Wictor Wilen

Wow, two heavy-weight Windows Mobile phones; Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 and HTC Touch Pro. In a few months I am ready to get me a new phone. I currently use the HTC TyTN, which has been a very pleasant ride (except for the glitching screen right now, to many drops…). When Sony Ericsson announced XPERIA X1 in march I got so excited and decided to get me one as soon as it hits the stores. Today HTC announced that they will continue their Touch series with the HTC Touch Pro, another sweet dream! So which one will be mine?

The Windows Live Writer has once again been updated, it’s still a Technical Preview. The new and updated version contains numerous improvements to the interface and introduces a brand new plugin model. New and improved features The interface has received some updates such as a tabs for switching between views and a nice feature which allows you to edit your post using your blog theme (might have been in previous builds, but this was the first time I’ve seen it).

Yes, you heard it right - now you can install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 on Windows Vista! No need for a Windows Server 2003/2008 or virtual machines, remote debugging or any other weird workarounds! Jonas Nilsson of Bamboo Solutions has come up with a way to allow you to install WSS onto a Vista x86/x64 machine using a special installer file. The post contains detailed instructions on how to install WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007 on any Windows Vista machine with IIS7.

I have repeatedly had Visual Studio 2008 hang or stop responding when I’m checking in files to Visual SourceSafe, especially when checking in large amount of files. It just stays there and eventually dims out (as non responding application does in Windows Vista). The ultimate solution is to kill the devenv.exe process and start over. But I have discovered that it is not just hanging, it’s just the main application window that stops responding. If you hover the application in the task bar on Windows Vista you see the preview window showing the check-in SourceSafe dialog. So you just have to wait it out.

A couple of weeks ago I bought the Belkin N1 Vision router and was really impressed with the design, usability and performance of it. This was until I tried to connect to my work using a Cisco VPN - it just did not work! The specifications for the router states that it has VPN support; IPSec pass-through and PPTP. On other routers I have seen methods to enable/disable IPSec pass-through in the router configuration, but I could not locate it in the N1 setup utility. After some googling I found out that this is always enabled on the N1 Vision, duh - guess not!

Today I passed another SharePoint exam; the 70-541, Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 - Application Development, with a score of 1000 of 1000. This one was pretty easy, compared to the ones for WSS 2/SharePoint 2003. If you have had chance to do some advanced developing and knows the SharePoint class library and Xml schemas you should give it a shot.

I have several times needed a way to sort XML, retrieved from a file or a web service, inline without invoking XSL transformations, which is the most common way to do it as I have seen. The .NET Framework contains the System.Xml.XPath namespace and is available from the .NET Framework 1.1 and up. This namespace contains a number of classes which can improve the performance of your .NET classes when working with XML. Specifically the System.Xml.XPath.XPathExpression contains a method (System.Xml.XPath.XPathExpression.AddSort) to sort the XPath query results.

The Swedish Standards Institute has as a result of the chaotic OOXML vote in August changed their rules for participating in technical committees and voting in them. Previously you could just before the vote sign the agreement and participate. From now on you must have been a member of the technical committee at least three weeks ahead of the votes you would like to participate in. The new rules also clearly points out that you only have one vote (I’m still wondering who voted twice…).

Author, editor and blogger, Ed Bott is currently publishing a series called Fixing Windows Vista, which contains really nice information and instructions on how to get the most out of your Vista machine. Currently three parts has been published: Fixing Windows Vista, one machine at a time Ed Bott shows how to install a clean Vista with the latest drivers (which is the most important thing on any Vista system) on a Sony Vaio.