I’ve been doing a little work on a WCF service that reads an Excel file. My development machine is running Windows 7 64bit and my service was deployed to IIS. I kept running into a problem with opening the OleDb connection to the Excel file: “Error: Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0' provider is not registered on the local machine.”

Turns out that Office Jet provider will only run in 32bit. After changing my ASP.NET processes to run in 32bit everything ran just fine.

This KB article shows how to change ASP.NET to 32bit: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894435/en-us

Nowadays there are a variety of tools and services available that provide insight into the quality of the code. In order to quantify quality a number of metrics are collected and used to create a maintainability index number. Visual Studio Team System gathers metrics to put a number on the quality of your code. While Omnext offers code is a company which offers services around providing insight into the functioning, quality, and size of software. Now what to do once you have a number? What does it really mean, other than wanting to be good and not score low on a report?

I offer a basic solution:

A project which scores high on maintainability can be maintained by junior to medior skilled developers.
A project that scores low requires senior developers to maintain the application and effectively do what a junior could do on a better code base.

This leads to a simple mathematical deduction.

A senior developer costs 30% to 40% more than a junior. Therefore a bad system will cost 30% to 40% more to maintain than a good system. Of course the increase is not quite linear so if we put it on a sliding scale/table we get:

Feel free to refer to this as the Blomsma Code Metrics Cost Factor.
:-)

Here are the two presentations I did at last weeks Augusta Developer Event.

02-24-2010 MDN - Choosing between WinForms, WPF, ASP.NET, Silverlight.pptx

02-24-2010 MDN - Silverlight and Section 508 compliance.pptx

Last week at the BAND user group meeting in Bangor me and Chris Bowen had a little unresolved discussion about how SQL Azure manages backups. Today I found (thanks to Ben Rees) a segment of a presentation that was done at PDC’09 by Dave Campbell and Tony Petrossian. I grabbed the screen that covers what is and what will be available when it comes to backup.

1. Automatic failover. Every SQL Server instance will be configured for automatic failover. This is part of the standard service, no additional charge.
2. BCP, SSIS or other custom tools. Today (3/1/2010) there is only one way to create backups and that is pull the data to a local backup. You end up paying for bandwidth usage.
3. Database clone. A on demand backup which creates an (almost) instant replica of your database. Useful before doing schema changes and you could easily schedule the creation of a daily clone if you wish to do so. You pay for the storage. This feature should become available 1H 2010.
4. Continuous Backup. Backups run as specified by user where you will be able to restore the database to a specific point in time. Pricing not available yet. This feature should become available 2H 2010.

Update: Original video is here.

VS2010 is not yet available on Amazon.com, but VS2008 with MSDN subscription is. If you purchase VS2008 with a MSDN subscription today then you will still qualify for a free upgrade to VS2010 when it goes RTM.

More info on the offer here: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/howtobuy/ultimate-offer.mspx

Now that the Release Candidate is available and RTM is scheduled for April 12th it will be time to see how you can get licenses for these great tools.
Read the Licensing Whitepaper to find out what you need: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=2b1504e6-0bf1-46da-be0e-85cc792c6b9d

Visual Studio will create ‘obj’ folders within your solution to store a bunch of temporary files. You can remove these files in a number of ways.
One easy way is to use Windows 7 Search to look for all the ‘obj’ folders and just delete them manually.
To do this I use the ‘kind’ keyword in the query box.

Tip: Just typing ‘kind:’ will give you a list of choices to choose from.

For a complete overview of the Windows 7 Search syntax go to: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/technicalresources/advquery.mspx

Both Visual Studio 2010 RC as well a Team Foundation Server 2010 RC are available to MSDN Subscribers as of today.
Go to: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/downloads/default.aspx

If you want to provide feedback on this release then you do so by using Microsoft Connect.
Go to: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio

For any additional information about versions of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4,
Go to: Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Release Candidate

Time for the first Augusta Developer Event of 2010. Join us for a morning filled with information about Silverlight. Shawn, Chris and Mark will present a variety of topics and we've planned a group discussion, so make sure you come prepared with questions, examples and your experiences.

When
February 24th, 2010 at 9:00am.

What is Silverlight?
Shawn Robichaud – 15 min
Introduction to Silverlight for decision makers, architects and developers.

Choosing the right technology
Mark Blomsma - 30 min
Silverlight vs. WFP vs. Windows Forms vs. ASP.NET. A session for decision makers, architects and developers. Which technology to use for which scenario?

Choosing the right technology – group discussion
Everyone - 30 min
Silverlight vs. WFP vs. Windows Forms vs. ASP.NET. A session for decision makers, architects and developers. Which technology would YOU use for which scenario? Please come prepared with questions, examples and ready to share your experiences.

Silverlight and Section 508 compliance
Mark Blomsma – 30 min
“Section 508 requires that all Web site content be equally accessible to people with disabilities. This applies to Web applications, Web pages and all attached files. It applies to intranet as well as public-facing Web pages.” (http://usability.gov).

Silverlight architecture overview
Chris Bowen – 30 min
Introduction to XAML, Silverlight assemblies, n-tier development, asynchronous behavior, …

Silverlight + Windows Communication Foundation overview
Chris Bowen - 30 min
Introduction to WCF based on a Silverlight demo.

Silverlight + RIA Service overview
Chris Bowen - 30 min
Introduction to RIA Services based on a Silverlight demo.

Wrap up
15 minutes.

Location
The event will be held at:
State of Maine Offices
Harlow Building
First floor conference room
18 Elkins Ave
Augusta

RSVP
Please register so we can make sure we have sufficient room.
Register here: http://www.maine-devnet.org/Home/SignUpForEvent.aspx.

Amazon is finally offering a Kindle which will also download books when you’re overseas. Not sure if they’re hitting the sweet spot when it comes to pricing. I think I’ll wait for the various slates (slim tablet PC’s) that are becoming available this year.

My suggestion for Apple and HP: put a WhisperNet Mobile card in your slate that will allow free access to just your AppStore!

Whoah! Just received an email from PJ:

“We are pleased to present you with the 2010 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Visual C# technical communities during the past year.”

I’ve once again been honored with the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Award. This is the seventh year running that I’ve been lucky enough to receive this great award and I it’s great to be part of the group of people that receive this award.

Another extension method… I just ran into the need to humanize some strings into more friendly ones. This can be used to humanize the name of an enumeration. It will turn a “CamelCasedString” into a “Camel Cased String”.

publicstaticclassStringExtension
{
   ///<summary>
   /// Humanize a "CamelCasedString" into "Camel Cased String".
   ///</summary>
   ///<param name="source"></param>
   ///<returns></returns>
   publicstaticstring Humanize(thisstring source )
    {
       StringBuilder sb =newStringBuilder();

       char last =char.MinValue;
       foreach (char cin source )
        {
           if (char.IsLower( last ) ==true &&char.IsUpper( c ) ==true )
            {
                sb.Append(' ' );
            }
            sb.Append( c );
            last = c;
        }
       return sb.ToString();
    }
}

Soma just announced that the beta period for VS2010 and .NET 4.0 has been extended and the release date is being pushed back a couple of weeks (no new date mentioned yet).

Also, in addition to the 2 beta’s that have been released there will be an additional public Release Candidate that everyone gets to play with :-)

Read more: http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2009/12/17/visual-studio-2010-and-net-framework-4-beta-period-extended.aspx

Bing Maps just released a new (beta) way of exploring maps. It allows you to walk and look around ‘inside’ the map. With Sophie sitting next to me on the couch we took a walk around Fenway Park.

Use this link to jump to the ticket office: http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/default.aspx#5872/lat=42.34667&lon=-71.098862&alt=-48.11&z=30&h=137.8&p=2.9&pid=5082/5003/0.6002=q:Fenway+Park,+Boston,+MA+USA:lat:42.3586715525037:long:-71.0566996783018

I’ve been doing some research into writing a DDE client in C#. Turns out there is project on CodePlex called NDde (http://www.codeplex.com/ndde) which offers a good starting point. For some reason it took many Bing’s and Google’s before stumbling onto this little gem.

Today I wanted to provide some feedback on a cool product (Live Mesh) I’ve been beta testing. I clicked the feedback link and saw this:

I guess I’ll have to learn Japanese :-)

Update: Feedback for Live Mesh can go here: https://connect.microsoft.com/LiveMesh

Update: Vote for my suggestion: https://connect.microsoft.com/LiveMesh/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=516914
My suggestion is:

I'd like to be able to temporarily take a folder offline. I imagine being able to right click on a Mesh Folder and choose from being offline for X amount of minutes or X hours.

Scenario:
As a developer I share my sources folder across multiple machines. Every recompile in Visual Studio leads to files getting synced. I don't need them to be synced until I'm done for the day/morning/afternoon.

I imagine this feature appeals to anyone who shares a folder with high frequent changes.

The schedule for the December Software Development Event is set (see below). There is another great line up of speaker and it looks to be a great event. Sign up at: http://www.sdn.nl/SDN/SDNEvent/SDNEventdecember2009/tabid/132/Default.aspx.

The event will be held at;
Van der Valk Hotel Houten
Hoofdveste 25
3992 DH Houten

Schedule

The sessions for the 3rd Dutch Code Camp have been posted to www.codecamp.nl. The Code Camp will be held on November 21, 2009 at the Hogeschool in Rotterdam (Netherlands).

When moving to Windows 7 I also moved from 32bit to a 64bit operating system. The experience has been great, but PDF previews in Outlook 2007 weren’t working anymore. Bink.nu has the solution:
http://bink.nu/news/fix-adobe-pdf-preview-handler-on-64-bit-windows.aspx

Scott Hanselman put up a page to help you detect whether you’re running the latest version of .NET available and also helps you figure out what the smallest version is tha you can download.

Go to http://www.hanselman.com/smallestdotnet/ for more information.

Just discovered that TFS2010 will retail for $499 and this will include provisions to allow 5 users (without CALs) to access the server. This is regardless of installation choice: Basic, Advanced or Custom.

More on: http://beta.blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/shair/archive/2009/10/24/tfs-2010-server-licensing.aspx

I won’t be able to make it, but just to remind everyone else :-)

Presenters: Greg Howe and Jeff Hall, BAND co-leaders
Room: Libra Conference Room, Husson University, Bangor

Jeff and Greg lead the BAND together. As developers Jeff is somewhat conservative and well thought out in his approach, while Greg tends to "wing it" and doesn't enjoy having to write test plans and documentation. However, instead of their differences making it impossible for them to work together, they see how they provide ideas and tools to each other. They are excited to bring their minds together and show how differences can work in your favor for really neat solutions.
This session has Jeff showing how you can work with XML natively in SQL Server, Greg showing you how to integrate jQuery into your web apps, and then both Joes will show how you can make a neat data-centric solution using the two technologies together.

Speaker Bio:
Jeff Hall is a software developer for Occupational Health Research in Skowhegan, with experience including ASP.NET, WinForms, unit testing and deployment.
Greg Howe is a Microsoft Certified Application Developer and has been programming applications since he was 13, maxxing out a Commodore 64. He currently builds web sites by day and night, working as a web software developer for EMHS in Brewer and doing side jobs where he can. He loves doing web work and enjoys it when someone says "That can't be done".

Register Now

A feature I’ve been waiting for in the ReportViewer control is “Export to Word”. After installing Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 I immediately created a little test to see if the feature made it. Good news! It did. Here is a screenshot:

From Scott Guthrie’s blog:

VS 2010 Product Line SKU Simplifications

With VS 2010 we are simplifying the product lineup and pricing options of Visual Studio, as well as adding new benefits for MSDN subscribers.  With VS 2010 we will now ship a simpler set of SKU options:

• Visual Studio Express: Free Express SKUs for Web, VB, C#, and C++

• Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN: Professional development tools as you are used to today with the addition of source control integration, bug tracking, build automation, and more. It also includes 50 hours/month of Azure cloud computing.

• Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN: Premium has everything in Professional plus advanced development tools (including richer profiling and debugging, code coverage, code analysis and testing prioritization), advanced database support, UI testing, and more.  Rather than buying multiple “Team” SKUs like you would with VS 2008, you can now get this combination of features in one box with VS 2010. It also includes 100 hours/month of Azure cloud computing.

• Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN: Ultimate has everything in Premium plus additional advanced features for developers, testers, and architects including features like Intellitrace (formerly Historical Debugging), the new architecture tools (UML, discovery), test lab management, etc.  It also includes 250 hours/month of Azure cloud computing.

More on: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/10/19/vs-2010-and-net-4-0-beta-2.aspx

PCMag reports the following:

Microsoft said Monday that Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 are now available to MSDN subscribers.

Microsoft also added what the company is calling the "Ultimate Offer," making it available to all active MSDN Premium subscribers at the official product launch on March 22, 2010. Under the offer, all active MSDN Premium subscribers will be transitioned to a higher-level Visual Studio 2010 with MSDN subscription at the product's launch.

The beta will also be made available generally on Oct. 21, Microsoft said. Microsoft will provide more details at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles on November 17 to 19.

Go to: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2354440,00.asp

Brian Harry has a post on a little gem called Team Foundation Server 2010 Basic. Price and such is not yet know, but it is set to be a replacement for Visual SourceSafe.

TFS 2010 Beta 2 is available for download (if you’re an MSDN subscriber).

Read the more here: http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2009/10/01/tfs-2010-for-sourcesafe-users.aspx

Go to: http://msdn.microsoft.com to start downloading (I’m at 15% right now :-) ).

If you’re a little confused about the rebranding, then go here for a nice overview of the new names and how they replace previous versions.

The MSDN Visual Studio 2010 page can be found here.

Registration for the 4th quarter MSDN (.NET) Northeast Roadshow has just opened up!  This totally FREE event will be held on Tuesday, December 15th.   Thankfully, we were able to secure more convenient hours this time around.  The event will run from 9:00 am thru 3:30 pm in the Florian Hall of the Central Maine Commerce Center in Augusta. (a.k.a. Public Safety/M.E.M.A)  These events target .NET developers and analysts, or those actively training to become one.  Microsoft Developer Evangelists Chris Bowen and Jim O’Neil will be making the drive up from their regional offices in Massachusetts in order to lead the presentations.

AGENDA

•    WCF (Windows Communications Foundation)
•    Silverlight RIA (Rich Internet Applications) and the MVVM design pattern (Model-View-ViewModel)
•    Where to find help when you get stuck.
•    LINQ  (Language INtegrated Query)
•    ASP .NET Webforms and AJAX

Please register in advance by using the following link:
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032429336&Culture=en-US

Jim O’Neil has a great post with a list of links to resources that are useful for developers targeting Windows 7.

Go here: http://blogs.msdn.com/jimoneil/archive/2009/10/17/code-camp-12-7-on-7-resources.aspx

The Dutch Windows 7 Community Launch will be held on Monday night during the Software Development Conference 2009.

SDC 2009 attendees will receive a link per email to register.
If you are not an attendee at SDN Conference 2009 then register through the Microsoft website.

I just ran into a little problem when attempting to run a Visual Studio unit test on my Windows 7 machine. I downloaded log4net.dll and wanted to use it in a project, but when running the unit test I ran into the following error:

Turns out that a downloaded file is blocked. You can unblock the file by right clicking the file and choosing “Unblock”.

Make sure you remove all copies of the assembly (if you have copy local = true) and then recompile.

I just spend 15 minutes trying to get a remote desktop connection to a brand new Windows Vista box. Couldn’t get it to work. Turns out it runs a Home Edition of Vista.

Important note: Remote desktop is only included in the Professional, Business, or Ultimate versions of Windows. Home editions do not have remote desktop.

More information on enabling Remote Desktop Connections: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/turn-on-remote-desktop-in-windows-vista/

Chris and Jim are coming to Maine and this time their bringing their TechNet friend Dan Stolts.
Augusta will be home to the MSDN Northeast Road Show and the TechNet Unleashed tour on the same day!

More info on the event can be found at: http://blogs.msdn.com/cbowen/archive/2009/07/20/announcing-the-fall-2009-northeast-msdn-roadshow.aspx

Note: You need to register separately for the MSDN and TechNet event!

Update [09-10-2009]: Corrected Jim’s name and Dan is the man that is doing the ITPro sessions :-)

Last night at the BAND (www.bangordevelopers.com) meeting we all did 10 minute presentations on the tool(s) we love as developers.

On my list were: Total Commander, LinqPad, Microsoft Office (codegen with Excel rules :-)), VMWare & VirtualPC, Live Mesh. Also on the list should have been Reflector.

Total Commander

Great tool for FTP-ing files and comparing a local folder hierarchy to the hierarchy on the ftp-server. Also much more reliable in FTP-ing large amounts of files than Windows Explorer.

See: www.ghisler.com

LinqPad

A must have for people using LINQ to SQL and Entity Framwork. Helps a lot with figuring out what the exact SQL statement is that get generated from your LINQ statement.

See: www.linqpad.net

VMWare Converter, VMWare Workstation and VirtualPC

These tools are invaluable in creating clean testing environments and separating multiple development environments on a single machine. VMWare converter allows you to grab a physical harddrive and convert it into a virtual machine. Very useful for Windows 7 migration scenarios!
See: www.vmware.com, www.microsoft.com/virtualpc

Live Mesh

Is only in beta, but already an invaluable tool for remote desktop connections across firewalls and synchronizing files across (virtual) machines.
See: www.mesh.com

Reflector

.NET Reflector is a tool any serious .NET developer cannot do without. View sources of any .NET library you use in order to track internal workings. Love it!
See: http://www.red-gate.com/products/reflector/

VSTO offers a number of classes to access Outlook information, but these classes do not implement IEnumerable<T> and are therefore not useable in a LINQ expression.

I wanted to be able to search for appointments using LINQ and write code that looks like this:

          var appointments = new Appointments(); var selectedAppointments
= from appointment in appointments where appointment.Start
<= end // end is parameter && appointment.End
>= start // start is parameter && appointment.Categories.Contains("Billable") orderby appointment.Start select appointment;

To do this I converted the Items collection in an Outlook Folder to an IEnumerable<Outlook._AppointmentItem>.
The code for the Appointments class looks like this:

          using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Outlook
= Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook; namespace Develop_One.OBiOne
{ /// <summary> /// Class
to wrap a collection of Outlook.Items as an IEnumerable of Outlook._AppointmentItem. /// Doing
this allows you to write LINQ queries against the Appointments. ///
</summary> internal class Appointments : IEnumerable<Outlook._AppointmentItem>
{ private Outlook.Items _items; ///
<summary> /// Default constructor will use
the items in the default Calendar folder to initialize items collection. ///
</summary> internal Appointments() { var app
= new Outlook.ApplicationClass(); var cal
= app.Session.GetDefaultFolder(Outlook.OlDefaultFolders.olFolderCalendar);
_items = cal.Items; } #region IEnumerable<_AppointmentItem>
Members public IEnumerator<Outlook._AppointmentItem>
GetEnumerator() { // use the private AppointmentsEnumerator. return
new AppointmentsEnumerator(this._items);
} #endregion #region IEnumerable Members System.Collections.IEnumerator System.Collections.IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
{ return this.GetEnumerator(); } #endregion
private class AppointmentsEnumerator : IEnumerator<Outlook._AppointmentItem>
{ private System.Collections.IEnumerator _items; internal AppointmentsEnumerator(Outlook.Items items)
{ _items = items.GetEnumerator(); } #region IEnumerator<_AppointmentItem>
Members public Outlook._AppointmentItem Current
{ get { return (Outlook._AppointmentItem)_items.Current;
} } #endregion #region IDisposable Members public
void Dispose() { return; } #endregion
#region IEnumerator Members object System.Collections.IEnumerator.Current
{ get { return (Outlook._AppointmentItem)_items.Current;
} } public bool MoveNext() { bool result
= _items.MoveNext(); while (_items.Current is Outlook._AppointmentItem == false &&
result == true) { result = _items.MoveNext(); } return result;
} public void Reset() { _items.Reset(); } #endregion }
} }

I just came across a nice add-on for Windows Live Writer which allows you to paste colorized source from Visual Studio.

Download it here: http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=d8835a5e-28da-4242-82eb-e1a006b083b9&bt=9&pl=8

I’m doing some work where a user can select data based on choice like “This week” and “Last month”. I wrote a bunch of extension methods that are pretty generic and may be useful for others.

Here is is:

          public static class 
          DateTimeExtensions { ///
<summary> /// Return the date that is the
start of the week relative to the specified date. ///
</summary> /// <param name="date"></param> /// <returns></returns> public
static DateTime GetStartOfWeek(this DateTime date)
{ DayOfWeek day = date.DayOfWeek; int days
= day – CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.FirstDayOfWeek; DateTime start
= date.AddDays(-days); return start.Date; } ///
<summary> /// Return the date that is the
start of the week relative to the specified date. ///
</summary> /// <param name="date"></param> /// <returns></returns> public
static DateTime GetStartOfLastWeek(this DateTime date)
{ return date.GetStartOfWeek().AddDays(-7); } ///
<summary> /// Return the date that is the
end of the week relative to the specified date. ///
</summary> /// <param name="date"></param> /// <returns></returns> public
static DateTime GetEndOfWeek(this DateTime date)
{ return date.GetStartOfWeek().AddDays(6); } ///
<summary> /// Return the date that is the
end of the week relative to the specified date. ///
</summary> /// <param name="date"></param> /// <returns></returns> public
static DateTime GetEndOfLastWeek(this DateTime date)
{ return date.GetEndOfWeek().AddDays(-7); } ///
<summary> /// Return the date that is the
start of the month relative to the specified date. ///
</summary> /// <param name="date"></param> /// <returns></returns> public
static DateTime GetStartOfMonth(this DateTime date)
{ return new DateTime(date.Year,
date.Month, 1); } /// <summary> /// Return
the date that is the start of previous month relative to the specified date. ///
</summary> /// <param name="date"></param> /// <returns></returns> public
static DateTime GetStartOfLastMonth(this DateTime date)
{ return date.GetStartOfMonth().AddMonths(-1); } ///
<summary> /// Return the date that is the
end of the month relative to the specified date. ///
</summary> /// <param name="date"></param> /// <returns></returns> public
static DateTime GetEndOfMonth(this DateTime date)
{ return new DateTime(date.Year,
date.Month, date.GetDaysInMonth(), 23, 59, 59, 999); } ///
<summary> /// Return the date that is the
start of previous month relative to the specified date. ///
</summary> /// <param name="date"></param> /// <returns></returns> public
static DateTime GetEndOfLastMonth(this DateTime date)
{ return date.GetStartOfLastMonth().GetEndOfMonth();
} /// <summary> /// Returns
the number of days in the month of the specified date. ///
</summary> /// <param name="date"></param> /// <returns></returns> public
static int GetDaysInMonth(this DateTime date)
{ return DateTime.DaysInMonth(date.Year,
date.Month); } /// <summary> /// Return
the first day of the year relative to the specified date. ///
</summary> /// <param name="date"></param> /// <returns></returns> public
static DateTime GetStartOfYear(this DateTime date)
{ return new DateTime(date.Year,
1, 1); } /// <summary> /// Return
the first day of the last year relative to the specified date. ///
</summary> /// <param name="date"></param> /// <returns></returns> public
static DateTime GetStartOfLastYear(this DateTime date)
{ return new DateTime(date.Year
- 1, 1, 1); } /// <summary> /// Return
the last day of the year relative to the specified date. ///
</summary> /// <param name="date"></param> /// <returns></returns> public
static DateTime GetEndOfYear(this DateTime date)
{ return new DateTime(date.Year,
12, 31, 23, 59, 59, 999); } /// <summary> /// Return
the last day of the last year relative to the specified date. ///
</summary> /// <param name="date"></param> /// <returns></returns> public
static DateTime GetEndOfLastYear(this DateTime date)
{ return new DateTime(date.Year
- 1, 12, 31, 23, 59, 59, 999); } }

The Zune-HD has gone on pre-order at Amazon.

I just finished upgrading my laptop (main machine) to Windows 7. I decided to go with an in place upgrade (after making a backup :-) ). I was a little worried that the Live Mesh beta might cause some problem, but… no problem. The system has been upgraded, Office 2007 is running, my Adobe AIR apps are running and Live Mesh is fully operational!

Congrats to Microsoft for an excellent upgrade experience!

Just answered a question from a buddy about Windows Live One Care. The Live One Care product is being discontinued and will be replaced by Microsoft Security Essentials.
Microsoft Security Essentials is in beta right now. From what I understand Microsoft Security Essentials will be a free solution.
More info here: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/.

From KezNews: “…the final product will be available only before end of 2009...”

Just found out that there is now a company offering sponsored tweets (http://sponsoredtweets.com/). Will this be the end of Twitter, or will my virus scanner move these messages to my ‘spam tweets container’? Where do I get to opt-out? The site pretends to do ethical spamming (http://sponsoredtweets.com/ethics/) but offers no simple opt-out feature.