Category Archives: Tools

Is Verizon really trying to torture me? Now they have Mobile 6

Tools

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 I won’t be playing with this. I’m sure I would have had the same issues that I had with the Treo, except for the lack of upgrade to Mobile6.

..and now am enjoying a known Blackberry issue

Tools

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 down three times, but still I received this same message.

When I got home, I jumped online and very quickly found that, as luck would have it, this was a known problem with the Verizon Blackberry 8830. It happens if you are on a call and a another call comes in (which was my scenario). Some believe that if you avoid hitting the green dial/answer button to answer, that will prevent the problem from happening. Otherwise, a soft boot (Alt + Right Shift + Delete) or a hard boot (reseat the battery) should get you back to working order. I did the soft boot. However this is not a good long-term solution since people are having to do it repeatedly.

There is a particular thread on the Crackberry.com forums that has very recent posts on it where I learned all of this. The latest post (from only 2 days ago) suggests that just getting a replacement phone might do the trick.

Other than that, I’m really enjoying this phone.

Access 2007 installation package and FREE Runtime available

Tools

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 a while) was that there was no freely available runtime. So every end user had to have a full license to Access, even if they weren’t doing any development.

So now the runtime will be free. It’s not quite available yet but will be out soon.

Here’s more from the Office Developer Center:


Introducing the Access 2007 Developer Extensions and Runtime

We are pleased to announce that the Access 2007 Developer Extensions and the Access 2007 Runtime are now available as FREE downloads.

Access 2007 Developer Extensions

  • Package Solution
    This is a wizard that will create a Windows Installer Package (MSI) to install your database, any supporting files, and optionally include the Access 2007 Runtime or prompt the user to download the Access 2007 Runtime.
  • Save As Template
    This allows creating database templates (ACCDTs) that can be featured in the Access 2007 Getting Started screen.
  • Source Code Control
    Integration with Microsoft Visual Source Safe or other source code control systems to allow check-in/check-out of queries, forms, reports, macros, modules, and data. You can also see the differences that have been made to your checked out objects.

Telerik’s new Reporting Tool

Tools

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 really great mechanisms for formatting reports in a CSS-like manner, which I really like. Another big win for me over Crystal is that while Crystal has evolved into a .NET tool, telerik’s was designed in .NET. So you can interact with all of the controls in the report in the same manner as any other control in .NET.

Another benefit is the ease of using the reports in a winform or a webform. The only thing I know that is different is that the webforms don’t support multi-column reports.

While there are definitely some more complex things I can achieve in Crystal (and I have the scars to prove it) that I can’t yet do in this first version of telerik Reporting, I expect great things to come of this tool as we see it growing over future releases.

On top of all of this, I’m happy that I can actually copy and paste more than one control at a time.

There’s a lot more to see in there. Check out the download. You can also download the extensive help files.