On February 8th the Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate was released for MSDN subscribers. If you are not a MSDN subscriber then you can get your hands on VS 2010 on February 10th. To download follow this link. If you are looking for reasons why you should install the newest version of Visual Studio and the .NET framework on your workstation then here are a few. This is not a complete list of features but a few of the major highlights: What's New in VS 2010 The Visual Studio Shell was rewritten in WPF – In my opinion VS 2010 is the first killer app for WPF. Overall, the basic layout is very similar to VS 2008 so it won't require much of a learning curve. You will however notice a slightly different design and color scheme. The WPF version of the IDE allows for richer visualizations and improved editor extensibility. Performance Enhancements – VS 2010 is much more responsive than previous versions. I immediately noticed improved build times and a much speedier add-reference ... [More]

As an IT professional, I have 3 major goals that I want to achieve before I grow old and retire: Land a job with Microsoft and work on a product team like ASP.NET. If for some reason things don't work out and I can't work for Microsoft then I would be honored if I could achieve MVP status. Perhaps my constant blogging about Microsoft products will get things moving in the right direction. Write a technical book. This is something that I have always wanted to do. I know that this would be a lot of work but I welcome the challenge. However, I think I need to accomplish goal #1 or goal #2 before I can get the attention of any legitimate publishers.   So why am I telling you all this? Well, my favorite blogger Scott Hanselman is asking the development community for a favor. He simply wants everyone to spread the word about the .NET 4 Framework that is being pushed out via automatic update. In case you didn't know, Scott Hanselman works for Microsoft as the Principal Program M... [More]

Ok, the title of this blog entry may be slightly misleading. The following is not a hack that will give you root access to a secure Windows 7 box. Basically the whole concept behind the God Mode hack is that you name a folder with a specific name and you will instantly have access to almost every setting in the OS. If you are familiar with the XP Powertoys, then the functionality rivals to that of TweakUI. To get started open a command prompt and type in the following command: mkdir c:\GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} Now navigate to this directory using Windows explorer. The folder will actually found under C:\GodMode (the GUID is not visible in explorer). When you see the folder, you will notice that it has a different Icon.   When you open the folder, you will see a series of shortcuts (286 total) for tweaking your system:     Pretty neat huh? You can create god folders in different places throughout your filesystem if you want. Enjoy!

Pivot is being developed as a way to connect data from different sources on the internet and aggregate each individual item into "collections" based on its metadata. The pivot website really sums it up nicely...At the heart of Pivot are "Collections." They combine large groups of similar items on the Internet, so we can begin viewing the relationships between individual pieces of information in a new way. By visualizing hidden patterns, Pivot enables users to discover new insights while interacting with thousands of things at once. Pivot could be very useful for research purposes. Typically when I am learning about something new I will Google it, read the most promising results in the list first, then I will try use the new terminology I learned to create additional searches to "fill in the gaps". With Pivot, it seems that you can search for something with generalized terms and allow the collection engine to find other relevant information based on patterns it derives in the metadata.... [More]

One of the reasons why it is so enjoyable to write .NET code is the IDE. If you started out writing code in notepad (like me) then I am sure that you truly appreciate all of the amazing things that Visual Studio does. Even though VS 2008 is amazing, VS 2010 is even better. One of the things they are upgrading for the next version is intellisense. In Visual Studio 2008, when you typed the first couple characters or a property or method, intellisense only returned items that started with those characters. In Visual Studio 2010 when you start typing text you get all the properties and methods start with and also contain those characters. For example, If you type "grid.Edit". You will not only get the method EditIndex (as expected) but you will also get RowCancelingEdit, SetEditRow as well. The method EditIndex will be the default selection because it is a obvious match but you will also see the wildcard matches listed as well. One other new feature has been titled Pascal Case... [More]