CristiPotlog

I just stumbled upon this gem: Top 25 Free Icon Resources for Web Designers.

If you are in despair for some free graphics those may come in handy.

Labels: Free, Internet, Programming, Software

Microsoft press officials released the text of Ballmer’s letter to the media one day after unnamed sources close to Microsoft told some reporters that Microsoft was losing patience with Yahoo’s reticence to take up Microsoft on its January 31 offer to buy Yahoo.

Microsoft says Yahoo has three weeks to negotiate a decent deal, after which time Microsoft is going to take his case directly to Yahoo! shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy bidding to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board.

I don’t believe that Microsoft has any real intention of walking away from this deal. I feel there’s so much overlap between Microsoft and Yahoo that this merger seems feasible, but a hostile proxy battle is the surest path to mutually assured destruction. Microsoft shares have already fallen more than 10 percent since the company first sprang its unsolicited bid on Yahoo, and market research has shown that it can take years before companies recover from a hostile takeover.

However, even thou Microsoft implies that Yahoo! has not answered their offer, Yahoo! has released to the press a statement on February 11, concluding that the proposal is not in the best interests of Yahoo! and our stockholders.

Labels: Internet, Software

After years of living in denial, Microsoft has finally decided to stop trying to fight open-source software, by releasing 30,000 pages of documentation for Windows (both desktop and server products) that were previously available to partners only through trade secret licenses. Redmond is making also available new licenses to a large number of its software patents “on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, at low royalty rates.”

In a series of recent moves including the launch of http://www.opensourcehero.com/ site, that will launch February 28, the same day as Windows Server 2008, Microsoft has released to the press “New interoperability principles.”

The four principles it is declaring are:

(1) ensuring open connections
(2) promoting data portability
(3) enhancing support for industry standards
(4) fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities.

In order to improve visibility for following acts, the company has setup a new site, that will allow access to latest developments in Microsoft's products.

Labels: Microsoft, Open Source, Programming, Software

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML Working Group has published a draft of the HTML 5 specification, the first major update to HTML in 10 years, factoring in changing tastes around rich-media applications and online collaboration.

Much has changed since the early dot-com days of December 1997 when HTML 4 was published. Now developers, designers and users have unlocked the Web's potential. Sites have moved from being a collection of static pages to media-rich communities leveraging participation.

HTML 5 is defined in a way that it is backwards compatible with the way web browsers handle deployed content. Some of the new elements in HTML 5 relate to structure and presentation. The new section and article tags, for instance, should be familiar to those of you who have worked with docbook. There are also new elements for navigation, headers, footers, figures, and dialog. Media support gets a boost, with the canvas drawing system as well as new audio and video tags. Improvements to HTML forms include support for date and time input elements and a new datagrid that will support interactive tables and trees. HTML 5 also gets basic templating functionality and support for repeating elements.

A full list of changes from the previous version can be found here.

UPDATE: Here's some more in-depth The HTML 5 Draft Hints at a Brave New Web

Labels: Internet, Programming, Software

James Lau has A basic guide on upgrading Visual Studio 2005 SDK packages to build in the Visual Studio 2008 SDK.

There are several things you need to be aware of when you are porting a VS 2005 package to VS 2008. This blog post will guide you through the process, step-by-step.

Labels: .NET, Programming, Software

Sun Microsystems announced an agreement to acquire MySQL AB, the company behind MySQL database, one of the world's fastest growing open source databases. MySQL database is regarded as one of the core components of open source server infrastructure, the so-called Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP (LAMP) stack.

In a blog post where MySQL published its official announcement of the acquisition, the company expressed strong affinity for the Solaris operating system. MySQL community vice president Kaj Arno wrote:

"Solaris has a special position in the heart of MySQL, as it was the first platform under which MySQL was developed. Linux came second. Internally, code coverage tests were long performed just on Sun. And with the DTrace probes planned as part of 6.0, some types of optimization of MySQL applications are the easiest on Solaris."

"The combination of MySQL and Sun represents an enormous opportunity for users and organizations of all sizes seeking innovation, growth and choice," said Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL. "Sun's culture and business model complements MySQL's own by sharing the same ideals that we have had since our foundation -- software freedom, online innovation and community and partner participation. We are tremendously excited to work with Sun and the millions of members of the MySQL open source ecosystem to continue to deliver the best database for powering the modern Web economy." (from Sun Press Releasses)

This has not come as a complete surprise. MySQL has previously turned down Oracle’s offer.

Sun's acquisition of MySQL broadly validates open-source database solutions as viable alternatives to proprietary commercial database products like those from Oracle and IBM.

Labels: Java, Open Source, Programming, Software

On a post on Netscape blog, Tom Drapeau, AOL's director of the Netscape brand, announced that AOL will end support and development for the Netscape Browser. Support will continue for the current version of the browser, Netscape 9, by releasing patches or security fixes until February 1, 2008. After that date, all development will stop and there will be no more active product support for the browser.

Originally released in 1994 during the nascent days of the web, Netscape Navigator was the underdog contender in the "browser wars" of the late 1990s, when it faced stiff competition from Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. Netscape released its browser's source code and created the Mozilla project in 1998. AOL then acquired Netscape in 1999.

AOL's Drapeau recommends for the nostalgic users to download Mozilla Firefox, and add on the Netscape's theme and extensions pack for Firefox.

As of February 1st, 2008, Netscape will continue to serve as a general usage Internet portal.

Labels: Internet, Software

I have started planning a project a few months ago. A Romanian clone of Digg. Not the first one, I assure you. I'm still gathering features for this site, hoping that it will be a blast. If not a ground breaker, at least a decent Digg clone :-)

And now, not at a totally surprise to me, comes this article from Scripting News, "The next step in Digg clones".

It talks about all other Digg wannabes out there, taking some points out, and insisting that there is a place, even if some might call it "niche" for sites that emulate Digg.

Even more, at the and of the article the author summarizes the whole idea:

"So that's the idea. I want starting a Digg-like community to be as easy as creating a weblog on blogger.com. Just fill in a form, click Submit and off we go. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Sure most will be ghost towns, there will be press articles talking about the abandoned communities, but I bet we look back in a couple of years and see the landscape in the blogosphere has changed yet again."

You might think that this will discourage me, but it feels nice to know that more people are working on the same field. It gives you a sense of competition.

Labels: Internet, Programming, Software

Somasegar has announced that his team has released to manufacturing Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5.

"We hope that Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 enables you as an individual or as a team to build great applications. Whether you are a professional developer or a software enthusiast, are building applications for the client, server, web, or devices we hope you have fun with these products as your software is our passion."

The entire family of Visual Studio products (from the Express Editions to the Professional version to Visual Studio Team Suite) and .NET Framework 3.5 are available for immediate download here.

Update:
For those of you intereseted in VSX, Aaron Marten published an update on his blog: "As a reminder, the August 2007 CTP of the Visual Studio 2008 SDK is not compatibile with the release version of Visual Studio 2008.". But he thinks they have the final build, and have a plan on posting it to the web later this week after some final testing.

Labels: .NET, Programming, Software, Visual Studio

Microsoft recently released a CTP (Community Technology Preview) of Sync Framework SDK – “a comprehensive synchronization platform enabling collaboration and offline for applications, services and devices with support for any data type, any data store, any transfer protocol, and network topology.”

According to the documentation (see Introduction to the Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime), the Sync Framework will allow developers to take online services and databases offline. Microsoft says the framework can synchronize “any type of file including contacts, music, videos, images and settings.” The Sync Framework also includes “built-in support for synchronizing relational databases, NTFS/FAT file systems, Simple Sharing Extensions for RSS/ATOM, devices and web services.”

The framework consists of:

• Core sync runtime that provides universal synchronization functionality agnostic of data types and protocols
• Ability to create and consume Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE) feeds
• Components to enable the rapid development of sync solutions on platforms including SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, NTFS file systems and removable drives
• An extensible provider model that integrates data sources into the sync ecosystem
• Rich conflict handling for automatic and custom resolution
• Built in support for filters to sync subsets of collections such as mailboxes or media libraries

You can use the Microsoft Sync Framework to build collaboration and offline scenarios such as the following:

• Seamless online/offline data access for rich internet applications (RIA) and line-of-business applications
• Peer-to-peer collaboration on content such as files/folders, email, contacts, appointments, audio, video and settings across any number of PCs, services, and devices

At the moment the Sync Framework only supports Windows Vista, XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Service pack 3. It’s unclear whether Microsoft will expand that support in the future.

For more information on the Microsoft Sync Framework SDK - CTP 1, you can visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/sync, and you can get a copy from Microsoft Downloads.

Labels: Database, Programming, Software

Mashable has published a list of tools and resources for building web sites and web applications aggregated from previous posts on their site.

"We’re all living on the web, and we all seem to be starting our own websites, so it’s time we all learned the languages that make it run. We’ve gathered over 250 resources to help you get going."

Check it out, it's pretty amaizing what they've done.

Labels: Internet, Programming, Software

Microsoft's Scott Guthrie announced yesterday on his blog that he and his team will make a long awaited shift in .NET development, a move that was expected for years by many developers. With the .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 release later this year, Microsoft will be offering source code (with source file comments included) for the .NET Framework libraries. The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL).

"We'll begin by offering the source code (with source file comments included) for the .NET Base Class Libraries (System, System.IO, System.Collections, System.Configuration, System.Threading, System.Net, System.Security, System.Runtime, System.Text, etc), ASP.NET (System.Web), Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms), ADO.NET (System.Data), XML (System.Xml), and WPF (System.Windows). We'll then be adding more libraries in the months ahead (including WCF, Workflow, and LINQ)."

The .NET Framework source libraries will be available for download as a standalone install (allowing you to use any text editor to browse it locally). VS 2008 will also provide integrated debugging support within the IDE, enabling you to press F11 ("Step Into") and drill into the .NET Framework source implementation with the debugger.

The post offers some preview screen-shots and detailed info.

It's not a first for Microsoft to disclose source code for some of its libraries, they have done it before with MFC, and this "new" concept looks a lot like that. Maybe there are other reasons for doing that at this moment, with Sun openning the source code for Java.

This move has stirred reactions from Mono development community, Miguel de Icaza him self publishing a long post on his web log making some speculations about why Microsoft choosed to open the source code.

Labels: .NET, Mono, Open Source, Programming, Software, Visual Studio

Microsoft released ADO.NET Entity Framework Beta 2 and the accompanying Entity Framework Tools CTP.

ADO.NET Entity Framework Beta 2 includes many improvements and some added features since the last release of the June CTP, including support for complex types, events to customize code generation, improved DataBinding usability, improvements to LINQ queries, and so on.

ADO.NET Entity Framework Tools Preview is the first release of the designer, having limited functionality and only supporting a subset of the ADO.NET Entity Framework. The tools works with Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 enabling developers to visually design model and mappings.

The Entity Framework Beta 2 and Entity Framework Tools Docs can be found here, and you can also find some samples for the Entity Framework Beta 2 here.

You can find out more about this on ADO.NET Team's blog.

Labels: .NET, Programming, Software, Visual Studio

Visual Studio 2008 "ORCAS" Beta 2 is out, Microsoft's Somasegar announced on his WebLog. He also annouced the availability of .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2 and Silverlight 1.0 RC.

To add to this, Microsoft is releasing a Go-Live license for Visual Studio 2008, the .NET Framework 3.5, and Silverlight 1.0 to make it easier for you to start developing.

Download location for beta is here.

There is an alternative, faster way to get the beta, by using the Microsoft Secure Content Downloader from Microsoft Research. With this tool you can simply choose a specific version from a combo, and start downloading it.

Labels: .NET, Programming, Software, Visual Studio

I've just watched Jonathan Harris' presentation at TED about his new projects that not only gather from the Web the emotions posted by people (We feel fine), but even present with astonishing visuals search terms that float around the screen like clouds of constellations (Universe).

Universe presents an interactive night sky, composed of thousands of twinkling stars, which then connect to form constellations. Each of these constellations has a specific counterpart in the physical world — a story, a person, a quote, an image, a company, a nation, a mythic theme. Any constellation can be clicked, making it the center of the universe, and causing all other stars to enter its orbit. Universe is infinitely large, and each person’s path through it will be different.

Both projects are amazing, showing a truly innovative mind. Jonathan Harris is an artist and storyteller working primarily on the Internet. One part computer science, one part anthropology, and one part visual art, his work seeks to explore and understand the human world through the artifacts people leave behind on the Web.

"As humans, we have a long history of projecting our great stories into the night sky. This leads us to wonder: if we were to make new constellations today, what would they be? If we were to paint new pictures in the sky, what would they depict? These questions form the inspiration for Universe, which explores the notions of modern mythology and contemporary constellations."

You can watch the presentation here: Jonathan Harris: The Web's secret stories.

Check out Jonathan Harris' site for more projects, and even a short bio.

Labels: Internet, Search, Software

Microsoft recently announced that Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas), along with Windows Server 2008 (previously known as Longhorn) and Microsoft SQL Server 2008, will be officially launched on February 27, 2008. This is a setback from previously announced date targeting the end of this year rather than the beginning of the next one.

Labels: .NET, Programming, Software, Windows

Microsoft has released a new community technology preview of the ADO.NET Entity Framework. This CTP contains updates to the ADO.NET Entity Framework since the Visual Studio Codename "Orcas" Beta 1 release, including changes in Object Services, Query, Entity Client, and the Entity Data Model Wizard in Visual Studio.

Microsoft is still far from finishing this software, however. This is suggested by the fact that the preview targets one single version of Visual Studio, this being Visual Web Developer Express. You cannot use the CTP with other version of Visual Studio for now. Is nice though, to be able play with future versions of pre-released software, and know in advance how the database programming will change using Microsoft development tools.

The Entity Framework has had a bumpy existence from the start. Microsoft first intended to release is as part of Visual Studio 2008 "Orcas", which is set for release later this year. But in late April the Redmond giant sacked it out from VS2008, saying it will be offered later next as an extension to VS2008.

You can download the CTP here.

Update: You can find installation instructions on the ADO.NET team blog

Labels: .NET, Programming, Software

Great news from Microsoft on this year's Tech-Ed. The new Visual Studio 2008 Shell will be available for download and redistribution for free as part of the Visual Studio SDK.

The Visual Studio Shell will be available to Visual Studio Industry Partners with Visual Studio 2008 beta 2 and will be available to the broader development community with the release of Visual Studio 2008.

The Shell comes in two flavors:

• integrated mode, optimized for programming languages;
• isolated mode, optimized for specialized tools.

I think this will usher a new era of innovation for independent language and tools creators for which a full blown IDE was the greatest restriction in targeting larger audiences. Previous licensing schemes, such as Premier Partner, involved a considerable amount of money (10K/year) to access the bare-bone IDE.

Deploying applications based on the Visual Studio Shell will be royalty-free. This involves that you owe a Visual Studio Professional license still, but redistributing is now free.

This year's Tech-Ed launched also the first "virtual" edition on http://virtualteched.com/ site. There you can find a video, A Closer Look at the Visual Studio Shell, where Microsoft group product manager Joe Marini discusses the newly announced Visual Studio 2008 Shell.

Labels: .NET, DSL, Programming, Software

According to this blog post, Microsoft is currently in the process of "rescheduling" this fall’s PDC (Professional Developer Conference).

Aparently Microsoft will exhaust all its developer goodies by this fall, as the post states:

"By this fall [...] upcoming platform technologies including Windows Server 2008, SQL Server code name “Katmai,” Visual Studio code name “Orcas” and Silverlight will already be in developers’ hands and approaching launch, which is where we’ll focus our developer engagement in the near term. We will update this site when we have a new date for the PDC that is better timed with the next wave of platform technologies."

This sounds a little bit strange, as we all know that Orcas is rather late than early, Microsoft needing to ship it pretty soon in support for the Office 2007 development platform. They even stripped features again from it, such as the Entity Framework, which is not included in the current beta, an d will be shiped during the first half of 2008 as an update to the Orcas release, according to ADO.NET team blog.

Labels: .NET, Programming, Software

Here's an interesting read from Microsoft Watch.

Apparently, Bill Gates said on on his keynote at this year's WinHEC, referring to the period between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 come to market, that:

"The hardware actually wasn't ready. Graphics interface was a case where we got out in front, and made sure that developers, and tools, and hardware came along."

Joe Wilcox, author of the piece speculates that Bill Gates is trying to parallel this year launch of Vista and the first beta of Longhorn Server to that period, arguing that a the market these days isn't quite ready for what Vista has to offer.

For more see the whole article: Is Vista One Step Ahead?

Labels: .NET, Programming, Software