This cost me two very precious hours today, so I thought I would share. In preparing my laptop for my upcoming trip, I needed to get the latest version of an app I wrote for a client in case I need to do any work for them while I'm away. The application uses the latest version of Crystal Reports which...

I spent a ridiculous amount of time moving an app with lots of Crystal Reports from VS2005 to VS2008. The VS part was a breeze. It was the move to Crystal Reports 2008 that slayed me. I learned a lot of lessons during this process and wrote them into an article for ASPAlliance in the hopes of helping...

Why oh why did I check out Instant VB after I spent 45 minutes trying to translate one line of code from C# to VB? Read more... [A New DevLife post]...

It took me a ridiculous amount of time to find this. First of all, do not download the trial version that's readily available. It doesn't have the Service Pack in it. I figured that out after I did the 350 MB download, unzipped and installed, only to have the same old problems I had before SP0. There...

Because my development machine crashed and burned last week, I had to build up a new box and decided to finally take the 64-bit plunge. Read more here: My first 64-bit computer [A new DevLife post]...

I just happened to discover this as I was setting up my new machine and grabbing Reflector off of the web. It only happened a week ago. There will still be a free community version but Red Gate will be able to put additional resources behind enhancing this tool that we can't live without. You can read...

It's been in there from the start (well at least since VS2003), but I have only recently started taking advantage of the "Format Document" and "Format Selection" functions in Visual Studio to help with the readability of code or xml. Read more... [A New DevLife post]...

I'm in SHOCK. I just learned about this option that I've always wanted in poweropint. When I present I always print out a set of 3 per page handouts then write notes to myself about demos in the area to the right. I often lose or throw away my notes and kick myself next time I want to do the presentation...

As per my previous blog post , I have just installed CR2008 Service Pack 0 and tested a report that I was unable to run when I upgraded from CRXI to CR2008. Not only did the bug go away, but now I am experiencing some amazing performance gains thanks to the new version of Crystal Reports. Read more here...

A few days ago I wrote that I had learned about some of the new goodies in SQL Server 2008 that would be of interest to developers after watching Rick Dyess' video, What about Developers? SQL Server 2008 and the Development Environment" It must have been a busy day last December when another similarly...

From last week's The New Yorker :...

Jeff McWherter wrote an article on ASPAlliance called Six Quick Crystal Reports Design Tips. When I first read through them I laughed at two in particular. One was how to get check boxes to appear on a report. I struggled with this one a few years ago and now use it frequently. Why didn't I just ask...

I spent a lot of time playing (and just attempting to play) with the new CR2008. Both what's included out of the box with Visual Studio 2008 and their standalone application. There were a lot of surprises. I wrote an article about everything I learned about things like backwards compatiblitiy, integration...

Ranting about the lack of updated images to use in our app development was a passion of mine for a short while (prior to VS2005). I just looked at what's included in VS2008 and was happily surprised! Read more... [A New DevLife post]...

I had never really though thought about using a spell checker for my code comments before. A blog post on the WebDevTools team blog got me thinking more about it. Read more [A New DevLife post]...

Memory is really cheap now - computer memory has dropped and thumb drives capacity is getting really big. Why is it that it makes me even more of a worrier? read more [A New DevLife Post]...

WHen I got VIsta, I jsut started using it. None of this studying business for me, no sir. SO of course, I have no idea where many functions are or how to use so many of the new features (or even what they are). I find them by chance or necessity or just osmosis. One thing I never really knew was what...

One week ago, I gave up on the Treo 700wx , gave up waiting for the "maybe in a few more months but we can't promise it" replies about Mobile6 phones and got a Blackberry. I like the Blackberry, really I do. But now Verizon has a Motorola Q with Mobile 6 available. I was only allowed one exchange, so...

My Blackberry "locked up" today and I thought I was going crazy. I was suddenly and utterly unable to call out or use the browser. It told me "Cannot connect. Call in progress." I knew there was no call in progress. All other non-connection functionality was working perfectly well. I powered the phone...

I solved a new showstopper login problem and finally figured out how to get alerts delivered by email! Read more... [A New DevLife post]...

I saw this in my Microsoft downloads email yesterday: Access 2007 Download: Access Developer Extensions Access 2007 Developer Extensions make it easy to deploy and manage solutions built using Access. Packing and sharing Access solutions has always been a pain in the rear. My recollection (it's been...

In their Q1 release, telerik is including the first release of telerik Reporting . With my well-documented, love/hate relationship with Crystal Reports, I was definitely eager to see telerik's implementation. Telerik is all about simplicity (of use) and design. So this first pass at Reporting has some...

If you forget to run particular apps (and I'm talking about key development tools) as an administrator, you may find yourself, as I did, spending a lot of time trying to solve the wrong problem! Read more [A New DevLife post]...

Dominick Baier posted this 3 months ago , but I only needed it for the first time today. It's quite handy having the SLN files as shortcts when doing conference presentations, and I am preparing my new Vista laptop for next week's DevConnections . Dominick created a little tool that you can use to run...

Activation by phone solved a strange problem which was suggesting that I had activated Office 2007 with my product key WAY too many times. Read more... [A New DevLife post]...

Now that I have Vista on my main development machine, I have had a chance to test out the variety of collaboration tools that I use in my work. Here's a post I wrote about what is compatible, what isn't and the status of compatibile updates from vendors . [A DevLife post]...

I have been using Quickbooks since it's DOS 1.0 version. I kid you not. My pet peeve with this software is online banking. When I download my AmEx bill, it takes me a horrrrrrrribly long time to get the transactions into my register. I paid $200 to upgrade from QB 2004 (?) to the newest version and even...

I have SS2005 on my development machine. Normally, I don't need to back up test data, but now that I have started using SourceGear Vault, the source gets stored in the database and therefore I definitely need to do the backups. I've set up backup maintenance plans before for a client, so even though...

I only discovered the ability to initiate remote assistance from my end, rather than having my client's go through the "ask for remote assistance" steps in WinXP, using Remote Desktop and kicking the clients off, using PCAnywhere or using a Live Meeting/WebEx type solution. Read more... [A DevLife post...

I was trying to clean up old unused folders on my website but there were empty folders that I just could not delete. The error message was that the folder was not empty. But it sure looked empty. I finally was told by my webhost that there were hidden files in there. Mostly the evil frontpage _vti_cnf...

As noted in my previous post, I have flagged and forgotten over 500 emails since 2001. With Outlook's new UI, flagged items are up front and center and now really useful, but not with 500 dead emails floating around in there. So I started going through them and got it down to 200 so far. Then I got even...

Now that the "Click to Active and Use this Control" is a fixed part of IE7, web developers have to pay more attention to the problem. I got bit by it because I'm embedding winform controls into web pages to do Ink on the Web. Here are some pointers to what we can do to not share this grief with people...

From Russ Helfand, creator of the CSS Friendly Control Adapter Toolkit, announcing a new version ! (Of course, this comes just weeks after my article about them in aspnetPRO is published :-), but I knew that was coming...) I'm pleased to announce that we have upgraded the CSS Friendly ASP.NET 2.0 Control...

I spent 2 1/2 hours yesterday trying to arrange a warranty replacement for a Dell monitor. The first hour was used merely trying to find the right means of contacting Dell for this problem. In the end, I succeeded, but there is something seriously wrong with how their info is managed... read more......

I have WS-FTP Pro 7.0 on both multiple computers as well as the newly released IE7. One computer has no troubles. The other gives me this interesting error when I try to start it up: The only solution is to click ok and then kill the app from task manager. Luckily, I found this thread in the Ipswitch...

Google Toolbar has a new feature called notifications. It took me a while this morning to realize that this was the service that was preventing me from starting up a 16-bit application (FoxPro 2.6). I had turned off all types of stuff, but when I killed the process for the GoogleNotifications in my task...

VPN is affected by the worm protection setting of NAV 2006. There is no obvious way to allow VPN unless you can figure out what app drives it. I googled and read other forum posts for quite some time tonight - most of them complaining, no real solutions. So turning off the worm protection in NAV is the...

Slow PDF printing? I had two suggestions - Print to Image and PostScript driver. For some reason, I settled with the first and never tried the latter until this morning. What a dope! [ read more... ] [A DevLife post]...

I had been mapping locations on local.live.com and then using the "email" button to get a link to send to people. This created a problem because the default for the link is zoomed in all the way. Some people said they were getting zoomed in all the way with the aerial view, which generally doesn't have...

Twice, I spent some time googling around for some way of having "copy file name" in my context menu in Windows. I saw a few utilities, but couldn't find anything (along the lines of Scott Haneslman's Ultimate Tools list) recommending any of them. So I happened to blog " wouldn't it be nice " and out...

It's not Scott Hanselman's famous Ultimate Tools list, but a short list of the utlities I use that make me happy. [ Read more... ] [A DevLife post] Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org...

Over month ago, Markus Egger pointed out this video of Office12 features that is on the Microsoft Office site. I finally got a chance to take a look at it today and am now inspired to reinstall my beta copy on my mobile pc (translation: my tablet) and play with it more. One of the things I think is cool...

Why I stuck with WS-FTP 7 for years is beyond me. I finally upgraded to WS-FTP Pro 2006 and was astonished with how awesome it is! [ read more ... ] [A DevLife post] Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org...

In reference to my " Vista 5308 -First Impressions " post, I was asked how I got the Vista Build 5308 specific video drivers that enable glass installed onto my Toshiba Tecra M4 Mobile (aka Tablet) PC. This machine has an nVIDIA GeForce Go 6600 TE 128M graphics card . I documented this in a post on my...

I now have built three VPCs to be used as bases for various testing. I can make a copy of a VPC and then use that copy to install "dangerous" bits - eg betas, ctps etc. My first VPC is a clean Windows XP SP2 system with all of the current updates. My second VPC is that plus .NET 2.0, VS2005 RTM and SQL...

One of my clients just had their ISA 2000 Server upgraded to ISA 2004 and were having some weird problems and finally got to the bottom of it - HTTP Request Filtering. Symptoms 1) There was one ASP.NET 1.1 app that was having problems with buttons on new records that did a server.transfer. But on pre...

I was at a party last night and someone asked me “so, have you got an Origami yet? Heh heh.” [ Read more... ] [A DevLife post] Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org...

I have a client who is a programmer with a small company that is creating a really cool on-line product. And I mean kew-well! His background is very strong in architecture and also he and his team have done a ton with WinForms but his ASP skills hark back to the pre.NET days. But he's doing the app in...

Maybe just cause I'm a dope and reallllllly stubborn. [ Read more ... ] [A DevLife post] Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org...

When I download pictures from my digital camera they are huge. I have to open them up one at a time in PSP and shrink them. The other day, after years of doing this stupid method, Ihad a great idea. I emailed all of the pictures to myself. When outlook asks "do you want to mail them as their original...

In December I bought a pair of new flat panel monitors. I had no idea the journey I would have to take in order to replace my KVM switch functionality which is simple and inexpensive with VGA monitors. [ Read more ...] [A DevLife post] Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org...

Okay this was an obscure problem. Luckily, I found the solution quickly enough in this long MSDN forum thread . The problem was that when I was trying to print the same report multiple times in an app, the 2nd time would always throw the error "Load Report Failed" on the SetDataSource command of my report...

When I bought my new HP LaserJet 1320 at the end of December, I was very frustrated to learn that there was a major conflict between the scanner software for my Canon scanner (CanoScan) and the printer . It was not possible to use the scanner as a copier because of this and anytime I wanted to make a...

Scott Guthrie blogs about the RSS Toolkit for ASP.NET 2.0 created by Dmitry Robsman on the ASP.NET team. The toolkit exposes an RSSDataSource which you can use with any of the databinding controls in ASP.NET 2.0. Check out Scott's post for all the details and how to's. Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org...

For as long as I've been using outlook, I have always clicked on the "new message" icon to create a message. I just accidentally double clicked on a whitespace below my message list in unread mail (where I have a red circle and yes I did that with a mouse, not on a tablet) and voila!! A new email message...

As I begin deploying new apps at my client site, we made a discovery that we were easily able to correct. After installing a .NET 2.0 app that uses Crystal Reports, we were unable to run Crystal Reports from our .NET 1.1 applications. We got an error indicating that it could not find the CrystalReports...

I'm pretty slow on the uptake sometimes. Leon Bambrick's TimeSnapper app was the top pick of the Larkware 2005 Developer Tool contest. I knew then that I needed to look at this program, but it unfortunately was on a long list of things I needed to do. Over the last few weeks, however, it bubbled up to...

I gave in and finally used on of my Support Incidents for a remote server debugging problem that was mystifying me and many others. Here is my experience (so far). [ Read more ... ] [A DevLife post] Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org...

You have a little piece of scotch tape on your finger but don't realize it. Your finger is a little swollen from being scratched. Lucky for me I a) noticed that little piece of tape that day and b) can use my other index finger until my right one is better. Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org...

My old HP Laserjet 4si had buttons on it that allowed you to control a lot of it's settings. The new fangled printers do this through html based application that you install on your computer and it is driven by java. I didn't mind that it was Java but it was definitely the source of many problems After...

I have an old HP Laserjet 4si that I bought a looooooong time ago. I think the retail price was $5000 and I paid about $3500. I can only remember that it was when I was living with a certain guy and we broke up when I was 33. So it is at least 11 years old! It has really been a die-hard and has MORE...

This newest version is built and compiled in .NET 2.0. I suppose this means it's time to get serious about porting a particular app that uses Infragistics controls to VS2005... Congrats Jason, Devin et alia... Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org...

Want to find out who is mucking with your computer? Would you believe it is one of the biggest corporations on the planet? Thank goodness for brains like Mark Russinovitch! [ Read more....] [A DevLife post] Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org...

I have thought about getting one of these for a while but didn't do anything about it. When I read Dave Sussman's blog post about his experience with it, I knew I had to have it. I just set it up and I love this. It will really save me when I'm paying bills and logging into lots of different websites...

Unfortunately, much of the effort behind this latest version of dasBlog is to deal with spammers. I mean, it's fortunate for us users, but it's such a pity that Scott, Omar and their elves have to spend so much of their valuable time dealing with this nonsense. As I'm getting about 200-400 referral spams...

Christian Weyer announces a major release of their Web Services Contract First tool, WSCF , as well as forums for discussion. www.acehaid.org...

I don't do a lot of work with RegEx, but I had to yesterday and needed a way to ensure I was writing it correctly. That means I finally downloaded and used Roy Osherove's great utility, The Regulator . That surely made my task a LOT easier! Thanks Roy. www.acehaid.org...

Scott & Omar and their merry little elves have been working hard and just released v1.8 of dasBlog that is filled with lots more spam protection and many other improvements. Scott lists the details and how to get the update here ... Thanks guys! www.acehaid.org...

This has confused me for a while and I just realized the solution. A few weeks ago I tried to download the Sharepoint help documentation which si a CHM file. I could never read it. The contents were there (on the left) but the actual documentation would not appear. The problem, I just realized when I...

The recent discussions about Sharepoint have piqued my interest (since I have been struggling with it for a few weeks) but not distracted me from my goal yet! Amanda Murphy, however has a LOT to say on the topic . She has a lot of experience with Sharepoint and her company, InfoTech Canada , dpes a large...

This bit me (again) today. It had been so long since the last time that I had to google for help. Problem: Select colA, colB, colC from tableA UNION Select colA, colB, colC from tableB when one of the columns is an ntext will result in this confusing error: "The text, ntext, or image data type cannot...

So, curious about how my Sharepoint adventure is coming along? It is all that I have been doing all week. Very unusual for me, who usually flits around from ... [ read more ] [A DevLife post] www.acehaid.org...

okay I give up :-) You know it's bad when I do this in my blog. I have tried the newsgroups and googled myself to death and the clock is ticking... I have been having a problem with getting file objects with SPWeb.GetFile for about a day. No matter what file name/path I pass into GetFile(), I get strange...

This is something I have learned is very confusing to people, as it was the most often asked question in my Security Basics for WSE talk. I have learned now to explain it as part of the talk, but thought to put it here as I had the same question asked in an email this morning. You can encrypt data with...

After fiddling with Sharepoint WSS for most of this week, getting advice from some Sharepoint geeks , reading the documentation,googling a lot and hanging out in the newsgroups, I have finally worked out that what I want to do is use a combination of all of the methods of working with WSS. My plan at...

There is nothing more fun than having a new project to work on and new things to learn. Yesterday I got involved with a project for my client where I am going to get to work with Sharepoint Windows Services for the first time. I have been a ... [ read more ] [A DevLife Post] www.acehaid.org...

Since February, the blogosphere has been abuzz with AJAX, which had been used by GoogleMaps and impressed the pants off of a lot of web developers. AJAX incorporates XMLHttp but is not limited to I.E. Now it is "hold the presses" at Microsoft who is planning [ read more ] [A DevLife post] TechEd Speakers...

As many people know I have had 2 1/2 years of HELL with trying to update applications from the web server. Maybe if I just went back to my clients and told them I will only write HelloWorld applications from now on, I could get it to work. TechEd Speakers Charity Auction http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI...

Okay - My name is Julie and I use FrontPage. I use FrontPage for the family websites: my parent's dog kennel , my sister's business and a few others . You know these sites, they are 95% static html and you are doing it for love (not money). Why not? My sister's business does use a little asp and we even...

One of the great difficulties of programming is having to accept the fact that we can't know every little function and feature that exist in our development tools. In the old days it was easy to write an application from end to end, understand all that was available to you in your IDE and database and...

Once a month or two months I need to print a shipping label. For years I have wanted a Dymo labelwriter , but it just didn't seem justifiable for the rare times I needed it. But I finally gave in and bought one last month. I have made 3 labels with it, but each one gives me such enormous gratification...

Juval Lowy is at it again. Not only is he creating .NET 2.0 components that we can use today in .NET 1.1 , but now he is creating VB components for C#. This from the man who is definitely a C# guy! What's next, Edit & Continue for C#? (Just kidding Juval, besides I think the E&C for C# camp already...

but you don't control the webserver box (i.e. it is on a webhost somewhere out in the world). I asked how to do this with DPAPI when you don't control the webserver. Paul Glavich and Rich Dudley were way ahead of me on this one. They both write web apps that can do the DPAPI on the webserver, then they...

I will write about what I have learned when I have time to absorb it all but I have seen great presentations by Steve Schwartz (overview of the variety of technologies to pick from for designing connected systems), Michele Leroux Bustamante (awesome look at doing ws-security with wse2 "beyond the wizards...

xTras.Net is one of the most creative vendors of 3rd party developer tools out there and owner Mike Schinkel has come up with another great idea! Xtras is publishing the "How to Select" guides edited (and sometimes authored) by Mike Gunderloy . I saw the first in the new series which was How to Select...

I had a very strange problem with SQL Server 2005 April CTP today that I have "solved" but just want to put it out there in case anyone has this happen too! I installed VS2005 Beta2 and SQL Server 2005 April CTP Developer on a completely repaved clean machine. There is nothing else on the box. I did...

I use SQL Server nearly every day and I know nothing about it. Two months ago I saw Rod Paddock running stored procedures line by line in SQL Query. I never knew you could do that. (highlight the lines you want to execute and hit run.) Today I was trying to do a query that was case sensitive. I guess...

Getting this computer fulfilled some of the satisfaction of the Mac Minis, I think, since I got it for a steal! This box has a really small footprint at about 10" x 10" x 3". It has an Intel 3.2 Ghz processor and usb ports for keyboard and mouse. The video is DVI so it's ready for digital and multi monitors...

Last week I bought a new machine for my Whidbey testing. It was a total steal. It arrived by UPS while I was gone today but had to be signed for. But the driver was enormously kind to leave his cell phone # and luckily he was still in my neck of the boonies so I was able to hook up with him and get my...

I have been struggling with a printer jamming problem for months. I even spent $400 on getting it repaired (it's one of those big honkin' LaserJet network printers) and still the paper was jamming. I have had the printer for 10 years and have *always* used plain copy paper. For the past 6 or so it has...

I just gave in and bought a new machine JUST for testing. It is faster than my regular development machine at 3.2 ghz, is a P4 and comes with 1 gig of ram already. They just kept slapping all of these discounts on ($50 off on any Optiplex between $400-$500 and $50 any GX270 or SX280) and the whole thing...

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start?ProductSKU=SDMHS95P%2fS&Dept=computers&CategoryName=cpu_Displays_FlatPanelLCDs_18%22 http://www.AcehAid.org...

According to this article based on research commissioned by Hewlett Packard, emails do more damage to our IQ's than weed! "The constant interruptions reduce productivity and leave people feeling tired and lethargic, according to a survey carried out by TNS Research and commissioned by Hewlett Packard...

I totally repaved my Whidbey test box with the intention of using Norton Ghost to create an image of a completely fresh machine before I install the beta 2 bits on it. The last step of the process is to install Ghost and it gives me the message: "To run Norton Ghost, you must first install Microsoft...

I gave up on this problem many many months ago and my one touch is sitting in a corner of my office detached from anything. There is hope for me yet to solve my backup problems. I am sure that when I plug it back in, I will discover that it is formatted as FAT. THANK YOU KIRK! http://www.AcehAid.org...

I have had a problem for a few years that when I vpn into a client's network, Windows Messenger automatically starts up and signs me in. Without even showing me anything in the systray. It's a little frustrating only because if I am VPNing in, that means I'm working and don't have time to chat. I finally...

It's starting to become a pattern I "lost" my Pocket PC at DevTeach in Montreal. I think I accidentally left it behind in the hotel room and it was never to be seen again - or something like that. After spending 45 minutes showing the very nice young waitress at the New York Sports Grill who is attending...

I just bought more memory for both of my laptops. I removed 256 chips from each of them. I can't think of anything to do but throw them in the garbage except that I see crucial sells the one I just took out of my Toshiba M200 for $43.00 and the ones I took out of my compaq are also $43 each . So that...

explanation? from the thoughtful Sam Ruby http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2005/02/16/SHA-1-Broken action item? from security expert, Keith Brown: http://pluralsight.com/blogs/keith/archive/2005/02/16/5907.aspx http://www.AcehAid.org...

Congrats to Scott Cate and company on a killer feature of EasySearchASP.NET . The tool lets you incorporate a search engine very easily right into your own website. But the new feature is "hints". It is REALLY cool. You can see it best right on the EasySearchASP.NET site by searching for something on...

Keith Pleas' " Guidance on Patterns & Practices: Security " hits the MSDN site. Security Digital BlackBelt WebCast Series schedule is online. http://www.AcehAid.org...

Soma announces that we will have new icons so we can build programs that look like the programs we USE! Hip Hip Hooray!!! many cheers for Microsoft responding to this very loud roar from developers. I know I was one of bajillions who asked for this. The icons and bitmaps that are given to us in VS2003...

Peter Provost is trying to help solve the DNS problems that the IDEP site is having. This is the organization I have been working with for the past 8 days in Bali, bringing supplies and aid workers into Aceh Province. We need data from different locations as they try to resolve the IDEP site's IP. Peter...

RSSInclude was a big help to me this morning. I was able to very quickly get the Aceh Aid Bucket Brigade blog feeding on to the IDEP Foundation Aceh Aid site. I'd like to be able to fine tune it more, but it does the trick. Thanks RSS-Info people. http://www.redcross.org...

C'mon Robert. This is not very subtle. As everyone's panting over the MSN Search announcement, Robert Scoble posts a big "HOW TO" on comparing desktop seach engines . Gee, could there be a connection? :-) Posted from BLInk!...

Makes perfect sense. Just because you are a sysadmin, does not mean you should have access to all fo the data in SQL Server. In his weekly SQL Server Tip, Roman explains how to set more concise accounts and permissions. Posted from BLInk!...

I finally got Norton Ghost and after hours of googling, gave up on the idea of backing up my 160GB drive which is a slave drive. I hate using my blog for tech support, but using Ghost 9.0, is there a way to back up a slave drive in a way that I could extract files if needed? You can do that with the...

This is *horrible* news ! I can no longer use the excuse that I do not have a box for Longhorn. But I'm busy with (oh, the how I want to say "busy with wse" but it's ADO.NET 2.0) right now and need to stay focused. You people are just cruel with your temptations. Posted from BLInk!...

I had a hard time remembering how to do this and was not using the right keywords in Google. There are a few ways to do temp tables in SQL. In SQL7 we could use a #tablename, but there are issues with that. It becomes part of the returned resultset and you have to remember to delete them. In SQL2000...

One of the advances of Crystal in version 8 was that we had the ability to create TTX files from our recordsets and then use the TTX files to design reports from. This alleviated a huge headache of being forced to either use that mistake of a database environment or hooking directly to databases to create...

Two of the new classes inside of System.NET.Cache are the HTTPRequestCachePolicy and RequestCachePolicy . It gives us some control on client side caching on a request by request basis. Since I think "web apps" when I think about caching, it took me some time to grok (with some help from a few folks at...

Although I was expecting some syntax changes, so far, my debugger visualizer that I wrote with the March bits and ran with the Beta1 still runs in the October bits. Two things to note: if you have the debugger visualizer project open in the same solution as the app you want to use it in, you will get...

Just for fun, I'm going to put the latest CTP of Visual Studio on my laptop that I will be using for my What's New in BCL Whidbey for ASP.NET developers presentation at next week's ASPConnections. Maybe I'll even try to run SQL 2000 Developer Ed. and sql 2005 express side by side. Just have to watch...

Geeze since March! Subscribed . Their second post is about what I need to do: dynamically embed an image into a report at runtime. Of course, it's on www.ASPADVICE.com ! Posted from BLInk!...

You probably know that Crystal was bought by Business Objects last year. Crystal is a great product with a horrible support reputation. That's not about individual support people (I spoke with an awesome one last night) but just an overall problem. I have suffered plenty as well. I will never get past...

I have been trying to figure out why my crystal reports are mysteriously growing to 2+MB in one of my applications. Ummm DUH - I kind of forgot that I had embedded a watermark in them and that file is over 1MB. I actually got them to call me to help me about it (awesome tech support guy who has been...

I have always had problems writing cd's. This is with 2 different cdr's and lots of different software over the course of many many years. I would have to toss about 2 cd's for everyone written. So I basically avoid it like the plague. But I just downloaded an ISO image and discovered that Windows XP...

KVM stands for Keyboard Video Mouse. Since I bought a new desktop this summer, my former daily driver was sitting in a corner doing nothing. I just bought a KVM 2 Port Switch made by LinkSys that is one sweet little cable with all of the connections built in. I can now switch between that computer and...

Cool!! This might finally enable me to rip that Access database out of one last of my old VB6 projects. It also made me wonder why I haven't even played with this stuff yet and then I realized I've kept myself busy with WSE2, ADO.NET2 and a host of other new things. Oh, to be able to just spend all of...

when I spoke in Montreal, I got to use a remote control (had used on at DevDays also). I love the freedom it gave me to wander around. So I ordered one after some recommendations and am looking forward to using it. This one is by Atek . I know it looks like it might double as some kind of sex toy...but...

I got sick of trying to figure out what to do about icons in my ink blogging application and just wasted the morning creating my OWN. Some are just from scratch, some take the images that are part of the Microsoft dev tools SDKs and modified them a bit. I finally gave up on finding a little infinity...

I am having great difficulty getting back to Dare's blog this morning and I wanted to comment on a post he wrote on 10/18 so I'll just do it here. Dare, dude, I did not say Google Desktop replaces WinFS. In this post, I pointed out the fact that many people were saying that and that WinFS is a whole...

I have made some pretty good headway with my complex App Updater Block needs, which I wrote about the other day here . However I have run into a roadblock. One of the things I was trying to accomplish is actually doing authentication and authorization before the user even got the updates. I have a reason...

I am sure that many of us use PaintShop Pro. I have since version 4,though I stopped upgrading after version 7 as it has about 4 gazillion times more things in it than I need. I found it interesting news that Corel acquired Jasc Software (announced today - all users received an email)....

After 2 years of just giving up on updating my .net apps through the web server, I finally went to patterns and practices guru, Chris Kinsman who helped me figure out how to combine a feature from the AppUpdater component (that is unavailable in the Application Block) with a feature from the Application...

This is from the policy tracing file created by my client where I am fiddling around and trying to use policy to sign with a use usernametoken. Here's a screenshot and then just a copy/paste so you can read the actual message. My point here is not to get help ,but to show you the level of detailed information...

(slaps herself in the forehead!) I have been dancing circles around the fact that my client side policy was being totally ignored and I couldn't get a trace file generated from WSE2 either. Doh! I was configuring the component that was doing the web service call, but the configuration info needs to be...

This isn't lookin' good. It seems I may have to hand code my policies after all since my web service is not on localhost. When you click okay on this message you get a second one and finally enable policy flag gets unchecked. I've been trying to trick it, by creating the PolicyCache.Config file, by editing...

I just checked my link on the previous post to Mindreef's site, and was suprised to see that the version just changed from 3.0 to 4.0 since I looked at the site last week. Copying & pasting a list of new features as I have not had time to look more carefully yet! SOAPscope Workspace : Gather Web...

So I took advantage of the Free for One Year offer of Computers Assoc. ETrust EZ Antivirus that you can get when you install XP SP2 (seems to be if there isn't already an anti-virus app on your system). I noticed a week ago that I hadn't in fact gotten any updates. The reason was timing. The EZAV software...

Peter Blum has taken his great know how with asp.net server controls and validation and combined that with the awesome lessons we have learned about securing ASP.NET websites, to create “Visual Input Security” tools (and it's clever nickname: VISE). I haven't had a chance to play with them...

I have used PaintShop Pro for years - I think since version 4. The features I use most are screen capture, image resize and brightness/contrast adjustment. Once in a while I will create little graphics with it, too. A few versions ago, they decided to compete with the serious graphics applications and...

I have not yet tried to cross this particular bridge in my experiments, but Scott Watermasysk did today . Because of the way UsernameTokens are implemented in WSE2, their encryption over the wire (hashing really) depends on the password that the user typed in to match the password in the database - meaning...

Well, I don't. That is why I am spending a lot of time trying to learn how the pieces of cryptography that are being used by WSE work. And appreciating how hard the designers of the WS-Security and WS-Trust and WS-SecureConversation specs have worked out all of the what-if's and come up with lots of...

My Crystal report files get bigger and bigger for no reason. I found this discussion of the problem on their website but as it suggests “unchecking the Save Preview Picture” option, which has never been checked in any of my reports, that didn't help. Just because...I checked it, saved, built...

I'm still pretty focused on the security related ws specs but will eventually reach out further. Therefore I'm definitley interested in all that's going on and here is the next step. John Bristowe went through the current spec and lists what is new for those of you who are trying to keep on top of this...

Although I have finally finished my deck for WSE 2 Security for Dummies, I am very happy to see this new article on WSE2 Security by Don Smith on MSDN online . I have really gained a lot be reading (or viewing) many different peoples explanations on this topic so that I was able to get my own grasp of...

That seems to be the thinking over here . Go see what the other half (well, I suppose Smalltalk doesn't really make up 1/2 of developers - but you know what I mean) has to say about web services. (edited title based on comment from James)...

I have used quickbooks since it's 1.0 DOS version. I have also used Quicken for eons. Each has a method to import records from online resources. I use that in Quicken to import my personal American Express acount and in QuickBooks to import my corporat Amex account. The similarites end there. Quicken...

WS-Policy is one of the very cool things that you get to leverage with WSE. I kind of love and hate the fact that there's a lot of “magic” happening here. When you define policies, your application behaves based on those policies. So on the client end if you say “usernametoken needs...

Aha! I had seen many samples of getting a digital certificate out of the client machines certificate store, but all of the examples were sending in some pre-defined private key. Let me back up. When you get a digital certificate and install it on your machine, it has a private key associated with it...

Once again, I'm getting it from James (though he and I agree to respectfully disagree with each other) for *considering* the DotFuscator Community Edition that is bundled in with Visual Studio .NET. Here are his posts: http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=155&thread=67231 http://www.cincomsmalltalk...

I explicitly chose to put the google toolbar in my i.e.. I *never* installed a Yahoo toolbar and I was never asked. It just appeared out of nowhere. That ticks me off - quite a lot. What's going on here? Is Yahoo being run by the we-are-going-to-take-over-your-computer Real Networks, now? I wonder if...

I just received an email from PreEmptive , the makers of DotFuscator . This is the obfuscation tool that has a “lite” version embedded into Visual Studio. Their email pointed me to a survey they are doing and based on the questions, I wonder if they are not seeing a lot of Visual Studio users...

We all know Dare Obasanjo's a smart guy. When I visited his home page and saw something about “we welcome visitors to Vermont”, I had a suspicion that his page was tracking where my ping was coming from but I brushed off that idea and {foolishly] decided to email him and ask what the Vermont...

Christian's been putting some teaser's up about something related to WSDL and I thought his “ announcement” post was another teaser! Geesh. Ben Miller mentioned that it was available (and that he likes it!) and I kind of did a double take - wondering how I had missed it. THIS IS A LINK TO...

In the UI for BLInk! I want to have my icons for formatting be large enough for clicking on with a stylus. Most of the format graphics provided in microsoft development apps (eg Visual Studio) that match the typical MS UI are bmps which don't resize (upsize to eg 32x32 or 24x24) well. I know we've all...

I've been watching Benjamin Mitchell's awesome WSE2 presentation from TechEd 2004. The demos are really blury. He keeps showing the trace in some tracing tool but I can't see what it was. I just opened up my rss aggregator and there at the very top of my feeds was Simon Guest's post entitle “WSE...

I started playing with this program about a week ago. Now I can say I definitely love it. It suits my needs to a “t”. I was more than happy to pay a mere $25 for it....

This was the phone call at 7am from the sys-admin at my client site. After a major server hacker problem a few months ago, they threw together a new box with Win2003 Server and a trial version of SQL 2000 to tide them over until they rebuilt the other machine. Things have been running smoothly on this...

This is a great interview . Rebecca , who is a program manager for Advanced Web Services at MS and Jorgen , p.m. for Web Services Standards at MS, are interviewed on webservices.org. They talk about Microsofts stance on web services, WSE being the “speedboat” to implementing WS-* specs today...

I'm going to be doing a lot of work in WSE2 over the next few months ...so if you are like me and think this stuff is just for plumbers like Michele L.B . or Christian Weyer or Bristowe , etc., you can witness a normal person actually understanding and heck, even USING WSE2. Because that is part of the...

I have been using my own little homegrown foxpro 2.6 app for many years to track my time working on client projects. I am now finding too many problems trying to run this 16bit app on my fast computer - and this has made me very inconsistent in keeping good track of my time. I found a little shareware...

I seem to make a point of sharing my .NET discoveries with the concept of “heh, if *I* can do this, so can you!” That is the point of why I am doing a WSE2 talk at DevConnections though I am hardly an expert. Michele LePlumber Bustamante is also doing a WSE2 talk at this conference, but she...

WSE2 service pack1 is on line. This just fixes a bunch of little things that might have been exposed when a lot more people started using it. Also they added additional ws* support. It's actually quite a long list. Note the known issues before you install and remember not to put it on a box with .NET...

I remember sitting with Kathleen Dollard at the regional MVP Summit in L.A. last fall while Ken Levy demo'd the then-NDA XML Tools for Whidbey. Kathleen (who is BIG on XSLT) was nearly peeing in her pants with excitement. She kept poking Don Kiely (sitting on her right) in the arm, giggling and jumping...

By way of Peter Provost , I found Code Architects' and .NET2TheMax's .NET Browser where they have highlighted new, changed and removed classes in Whidbey. Thank goodness someone has taken the time to do this. EVery time I look at the Whidbey help files, and see those bright red “new in .net 2.0”...

her ”Who would you like to talk to?” me “ Arin Goldberg ” her “Did you say Erin Goldfitter” me “No” her “okay. Can you say the name again?” me “Arin Goldberg” her “Thank you. I found someone named Aaron Goldstein, is that correct...

I just went through a nerve-wracking few hours after doing the latest Windows Update. After rebooting, well, attempting to reboot, all I got was a message that said “NTLDR Missing, Press CTRL-ALT-DEL”. After some digging (and being thankful to have the calm Don Kiely here) it seems that because...

Apparently there is a security hole (buffer overflow) in Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0.1 for Windows. It is patched by the current 6.0.2 update you can get here . The security problem, according to someone in my user group, is much more serious than Adobe lets on on their website. This may be old news, but...

This new Apress book by Dan Maharry and Damien Foggon looks like a great resource. It's just gone to press so keep an eye out for it....

I encountered an error when working with an Infragistics UltraWinGrid that I could not trap or debug. It was in using a dropdown in a cell, and the exception raised told me it could not update an invalid row. I spent over an hour trying to trap the error at its source so that I could fix it but was unable...

I vented about my problems with the App Updater Compenent in this post last night . That's not very constructive. In the effort of helping Erik Porter compile a more detailed how-to on using this component I am going to list some of the issues I was having. 1) I only want the app to check for an update...

I think the app updater component (different from the app updater block ) is great for helloworld apps. (I should say really, it's great for more than that since it will also grab dependency files). But I spent all day trying to get it to work on something a little more complex and am now giving up....

If someone as smart and experienced as Sam Gentile has this much difficulty with the current SQL Express (BETA), imagine the poor user who is their actual target audience! Granted it's a beta, but Sam is used to working with very early bits... (update: Read Brian Randell's response... and don't miss...

I had a new table to add to a sql server database. The table was already pre-defined in a dataset schema in vs.net. I thought ”wouldn't it be nice to create a table from an xsd as easily as I can create an xsd from a table?“ I could have created the table by hand in 2 minutes. But instead...

This was a REALLY difficult problem to track down so I am adding it into the world for google to help someone else (or even myself again). I used one cyrstal report as a basis for another. So I literally copied the report files to a new folder. When running the report an error was thrown that I could...

From MSDN maven (ooh - that sounds old, but she's not!) Sara Williams , this new feature of MSDN just went live: At the MSDN Product Feedback Center , you can submit bugs and suggestions. You can search through other people’s submitted bugs and suggestions. You can vote for your favorites. You...

I just spent 4 hours trying to figure this out -- so here it is for the next sucker. I have a new machine on my network and it will be my development machine. I added my domain account on to this machine as a non-admin. ( Do you hear cheering? ) I used an admin account to install my software, including...

I read the instrux, went to the update windows site and sat and waited and waited and waited while it said “checking for updates”. I stopped it and started it again. And waited and waited and waited. After at least a 1/2 hour of this nonsense, I finally noticed the very small and very unnoticable...

Totally dedicated to web services interop are the Interop Warriors . Chris Haddad Benjamin Mitchell Michele Leroux Bustamante Heinrich Gantenbein Anant Kadiyala John Bristowe This is a new blog site dedicated to sharing info from those who are in the know....

If you have ever had a meal with me, you probably noticed that my right hand is really shaky. Soup is getting to be a serious problem and chopsticks, too. I have had it checked over the last two years with no recommendations oustide of take a long vacation or try a new mouse. Others have suggested the...

One of the drawbacks when buying a new computer is paying for an operating system that you already own. Dell has a series called the “N” series that they really devised for Linux, etc. users but is a great option for people who already own an OS. I just ordered an OptiPlex this way. I only...

Because I had to write a DistinctRows function last night, today I looked at the May bits of VS2005 to see if they had addressed this really obvious need, and indeed they did! Hooray hoorah! OverLoads Public Function ToTable ( _ ByVal distinct As Boolean , _ ByVal columnNames ( ) As String _ ) As DataTable...

Speaking of Scott Hanselman , he started a fantastic discussion about datasets. His issue was returning datasets from webservices (public ones) that may have subscribers that are not .NET clients and don't grok datasets. There are a bunch of discussions that spun off of this as well as a pointer to a...

Just got my July MSDN mag in the mail and besides the usual luminaries, Rocky Lhotka, Brian Randell, etc. gracing the cover, there was our own James Avery ( who is a luminary in his own right of course ) with an article that I would like to literally photocopy and hand out at my next user group meeting...

This is for DotNetDave McMasters who said - “hey if you figure that one out...” The problem I have had a very annoying problem with a Crystal Deployment. I did find, 2 years ago, thanks to the Wrox Crystal book and then FINALLY Crystal put the info up on their own website, how to deploy the...

In addition to reading Eric Sink's post on VS2005 Team System and the relation (and possible effects of) it's source control tool (”Hatteras”) to SourceGear Vault , this post by Korby Parnell addresses the relationship of the VS2005 Team System and Microsoft's Visual Source Safe as well as...

Mark Miller, from Developer Express , was clearly the “belle of the ball” (well, the beaux of the ball) at TechEd showing off their phenomenal product, CodeRush . This was viral. I knew it was cool when I saw Scott Hansleman hunkered down with Mark and his laptop for about 2 hours at the...

I took advantage of the 1/2 price (for first 500...) cert tests taht Pearson/Vue was offering at TechEd and finally took some tests. Other than the recent .NET Security beta that I took I have never taken cert tests in my 20 years of programming. I took the Windows Forms VB.NET and Web Applications VB...

Rebecca Dias did a demo during Ballmer's keynote this morning. Rebecca is the Product Mgr for web services. It is great that it almost seems like just "the norm" to have a woman doing something so incredibly visible + extremely important at an event like this. Doing a demo at a Ballmer keynote is no...

I was fiddling with my new PocketPC and went to System and memory to look at how much memory there was. Then tapped on ok and nothing happened. After a little fiddling around I just pushed the power button but heck it doesn't turn off. Darn. I'm still not finished packing for TechEd. I thought it would...

The July issue of Visual Studio Magazine features this article, SQL Server Tips & Tricks , by Roman Rehak . Roman is one of our local heros, and as track chair for PASS, a popular PASS speaker, frequent author of SQL related articles in VSM, track chair for DevTeach and a speaker there as well AND...

I am so sick of trying to explain WHICH version of vs.NEXT I am using. It is tooo long. Just because they removed “.NET“ from the name, doesn't help. Visual Studio 2005 Community Edition March Preview or something like that Visual Studio 2005 Community Technology Preview March 2004 Can't...

from Simon Fell : If you use PocketSOAP, then I'm interested in which platforms & features you use, head over to the mailing list and do the survey , thanks !...

Loren Heiny talks about concerns about MathPractice and FractionPractice apps. I have always been concerned about all of the shortcuts available, such as spell checking, which are valuable tools but should not be the replacement for learning skills. Just as most of the best improve musicians actually...

Today we switched servers at my main client. The old box had win2k, IIS5 and SQL7. The new has win2003, IIS6 and SQL2000. So this meant with many vb6 apps, numerous .NET apps, many web services, a few asp websites and a few .net websites, and mostly win2000 client machines throughout the office, we had...

I just had my first call from a friend who got the Sasser Virus. The sad thing is that she works in a company where there are i.t. people responsible for ensuring that she is safe. An important thing to stress with clients/friends/my parents (aiming here at people who are not computer professionals)...

Hannes Preishuber (who I met at the summit. Hi, Hannes!) learns something very scary about TSQL . Here are some great reasons to protect yourself from SQL Injection through things like validation (Hannes points out that a typical search for quotes won't help in this case), using stored procedures and...

About a month ago my client's ISA server crashed. The I.T. guys discovered 30 GIGs of pictures and movies (mostly in german) on the box. Oops! So they had to rebuild that box and (I can't even remember why) but also determined that they really needed to rebuild the server that is the webserver and sql...

Jimmy Nilsson presented on TDD at VSLive recently. He writes in his blog “a couple of guys told me that they love the idea of TDD, but they have a hard time getting started each time they try. One of them said that he had a couple of setters and getters, some add methods, and some calculations...

I love remote desktop. I have been using it for about 6 months. I have wireless at home, so I actually use remote desktop from my tablet and my laptop while sitting in different areas of the house to work on my main machine which is in the downstairs office. When I travel, I use remote desktop to connect...

What's my golden rule? No computer books in my bedroom. THat sounds a little wierd out of context. I read novels at night to clear my head so I can sleep. I will NOT read ANY technical anything. They are not allowed in my bedroom even - no magazines, no books. I got a copy of Mike Gunderloy's book ,...

This evening I received a reply to an email that I wrote 16 months ago! In January 2003, I sent the following email to my user group: Folks, go check out: http://www.crystalreportsbook.com Basically the story goes that this book was written for APress and then the contract was cancelled due to a lack...

A few months ago, I received a very cleverly disguised email “from Citibank” with a link to update my records. The link url looked very “safe” https:, even. And I have a Citibank account, but of course I know better. I looked at the source of the html to see what url is truly...

XML night was fun at VTdotNET last night. We had 30 people attending our meeting. This is about our mean - vs. average. We have actually had 50 at a few meetings and sometimes we have closer to 20, but it is more likely to have 30 than anything. Joe Stagner , our MS Community Champion (though I think...

About 1 1/2 years ago, I wrote an ASP.NET Timesheet application for a client of mine. One of the things that I had a murderous time doing was making start and end time text boxes that validated against each (on the client side) other checking for all kinds of things and including even a checkbox to indicate...

The latest issue of SQL Server Magazine has an article by Vermont.NET member Roman Rehak (and PASS Track Chair & Speaker and DevTeach Track Chair & Speaker and and and...). The article is called Inside Database Maintenance Plans . According to Roman's weblog, “ the main target audience...

This documentation has gone missing from MSDN. Does anyone know where it is??? ( this is a post I wrote in July) I have looked in the Architecture area and on the ColdRooster site to no avail. Until WinFS comes along, I think this is a really handy article. From October 2001 but still quite relevant...

from Doug Thews by way of James Avery , I just downloaded an update to the outlook junk mail filter . I am SURE looking forward to less junk in my inbox. This is my form of Bayseian (sp?) filtering. Update the outlook junk mail filter thingie once in a while......

I use VPN to work on my client's computers that are 300 miles away. Sometimes I have to connect many times during the day. Whenever I connect VPN (which means I am working), I automatically get signed into WIndows MEssenger - which gives people the signal that I am available to chat - which I am not...

In college, they were known as the Gang of Fourplay, you can read it all here: ( by way of Ted Neward )...

Since I could not find this on the web, I am putting it here for the next person. When trying to upgrade a virtual server in IIS6 with the FP2002 extensions, I received an error message “unable to access frontpg.lck“. Since I was logging into the process with an admin account, I needed to...

Phil Scott thinks so - and since he is pointing to one of my favorite resources ( devedge.netscape.com ) when dealing with any css or html issues, I just couldn't resist pointing this out! (Once I stopped giggling)...

I had a problem today with some suddenly altered write permissions on my client's webserver. So I needed to create a new directory that I had total ownership of to work with. That meant trying once again to remember how to use the darned MapPath, etc. It's one of those things you use once a year or so...

Here. On the surface, these specs would seem to be similar by definition (just competitive), but Werner explains that this is not the case and then goes in to a analysis/comparisonof the three. These specs are all still “young”. Werner is one of most knowledgable people out there when it...

geesh - just when I've got my new server stable and had long talks with Steve Smith about how phenomenal SourceGear Vault is and was about to install my personal edition of Vault and was prepared to be very impressed and then blog about it and then thanks to my millions of readers, SourceGear would get...

My client and I are getting ready to start sharing reports via the web with clients. These are the same reports we have in windows apps (VB6 and Winforms). I want to generate the reports dynamically because there will be so many. There are thousands of clients (though only maybe 50 active at a time)...

Just because I have had one or ten roadblocks every step of the way of rebuilding my server, I thought that this was very funny (thank goodness my sense of humor has returned after a good nights' sleep!) When trying to install SQL Server 2000 Ent from my 12/03 MSDN Universal CD on to a Windows 2003 server...

Seems I have gotten side tracked with a lot of hardware issues lately. About two months ago (more?) I decided that I needed more hard drive space on my server . I upgraded to sql server 2000 so that I could accomodate things like Reporting Services and SourceGear Vault (single user). I just couldn't...

Rich was kind enough to try to help me after all of the illogical trouble I was having wtih my server installation. He took a close look in the box and said the scsi cable wasn't plugged in properly. “Oh No!” I sasid, I have reseated that a # of times, it's a software problem. I was at a...

Werner got a way-cool laptop. The kind a rocket scientist should have! But he's already having second doubts about it. In early december he ordered the machine. Here is his post about that. Earlier this week, he recieved the box and expressed some dissapointment as well as some hope for it. One day later...

This is a survey for contractors/independents who are responsible for their own data backup in what is likely your home office. What software do you use? Do you back up to cd, dvd, writeable cd/dvd's, tape another hard drive? Is your backup process automated? How often? Full always? Differential? Incremental...

I have been VERY spoiled in the last few years as a user group leader , INETA volunteer, MVP and babbling blogger because people like to push software my way. Here! use it, write about it, tell the world, give it to your user group. No problemo, dude! Now that I found a product I really want and need...

I was just exporting some brand new sprocs from my dev sql server to my production sql server. When doing it, I got an error and when I looked at the error it said that it couldn't drop a particular TABLE for some reason. I wasn't dropping tables! What is it doing? Egads! Now I have to go through the...

I (and at least one other person that I am aware of) signed up for the reporting services beta about 3 weeks ago. It mentions a wait of a coupla days to hear back. I'm really eager to get a good look at it. So is my client who is considering the alternatives as well (hint hint). Any chance?...

I have been using the Personal Update dashboard for about 3 years. I really love it. I open up outlook and see highlights of my calendar, the weather, headlines of topics I have chosen, and the state of my paltry stocks. I was SO VERY SAD to see this today. I'm sure there is a replacement somewhere,...