vNext (Windows, Office, Visual Studio and More)

Windows 7 LOLs

Frank La Vigne — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:09:00 GMT

By now you’ve probably seen the ad campaign for Windows 7, where various people take credit for Windows 7. Below is an example of the ad in German.

This got me to thinking, what if they used celebrities in the campaign? and did a mash up with another popular internet meme?

One person jumped immediately into my mind:

Technorati Tags: Humor,Windows 7,LOL

Impromptu Look at Windows 7 MultiTouch

Frank La Vigne — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:46:00 GMT

I found this video on Channel 9 about the touch capabilities in Windows 7.

It’s impromptu and it’s real. Check it out.

Now, I must get a multi-touch monitor.

Technorati Tags: Windows 7,MultiTouch,Channel9

BumpTop + Multi-Touch = Woah!

Frank La Vigne — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Yesterday, I blogged about the developer experience with Multi-Touch on Windows 7.

Here’s a real eye-opener when it comes to what can be done with Multi-Touch now that BumpTop support it.

Take a look at this and try to tell me that current desktop metaphor, a product of 1980s, still serves the usability needs of 2009.

Technorati Tags: BumpTop,UX,Multi-Touch,Win7

Windows 7 in Pictures: 10 Cool Desktop Features

Frank La Vigne — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:06:00 GMT

Network World has a slide show on 10 Cool Desktop Features in Windows 7.

Even if you've been playing around with Win7 since the early betas, there may even be a thing or two you haven't seen yet.

Technorati Tags: Win7,Windows 7,Network World

Project Natal in Use

Frank La Vigne — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:10:00 GMT

Project Natal, the new controller-less experience for the Xbox 360, made a big splash at the E3 trade show.

Sure, the demo video looks cool, but how much is marketing hype and how much is a real, tangible product?

The good news is that from this video, we can infer the following:

This is a real and it works reasonably well.
There is at least one sample game to demo the technology
There probably is an SDK

If you the video more closely, you will also see that something has been censored.

Clearly someone went out of their way to blur out something this in the video.

Could the final shape and form of the Natal camera still be NDA? Are there other sensors on it such as infrared and motion detectors?

To do all the things that Natal promises, it would need to have a sense of depth.

Based on my experiments with the Touchless SDK, I'd put money on there being a second camera on the Natal device. If it's not a second camera, then it could be some kind of range-finding mechanism to get that third dimension clearly.

Or, does the Natal device have its own onboard circuitry to figure out what its "seeing." That would save the XBOX CPU from doing the extra work.

In that case, how big will it be and what is it sending over to the XBOX? How will it connect? USB?

If it's USB, then can I plug this into my Windows based machines?

Now, the real question is: when and where can I get my hands on the SDK?

Technorati Tags: Project Natal,Felixia Day,E3,XBOX360

Learn the New Features of IE8 in 15 Minutes

Frank La Vigne — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 13:05:00 GMT

These videos cover the new features of IE8 in about 15 minutes.

Some of the new features highlighted are: Accelerators, Web Slices, Compatibility, Speed Improvements, Security and Privacy.

[found via Dr Z.]

Technorati Tags: IE8,Dr Z,Browsers

Microsoft's Cloud Computing Tools

Frank La Vigne — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:11:00 GMT

Have you been eager to play with Windows Azure for a while now, but weren't sure exactly where to start?

Fortunately, there's this page on MSDN: Getting Started with Microsoft Cloud Computing Tools.

The page has links to the team blog, useful bookmarks, and a list of software to download and install.

Technorati Tags: Windows Azure,Cloud Computing,MSDN

An Early Look at Windows 7 Performance

Frank La Vigne — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:37:00 GMT

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes at ZDNet has run a series of tests on a beta build of Windows 7.

Keep in mind that pre-release software is usually more about stability than performance.

But, so far, the results are very encouraging with Windows 7 coming in first when compared to Vista and XP.

Once Windows 7 undergoes performance tweaking, who knows how much better the results will be.

Technorati Tags: Windows 7,ZDNet

The Agony of Installing VS2008 SP1

Frank La Vigne — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:27:00 GMT

I never thought I would be so happy to see an "Install Complete" dialog until today.

After several hours of wrestling with Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008, I was delighted to see this screen.

The problem was KB944899, a update to VS2008, which the SP1 installer doesn't like *at all*.

I had a similar problem before and I was able to remove the control panel.

However, this time around, KB44899 was nowhere to be found, but thanks to Heath Stewart's blog post, I found that keys for this monkey-wrench-of-an-update hidden in the registry.

Some installers just check for the existence of the keys related to KB944899 to see if the update is still installed, leaving you in limbo.

You can't uninstall it; it's already gone, but you can't install SP1, since the installer still thinks it's there.

Here's the fix: simply run this command at an elevated prompt:

reg.exe query HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Updates /f KB944899 /k /s

If you get back any results, then just delete the keys.

Using RegEdit, I found the offending keys and deleted them.

That was the magic trick that did it.

Those are four hours I won't get back.

Hopefully, I can save other people some time and agony.

And, if anyone from Microsoft is reading this, please fix this.

When I had troubles with the VS2008 SP1 install before, I had assumed it was all the beta Silverlight tools, etc I had installed.

If I'm playing around with pre-release software, I know the risks, but this was a fresh install on newly re-paved system.

There's no excuse for that.

Technorati Tags: VS2008,VS2008 SP1,Visual Studio 2008,Error,KB944899

Soma on Dev Tools for Windows Azure and Windows 7

Frank — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:47:00 GMT

S. Somasegar (aka "Soma") is the Senior Vice-President of the Developer Division at Microsoft.

In this Channel9 video, he talks about the big announcements at PDC and how his team is working on tools for Windows Azure and Windows 7.

Soma on Visual Studio for Windows Azure, Concurrency, and Windows 7

Technorati Tags: Cloud Services,Concurrency,Visual Studio,Visual Studio 2010,Windows 7,Somasegar