Entries for AIM48

Tapi via skype [Tapi via skype]

AIM48 — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 01:43:59 GMT

Hi all,

We are a monitoring service that periodiclly calls around to a whole list of remote devices using standard POTS (regular phone) lines and retreives reading/sends commands thru a standard terminal session.

As it stands now we have 2 dedicated lines running out of a server in the office that do the actual dialing around (with all the standard modem schreeching etc... ).

We would like to move all this to the web. For example - right now clients get their device reports either by fax or email at the end of the day and they call (or email ,fax) changes they want made

We want to go "hi-tech" , we want clients to be able to login to a website and view their latest reports there - at the same time they should be able to change the device parameters and initiate a on demand call to the device to update the parameters - then 5 minutes later they log back in and they initiate a call to see what the effects of that param change were etc..

We also need more phone lines for our automated calls etc... So we decided that it would be best to move to the web.

woooo. That was a long intro.... Anyways to the point:
The plan is to locate a server at a datacenter and use skype to conduct the calls.

Are there any tapi-skype bridging components for .net

Thanks.

in reply to Tapi via skype

C9 Privacy bug? [C9 Privacy bug?]

AIM48 — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 18:01:55 GMT

If you send a email to a user by clicking on the little envelope icon and the users email box is full then you get a bounce back to your mail address directly from the users server with the users email address.

other cases that would casue this:
Out of office messages
Some spam filters

in reply to C9 Privacy bug?

Suggestion For Desktop Search [Suggestion For Desktop Search]

AIM48 — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 13:29:39 GMT

I was looking for a phrase some where on my hard drive - so naturally I used MSN Desktop Search - and I found the file that contains the phrase. A word document with > 5000 words.

So these are the steps that I had to go thru to find the phrase I wanted.
1. Type the search phrase into the msn bar at the bottom of the screen
2. Wait for the result window to open
3. Find the right file from all of the returned files
4. Double click the file to open it.
5. hit ctrl f in Microsoft word
6. Retype the search phrase into Microsoft word
7. Click Find to find the item.

7 Steps to find something from the search bar. What if we could smoothen things out so that we could stop the process at 4.

So that the process now is :
1. Type the search phrase into the msn bar at the bottom of the screen
2. Wait for the result window to open
3. Find the right file from all of the returned files
4. Double click the file to open it.

at this point Word would open and immediately search for the search phase and highlight it.

How do I suggest this happening? Like thus.
Applications can define commands (verbs) to run against their associated document types so for example if you right click on a word document you would have Open,Edit,New,Print etc...

My suggestion - apps would define another command type called "Search". When a user clicks on a document in the windows desktop search window then search will open the app passing the command line defined in the registry key and the name of the document and the search term.

When the app (any app - I was using word as an example) - received the search command it will load the specified file and immediately do a search for the appropriate phrase.

in reply to Suggestion For Desktop Search

MS: Buy HopStop [MS: Buy HopStop]

AIM48 — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 18:30:48 GMT

Integrate it into live and you got an extreemly powerfull and usefull mapping product

in reply to MS: Buy HopStop

asp.net 4.0 suggestion: Encrypted cookies [asp.net 4.0 suggestion: Encrypted cookies]

AIM48 — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 07:14:30 GMT

Auto encrypted and validated user cookies (just like the asp.net forms cookies are)

in reply to asp.net 4.0 suggestion: Encrypted cookies

MS (sort of) ships source code with product [MS (sort of) ships source code with product]

AIM48 — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 00:30:37 GMT

I don't know who and how helpfull this would be too - but to see most of the source code to the new MS office accounting - Just load it up in Reflector.

in reply to MS (sort of) ships source code with product

Suggestion: Windows Update Foundation [Suggestion: Windows Update Foundation]

AIM48 — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 22:59:26 GMT

So I have a bunch of gunk in my tray area - Most of them are * update - Java update,windows update , Norton update even some kind of drawing program trial I downloaded - they are all sitting there taken up varying amount of CPU periodically "Calling home" to see if there are "NEW!! CRITICAL!!" updates etc... I as the user do not know what they are and where they are and how to disable them.

It is obviously important that applications be able to update themselves on the fly especially in today's internet environment with security patches etc... But I believe that software developers should focus on what they (think) they do best - developing their actual program and not worrying about creating little updater icons - they usually leave it to the end and throw together some thing that is usually not very well behaved etc...

Therefore I suggest that Microsoft take a large part of the burden off the regular developers like this.

Microsoft already has the whole windows update infrastructure - They should extend it a bit to support 3rd party applications - this is the scenario I imagine.

3rd Party Developers would create their applications.
They would log in to a special (free) Microsoft portal
They submit there company name. Application name - exe name etc..
They receive a special unique GUID for their application
In the install for their application they register that unique GUID for their application with the "Windows Update Foundation".
The vendor logs onto the Microsoft portal and indicates that the latest version for this application is lets say 1.0.2.0.5.2.3
When the regular windows update runs it sends the uniqueid and the current version of the app to the windows update service - Windows will notify the user that updates - either windows or third party applications.

The user can then decide what to update and what not.

WUF would then kick off the applications BITS downloader from the vendors site.

Obviously there are security implications -
but I think it would make the whole windows experience more seamless for the user and for the software developer

in reply to Suggestion: Windows Update Foundation

Firefox 1.5.0.6 - Search engine trouble? [Firefox 1.5.0.6 - Search engine trouble?]

AIM48 — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 07:07:54 GMT

I received a pop up telling me that 0.6 is available and I installed it.
However there are no search engines any more in the drop down list - and when I click on "add searche engines" it takes me to the correct page and when I click on a search engine it pops up asking me if I want to add it - but then it does not addit.

I searched the web and did not find any mention - so is it something with my configuration?

in reply to Firefox 1.5.0.6 - Search engine trouble?

Validatior Tediousenss and Suggegestion [Validatior Tediousenss and Suggegestion]

AIM48 — Wed, 17 May 2006 16:44:26 GMT

ASP.Net has a very nice feature called validators - you assign a validtor to a control and you specify what has the control must contain before the page is posted back and or vaildated at the server.

Nice... The only problem is that (as I see it) there are 2 kinds of validators the RequiredFieldValidator and the rest of them

Requiredfiledvaildator makes sure that the field is filled in in general - while the others make sure that what was filled in follows a specified format - So I have a form with a bunch of fill in boxes , now I have to add 2 validators to each item , a reqed and a data format.

While I can underatand that there are times that the data does not have to be there but if it does it needs to be valid - many other times (if not most) both are needed.

So my suggestion - Add a property to all validators (via BaseValidator) called ??IsRequired?? - so that one validator can do everything needed.

in reply to Validatior Tediousenss and Suggegestion

BSODs and linux users [BSODs and linux users]

AIM48 — Wed, 10 May 2006 13:26:57 GMT

I was reading this thread on /.

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=185082&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=15276489#15276522

Now I am a pretty heavy WIN user. Yet I havn't seen a BSOD in a long time (I even forgot what they look like). So whats the story?
I have no reason to doubt all of those anectdotes (some of them sound quite convincing) so my qustion is this, Why is it that I a heavy WinXP user almost never sees a bsod (and I seem to gather that most other heavy users of windows don't get them (we had a guy at work who prided himself in that he was able to get XP to BSOD) - while others who don't use it as much get them all the time, Is it that we sub consiously know what to avoid doing so that we don't crash and burn????

in reply to BSODs and linux users

Re: Windows POS 7.0 [Re: Windows POS 7.0]

AIM48 — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 15:18:06 GMT

shooby wrote:

This photo appeared over Times Square recently.

So would you rather have this appear?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtorrone/52926832/in/photostream/

in reply to Re: Windows POS 7.0

Vista Suggestion: Common Backup Interface [Vista Suggestion: Common Backup Interface]

AIM48 — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 03:57:10 GMT

Yicky!! I am in middle of trying to setup a remote backup type of thing (over the internet). The backup/file selection interface is terible. This isn't the first one I have tried and the other ones were just as bad - that's what happens when many different companys have to implement the same thing - they hardly do it well. This interface isn't a selling point for the companies anyways - they do it because they need to provide a interface so they throw something together

On the other hand the windows backup interface is useable - but just barely - definatly more then the internet backup stuff I am trying to set up.

So , My suggestion - Seperate the backup interface from the backup engine. Make a central windows backup information store from which any backup application can read. Then all these companies whould not have to reimplement the same functionality every time. You would also be able to reuse the info between apps ( a tape backup and a remote backup)

On the other side you can now have a third party come out with an even better backup interface then the one built into windows and have that replace the windows one.

An added benifit is that since you now have a single point of backup information - application developers can now plug into that and specify the file extensions that do need to be backed up for that extension type and you can now specify the applications to backup rather then directories. Apps can also provide a backup export type of functionality