Jeremy Caney

If you have a Windows Phone 7 and need to store a phone number with an extension into your address book ("People"), use the "," key.  This takes the place of "n" for "pause" on many phones (including Windows Phone 6.x and Blackberry).  This originally had me stumped since Windows Phone 7 doesn't allow the selection of letters for phone numbers.

Traditionally, wrapping client-side controls in server libraries simplifies integration by abstracting backend and client development. To support this, control developers (e.g., ComponentArt, Infragistics) provide all-inclusive frameworks complete with custom AJAX, JavaScript-enabled controls and server-side APIs. Given modern development practices (e.g., MVC, AJAX) and the maturity of JavaScript frameworks (e.g., Prototype, ExtJS), however, do these benefits still apply?

I've never been fond of the term "Web 2.0" - in part because it's often used to imply a new suite of technologies even though it's largely founded on concepts that have been well-established (but not widely-utilized) for over a decade. For example, XMLHttpRequest - the backbone of the AJAX style of development - first shipped with Internet Explorer 5.0 in 1999. The term thus struck me as another example of the popular trend in software of rebranding old technologies as the "next big thing".

The majority of our workstations are Apples running Windows Vista (we are, after all, Windows developers). This introduces certain IT challenges - the most notable being backing up of the operating system. This post discusses various approaches to solving this problem, including must have tools and general recommendations.

Despite a bias against both Google as well as new entries into the browser market, I'm quite impressed by Chrome. More importantly, however, I feel that Google is well-positioned to drive progress in the W3C in a way that Firefox hasn't even attempted and which Microsoft was destined to fail due to fundamental disagreements in style.

Microsoft recently released the the MSDN Code Gallery. Compared to CodePlex, the site offers less project management, collaboration and source control features and, in concept, is more optimized for quickly publishing code snippets. Unfortunately, though, I don't think think they went far enough in simplifying CodePlex and, as such, it's impractical for its intended purpose.

During a discussion this weekend I realized that a lot of the complexity of DAL and ORM projects stems from the attempt to accomplish both needs in the same library. And perhaps that makes sense; it might be argued that the only pragmatic difference is cache strategy. Nonetheless, as with all development projects, identifying the project requirements and evaluating them against the innate benefits of each approach is critical.

I have mixed views on tagging. On one hand, I agree that most information architecture forces the user to channel the content owner in order to find content; the inability to (easily) cross-reference data into multiple categories in most systems compounds this problem. At the same time, tagging doesn't innately solve this. With this in mind, Ignia has implented a different strategy for tagging that begins to address some of these limitations.

We've done quite a few SharePoint 2007 sites but a recent project required diving much deeper into the product, including extensive use of custom web parts, search indexes and registration on top of the standard arsenal of master pages, layouts, XSL style sheets, web part definitions, etc. Additionally, this was the first MOSS project for two of the project members which meant a steep learning curve for the team. This post discusses some of the lessons learned.

Given my firm's rigid code formatting, organization and commenting standards I may seem like the person least likely to criticize standards zealots. Nevertheless, hearing terms like "web standards" or "semantic web" makes me cringe. It's not that there is anything wrong with these concepts (contrary!) so much that their proponents have become so mired in the principals that they've forgotten the objectives - as well as those of their clients.