It seems like that sometimes, doesn’t it! Well, here finally is the Smart Client Developer Center on MSDN. It took Microsoft a long time to come to this definition of Smart Client and it looks like they’re stickin’ with it! See if you can define Smart Client before going to look at their definition. If you are close then they are getting the message out properly now.
Daily Archives: June 8, 2004
Evan Feldman from the Mobile PC Team talks about Microsoft and Tablet PCs
Evan Feldman just started a blog and already jumps into the deep end to address a big question we all have about TabletPC’s – who the heck is their target market. He has an explanation of what they are thinking over there in the TabletPC hallways of Microsoft and sums it up with this interesting statement:
those who are evaluating Tablet’s today aren’t necessarily the target user and thus don’t see the value and promise in the platform, but instead are looking towards all the cool things that the technology could do rather than the simple and mundane tasks that it actually enhances.
I think I’m going to add that quote to my deck for my tablet pc talk at DevTeach.
Evan, by the way, is now a user research manager for the Mobile PC Team but he started the user research group for Tablet PC and says that his “charter is to understand the needs, usefulness and usability.“
Kimberly Tripp is blogging
Kimberly Tripp’s blog went live today and it already has a bunch of great content! It looks like she has finally buckled under the pressure! Her first post – “I can’t not blog anymore“ – says it all.
ScottW discovers “using” in VB.NET Whidbey
Scott Watermasysk writes about the using statement in VB.NET Whidbey pointing out that “using … end using” will also immediately dispose of the resource you created with “using”.
Brand spanking new concept to me – since I have not even used enough C# to know that it already exists there (which I figured out *after* I read Scott’s post).
This makes me realize that I need to understand dispose a lot better than I do because outside of explicitly closing ado.net connections (in cases where they are not implicilty called – as in a datadapter.fill), I don’t really call Dispose outside of my infrequent work with unmanaged resources.
So google this: “when to call dispose .net” and you will find all kinds of msdn articles (this one is for interop though which is not so novel), interesting posts by Paul Wilson, Patrick Steele (who basically constructed the using construct all by himself in vb.net!) and others, articles on Code Project and more.
TabletPC Talk at DevTeach Conference in Montreal
When I initially proposed a Design Considerations for Tablet PC Development talk for DevTeach, I did not realize that it would be the only TabletPC talk for the whole conference.
But since it is, I have shifted the focus to more coding against the TabletPC SDK. I will still spend some time talking about Why Tablets? Why develop with the SDK? and Design Considerations. But the bulk of my presentation will now be looking at what is in the SDK, what you can do with it and how.
Are girl geeks geeky enough to write utility programs?
Ziff Davis’ DevSource is having a great Utility Programming contest with a grand prize of a trip to VSLIve NY. The contest entries have until June 11th to be submitted.
Here is a description of the contest
Ziff Davis Internet challenges you to write a software utility that runs on a current Windows operating system. Your utility should help simplify, automate, secure, and streamline one’s PC experience.
The utility can do nearly anything you like, though we’ll give extra attention to software that does something especially useful, elegant, and innovative. We want to hear from you!
Esther Schindler, a writer who is working with DevSource, noted that so far not one of the entries was written by a female developer. Why is that? Are utilities too geeky for chicks? We just thought it was a curious thing.
Rich Turner is back with No! Niente! Nein! Never, etc. this time on “Is OO Dead”
Rich Turner from the Indigo team is here with his arms waving and feet stomping to attempt to stop the spread of the malformed idea that the push of SO means the death of OO.
OO is *absolutely* relevant, useful, valuable, important, vital and positively NOT deprecated and obsolete. I don’t know where this message came from, but it is NOT true.
He points out the problems with OO and explains that SO complements OO.
Looks like Compaq should be following Dell’s lead
Mike Gunderloy shares a pretty unpleasant tech support experience with Compaq that was enough to render him a permanent non-customer of HP and Compaq. Recently Dell pulled a good chunk of it’s outsourced tech support back into the U.S. where they could have more control over it. From Mike’s posting, it sounds like Compaq could benefit from the same move.
Funny Dave Burke and his Donut madness
Dave comes up with a very interesting theory on the developers who have written the auto-check out programs for grocery stores.
Serendipity with Crucial.com
I just ordered some memory from Crucial. The chips were $259 each. I selected 2, filled out my billing and shipping info and then when I looked at my shopping cart, the price of the chips was suddenly $23 less for each chip. I opened up the site in a new browser window, drilled into the same memory, and indeed, the prices had just been dropped! (I actually asked them what had happened.) Lucky me by 5 minutes!