João Paulo Figueira shows how to access Windows CE Databases from .NET Compact Framework. It explains the concepts behind the CE property databases and the APIs involved to use them: CeDbApi - Contains all the imported API functions used by the other classes. CeDbException - Type of exceptions thrown by the wrapper. CeDbInfo - Wraps a CEDBASEINFO structure, needed to create new databases and to query existing ones. CeDbProperty - Models a property value. CeDbPropertyCollection - A collection of properties, searchable by property id. CeDbPropertyID - Static class to manage property ids. CeDbRecord - Models a database record. CeDbRecordSet - Implements ...

Larry Osterman shares the story behind the Compressible Encryption option in Outlook. The reason I like this dialog box is the default setting "Compressible Encryption". Why? Because if you select it, you're not encrypting ANYTHING.

Textamerica, the leading photo/video moblog community, recently launched the Textamerica Developer API. They are giving $500 to the first 20 applications (with source code) which they deem to be the most useful to the Textamerica Community as a whole. There is already a TextAmerica Java client but I did not find .NET client. It is a shame they did not use SOAP and publish a WSDL but decided to use their own call format: <methodCall> <methodName>ta.Moblog.GetMyMoblogs</methodName> <params> <param><value>MYAPPKEYXXYY77XX</value></param> <param><value>MyLogin</value></param> ...

Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 is available for download to MSDN Subscribers through the MSDN Download Center and to all others for a nominal fee.

I posted earlier on how to get the com+ call times the unofficial way. Someone asked for a VB example so I put together a com+ call time toolkit that contains the com+ call time tracker and a VBScript example client. You can do a lot of neat stuff with it: Use it a ASP page to monitor the call time of your components live Use Cacti to show how average call time changes during the day. Use the COM+ Admin API to automatically shut down/recycle components with high call times Installation Download the egilh Com+ Tracker Extract the files Register the DLL in COM+ or run regsvr32 EgilhComTracker.dll in the directory where you extracted the files UsageThe egilh.ComTracker ...

With some help from our little friend; I finished the dog house. It was inaugurated before I finished the walls: He is growing like mad but letting us sleep at night after moving outside so I should finally have some time, and energy, to get back to some development and technology posts (if I resist posting about MotoGP this weekend :-)

Tonight is Sydney's first night sleeping outside. We have spent most of the week getting him used to the idea. He has had two places to sleep from the beginning (probably a bad idea but that's life). One inside in the kitchen where he has spent the nights so far, and one outside on the stairs where he rests/sleeps during the day when we are outside. Yesterday evening he even fell asleep on his place outside on the stairs but woke up before we went to bed. Things started very well (not more than a couple of minutes crying) but has degraded to a long concerto of various cries now that he is about to fall asleep for the night. I feel guilty as hell but going out just shows ...