Forums

Zune Social interface is wonderful

intelman — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 23:33:08 GMT

I had not realized how clean and easy to use the zune social web interface was for podcasts. The silverlight player is quite quick and easy to use.

http://social.zune.net/podcasts/

I was honestly not aware... It is nice for viewing podcast videos without flash! Hell, even listening to audio without flash is wonderful!

Recording video in Windows Mobile 5.0/6.0

Anthony Papillion — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 19:18:25 GMT

Hello Everyone,

I just started work on a Windows Mobile application that needs to record video and then be told what the name of the video is once it's recorded. I've worked pretty heavily with Windows Mobile in the past but never with the camera. Can anyone point me in the direction of a good tutorial on how to record video programatically in Windows Mobile 5/6?

Thanks in advance,

Anthony

3D Map, Human Interface and Social Game

Robin Lynn Ore — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:08:57 GMT

This was on my Twitter this morning and found this link. I was working on something similar and found your threads here for map applications. Lets do a map project on my assigned data bases while the supercomputer is still free. I know how this is done and what is possible with this. Can anyone help?

http://brightcove.newscientist.com/services/player/bcpid1873822884?bctid=52818280001

Subtle aspects of an app's support for Windows 7

contextfree — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:12:04 GMT

Some OS features, like extended Jump Lists or progress indicators in taskbar icons, require that your app be explicitly programmed to use them. Others are generic and function for all apps -- but, like screen resolution, some apps can still be more suited than others for use with them.

For instance, I find taskbar window previews and Aero Peek useful when I have too many apps and windows open and am looking for things to close (I tend to take a "GC cycle" approach to window management). I can quickly and smoothly move though the windows and just middle-click on anything I don't need. But this breaks down when I come to an app such as Firefox that displays a modal confirmation dialog when you attempt to close multiple tabs; that totally breaks the flow. When possible, it's much better to just close the window and have a mechanism for restoring closed tabs, as Chrome does. Aero Snap is another example: not every application (or website) is usable at half width, especially on laptops, but I think developers should give some thought to making their apps work well in this mode, as when it does work it's very convenient for coordinating between applications.

List your Travels

May28th2018 — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:49:18 GMT

So most of us programmers have been called to different places around the world to conferences, meetings, and to train.

Where have you been to in the world?

Me:

England (West London, mostly populated by Indian people, and overweight potty-mouth brits)

France

Switzerland

Germany

Japan

Canada

China

Hong Kong

and I am going back to China in 3 days for 2 weeks heading through Beijing as well as a return visit in mid-January. It really is a nice place to visit despite all the negative press they get in various countries.

Trip requirements, CHECK!, and away I will go. Teaching our world neighbors the fine art of software. :)

So where have you been, and what are some cool spots to visit for programmers?

cpu sharing on windows 7

Nick — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 06:57:33 GMT

Lately I have been programming shaders on DX 9. I use my laptop for most of the development work which is fine for most of the time but I would really like to use the spare desktop I have as a HPC unit. What would be ideal is if Windows was able to use CPU resources from a network computer. I know windows server 2008 can be used to add HPC nodes but I did rather keep using Windows 7 and get the HPC benefit.

anyone having an Envy 13?

Ion Todirel — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:46:42 GMT

the thing looks nice, how is the touchpad, is it really that bad?

C9 Guy

Joshua Ross — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:10:08 GMT

On the little C9 guy on the end of the new videos, why is the bluetooth ear piece drawn on the XY plane? Shouldn't it be on the ZY?

Life

Titan — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:03:17 GMT

Planetary monadic system or an isolated ( independent ) monad, foreign to most everything else operating in and around it? Lovelock is right. Life as we know it is a planetary scale system (a wet rocky planet in current implementation. More importantly, the scale of biologic, chemical and physical interoperation extends to all regions of planetary activity). This is true, even mathematically.

See the fractal?

Video Downloads Truncating

gav135 — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 01:10:58 GMT

File downloads have been truncating since (roughly) the PDC. I've used every download manager I can think of for both Channel 9 and PDC videos (though I understand they're on the same server), and they just keep truncating. It's a rare day when I manage to complete one (stop and resume is either ineffective, or lasts only for a moment). I've tried from multiple locations with 10mb/s connections.

photostory - win7 equiv please?

me — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:01:06 GMT

its funeral time again (someone tory worked with)

how do i do a photostory?

it wont load - i tried loading photogallery - which has links to Photo Collage maker - 30 day trial #%$^

Ive read forums saying you cant - some guy poppa john is writing about replacements

people in the forums are bemoaning not being able to edit their files..

and that they LEARNED it already

i thought ms moved this into photogallery ... no idea anymore

all i know is i cant make a thing for a funeral

and that moviemaker is also gone

and someone should be FIRED

now someone PLEASE tell me im wrong and point me to what i have to do on win7 to Photostory

(hey its a verb!... and you killed it??)

ie; Windows Live Photogallery with PhotoStory TM

sob

WMP on Windows 7

Doctor Who — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:35:45 GMT

I've recently installed Windows 7. Been playing with it for about a week or two. Love it!

One question I wonder about, though, is Windows Media Player (WMP) in Windows 7. With Windows Vista I would share out my music to others at home, and they would share out their music with me, etc. It was nice to have this. However, WMP in Windows 7 has the notion of "media streaming", and it looks as though it is only available to the homegroup that is defined in Windows 7. Have I got it correct? Is it the case that I can only share out my music to others in my home network if they also have Windows 7 on their machines?

Nokia N900 N-Tour-Age In Dubai, Maemo Mobile OS Based on Linux

Go Microsoft !!!!!!! — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:48:43 GMT

Firefox 3.7 D2D-accelerated

Go Microsoft !!!!!!! — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:12:23 GMT

Download

Article .

IE 9 Beta 1?

PDC Cartoon

Ian Walker — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:36:08 GMT

One of the Microsoft stands had a guy offering to do a caricature of you (using a TouchScreen / Paintbrush and Corel PaintIt Touch).

Each image was saved as a file using your email address.

I havn't received mine yet, does anyone have a contact (or received their own yet)?

Ian

URL as pointers

William Stacey — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:40:40 GMT

Some suggest (in pdc language panel) services taken to the extreme could be abstracted almost to the pointer or reference level from client perspective. Such as:

string name = ("http://mydomain.com/myservice.svc").Name;

One could imagine that the url ref at edit time could dynamically load service meta data and cache as needed for compile time and intellisense needs. Question becomes does this level of abstraction hide too much? Do remoting boundaries need to be more explicit because they are slow, async in nature, and error prone?

Should every property and method on a service just be async by design?:

// Get a property.

("http://mydomain.com/myservice.svc").Name.OnComplete(n=>

{

Console.WriteLine("{0} returned", n);

});

var q = from c in http://mydomain.com/myservice.svc/Customers

select new {Name = c.Name, Age=c.Age};

Does this just all boil down to doing implicit Subscribes to a remote service using local observers and callbacks? Is this just more sugar over the Astoria model? Would making all services "astoria" like services, finally create the true cross platform global fabric?

Memory barrier puzzle

William Stacey — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:06:31 GMT

In the following code, if you leave "if (someFlag) count++" commented out, the Thread never exists because "complete" is cached somewhere in processor. An explicit barrier will fix this race as expected. Question is, if you un-comment the test on "someFlag", it also behaves as if MemoryBarrier() was called, because the thread stops. I imagin this is because the additional test somehow invalidates the cache or register so as to read "complete" from main memory. Any thoughts? Please don't respond with "use a lock", because that is not the question. Another question is, why doesn't the write barrier appear not to flush cache after setting "complete"? At least on a single cpu, I would expect the full barrier to flush cache and force the reader thread to grab "complete" again from mem.

//Note: to see the race, compile in "Release" and run without debugger

private void MemBarrierTest()
{
    bool complete = false;
    bool someFlag = false;
    var t = new Thread(() =>
    {
        int count = 0;
        while (true)
        {
            //Thread.MemoryBarrier(); // Read barrier.
            //if (someFlag) count++; // Acts like a barrier in tests? Comment out to timeout.
            if (complete) // complete is read "false" from cache or register, as no barrier.
                break;
            count++; // Do some work.
        }
    });
    t.Start();

    Thread.Sleep(1000);
    complete = true; // Set complete to stop thread.
    Thread.MemoryBarrier(); // write barrier.
    if (!t.Join(2000))
    {
        MessageBox.Show("Worker timeout. Did not see complete flag.");
        t.Abort();
        return;
    }
    MessageBox.Show("Join done.");
}

There must be a better way

CKurt — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:31:58 GMT

Working on a Silverlight App and wrote this:

[code language="csharp"]

if (detectMovement) {
LocationRect currentView = myMap.BoundingRectangle;
double maxLon = currentView.Northeast.Longitude;
double minLon = currentView.Southwest.Longitude;
double maxLat = currentView.Northeast.Latitude;
double minLat = currentView.Southwest.Latitude;
//
fullSource = newCollection.getFullSource();

if ( newCollection.isAvailable() ) {
currentSource.Clear();
IEnumerable<KMLElement> placemarks =
from element in fullSource
where (
(element.Location.Longitude >= minLon)
&& (element.Location.Longitude <= maxLon)
&& (element.Location.Latitude >= minLat)
&& (element.Location.Latitude <= maxLat)
)
select element;

foreach (KMLElement elementje in placemarks) {
currentSource.Add(elementje);

}
myDataGrid.ItemsSource = currentSource;
}
}

[/code]

It works, but its' really slow because the LINQ query must do a lot of calculations. I want to get all placemarks within a givin BoundinRectangle. It there wa way to do the LINQ Query assyncronously?

Ps: Below the Map there is a Daradrig showing the places on the map and I want to filter the grid depending on the currentview of the map. It is also very wierd I have to rebind the datagrid to the result of the query everytime one filters AND I have to use a foreach loop to be able to bind it, because the LINQ query does not return an ObservableCollection

change the size of Start Menu

KateSun — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:25:15 GMT

when some notebook is very small, i hope enlarge the size of Start Menu, how to programe it through C#?

or any other solution~~~

Happy Thanksgiving 9ers!

William Stacey — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:07:19 GMT

concurrent collections and TakeWhile

William Stacey — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:59:33 GMT

Shouldn't thinngs like the concurrent collections (px), have TakeWhile method(s) that take a predicate?

That way, you can remove multiple items inside the single lock context atomically, instead of entering and exiting lock context after each take.

Example.

var readers = bc.TakeWhile(p=>p.IsReader);

Linq Extentions adds things like TakeWhile, but those operate from the "outside" of the collection. This needs to work from the inside. Would there be a general way to implement this pattern for collections in the px? Could there be a way to make the standard extentions, special case concurrent collections in the ways it makes sense - some interface maybe?

new pc and Windows 7 my review

jason818_253.33 — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:55:45 GMT

As stated on a different thread my video card burned out on my 7 year old computer. I thought I would upgrade to Windows 7 from XP and buy a new computer...

Dell hardware.

Dell's Studio XPS 8000. The i7 Intel core processor helps run the machine smoothly and quietly. The 1TB hard drive should be enough room for all my programs, pictures and video.

The entire tower is nice and compact and weighs about half what my last computer weighed.

The dell key board is a little compact. Or maybe I just have large hands, but I don't think that is the case. Until I get used to this key board I think Ill like a little larger key board.

Software and OS

Manufacturer installed Windows 7 home premium and the thing ran from boot up. Every thing seems to be plug and play from additional external drives to my side winder joy stick and canon inkjet printer. Even the internet ran with out having to put in some install disk. Very easy set up.

Interface is well designed with hints of artistry. the only thing I would change would be the color over the x button to exit a window. I think red is a little dramatic. I would like to have seen a yellow or orange. red just says "stop" and some times a person really does want to close the window.

I got rid of the dock on the interface. I am accustom to having shortcuts placed directly on my desk top and I don't need this doc thing to tell me where to put them. I am not a mac user, I don't need my hand held. I did look at a mac but they were so over restrictive they made me feel like I had to fit into a cookie cutter mold to use one.

IE8 is running just fine. I have two tabs set, each running ether google or bing as my primary search engines. kind of a neat thing I could do.

What I am amazed with is the compatibility of windows 7 and that it runs all my old software. Adobe CS2, Office XP and so on. Windows and the i7 Intel processor opens aps in a flash.

The personalized Aero themes are a family favorite. lots of fun art and games. The sounds for Windows 7 are kind of pleasant as well.

This is the first time I have looked at an operating system with admiration towards those who have built it. With windows XP and Windows 95 I never gave it much consideration. I hope my windows 7 experience continues to be an enjoyable one.

Workflow Custom Activity

pdiddypdiddy — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:56:54 GMT

Is It possible to have a dependency property on my custom activity that is an object like a Person object.

Then when I drag and drop the custom activity, I'd like to be able to enter the firstname and lastname of the person directly to that Person property.

I don't want to create a dependency property for firstName and Lastname.... Is this possible ? Or I have no choice to create 2 seperate dependency property

New toy, Sony Vaio P Series

Lee Dale — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:25:39 GMT

Bought one of these the other day, loving it so far. Built in mobile broadband is a god send, can access internet all the way to work on the train.

Has a Intel Atom processor, 2GB RAM, 128GB SSD. Running Windows 7 Professional with Aero enabled, and the performance is very good for such a small machine, battery life is pretty good also.

Installed Visual Studio 2010 with Office 2010 also.

XamlPadFx

j.fox — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:23:28 GMT

I've found a xaml editor named XamlPadFx(http://www.xamlcast.com)

The concept behind the editor is very simple and interesting to me.

You can easily insert new elements and attributes using a pointing device.

But, unfortunately, It seems the application doesn't support for Silverlight.

I want them to develop a version of silverlight, or should I do it by myself maybe.