Jay Smith

Last fall I was looking for an application that could display tweets based on a hastag on the wall.  I found HashWall on codeplex and downloaded it immediately.  It worked great but then I got to thinking, this is going to be a corporate event where I work and that it may not be a good idea for tweets to be displayed unfiltered on the wall behind our CIO giving the welcome speech. 

Open source to the rescue, I thought heck this is an open source project I will just download the code put in a bad word filter and away we go.  Slow down there cowboy, it doesn’t always work that way.  The source code on CodePlex didn’t contain the code to perform the Twitter search.  Since I had recently completed Peepster, a one way tweet application, I was ready to take on the challenge.  I grabbed the latest build of TweetSharp and went to town.

I believe in sharing so I took the fully working code and put it back on CodePlex as a fork of the original HashWall project with a few minor updates so that everyone could utilize it.

The short list of updates:

• Replaced twitter search provider with TweetSharp
• Added content filtering based on a bad word list
• Modified SetupDialog to allow user to use a File Open Dialog to browse to alternate background image

Please feel free to check out the code and make it your own.

Enjoy

Tags: projects, twitter

The closest event to our location is Dallas, TX on 2/4/2010

Join your local MSDN Events team as we take a deep dive into Cloud Computing and Windows Azure™. We'll start with a developer-focused overview of this new platform and the cloud computing services that can be used either together or independently to build amazing applications. As the day unfolds, we'll explore data storage, SQL Azure, and the basics of deployment with Windows Azure. Register today for these free, live sessions in your local area.

SESSION 1: Overview of Cloud Computing and Windows Azure
The Windows Azure platform is a set of high-performance cloud computing services that can be used together or independently and enable developers to leverage existing skills and familiar tools to develop cloud applications. In this session, we'll provide a developer-focused overview of this new online service computing platform. We'll explore the components, key features and real day-to-day benefits of Windows Azure.

SESSION 2: Survey of Windows Azure Platform Storage Options Durable data storage is a key component of any cloud computing offering. Windows Azure does not disappoint, with three forms of durable storage: tables, blobs, and queues. In this session, we'll explore the highlights of these three important implementations and how to both create and use each form. Because many applications require a relational database, we'll show you how to utilize SQL Azure to store your SQL Server® databases in the cloud. We'll also tackle account names, using Azure data storage for ASP.NET session state, plus scaling and configuration with Windows Azure.

SESSION 3: Going Live with your Azure Solution
Windows Azure features a powerful, yet simple deployment model. By focusing on your application and abstracting away the infrastructure details, you can deploy almost any app with minimal fuss. In this session, we'll walk you through the basics of Windows Azure deployment, including site monitoring, diagnostics and performance issues.

For more information or to register, visit: www.msdnevents.com
OR CALL 1-877-MSEVENT

Free Technical Resources. Attend an event, and you'll receive a USB drive jammed packed with technical resources hand-picked to supplement the day's sessions.*

Tags: msdn

Recently when I clicked on a link in a tweet from Chris Patters for his blog post Permanent Link to Leveraging Windows 7 Boot to VHD to Test Visual Studio 2010, and was amazed when I hit it from my iPhone and it looked like an iPhone app I HAD to check it out.  Chris is running WordPress and they have an add on called WPTouch that detects if you are coming from a mobile device.

I use Blogengine.net for my  blog and instantly hug my head in sadness thinking that I would not be able to have this for my blog.  Well guess what???? SoundDbbg has created the BETouch 0.1 - iPhone Theme for BlogEngine which is a port of WPTouch theme.

I downloaded it and and installed it on my blog, set BETouch as my mobile theme, but when I hit it from my iPhone it just looked like my regular site.  It should have looked like the image below.

After doing some research I found this Work Item in the BlogEngine.net site that shows how to add iPod and iPhone to the list of known mobile devices.

To make your BlogEngine.net install aware of iPhone and iPod add make the BlogEngine.MobileDevices key in you web.config look like the following.

<add key="BlogEngine.MobileDevices" value="(iphone|ipod|nokia|sonyericsson|blackberry|samsung|sec\-|windows ce|motorola|mot\-|up.b|midp\-)"/>

It all works great now my blog looks very nice and readable on an iPhone.

Tags: blogengine.net

This week my current project decided to start using Visual Studio Team Test for manual UI test.  So, naturally someone had to write the test, but we didn’t have Visual Studio Team Tester Edition installed.  After installing it, which looked good, when I went to add a new “Manual Test (Word Format) none of the new Item Templates where there. 

After a little searching I can across this post from 2007 that said to run  the following to correct it.

   1:  C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE>devenv.exe /setup

From the post they believed that the issue was that the Item Template cache was not getting updated.  Running devenv.exe /Setup forces Visual Studio to merge the resource metadata that describes, menus, toolbars, and command groups from the VSPackages.  Evidently it also updates the Item Template Cache as well.

All is good and I am off created Manual Test now.

Tags: visual studio

A few months ago I rebuilt my laptop and reinstalled Visual Studio 2008 and installed the SQL Server Express both x64 versions.  When in a solution and trying to add a SQL Server database I would get the following error.

“Connections to SQL Server files (*.mdf) require SQL Server Express 2005 to function properly.”

I have been searching for a fix for this for the last few weeks and finally found this Microsoft Support hotfix.

This issue is only experiences on 64bit systems, 32bit systems are working correctly.  Your system should also have Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition with Service Pack 1 installed to apply this hotfix.

Tags: visual studio