KludgeHack

Sysinternals avaiable as Windows Share
1 June 2008 in Microsoft | Comments (5)

If you are as addicted to Sysinternals tools as I am, I think you will like to know that you can now access the Sysinternals using the Windows share: \\live.sysinternals.com\tools

This is something I’ve never seen (Internet wide share), and I really think that it help when you need some of the tools.

WPF Boot Camp Videos available
10 April 2008 in Microsoft & WPF | Comments (0)

If you haven’t seen, and are interested in all WPF stuff like I am, check out the WPF Boot Camp 2008 videos site.

There is a lot of great content there, including some of the best speakers in the WPF world.

The website requires Silverlight Beta 2 to run. If don’t have installed and don’t intend to install, you can download directly from here.

Visual Studio and Expression free for students
19 February 2008 in Microsoft | Comments (1)

Today Microsoft (by Bill Gates) released a new offer called Microsoft Dreamspark through their portal for students Channel 8.

In this new offer, the provide free of charge the Visual Studio, Windows Server 2003, Expression Studio and XNA Game Studio to all students in some country’s. Unfortunately they still haven’t find Portugal in the map, but promise to look close throughout the year…

As a student, I can’t really tell you how cool this is. Microsoft makes lots of mistakes, but their development tools was as long as I can remember their top software. Without hesitation I can easily say Visual Studio is the best IDE around… having this for free is really great.

I know there will always be someone saying Microsoft does this only to expand its monopoly through students (future professional programmers), which I find mostly true, but its nice to have more options.

Creating Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets
22 December 2007 in Fun & Microsoft & Programming | Comments (3)

It was only about two months ago that I heard about the Microsoft Gadget Competition. Apparently they been doing this contests around the globe for a lot of countries, and they finally decided do it here in Portugal.

I was able to find some free time and started developing some gadgets for this competition. I ended up having two gadgets made in English, and two in Portuguese.

To make this gadgets I needed to go out of my way and stick my hands in the all so famous world of Javascript/AJAX. The Vista sidebar, just like Google and Apple, uses HTML to render gadgets.

The main downside is the lack of communication with Windows. Although they were developed in this way so that developers could make Web Gadgets and Sidebar Gadgets almost the same way (and offers a great level of security), they don’t allow the creation of more control over the system than a normal website.

The only upside I noticed in using HTML for gadgets, is the use of the same render engine for all gadgets: IE7+. For this environment, the special effects (Filters and Transitions) that IE bring, makes gadgets shine.

My first gadget was a FeedBurner gadget using their Awareness API to keep on the sidebar a feed readers count updated with the service. This was made so I and others can keep updated on this number without needing to visit the website.

After this, I created the very famous Jaw Breaker (Bubble Breaker?) that anyone using Windows Mobile already knows. I somehow find it an addictive game, and decided build one for the sidebar. This has been, by far the most downloaded (20000+) and well rated gadget of the four.

Not completely happy with my gadgets, I also build two more Portuguese gadgets that makes use of some Sapo services (main ISP in Portugal). One called Sapo Tráfego ADSL brings to the sidebar the current state (bandwidth) of the ADSL line, and one called Sapo Fotos that brings photos from their Photos service (very similar to Flickr).

So, feel free to test and use if you like, my gadgets. You can find them in the following links:

• FeedBurner Readers
• Jaw Breaker
• Sapo Fotos (Portuguese)
• Sapo Tráfego ADSL (Portuguese)

The contest begun last week at this website, and if you are Portuguese, go there and deliver some votes around and you will probably win one prize (six Office 2007).

WPF Contest
13 December 2007 in Microsoft & Programming | Comments (0)

I was so happy to see that Lab49 and Microsoft were having a WPF contest about data visualization… until I realized the contest were only available for residents of Canada, Mexico, the United States, and Puerto Rico.

The contest criteria is very simple, you only need to develop a creative and smart way of interacting and visualize data (the prizes are so good…).

If you happen to live in one of this allowed country’s… heres your chance. At least, I’m not going to be your competition