From the monthly archives:

August 2008

TIP: How to be an annoying presenter #1 – the ZoomIt virus

August 30, 2008Humour

I consider myself an average presenter. Not terrible, but not great. I’m working on being a great presenter.
To this end, as well as working on what I should be doing, I’ve also been spending time analysing what should be avoided. Over the coming weeks and months I’ll be sharing a few tips on what not [...]

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VSTO: Deployment via SharePoint

August 29, 2008Main

Deploying a Word document level VSTO add-in via SharePoint
Actually, more correctly, we are going to deploy via ClickOnce but deliver via SharePoint.
This the second demo on VSTO deployment, and follows on from my previous post about VSTO deployment via ClickOnce.
It covers building a very simple Word document level add-in, deploying to a network share, uploading [...]

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VSTO: Deployment via ClickOnce screencast

August 29, 2008Main

Deploying an Excel application level VSTO add-in via ClickOnce
If you are new to VSTO deployment then this simple little screencast (just under 14 mins) may help. It covers the scenario of deploying an application level add-in via ClickOnce to a network share, and then the experience a user would have installing it.
TechEd 2008 – Session [...]

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TECHED: RFID Palava

August 25, 2008Link

UPDATE: I changed some wording slightly – the term ‘tracking people’ was misleading – see comments for more details
It’s going to be interesting to see the reactions of attendees to the RFID tag palava at this year’s TechEd in Sydney.
For those who missed it, the dudes at Breeze (Mick Badran and Scott Scovell [...]

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LINQ: Converting LINQ results to an XML file (via a DataTable)

August 24, 2008Microsoft

I need some help with this one please…
I’m sure this is basic stuff but I’ve been fighting VB.NET a little lately as I try to get clever with some Outlook add-ins I’m writing (Disclaimer: I’m in *management* now so I don’t write code much these days
Anyway I have a pretty simple requirement: I [...]

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TECHED: Interesting mix of non-bloggers

August 24, 2008Link

I have to say I’m very much looking forward to TechEd next week. There’s a ton of exciting things to learn about this year, and with a swag of releases under their belts I’m sure Microsoft has had a tough time putting together the session tracks.
As per usual I’ll be attempting to cover almost all [...]

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Photosynth: What did I miss?

August 24, 2008Link

I finally got a chance to spend a little time checking out Photosynth tonight.
Once you get over the initial let down (it’s pretty under-whelming I have to say) and start playing with it, you start to realise how useful it can be. As Mary Jo notes, this is aimed squarely at the consumer market, so [...]

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SBTUG: This Wed 27 Aug 2008 – Working efficiently with JIRA, and Electronic Forms in Office

August 24, 2008Main

This Wednesday at the Sydney Business & Technology User Group (SBTUG) is looking really good with two presentations on improving business processes.
The first uses an Atlassian product, the second uses Microsoft.
When: This Wed 27 August 2008

Time: 6pm (until approx 8:30pm)
Where: Microsoft, North Ryde
Contact: Craig Bailey : 0413 489 388
Cost: Free (Pizza [...]

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Atlassian and Microsoft Office

August 18, 2008Elcom

The links between Atlassian and Microsoft Office grow stronger with Atlassian’s latest Connector between Confluence (their Wiki product) and Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. In this case the Connector allows content on the Confluence Wiki to be imported, edited and updated from Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Check out the super simple 3 and half minute [...]

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What’s changed in Visual Studio 2008 SP1?

August 17, 2008Link

Maarten van Stam has a nice tip for isolating specific changes made in SP1. Check out his post here, or just run this search and you’ll see the list of 902 pages worth of doco changes.
You can then narrow that further by selecting one of the one of the Refinement options:

Refining by Visual Studio [...]

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VSTO: Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and Outlook Add-in issues

August 16, 2008Main

By now I’m assuming most of you have downloaded and installed Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008. For those who haven’t here’s a few links you may want to note:
Before installation
If you’ve installed any hot fixes over the last few months you should clean them up first
Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack Preparation Tool (14 [...]

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PERSONAL: Health and Fitness

August 16, 2008Main

Warning: personal ramblings about my health and fitness (or lack thereof) ahead – nothing technical here.
Back at the gym
I went back to the gym again yesterday after a month off (not by choice mind you, but due to being really sick for 2 weeks, and then visiting the hospital most nights for the last few [...]

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VSTO: Harry Miller and the VSTO glasses

August 15, 2008Link

When I first started viewing this video by Harry Miller (on the Microsoft VSTO team) I started to cringe. It seemed a little over the top (and probably clashed with my general sense of Australian humour – sadly to be funny in Australia you usually need to be crude, critical or self-deprecating – just saying…)

But [...]

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Visual Studio Gallery

August 9, 2008Link

Thanks to Deepak Kapoor for alerting me to this one – the Microsoft Visual Studio Gallery – a list of add-ins and extensions for Visual Studio. It’s been around for a little while now, so you may already know about it. But if not, start here with the list of Highest Rated add-ins for Visual [...]

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SQL 2008 Support in VS2008 SP1

August 9, 2008Link

A nice little interview with Milind Lele by Beth Massi, uncovering some of the nice data sync enhancements coming in SP1 (especially if you are connecting to SQL Server 2008). If you haven’t seen this stuff covered before, then this 15 minute overview is worth watching.
But treat this as a ‘what’s possible’ not a ‘how [...]

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Internet hairdressers

August 9, 2008Link

I’m sure this must be available already, but I haven’t seen it anywhere (leave me a comment if you know of one)…
As I was getting my hair cut this morning I really wished I could have been surfing the net (my hair dresser isn’t very chatty and I kinda get uncomfortable looking at myself [...]

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Advice for would-be CIOs

August 7, 2008Humour

I don’t know if you read CIO magazine. I do because I plan on being a CIO in the next 5 years.
Of course, I realise that reading a magazine won’t make you into a CIO, but it sure does highlight the skills you need to work on. Take last month’s edition for example. In the [...]

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CLARITY: Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO)

August 3, 2008Clarity

After chatting with a few people about Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) recently, it’s clear that the technology is not that well understood (even though, in my opinion, Microsoft have done a pretty good job of articulating it – much better than say OBA for example). So in this post I’m aiming to [...]

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Corneliu – Anti-spam email encoding tool

August 2, 2008Community

I’ve been meaning to blog link this for ages, because I use it all the time but always have to go searching for the URL…
So here it is, Corneliu’s most excellently helpful Anti-spam email encoding tool. Put in your email address and it’ll return a nice encoded one that most spam bots won’t recognise (sure [...]

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Mojave Experiment thoughts

August 2, 2008Link

The Mojave Experiment has received a fair bit of attention in the last week or so. Some think it’s great, others deceptive. One comment I found interesting was Mary-Jo’s thought that if Apple had done this type of marketing they’d be getting applauded. Maybe. (As an aside, Adrian has a nice little discussion of [...]

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