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February 21, 2006

VB and XML on a colission course

A stream of angle brackets is being fired into the VB language with sufficient velocity that XML is expected to be fused into the core.

Imagine writing code like this:

Console.WriteLine(Person.<Name>.Value)
Console.WriteLine([email protected]>) 
Person.<Name>.Value = "Mike Champion"

Details here.

Posted on February 21, 2006 at 08:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hotfix for: Visual Basic compiler is unable to recover from the following error

If you occasionally get an error in VS indicating that the background VB compiler has crashed, Microsoft has a hotfix available. Details here.

Posted on February 21, 2006 at 04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My.Resources and Localization

Let's say you want to localize an application. You can set the localizable property of your forms, but if you have other strings that need to be localized (the text of messageboxes, for example), you will also need a way to obtain a localized string at run-time.

My.Resources supports this. Just follow these steps:

1. Create a new VB.NET Windows Forms project.
2. Double-click My Project in the solution explorer.
3. Click the Resources tab.
4. Set the Name for the first resource entry to Message1.
5. Set the Value to This is English
6. Right-click on the project in the Solution Explorer, and select Add | New Item.
7. For the item template, select Resource File.
8. Set the name to Resources.es.resx, and click Add.
9. In the resource editor, set the Name for the first resource entry to Message1.
10. Set the Value to This is Spanish
11. In the Solution Explorer, double-click Form1.
12. Add two buttons to Form1.
13. In the click event for the first button, enter:

        My.Application.ChangeUICulture("en")
MessageBox.Show(My.Resources.Message1)

14. In the click event for the second button, enter:

        My.Application.ChangeUICulture("es")
MessageBox.Show(My.Resources.Message1)

15. Run the application. When you click the first button, you will see the English resource string. When you click the second button, you will see the Spanish resource string.

Posted on February 21, 2006 at 09:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

February 16, 2006

You'd think they'd understand basic economics

I'm not certain if our elected representatives in congress are simply completely ignorant about the capitalism, or if they're simply pandering to the masses.

Google, Yahoo, Cisco, and MIcrosoft are getting raked over the coals for doing whatever China demands to gain access to the Chinese market.

One lawmaker minced no words in addressing the companies. "Your abhorrent activities in China are a disgrace. I simply do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night," Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., whose district includes the Silicon Valley, admonished executives from the four major technology companies.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002808323_chinahearing16.html

I guess Rep Tom Lantos is a blithering idiot.

Executives of publicly traded companies have a legal responsibility to "carry out the responsibilities with the utmost degree of good faith, honesty, integrity, loyalty and undivided service of the beneficiaries interest."

The beneficiaries are not the people of China. They're not American citizens. They're certainly not the blowhards in congress. They are the shareholders of Microsoft, Cisco, Yahoo, and Google. If those companies do anything other than attempt to maximize return on investment, without breaking the law, then the CEOs deserve to be thrown out on their ear, and can even be liable. Google filtering content to get into China is good for Google's bottom line. "Do no evil" went out the freak'n window the instant they went public.

The solution is for Congress to get off it's collective tushy and pass laws. Or better yet, go to the WTO and claim that China is restraining trade by blocking American Internet companies from its markets by erecting unfair barriers to entry. But don't blame the execs. They are far more accountable to their shareholders than to Chinese dissidents. It's the job of the legislative body to restrict (dare I say, regulate) what the investors can demand.

Posted on February 16, 2006 at 04:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 14, 2006

Let your people blog (for fun and profit)

A new study sheds some light on why big companies should let their people blog. Some excerpts:

...traditional corporate messaging is less interesting and less relevant to online publics because traditional corporate marketers show little care for the people who make up the markets. Rather, corporate voices sound more like profit-driven machinery than real people engaged in two-way conversations.

Among the most important findings of this study are that 1) blogs were perceived as more conversational than organizational Web sites, and 2) this conversational human voice correlated positively with other previously-identified relationship outcomes.

As Searls and Weinberger expounded "… the best of the people in PR are not PR Types at all… they're the company's best conversationalists" (2001, p. 90). This is quite a conundrum for the practice and theory of public relations.

The last quote is especially interesting. I remember Scoble commenting that he couldn't help but think that he was hired, in part, for his blogging popularity. Will company PR folks recruit top bloggars, and then channel them into being "evangelists"?

Posted on February 14, 2006 at 08:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

February 11, 2006

Search: Online, Replace: Live

Apparently up in Redmond, "Live" is wired, ".NET" is tired, and "Active" is expired.

According to this article, the Live moniker is getting tacked onto more products. E-mail, IM, and search are getting sucked into the "Live" marketing juggernaught to join Office.

So the version of Office that you actually install, will that be called "Office Dead"?

Posted on February 11, 2006 at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 06, 2006

Select All on Texbox Enter

You' think that if wanted to select all the text in a text box, when click in, it would be simple. Actually, it requires a mere four even handlers.

Posted on February 6, 2006 at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

February 02, 2006

That service pack you've all been waiting for

Microsoft has launched a new Visual Studio 2005 Servicing site that lists such important things as when VS 2005 Service Pack 1 will ship. Q3 of 06 is the target date, but I don't think the development team has even reached Milestone DS yet (that's the Date Slip milestone).

Posted on February 2, 2006 at 05:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)