Robert Bruckner points out the new MSDN aggregation site for Reporting Services 2008. Looks to be the one stop for a wide range of Reporting Services 2008 information with sections for downloads, white papers, video tutorials, links to blogs, podcasts, etc.

There are also sites for Reporting Services 2005 and 2000, though they are not as rich.

While installing a Java update I came across the typical bundled software option and found Sun was promoting the MSN Toolbar.  I recall previous Java updates offering the Google Toolbar and was a bit surprised to find a Microsoft product being bundled with a Java update.  Aren't Sun and Microsoft competitors?  At least their frameworks are (.Net vs. Java).

 

 

The install option was selected by default.  I took the screenshot after I unchecked it.

If you want to use Windows Server 2008 or Vista SP1 as a guest operating system with Virtual PC 2007, you'll need Virtual PC 2007 SP1. Updates for both x86 and x64 clients are available. Not sure if you could get either of these working using a different OS selection in VPC. I'm eager to try out the remoting feature in Powershell v2 and currently these operating systems are they only ones that support Powershell remoting.

Jon Galloway posted an article describing a way to view low bandwidth optimized MSDN pages by modifying the URL.

Try it out...


Also check Jon's site for a bookmarklet he wrote which you can use to switch this functionality on or off at any time.

This option will be very useful when my laptop's cellular connection has a bad signal (like when on the train). I imagine this will also be helpful to all those smart phone browsers out there. Any smart phone owners care to try it out?

Check out his comments section. The Product Unit Manager for MSDN responded with some insight into what they're doing. It sounds like they might change the way the "loband" option is specified. I was wondering why they didn't just make it a query string item, but I'll bet they've already got some serious url rewriting going on.

I didn't go to MIX, but I did read a few blog posts of people who did. Definately need to dive deeper this weekend. Here is my quick overview of what was announced/released...

DLR

• Dynamic Language Runtime
• Lets your .net code iteract with dynamic languages like Ruby, Python, Javascript
• Lets those languages interact with your .net code! Neat!
  

CLR on a Mac

• A browser plug-in that will run .net 3.x apps
• OSX Only
• Intel based Macs only?
• Safari, Firefox, IE
• Subset of the BCL
• Rewritten CLR
  

Silverlight

• Lots of classes to make working with media easier.
• 720p

Some links for further review...
http://www.silverlight.net/
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/

Wanna try it?
Get the plug-in. - Quick install. No need to restart computer, but you will have to restart the browser. Definately works in FireFox.
Go to http://silverlight.net/fox/

 

An email from fellow blogger and brother-in-law Eric prompted me to checkout Google Reader for reading and managing all the blogs I subscribe to. After importing all 154 of my feeds, I sat back with a cup of coffee and started reading. I dug it...quite a bit. Google Reader has the usual google UI goodness. The seamless updating of different browser elements that's so shiny and Web 2.0-y.

I haven't played with the tagging yet, and I'm not sure what "Shared Items" are, but Google Reader has one killer piece of functionality that has already converted me...It only marks items you've actually read as "read". Bloglines is terrible about this. As soon as you click on a folder in bloglines, it assumes you've read all the posts within. It's a real pain to have to update items as "Keep New" individually in Bloglines. It's a backwards way of processing things. Google Reader updates each item as read once you've scrolled past it.

Because of this feature alone, I'm switching to Google Reader.

 

I use virtual envionrments fairly regularly at work.  I mainly use them for app debugging in a clean environment,  permissions testing, and automated deployment testing.

I have a Virtual PC 2004 setup with my base OS installed on it's own virtual hard drive.  I create a new differencing vhd on top of that when I need a fresh environment to work in.  This has worked very well for me until today. 

I created a new differencing vhd and booted into it.  Everything was fine until I tried to login.  I received the following message box...

So when I arrived at work this morning I noticed that my computer had been restarted. After a quick brain scan I reassured myself that I had saved all my work from the last night. I logged in and checked my computer's even log. System came back up at 6:30, but no activity from about 11pm till then. I decide to check on the servers...

Domain Controllers (check, check)
Database (check)
Citrix (check)
Web Server...

Our web server wasn't responding. No biggie, I grab my keys and walk down to the server room to cycle it. As I approached the server room I noticed an unusually loud fan noise. I unlock the room and step into a sauna. By now I'm wondering what servers have been fried. I check the AC controls (our server room has it's own AC unit on the roof) and they read 99 degrees. I turn them off then back on. Nothing. Ok, time to call the boss. After getting the office park's phone number from the boss I give them a call. Apparently ComEd blew something and the entire office park (5 buildings) was in the dark from midnight to around 6:30. They are currently going building to building checking the breakers to make sure everything is back up. About 10 minutes after that conversation the head engineer stops by the office. I've met this guy before when all of the personal heaters we run in our office were causing circuits to trip. He told me that he'd have someone reset our AC unit on the roof and that should cool things off.

As of right now we still do not have AC in the server room. I borrowed a fan from another employee's office and I'm blowing cool air into the room. It's lowered the temp from about 99 to 94.

An interesting start to a Friday.

Edit - Apparently when I email a blog post it doesn't preserve the formatting.

 

That was my commute time this morning. On the best of days it's 30 minutes, on average 45. However I will use this opportunity to plug www.traffic.com. I setup their service, which is free, about 3 weeks ago and they have been far more accurate than WBBM or the overhead road signs (those overhead signs are worthless if you ask me). You can set up different routes on traffic.com and have them email you reports at different times. My basic setup is HomeToWork and WorkToHome which I have emailed to me at 8am and 5pm respectively. Check it out if you're a commuting commando like me.

Google is a very useful and powerful resource. I google daily (yes, it’s a verb now). I can't imagine using a computer nowadays without google or the internet, though I am old enough to have used computers before the internet was mainstream. In fact, my first computer didn't have a hard drive, floppy or any other non-volatile backing store, but that’s another post.

The purpose of this post is to share some advanced googling features.I came across a post by CyberWire that points out some of the slightly more advanced Google search features. At the bare minimum, review the use of quotes and the "+" and "-" symbols. If you are still interested after that, I would also recommend the book“Google Hacking for Penetration Testers”.

If I had to choose one advanced Google feature that I think everyone should add to their repertoire, it would be the “site:” prefix. You can use this in your search to limit Google to only searching a particular domain. The neat part about this is that you can also use wildcards.

For example, if you wanted to search only government sites for information on renewing your passport, enter the following “renew passport site:*.gov”. This will limit your search to the .gov top level domain. Is Amazon’s website search not returning the results you expected? Try using “mybooktopic site:amazon.com”.

I have to admit that I also use the “define:” prefix quite a bit too. There is a firefox extension that allows you to highlight a word, right click and select “define” from a menu that will open a new tab with the definition. A very helpful tool if your vocabulary ain’t what it used to be. (I wrote an "extension" that allowed IE to do the same thing, if you're interested comment below and I will provide the code)