You've reached the internet home of Chris Sells, who has a long history as a contributing member of the Windows developer community. He enjoys long walks on the beach and various computer technologies.
Friday, Aug 25, 2006, 12:05 PM
Windows Live WiFi Beta
The Windows Live team has posted their WiFi beta and they'd love it if you checked it out. I already love the HotSpot Locator (there are lots of free hot spots in my neighborhood I didn't know about!) and are working on a security blanket for unprotected hot spots as well as a bunch of other WiFi related stuff. Check it out!
Wednesday, Aug 23, 2006, 10:31 PM in Fun
I listen to one podcast: HanselMinutes
Scott created his podcast with the idea of not wasting his listeners' time and he's done it. HanselMinutes is the only podcast I listen to. In fact, I prepared for a long car drive by filling my phone w/ episodes I hadn't hear yet and listened all the way (except when I called Scott to complain about one of them : ).
Not only does Scott have a fabulous list of topics for the Windows developer, but the way he explains them is wonderful, too. I don't know where the guy finds the time to do all the stuff he talks about; I'm jealous!
In fact, I'm so enamored of his show, I've been trying to horn my way onto an episode (and not just 'cuz he had very nice things to say about me recently [19:53 - 21:12]). I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but either way, if you only listen to one podcaster this year, it should be Scott.
Friday, Aug 18, 2006, 11:48 AM in The Spout
Fixing the Internet
About 18 months ago, I asked for an intern and boy did I get one. He doesn't want to be mentioned, but he's done some pretty cool stuff with the site in his spare time (he's also a very busy web development consultant):
- Dug into what it would take to rebuild sb.com from scratch in ASP.NET 2.0 (although we differ on the moral implications of the license on Community Server 2.0)
- Updated 404 page that tracks usage on dead/non-existent links, even missing URL #frags
- Server-side link and client-side #frag forwarding
- tinysells.com implementation (e.g. www.tinysells.com/4) and administration console (i.e. book co-authors)
#4 was very cool, because it enables me to put links into my writing that are easy for the reader to type and that are easy for me to update when the real URL changes (none of the other URL redirection sites allow administration post-facto as far as I can tell).
#3 is also cool, because of the primitive site authoring tools I use (FrontPage), so when I move spout/index.htm (the content of spout/default.aspx) to spout/archive.htm (the content of spout/archive.aspx), all of the links that folks have put into their own content are broken. Now, we've got a means for tracking when those links are broken and for forwarding them, even using my silly client-side name #frags. That even means that when folks form their URLs incorrectly (this one was never right and should always have been this) can be caught and corrected on my side.
Anyway, I wish I could tell you about this guy 'cuz he does great work and he deserves move business. Hopefully this post will shame him into it. : )
Friday, Aug 18, 2006, 9:22 AM in The Spout
The Internet Is a Meritocracy
It's easy to think that if you're already got a high page rank in google, that you'll get more than your far share of traffic, polarizing the internet into a small number of sites that get all the hits. Luckily, according to "Topical interests and the mitigation of search engine bias," published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that's not the case:
"Our result has relevant conceptual and practical consequences; it suggests that, contrary to intuition and prior hypotheses, the use of search engines contributes to a more level playing field in which new sites have a greater chance of being discovered and thus of acquiring links and popularity, as long as they are about specific topics that match the interests of users as expressed through their search queries."
In other words, if you've got something relevant to say, the folks that care will find it. Yet again, letting the internet decide yields the best result.
Source: Is there a googlearchy?
Tuesday, Aug 15, 2006, 9:56 AM in The Spout
$33 On Bookpool: Windows Forms 2.0 Programming
The nice folks at Bookpool are running a special on Windows Forms 2.0 Programming: only $33! Enjoy.
Tuesday, Aug 15, 2006, 12:29 AM in Fun
Vista Song Parody from Ted + Carl!
I'm a big Ted Pattison fan in general (you have *got* to hear the story where the cowboy shows up at the door in buttless leather chaps), but he's at his best when he's singing (or holding Don's hand). Of course, Carl Franklin's no slouch at singing either (I don't know how he his at holding hands or whether his chaps have a butt or not), so you'll want to hear them singing "Why Did Shipping Vista Turn Out to be so Hard" sttto "Me and Julio Down by the School Yard," by Paul Simon. Enjoy.
Monday, Aug 14, 2006, 10:24 AM in The Spout
24 and the Comic Book Archive
I'm an avid 24 watcher and one of my favorite parts of the show (offsetting the fact that Jack never so much as cracks a smile let alone giving us a nice "Wahoo! I did it! I rock!") is when one of the technies "sends her screen" to another computer. Man! I want that! It's so often the case that I've got a bunch of morning news sites and documents I'm reading through that I get onto one computer in my house and want to send to another computer for reading (maybe it's the computer downstairs or the Tablet), but there's no way to do that. I want a little glyph next to the Minimize button called Send that lets me pick a computer to send the screen to.
And what does that have to do with the Comic Books Archive, which was archiving digital images of almost 3000 comic books at last count? These are folks that have figured out how to digitize a specific media and provide a specialized format (the Comic Book Reader format) and provide a specialized reader (cdisplay), which would make an excellent thing to send to a Tablet PC, along with PDFs, Word docs, web sites, 18,000 books from Project Gutenberg, and anything else that you'd like to share between your own computers or those of your friends and colleagues.
In April of 2005, Paul Thurrott mentioned something called "application sharing" that would enable sharing of individual apps via terminal services instead of entire winstations. I don't know if we're actually building such a thing, but I in addition to being able to reach from one computer to another to grab an app, I'd also like to send one.
Wouldn't that make Jack proud?
Sunday, Aug 13, 2006, 11:41 AM in .NET
WPF Security in 14 Points and Some Extra Words
MikeDub has a nice summary to get you started down the road to WPF ClickOnce deployment, both for stand-alone apps and browser-based apps (XBAPs). Enjoy.
Sunday, Aug 13, 2006, 8:30 AM in The Spout
Get 'Em While They're Hot
Even though the 1st printing was just in May of this year, Windows Forms 2.0 Programming just entered the 2nd printing. Thanks for reading!
Friday, Aug 11, 2006, 1:07 PM in The Spout
We Sold A Copy of ATL Internals!
You said it couldn't be done, but ATL Internals, 2e, has a review! Thanks, W.
Tuesday, Aug 8, 2006, 1:29 PM in The Spout
The Media Center PC ain't a desktop; it's a server
I've seen some flack lately about how the Windows Media Center Edition-style computers haven't changed how folks consume content. Man, it sure has changed mine. Sure, you can put a MCE box on your desk and watch TV from your chair, but who the hell wants to do that?
A MCE box belongs in a living room or bedroom somewhere or even in a server closet. In fact, while I have my MCE box attached to my bedroom TV, I use it as a media server for music, video, photos and recorded TV shows. My media is available at every PC in my home and at every TV w/ an MCE extender box (I have an XBox on one TV and an XBox 360 on another). This setup allows my media "room" to be my entire house and allows my family room media setup to consist of an HDTV and an XBox 360.
What's not to love about that?
Thursday, Aug 3, 2006, 10:57 AM in The Spout
3 Degrees of Email Separation
Microsoft is a sea of answers if only you can find the right person to ask. In my experience, I get a lot of those incoming questions, both internally and externally. Often, I don't know the answer, but I can direct the email to someone closer, who will either know the answer or the right person to ask and so on.
Depending on how well a person in this chain is at answering this email, this process can take minutes or days, but it almost always ends up with the person that knows the answer within 3 emails. Often this chain involves an internal mailing list (lots of external questions end up on internal email aliases, insults and all : ), which doesn't necessarily shorten the chain, but it does tend to shorten the response time.
I consider the ability to follow this chain to an answer one of the huge benefits of my industry -- I wish I was able to tap into it in other disciples, e.g. health care, financial, home repair, etc. Likely these chains exist in other areas, too, I just don't know the first link in the chain. I actually tried to establish a financial chain one time, but that just pissed off the guy who was always my first email. : )
Sunday, Jul 30, 2006, 7:35 PM in The Spout
Custom Settings Provider in .NET 2.0
I updated the SDK RegistrySettingsProvider to implement IApplicationSettings and built a sample to demonstrate how to integrate it (or any .NET 2.0 custom settings provider) with the settings designer-generated code. Enjoy.
Sunday, Jul 30, 2006, 2:06 PM in Tools
Number to String Converter
To capture the work that Doug and I did to make Indigo (WCF) and Avalon (WPF) work together, I tore up our PDC sample application into a set of simpler technology samples. To make it fun for myself, as part of these samples, I built a little library for converting numbers into strings of English words, e.g.
Sunday, Jul 30, 2006, 1:34 PM in .NET
On W*F Integration Samples
As you may or may not recall, Doug Purdy and I had some trouble at the last PDC getting Avalon (WPF) and Indigo (WCF) to work together. To save myself from having that trouble again, I came back from the PDC and starting the "WinFX Cross-Pillar SDK Samples Working Group," which is just a fancy name for the PMs in charge of Avalon, Indigo and Workflow samples getting together to make sure that we have a list of simple technology samples showing the three W*F technologies working together.
You can see the results of that work in the .NET 3.0 SDK under the Integration Samples for WinFX Features topic. Right now, there are 9 integration samples and I'm hoping to almost double that by .NET 3.0 RTM. I'd love feedback. Thanks!