Angus Logan's Link Blog

100K project problems

2004-11-23T20:32:00.000+10:00

100K project problems
To leave aside patents for a moment, if you're having problems with large (>100K lines of code) projects in VB, this KB article might help. The problem is fixed in VB 2005, but if you're using VB 2002/2003, there is a hotfix for it. Thanks to Eric Harrison for publicizing the problem!

InfoPath - Hands on Lab Manuals - Posted

2004-11-21T13:21:00.000+10:00

Hands on Lab Manuals - Posted

I wanted to thank everyone that attended the recent Hands on Lab sessions that we help for InfoPath. As promised here are the lab manuals that you can download from here.

Checklist for Testing SharePoint Web Parts

2004-11-20T22:49:00.000+10:00

Checklist for Testing SharePoint Web Parts
Use this checklist to assist with deployment and maintenance of your Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Web Parts.

Good Point...

2004-11-20T22:37:00.000+10:00

Good Point...
"Programming is like sex: One mistake and you support it a lifetime"

Integration of Project Server 2003 & WSS with IBF

2004-11-16T21:54:00.000+10:00

Integration of Project Server 2003 & WSS with IBF.

Folks,

Here is the first solution that I have worked on that integrates Project Server 2003 and Windows sharepoint services with IBF. This solution is available freely for download at (http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/3/0/4301f026-044b-4272-8857-a705c294187e/MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Solutions_ProjectServer1.0.exe)

I am working on making enhancements to the solution. Keep watching this blog for more information on the solution.

Cheers,

-Natarajan

Live Communications Server 2005 Documents Available for Download

2004-11-14T18:44:00.000+10:00

Live Communications Server 2005 Documents Available for Download

A number of new downloads are available for anybody going for the new Live Communications Server 2005:

Business Value of Presence
This document describes the business value of presence within an organization and how this vital information has been integrated into the programs used by most information workers.
Active Directory Schema Extensions
This download contains the Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 XML Schema used to extend the Microsoft Active Directory directory service.
Release Notes 1.0
This document contains the most up-to-date information for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005. The release notes list important information you should know prior to deploying and using Live Communications Server 2005, including known issues.
Deployment Guide
This document guides you through the deployment of a Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 Standard Edition.
Feature Guide
This document provides an overview of the features in Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 and the features found in Microsoft Windows Messenger and Microsoft Office System programs, such as Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
Instant Messaging Etiquette Guide
This guide provides a set of guidelines and best practices to help you use instant messaging effectively in an enterprise context and to mitigate the risk of unwanted communications.

Guy Worth Hiring

2004-11-12T09:28:00.000+10:00

A Guy Worth Hiring

This guy deserves a flood of job offers. Make yours good!

K-Wise Deployer

2004-11-11T20:28:00.000+10:00

K-Wise Deployer

I had a superb demo today of the K-Wise Deployer ... this provides a powerful content migration solution for SharePoint 2003 product and Technologies. It constitutes a stand-alone application designed for the rapid content migration from multiple sources.

The K-Wise Deployer is an accelerator for the design, modeling, construction and content migration stages of SharePoint. It provides:

Migration from:

SharePoint 2001

File Shares

Exchange Public Folders

Hummingbird

Hyperwave

Lotus Notes

other sources

Mapping and analysis of content sources

Metadata Editor, extraction of properties and flexible mapping into Columns

A graphical interface supports rapid creation of SharePoint Server
structure: Sites, Areas, Libraries and Folders

Bulk and Batch check-in of documents

Taxonomy management tool

Sharepoint+

MCMS Rapid ... update

2004-11-10T15:35:00.000+10:00

MCMS Rapid ... update
Further to my previous blog entry of the MCMS Rapid Solution Site - I spent yesterday with ArtemisCorp ... just wanted to reassure everyone that this is on target for 30Nov. And BTW - its looking awesome!

My Microsoft Interview

2004-11-10T15:33:00.000+10:00

My Microsoft Interview
My second interview process at Microsoft started off with the typical scare (I'm not going to go into my first interview experience, but I will say I was offered a position at Microsoft but did not accept it). I need to realize that traffic going to Redmond from my home is really bad around 8:15. I thought I had left plenty of time, but still barely made it with a minute or two to spare. (When will I learn?!) I did wear a suit again, this time a really expensive Hart Schaffner and Marx number (that looks very good on me, if I do say so myself!)

My second interview seems like it went according to the typical MSFT process. I still didn't get a puzzle question, but that's okay, I probably would have bombed it anyway!

The interview started at 9:00am with Cody Horton in Building 19. I actually walked past one of the Moon Gals' office when going to Cody's office, but I can't remember which one! Anyway, I chatted a while about things with the recruiter, then he sent me on the shuttle over to building 44.

In building 44 there was a bit of a mix up as the first person on my interview list was out that day, so things were a little bit off kilter, but after that things went smoothly. I chatted with a peer of my boss named Joanne, then a gentleman from another group (whose name escapes me now). After that, I met with my future boss, Chase Carpenter, then went to lunch with one of the technical guys on the team. We had lunch at Claim Jumper, that bastion of light lunches, and we found out that we both had a somewhat similar background (a liberal arts background).

After lunch, I had one more scheduled interview, and then was asked to wait to speak to one other person. After that, they asked if I could wait around for a little longer to talk to my future boss' boss. I think that getting to that point is the key that they are considering you. If it is a competitive situation, it's not a guarantee, but if you are the only candidate and talk to your boss' boss you are likely going to get an offer.

The interviews for the program manager position were much more focused on scope negotiation, dealing with slippages, phasing, communication, etc. There was not as much security, but I think they had a good feeling about my skills since a) I had been offered a position by the Security Center of Excellence, and b) I have a reasonable resume. A MSFT PM has solution architecture and project management responsibilities, and at least from the interview, they were more concerned about the PM aspects of the position. I think I did relatively well throughout the interviews.

By the time I met with Jeff Newfeld, I was pretty beat. I started in with him after 5:00, and had been "on" almost the entire day. It was pretty exhausting, but I was happy when things were over close to 6:00.

On the whole I think I did pretty well, but was told that there was another candidate, so I wouldn't hear anything until the end of the week. Didn't I do this waiting game 3 months ago?!

The perfect CV?

2004-11-09T21:11:00.000+10:00

The perfect CV?

I don’t know if there is a perfect CV and each recruite’âs idea of a perfect CV will be slightly different. But I can tell you what I like to see.

A good CV is one that clearly shows me how well you are suited to the role that y’uâre applying for.

Some easy tips to follow

Tailor your CV for each role that you apply for

Keep it short and to the point

Look critically at every item you include. If you can't immediately see why it's there, take it out

When your CV is completed check it carefully for grammatical errors and spelling mistakes and then check it again. Itâs a good idea to get someone else to read over it for you as well

What you should include

Name and full contact details including mobile and e-mail address

A short career objective or career profile

Education and qualifications

Relevant work experience

Interests, activities and achievements that clearly show skills for the position your applying for

Dont include unless it's been requested

Marital Status

Age

Your photograph

Nationality

How to present your CV

Type or word processing your CV as black text on a white background

Print each page on a separate sheet

Keep it plain. Fancy fonts and decorative borders are more of a distraction than a help

Make it esy to follow by being consistent with headings and fonts

I hope this helps and I welcome any feedback or questions that you may have. ZoÃ« and Gre’chenâs site has heaps of great advice regard’ng CVâs so make sure you have a look.

We have a couple of CV templates on our careers site that you can have a look at as well.

Thanks JB

Windows Installer 3.0 Redistributable Live

2004-11-09T20:58:00.000+10:00

Windows Installer 3.0 Redistributable Live

I was just notified that the Windows Installer 3.0 redistributable has been posted live.

1. The redistributable package can be obtained from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5FBC5470-B259-4733-A914-A956122E08E8&displaylang=en

2. There is also a Knowledgebase article about this release available at: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=884016

3. Finally, the SDK documentation and tools are part of the Windows XP Service Pack 2 platform SDK and are available by clicking the "Windows XP SP2 SDK" link from: http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/sdkupdate/

I know a number of you were waiting for this release, so here we go. On with better patching and command-line typing in Darwin.

IBF Samples

2004-11-09T20:57:00.000+10:00

IBF Samples

Looking for samples demonstrating the power of the Information Bridge Framework? Microsoft download center has a download with the following samples:

These downloads include the following sample solutions and a white paper:

A generic customer relationship management sample solution (MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Solutions_Sample1.0.exe)
An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system sample solution based on Oracle LOB applications (MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Solutions_Oracle1.0.exe)
A Hello World sample solution (MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Solutions_HelloWorld1.0.exe)
Developing a Hello World Sample Solution for Information Bridge Framework White Paper (HelloWorldWhitePaper.doc, included in MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Solutions_HelloWorld1.0.exe)

SQL Server 2005 Webcasts

2004-11-08T10:42:00.001+10:00

SQL Server 2005 Webcasts
Just thought I'd plug the SQL Server 2005 webcasts which are due to launch from the beginning of December. If you'd like to know more, go here to register: http://msdn.microsoft.com/SQL/2005Webcasts/.

Amazing Pet Shop Boys fan site

2004-11-08T10:42:00.000+10:00

Amazing Pet Shop Boys fan site

Wayne Studer has on his site "interpretations and analyses of every song written or performed by Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant" -- pretty darn impressive! You can catch the goodness at http://www.geowayne.com/psbhtml.htm

Personally, I think one of the most powerful lines they've ever written comes from Jealousy, on the very melancholy album Behaviour:

I wish I'd never met you or that I could bear to let you go.

I'm sure we've all felt that way at some point in our lives :-(

Free Windows XP Service Pack 2 E-Learning Clinics

2004-11-08T10:39:00.000+10:00

Free Windows XP Service Pack 2 E-Learning Clinics

I was going through my email on the weekend and found these e-learning clinics for Windows XP SP2. They are really pretty good

Announcing Free Windows XP Service Pack 2 E-Learning Clinics
Microsoft Learning is excited to announce the availability of free self-paced e-learning clinics for IT professionals and developers on Windows XP Service Pack 2.

These e-learning clinics are available in English to all customers worldwide on http://www.microsoftelearning.com/xpsp2/

Free hands-on labs online will be added to this content in the coming weeks to allow customers to walk through practical exercises in a safe, virtual environment.

IT Professionals: E-Learning Clinic 2851: Deploying and Administering Windows XP Service Pack 2

Session 1: Windows XP Service Pack 2 Security Technologies
Session 2: Deploying and Managing Windows XP Service Pack 2

Developers: E-Learning Clinic 2853: Developing and Maintaining Applications on Windows XP Service Pack 2

Session 1: Introduction to Windows XP Service Pack 2 for Developers
Session 2: Developing Applications in Windows XP Service Pack 2
Session 3: Running SQL Server on Windows XP Service Pack 2
Session 4: Advanced Application Development with Windows XP Service Pack 2

[ Currently Playing : They Can't Take That Away from Me - Robbie Williams - Swing When You're Winning (03:08) ]

My Media Center PC

2004-11-07T11:55:00.000+10:00

My Media Center PC

Buy one or roll your own?

In my case, until a couple of weeks ago they weren't even sold in Australia so I had to build it myself.

I got my hands on an eMuzed MauiIII PAL TV card 6 months back and tried running MCE2004.

Well that didn't go well. No program guide, I couldn't even tune in the channels. I got it working eventually with some hacks and a Dutch program guide, but it was not a great experience.

Enter MCE2005, yes it works in Australia, even though we don't have a program guide (the TV stations own copyright on programming information and MS has yet to do a deal with them, though it is expected in the future)

I took a fairly standard PC and turned it into a MCE2005 box

P4 2800
1 GB RAM
>300 HD?s
eMuzed MauiIII PAL TV Card
cheap GeForce Ti4200 Display Adapter
eHome Infrared Remote Control (freebie from MS, thanks guys)

It works very well, surprising with the low end display adapter. I want be rushing out to get an FX or Radeon anytime soon.

The main thing seems to be the TV Card quality, *GET* one that does hardware decoding. If your offered one with software decoding tell em where to shove it.

I suspect you could run this on an old spare box. A P2 or P3 as the CPU isn't getting hammered and the disk subsystem throughput requirements are not high.

Anger Management for Outlook 2003 ...

2004-11-07T11:51:00.000+10:00

Anger Management for Outlook 2003 ...

Have you ever sent an e-mail you knew almost immediately you would regret? (More importantly, does this happen often?) If you've ever wondered if your e-mail client could protect you from yourself, here's a handy tip you should consider: You can create a rule in Microsoft Outlook 2003 that defers sending messages for a few minutes after clicking the fateful Send button.

Follow these steps:

From the menu, Click Tools > Rules and Alerts > New Rule to bring up the Outlook Rules Wizard.

Let's Start from a blank rule, and check messages after sending - Click Next.

Since the rule will apply to all sent messages, click "Next" to skip selecting a set of conditions. A dialog box may appear asking you to confirm that this is what you want to do.

Check Defer delivery by a number of minutes. Down below, click on the underlined "a number of" text and select the number of minutes you thinks it takes for your sanity to previal. Note: if it actually takes a few days, you might have a bigger problem than Microsoft Outlook can help you with. A couple of minutes usually works for me.

If you think you may want to apply some exceptions to this rule, click Next to apply any additional properties. Meeting invitations are a common exception - We rarely flame people we'll be meeting with shortly. Otherwise, click Finish. You're done!

Later ... In that fateful moment when you come to yourself after sending an e-mail, rush to your Outbox and delete the message before it goes. Wow! You may have just saved your career.

Resume breathing.

Mild-mannered e-mail writers need not apply.

My experiences also include accidentally sending e-mails before I finished writing them (doesn't that always look dumb?) Share your story below about "that message" you wish you could go back in time to erase ...

A (speculative) look inside Google

2004-11-07T11:46:00.000+10:00

A (speculative) look inside Google

Thanks to John Topley posting a comment on my blog, I discovered this old but fascinating speculative look inside Google based on published accounts. There are some interesting conclusions in the paper - the key one being that Google is building a general purpose supercomputer that will serve as a platform for running web scale applications. Hmmm ... sounds a lot like Amazon/Yahoo (not so sure about eBay).

The comments are also interesting to read as well - with a few anonymous folks 'showing off' (or flat out lying about) their knowledge of Google internals.

For some meaty information, check out this paper on the Google Filesystem, which talks about the design of Google's petabyte fault-tolerant filesystem that lives on 100,000+ nodes, which was presented at SOSP 2003.

Edit Posting Properties in Authoring Mode

2004-11-07T11:38:00.000+10:00

Edit Posting Properties in Authoring Mode

On the past couple of MCMS projects I've worked on, we decided to bring the Page Properties into the page in authoring mode and turned off access to the "Page Properties" window for authors and editors.

This killed two birds with one stone:

1) It took a fewer steps for authors and editors to change properties like the StartDate, ExpiryDate, Important, and certain Custom Properties. No more needing to open a separate window and figure out which properties to change.

2) It allowed us to hide certain Page Properties from certain users, like Name, Display Name, and some Custom Properties. Since you cannot restrict rights down to the placeholder or property level (only the channel level), this allowed us to show some properties only to users in certain role groups (using another nifty method, BTW). Plus, we automatically set the Name and DisplayName of most of our postings, so this method removes the ability for the user to edit these properties as well.

We built separate User Controls for each feature, and then added the controls to each template. This works well, but does mean that we have quite a few different User Controls.

Stefan Goßner has come up with a solution which can bring some or all of the Page Properties into the page, and does not require much (or any) coding! Check out the article on his blog and download the sample code from GotDotNet.

Toss the TiVo for Media Center '05?

2004-11-06T01:40:00.000+10:00

Toss the TiVo for Media Center '05?

Bold statement by PCWorld... I would so love ot try out a MC'05 box... but I'm heavily invested in TiVo (2x80hr Series 2 boxes).

» New Media Center OS Plays Well

Need A Time Zone Converter?

2004-11-06T00:22:00.000+10:00

Need A Time Zone Converter?

TimeAndDate.com has a search engine for its WorldClock that allows you to see what the current time and time zone is for most major cities througout the US and the World.

In addition to current time and time zone the WorldClock also provides:

GMT Offset

Daylight Savings information

Sunrise/Sunset

Dialing Codes (can tell you exactly how to dial a specific international number)

Geo-Coordinates (Longitude & Latitude)

Meeting planning features

Books about the city searched

Here is Austin's info:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=24

And, Belfast:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=919

Solution to allow property editing when being in authoring mode

2004-11-06T00:20:00.001+10:00

Solution to allow property editing when being in authoring mode

A common question I received from customers is that they would like to edit property values during authoring time similar to editing placeholder content.

I have previously provided a solution for this but this needs to do some coding for every property. A better solution would be to have a server control similar to the MCMS placeholder controls to do this.

After spending a several hours I just finished such a server control which will be available on GotDotNet in a few days.

Here is an article with a brief description on the details.

ASP.NET Starter Kits laboration.

2004-11-06T00:20:00.000+10:00

ASP.NET Starter Kits laboration.

Only for swedish readers:

I mitten på november kommer vi på Microsoft tillsammans med Jönsson & Lepp hålla tre stycken gratis heldagslaborationer i ASP.NET Starter Kits. Vi kommer att titta på arkitekturen, hur vi skräddarsyr utseende samt utvecklare egen funktionalitet. Under dagen bjuder vi på mat och fika. Anmäl dig snarast eftersom det endast finns 20 platser på respektive ort och tillfälle.

Den 17:e november är vi i Stockholm: http://msevents-eu.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=118751090&Culture=sv-SE (OBS FULLT)
Den 18:e november är vi i Göteborg: http://msevents-eu.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=118751474&Culture=sv-SE
Den 19:e november är vi i Malmö: http://msevents-eu.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=118751475&Culture=sv-SE

Hoppas att vi ses!