC and Stephen Walter (with great work from Phil, Tom, Jay, Jay-E, Rich, Zac, and JM) has been building a gallery to show off great MVC designs.

It's NOW LIVE HERE (http://www.asp.net/MVC/Gallery/)

To kick things off WE'RE HAVING A CONTEST !!!

You can get all the details and submit your design until January 31st HERE (http://www.asp.net/MVC/Gallery/Competition/)

SplendidCRM Software, Inc., a  provider of Microsoft-centric Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions for open-source use, announced the launch of Version 3.0 of SplendidCRM.

The release of Version 3.0 marks a milestone as it introduces the SplendidCRM Workflow Engine as a flagship feature in the new SplendidCRM Enterprise product.

"For many companies, workflow is a critical feature and we are pleased to be able to tightly integrate SplendidCRM with Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation," said Paul Rony, President of SplendidCRM.

The Community version is FREE !

http://www.splendidcrm.com/

I started looking at Lego Mindstorms becauseI thought the robotic nature would make it interesting for some presentations that I have to give on programming to people who know very little about computers and are not programmers.

This book was a super "Jump Start" that includes 10 quick projects so you can dive right into it.

It's a quick, understandable read. AND FUN !

You can get it HERE.

We got lucky. Though there are still 200,000 homes in New Hampshire without power, ours came back on today.

Thought the power surge blew the power supply/motherboard in my Media Center PC :(

I got concerned email from Microsoft (Thanks Natalie & ScottGu) and from local friends (thanks Ron & Jon) and friend as far away as Iran (thanks Armin)

So, I'll be back up to speed by tomorrow.

So... The damage.

• $1000 for Generator, gas, extension cords, batteries,  and ancillary gear.
• $ ??? - For a replacement computer
• 11 impressive bruises from falling down a full icey flight of stairs in the dark :)

It's amazing what we take for granted.

Since there are still so many local families without services, we've opened up our home to a couple of local families to come stay until their own power is back.

Many thanks to all for your interest!

First, thanks to everyone who has called and emailed. Jill, the Girls and I are all fine, if not warn and well rested.

We lost Power and Phone service on Thursday Night - now Sunday, Electricity, Phone, Internet, and Cable are all still out. Due to compromised towers, even cell phone service is effected.

400,000 homes in our tiny little state of NH are effected.

We've been declared a "State of Emergency" and 4 deaths have been reported.

The State Emergency Services office is warning that all power may not be restored untill NEXT weeked (a total of 9 ot 10 days without power)

I waited in line for 11 hours for a Generator on friday and thankfully was able to purchase one of the few that were successfully shipped to the state.

So we have a generator and a bit of propane powered heat. I'm also able to scoop water through the ice of a local pond so that we can flush the toilet once a day :)

I'n the meantime, I'm making a daily trip to the Borders Book Store in Concord NH once a day to sync email and make phone calls and spending much of the rest of the tie making sure the pipes don't freeze and such.

More news soon.

Oxite is an open source, standards compliant, and highly extensible content management platform that can run anything from blogs to big web sites.

We know this because it runs MIX Online.

You can download it from here (http://www.visitmix.com/Lab/oxite).

I've spent allot of time in my career focusing on Software Security.

I'm also a bit of a VoIP geek.

So Hacking VoIP: Protocols, Attacks, and Countermeasures  was a treat for me, especially since it uses Asterisk which is a hobby of mine.

I'd never really thought about the subject and this book was a great intro. Not too light and a good read. (197 Pages, I read it in a single day.)

I highly recommend it if you are remotely interested din the subject !

Alachisoft has released TierDeveloper 6.1 as free software (previous version priced at $1495/developer). TierDeveloper lets you develop major chunks of your .NET applications in a matter of hours and days instead of weeks and months. TierDeveloper is one of the most feature-rich ORM code generators in the market.

It provides you the following:

- Map and generate .NET persistence and domain objects in C# and VB.NET

- Design and generate custom ASP.NET and Windows Forms GUI seamlessly

- Generate web services and WCF server layers and proxy client objects

- Powerful Template IDE to let you customize existing or write new code generation templates

- Full support for .NET 2.0/3.5 and Visual Studio 2005/2008

Download TierDeveloper 6.1 Free Software
http://www.alachisoft.com/rp.php?dest=/download.html

TierDeveloper 6.1 Information
http://www.alachisoft.com/rp.php?dest=/tdev/index.html

Reporting may not be "sexy" but it's the meat and potato of every profitable business !

You could call Brian Bischof a "Crystal Wizard".

Some time ago I listed one of Brian's books in my asp.net/forums book picks but he hasn't been resting on the success of his works.

Click on the books above to check them out on Amazon.com

I'm finding them REALLY useful as I'm building some web site reporting features.

I have this machine in my office that's been sitting quietly under a desk for a long time.

I'd decided to re-purpose it for IE6 compatibility testing and since I had it configured to auto-update I need to re-install Windows XP.

It made me wonder how long it had been running there and whether or not there is a way to find out what the origional install date of Windows was.

It turns out that SystemInfo.exe does the trick !

You KNOW I'm a Control Junkie !!

ComponentArt makes some cool stuff and they have a HUGE deal right now.

Click Here to Check it Out http://www.componentart.com/store/

... And if anyone else has a HUGE sale going on forthe holiday season. EMAIL IT TO ME so I can tell my readers about it !!

I thought this article at LinuxWorld was interesting [ Click HERE to Read ].

"Some customers are finding that they have a place for both and that Linux isn't necessarily an economic no-brainer"

Now before the SlashDot army starts to spam the MisfitGeek, I'm a LONG TIME Unix guy and Linux user.

I just hate buzzword jockeys that churn popular phraseology to support their emotional argument without qualified data to back it up !