New Features in Office Live
Microsoft introduced a new set of features in Office Live. 
For those who don’t know what Office Live is: Office Live is like a lite cloud version of Share Point. It enables users to store, organize and share documents.
There are four new big features:
- Support for folders. Now the workspaces can contain folders in order to help us organize documents. I am really excited about this feature because I have also requested in through the feedback form. I am using Office Live a lot and I needed folders and subfolders.
- Cut/Copy/Paste. Now Office Live provides support for cutting/copying documents and pasting them in another folder/workspace.
- Increased storage space. The storage space increased to 5GB. That’s a looot. If you don’t think so just try to see how many word documents can you store in 5GB :)
- Eight new languages. The new languages also include Romanian (personally I prefer English but there are other who prefer their native language. The new languages are: Hungarian, Romanian, Lithuanian, Serbian Latin, Ukrainian, Slovak, Latvian and Slovenian.
Funny Pie Charts
I’ve found today a website with a lot of funny pie-charts. Some of them are below (7):
Working Hours Poll
[poll id="8"]
Blog width
After analyzing the statistics from Google Analytics I have decided to increase the blog’s width.
The width increased with 150 pixels (from 850 pixels to 1000 pixels) because less than 1% of the visitors have a resolution with a width smaller than 1024 pixels.
Best hosting?
Many people asked me about hosting and where should they host websites.
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Live Mesh – Synchronizing Life
Great commercial:
Access private data with Reflection
This article shows how one of the basic OOP principles – encapsulation – can be violated using reflection.
Let’s assume that we have a simple class with a private field called “someHiddenValue”.
class ClassThatHidesSomething { private int someHiddenValue = 5; } |
We want to modify that field from outside the class. This can be done extremely easy through Reflection. First of all we need to get the Type of the ClassThatHidesSomething and get some information about the someHiddenValue field.
Type classThatHidesSomethingType = typeof(ClassThatHidesSomething); FieldInfo field = classThatHidesSomethingType.GetField( "someHiddenValue", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance); |
- BindingFlags.NonPublic specifies that we want to search in all fields; by default it searches only the public fields – actually here is the trick that violates encapsulation.
- BindingFlags.Instance specified that we want to search in instance fields also; by default it searches only in static ones.
Now that we have the FieldInfo of that specific field we can do whatever we want with it. Let’s display its value. But first, because the field is an instance field we need an instance of ClassThatHidesSomething.
ClassThatHidesSomething c = new ClassThatHidesSomething(); int hiddenFieldValue = (int)field.GetValue(c); Console.WriteLine("Hidden field value: {0}", hiddenFieldValue); |
Using the same instance c we can set the private field’s value.
field.SetValue(c, 6); |
Below you can see the entire code (it is a console application):
$250.000 Bounty for Conficker Authors
Microsoft is offering no less than $250.000 reward for information that results in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for illegally launching the Conficker malicious code on the Internet. Residents of any country are eligible for the reward, according to the laws of that country, because Internet viruses affect the Internet community worldwide.
Individuals with information about the Conficker worm are encouraged to contact their international law enforcement agencies. Additionally, Microsoft has implemented an Antivirus Reward Hotline, 1-425-706-1111, and an Antivirus Reward Mailbox, avreward@microsoft.com, where tips can be shared.
Learn About Azure Services Platform
Microsoft provides two ways of learning about Azure Services:
1. Azure Services Traning Kit
The Azure Services Training Kit which includes a comprehensive set of technical content including hands-on labs, presentations, and demos that are designed to help you learn how to use the Azure Services Platform. The February release includes the following updates:
- 19 demo scripts that walkthrough several of the services
- 10 presentations covering the entire Azure Services Platform
- 3 additional hands-on labs for Live Services’
The technical content covers services including: Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services.
It can be downloaded from here.
2. “How Do I?” videos for Azure Services Platform
For Windows Azure:
| How Do I: Get Started Developing on Windows Azure? | If you’re a developer and you’re new to Windows Azure, start here! You’ll see what you need to download and install, and how to create a simple “Hello World” Windows Azure application. |
| How Do I: Deploy a Windows Azure Application? | In this brief screencast you’ll see what it takes to move your application into the cloud – you’ll see how to request and register a token, how to upload your Windows Azure application and how to move it between staging and production in the cloud. |
| How Do I: Store Blobs in Windows Azure Storage? | In this brief screencast, learn how to leverage Windows Azure storage to store data as blobs. You’ll learn about blob storage, containers and the API that makes it easy to manage everything from managed code. |
| How Do I: Leverage Queues in Windows Azure? | In this screencast, learn how to use queues to facilitate communication between Web and Worker roles in Windows Azure. |
| Debugging Tips for Windows Azure Applications | The Windows Azure SDK provides a development fabric that provides a “cloud on your desktop.” In this screencast, learn how to debug your Windows Azure applications in this environment. |
For .NET Services:
| How Do I: Get Started with .NET Services? | .NET Services are a set of highly scalable building blocks for programming in the cloud. In this brief screencast, you’ll learn about the registration process, the SDK and the built-in samples – everything you need to know in order to get started. |
| How Do I: Harness the Microsoft .NET Service Bus? | The .NET Service Bus makes it easy to access your Web services no matter where they are. In this brief screencast, you’ll see how to take a basic Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service and expose it to the Internet with the .NET Service Bus. |
For Live Services:
| How Do I: Get Started with the Live Framework? | If you are looking to get started developing with the Live Framework, this is the place to start! In this screencast you’ll learn how to get a Live Services token and what you need to download in order to start writing Live Framework applications. |
| How Do I: Use the Microsoft Live Framework Resource Browser? | The Live Framework Resource Model is a simple, straightforward information model based on entities, collections and relationships. In this brief screencast you’ll learn how to navigate the relationships between entities by using the Live Framework Resource Browser, which is a tool that ships with the Live Framework SDK. |
Top Ten Reasons Why The Most Important Machine Is Unlabeled
An interesting post on Brad Abrams’ blog – it is about a move day at Microsoft and how computers can be recognized.
Today is office move day across much of .NET Framework land.. Good folks across building 41 and 42 are doing a little shuffling around… As part of the move, we all had to be out of the office today. Like any good manager, I wanted to keep my team productive even during this “downtime”.. Many of engineers on the team wanted to work on “their” machines, so we reserved a conference room and had them plug in their machines there then go home or to Starbucks or the local library and work from there remotely. So we ended up with a conference room full of nearly identical headless dev machines, luckily we had the foresight to label them.. all but one of them ;-)
Read the full article here.