I retired from personal blogging in July 2008 but you can find me over at blog.xero.com

Track Changes, What’s that?
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 12:09 am on Saturday, 31 January 2004

Australian political candidate gets burned by journalists walking through updates made to the Word document of his speech.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,8531027%255E2702,00.html

What a person says (or writes) can convey a lot of information.  Visibility of the editing process has infinitely more meaning.

Great example of how our everyday technology has the power to change things, often in unintentional ways when information is hidden. 

Bet the Adobe salesman makes target this year.

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Another good RSS explained article
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 9:26 pm on Tuesday, 27 January 2004

http://www.mnot.net/rss/tutorial/

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Don Box on Indigo
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 8:52 pm on Tuesday, 27 January 2004

On news.com Don Box discusses the move from COM & DCOM to Indigo

The problem with most distributed object technologies, Box said, is that programs require particular class files or .jar files (referring to Java), or .dll files (Microsoft’s own dynamic linked libraries). “We didn’t have (a) true arms-length relationship between programs,” Box said. “We were putting on an appearance that we did, but the programs had far more intimacy with each other than anyone felt comfortable with.”

“How do we discourage unwanted intimacy?” he asked. “The metaphor we’re going to use for integrating programs (on Indigo) is service orientation. I can only interact by sending and receiving messages. Message-based (communications) gives more flexibility.”

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Paradise Modem Upgrade
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 7:40 am on Tuesday, 27 January 2004

I’ve been having problems with my Paradise connection for the last few weeks.  It seemed to be loosing packets. 

They’ve just swapped out the COM21 modem for a Motorola surfboard.

Heaps faster!! If you still have a COM21, get it changed.

For some reason they have to change your static IP address, so I had to change firewall settings and get a DNS entry changed.

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Web services company targets Exchange
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 4:27 am on Tuesday, 27 January 2004

On news.com a company provides a web service email back end that users access through their Outlook client.

For Microsoft, this is the inevitable issue of building tools and promoting web services that allow other developers to cherry pick pain points.

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P/Invoke
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 7:08 pm on Monday, 26 January 2004

P/Invoke lets you talk to native functions on Mobile devices.  New article on MSDN takes the fear out of it.

Creating a P/Invoke Library

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IM History now on MSN Messenger
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 8:50 am on Sunday, 25 January 2004

Not sure when it snuck in but now in the context menu (when you right click on a buddy), there is an option to view Messenger History.  Opens a new window I’ve never seen before.

I’m running 6.1.

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Introducing AfterMail
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 1:03 am on Sunday, 25 January 2004

Over the last few months I’ve been working on a new product called AfterMail with Mike Upshon of Kickstarter fame.

AfterMail works alongside Exchange (or any other email system) and loads all Enterprise email into a relational database, as well as booking attachments into the file system as a true single instance store.

We’d become frustrated that email had changed to a matter of corporate record, but was still managed by the hierachal model.  Exchange over a SQL store is still a couple of versions away which we believed created a great opportunity.

When Email is unlocked from the proprietary mail stores it becomes just another type of corporate data. Similar to financial information it needs to be very secure, but available when you need it (provided you have the appropriate profile).

Some of the benefits of AfterMail include:

More information is up at www.AfterMail.com

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“Could not open in Design view. Quote values differently …”
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 12:23 am on Sunday, 25 January 2004

One of the annoying bugs in the Visual Studio IDE.  For my own reference …

It’s the double quotes marked below …

<asp:hyperlink ID=linkReturn NavigateUrl=Prospect.aspx?p=<%=request(”p”)%> Runat=server>

… that are the issue.  Replace with single quotes …

<asp:hyperlink ID=linkReturn NavigateUrl=Prospect.aspx?p=<%=request(”p”)%> Runat=server>

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Headset Bonding Problem Workaround
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 9:30 am on Friday, 23 January 2004

A Jabra support person posted this which also seems to work for my HBH-65, implying it’s an iMate issue.

Select Bluetooth menu> Select Off> Select OK (BT is now disconnected)
Return to desktop (Today view)> Disable BT HS mode> Enable BT HS mode (User
to be prompted to turn On BT radio)>Select OK
Enter BT menu> Select On> Select OK (The XDA II returns to the “Today” view
and will try to synchronise with the HS again.
Check connection by establishing an outgoing call. If no sync - you will need to re-pair the two devices)

Andrew from Australia has followed the problem further …

Yep – It’s an issue with the Sony Ericsson firmware.. There’s “no solution” according to the SE engineers as it’s a series of changes made to support proprietary aspects of the new SE handsets… ie.. If you can find a REALLY old HBH 65 – Then it works (mostly).. The new ones don’t…

All up it doesn’t bother me as I’ve found that there’s PLENTY of cheaper and better headsets out there!! The Jabras are also hopeless.. Really unreliable..

Try the cheaper Bluetake (and similar) ones.. These are all REAL BT Headset profile units.. Rather than proprietary “versions” of the standard…

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XPSP2
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 4:47 am on Friday, 23 January 2004

A look inside whats in Service Pack 2.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1455935,00.asp

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‘Xen’ programming language unites C#, XML and SQL programming languages.
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 4:33 am on Friday, 23 January 2004

From Microsoft Watch.

More at Extreme Tech.

In Xen, you can also write code that performs filtering tasks just like select statements in SQL. Using our just created Customer table, we can retrieve all of the customers who have the name “Fred” and a custid greater than 100.

//Instantiating a Customer table called CustomerTable
Customer CustomerTable;

[Let's assume CustomerTable has some data that was filled in already by a user.]

//Selecting all customers named Fred with a custid greater than 100
Customer* Freds =
      CustTable[it.name==”Fred” && it.custid>100

So finally here’s an example of combining set based, ‘SQL type’ syntax with a procedural language.  Will these extentions ship with .Net and Yukon?

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WiMax inches closer
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 4:33 am on Friday, 23 January 2004

WiMax Chip Race Begins

With a range of up to 30 miles and data rates up to 70Mbps, WiMax is expected to help bring broadband access to rural areas and developing countries where it isn’t economical to deploy traditional last-mile connections.

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iMate + Headset
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 10:31 am on Wednesday, 21 January 2004

I’ve been using my iMate Pocket PC 2003 phone now for a few weeks. Impressions so far.

I still prefer the pda form factor as opposed to a smart phone so I don’t have to ‘thumb’ messages.  Maybe by the next generation they’ll get these down to a size that doesn’t feel like a trade off.

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The new wall status symbol
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 10:21 am on Wednesday, 21 January 2004

Met Andrew from Borg today and had a look at the wifi product’s he’s been developing. Impressive stuff.

Check out the specs on the Borg 8Slot Wave Guide.

Model: ALUWG-8SL
Type: 8 Slot Waveguide
Frequency: ~ 2.437 Ghz
Impedance: 50 Ohms nominal
VSWR: 1:1.2
Gain: 18 dbi
Radiation: = 180°
Polarization: Horizontal
Connector: N Type Female
Mounting: Dual U Bolt (not supplied)
Dimensions: 100X50X920 (length may vary)
Material: AL

What’s cool is the Borg gear pushes wifi distances out to several kilometers. 

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ASP.Net Overview
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 8:25 am on Wednesday, 14 January 2004

While googling just discovered this pretty useful pdf document that gives a good intro as to how ASP.Net works.

http://www.develop.com/conferences/conferencedotnet/materials/A2.pdf

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