Explosion in Sofia

I found this picture showing Sofia on 1.Jan.2005 at 00:00h.
I didn't know they sell this stuff to everybody :-)

Microsoft Robotics Studio CTP 1

Microsoft presented Microsoft Robotics Studio CTP 1 at RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition 2006. It is intended to provide common development platform for robotic development. Find more details and download link here

I’ve just installed it and discovered that the CTP contains a sample service implementation for RCX20. I hope I will able to write some interesting stuff for my RCX with VS2005 and the Robotic Studio

Stay tuned for more on this topic

 

…Still publishing with Word 2007 Beta

BLinq

Check out this tool called BLinq (Web Linq). It generates ASP.NET web sites from a database schema. It uses the May LINQ Community Tech Preview.

Download the prototype and read more here

I'm very excited from the new MS Word 2007 Publish/Blog feature. It is really cool!

The .NET Framework 3.0 Pre-Release

The .NET Framework 3.0 Pre-Release is available for download. Download it hereThe .NET Framework 3.0 is the new name for the set of technologies previously known as WinFX. However it is run on top of the .NET Framework 2.0 CLR. It will be available for Windows XP , Windows Server 2003 and Vista.Get more details here and here

.NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP1 is out

.NET Compact Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1 is in the process of being released.
Check the .NET Compact Framework Team blog for details.
It may be downloaded here

AJAX on Mobile Devices

This post on channel9 , talks about using AJAX in Pocket IE

Phone calls in the Device Emulator

Have you ever wanted to test your phone enabled application without actually using real phone calls?
Windows Mobile 5.0 Phone Edition image for the Device Emulator allows this. It contains a virtual radio driver (fakeril), which allows testing such a functionality by using special dial numbers.
The following numbers may be used for test purposes:

SMS look back number:	1-425-001-0001
Voice numbers:	7272470,7272620,7272688
	7272979,7272917,7272263
	7274390,7274388,7274386,7274389
Data numbers:	7272455, 7272931, 727343, 7273432
Always busy:	7272024
Never answer:	7272773
Emergency:	911, 112, 08, 999
SMS:	0010001, 0010002

Error 2755 and MSI

I was surprised getting strange error, while trying to run an MSI produced with VS2005
The error was saying:

.The system cannot open the device specified. The installer has encountered an unexpected error installing this package.This may indicate a problem with this package.The error code is 2755.

Finally, Google says that this error is encountered when the install image is placed on an encrypted volume. After moving the installer to non encrypted volume , the error disappear

Interprocess Communication with the .NET Compact Framework 1.0

To implement IPC in a .NET Compact Framework 1.0 application, a number of options are available:

• Named events


• Windows messages


• Point-to-point message queues


• TCP sockets


• Memory mapped files


• Registry


• File system


• Database

See the original article.

MS Days 2006

MS Days 2006 will be held on 21st and 22nd June at Arena Cinema, Mladost (Sofia)
Those who want to attend may register here.

I will present a session about .NET Compact Framwork Development together with Tihomir Ignatov.
I will also participate in the second session held by Intelligent Systems Bulgaria to present our mobile solution for Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Radio tangra is back!

One of my favourite radio stations is back!
http://www.radiotangra.com/

Are we going to write device drivers in unmanaged code?

Writing device drivers in managed code this days is not possible. However, I found this interesting article from Chris Tacke comparing the performance of managed vs unmanaged code.

Mobile Client Software Factory – CTP Release

The CTP release of the Mobile Client Software Factory is out.
The Mobile Client Software Factory provides an integrated set of guidance to help architects and developers create line-of-business Windows Mobile applications that interact with back-end systems over various networks (WiFi, GPRS, etc.) that might be intermittently available. A mobile smart client line-of-business application has one or more of the following characteristics:

* It has a rich user interface that takes advantage of the power of the Windows Mobile device.
* It connects to and exchanges data with multiple back-end systems through a gateway server through the most cost effective underlying network technology.
* It takes advantage of local caching and processing to enable operation during periods of no network connectivity or intermittent network connectivity.
* It is easily deployed and configured.
* It keeps local, potentially confidential information secure.


In short the Mobile Client Software Factory contains the following goodies :

• Composite UI Application Block ported into the .NET Compact Framework
• Application blocks
• Guidance Automation Toolkit
• Quick Starts Examples
• Reference Implementation

Unspecified error 80004005

Lately, I am working over a Visual Studio 2005 Add-In for our NavMobile product. It is meant to allow our partners to be more productive, while customizing the solution for their customers. Yesterday, we've spent some time clearing old stuff from our central source repository.
Later, I've opened the Add-In Project and this message box appeared on my desktop after running the project:

This message was not quite helpful for me, although I knew there is a problem with the output assembly loading. I've tried some goggling, but no luck. I've checked the \BIN folder security settings, but there wasn't anything wrong. Finally, after an hour or so I solved my problem.

When a new project of type "Extensibility/Visual Studio Add-in" is created you'll get a bunch of files, including 2 files with ".Add-In " extension.
1.MyAddInProject.AddIn
2.MyAddInProject - For Testing.AddIn".

However during our source repository clearing, we've accidentally deleted the file #2. This file is created by default in ...\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\AddIns
When I've opened the project first I saw the file #2 is missing. I've created a file with the same name and copied the content from file #1. And this was the reason to get the error message.

These files contain XML describing the Add-In and they are used by VS2005 in order to know which Add-Ins to load. The files contain a tag named /Extensibility/Addin/Assembly,which points to the Add-In assembly name. However, by default file #2 contains the full path to the assembly Add-Ins and file #1 contains only the name of the assembly.

The error dissappeared after placing the full path to the assembly Add-In in the /Extensibility/Addin/Assembly tag.

In general: if you get such an error, while trying to debug your Add-In, check if the assembly path written in file #2 is "visible" for VS2005.