Technoeuphoria!

Visual Studio 2008: What's new in the language?

I've been following Scott Gu's blog for news on what's new in Orcas. He has a "New in Orcas" series that he's frequently updating and you might want to keep a tab on it. Here's what I've gone through so far, all of them VERY interesting reads:

• New C# Orcas Language Features- Automatic Properties, Object Initializers, and Collection Initializers
• New Orcas Language Feature- Extension Methods
• New Orcas Language Feature- Lambda Expressions
• New Orcas Language Feature- Query Syntax
• New Orcas Language Feature- Anonymous Types

More of Microsoft Surface

Found this video with a "behind the scenes"  look at Microsoft Surface, for all the skeptics out there who think these videos are rigged ;)

SQL Serve 2008: Spatial Data Types

I feel so old fashioned not being able to understand the world of SQL going beyond 2D. I found this great post that proved quite enlightening for the layperson like me. Basically it gives an introduction to what exactly Geospatial data is and it describes 2 new data types coming in SQL Server 2008 (codenamed "Katmai") namely the geography, which supports a round-earth model and geometry, which supports flat-earth data.

Also, in this other article from Directions Magazine, Ed Katibah, the Spatial Program Manager with the SQL Server team talks more about the spatial data types. It even shows how a SQL query to spatial data looks like. Check it out!

Visual Studio 2008: Multi-targetting

One pretty cool feature of Visual Studio 2008  is the ability to chose your target .Net framework. When you create a new project, you're actually given an option to select which version of the framework you want to target, back up to .Net 2.0. This is made possible because, just like the increment from 2.0 to 3.0, the increment to 3.5 is also just extending the framework on top of the previous version:

Do note, however, that if you open a Visual Studio 2008 project/solution, with Visual Studio 2005 (because, yes, you can run them side by side on the same machine) you will not be able to do so. Same goes, if you have a Visual Studio 2005 project, that you open and "migrate" into Visual Studio 2008. Visual Studio 2008 WILL prompt to create a backup for you but it's always better to be safe. :)

surfing the net on your windows mobile emulator!

DevEnvironment:
Windows Vista
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 ("Orcas")
Windows Mobile 6 SDK

I guess you won't really use it for surfing the net per se, but if you want to simulate internet availability for your Windows Mobile applications, here's what you have to do:

1. Open up you Windows Mobile Device Center and select connection settings:

2. In the connection settings dialog box, toggle on Allow connections to the following: and select DMA

3. Next, go to Visual Studio 2008, press F5 and select to deploy on the emulator of your choice, in my case, I have the Windows Mobile 6 Standard Emulator

4. Once the emulator is up, click on File -> Configure

5. Select the Network tab and toggle on Enable NE2000 PCMCIA network adapter and bind to: and select which network card you want to bind it to, obviously the one you use to access the Internet on your host machine.

6. When this is done, go back to Visual Studio 2008, go to Tools -> Device Emulator Manager

7. Look for your emulator and right click, and select Cradle

8. Surf's up!

Nibbles Beta

Here's a really cool looking site to help you get started on Silverlight and the Expression tools Blend and Design. 

http://www.nibblestutorials.net/