Google just added support for AIM to Google Chat so you can just enter your login details and chat right away from your Gmail or Google Apps for Domains account as if they were Google Chat users.
Better yet you can actually enter your ICQ number in the user-name box, fill in your password and integrate your ICQ account although this is seemingly undocumented and likely just a result of the ICQ and AIM integration from some time back.
Apple’s iPhone SDK is now available in beta format for free download (running your apps on a real iPhone is a one-time $99 charge).
The 2.1GB download contains the full Xcode 3.1 environment for Mac app development but also an extra 22MB of iPhone-specific SDK goodness including an iPhone simulator named Aspen Simulator (perhaps the code-name for iPhone). Whilst most of the iPhone’s apps are absent you can still access settings, photos, Safari and contacts.
AnkhSVN 2.0 is now out with the majority of these features making the cut!
Now that AnkhSVN 1.0.3 is out with support for Visual Studio 2008 we can discuss our future plans for AnkhSVN.
I had to do a couple of ad-hoc Excel jobs today and found that whilst Excel has a VLookupVLookup function for spreadsheet/ranges it doesn’t have one for databases.
It’s been a while since I touched VBA and Access but the DLookup function was quite useful so here it is for Excel. Read the warnings below before you use it!
My good friend Steve Streeting is giving a talk about the Hibernate object-relational mapper at the Guernsey Software Developer Forum tomorrow night. Hibernate is a very successful ORM for Java which has been ported to .NET under the moniker NHibernate.
The event, as always, is open to everyone and commences at 6pm at the Guernsey Training Agency above the old Post Office in Smith Street, St. Peter Port. They normally run for around 1 hour followed by an optional 30 minutes in the pub for those who can’t get enough (code, not alcohol).
Microsoft have released the binary file format specifications to their Office suite (the XML ones are already published) under their Open Specification Promise.
I am not a lawyer but as far as I understand this means you are free to implement the standards with a promise that Microsoft will not use any patents under its control that are required to implement the specification against you.
My Humane theme for Visual Studio is getting a fair bit of traffic today courtesy of Scott Hanselman. Given I have been messing with Mac development lately I thought it was worth porting to TextMate and Xcode 3.
My Envy Code R programming font isn’t great on the Mac yet so I have configured these to use the excellent but overlooked Panic Sans in 12 point which unlike Monaco is available in bold, italic and bold italic variants. (I love my comments to be italics)
Rob Conery got me thinking about web site maintenance and I put forward a brief comment on the two distinct types and how Visual Studio handles them which I have expanded upon here.
Primarily for working with ad-hoc web sites that have programmed elements. Easily identified by customer-specific content present in aspx files.
Radio 4 covered the The Six Word Memoir competition, inspired by Earnest Hemingway’s wager he could tell a complete story in just six words. He deliciously delivered “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn” earning him $10.
Expressing a life story in six words is just as tricky. Some of my favorite submissions include:
Long-time friend, fellow co-host of the GSDF and the coding genius behind the open-source Ogre3D engine Steve Streeting has written an interesting piece on Open source adoption; countering the fear and doubt. I have no doubt that this was fueled by a lengthy discussion last night in the Ship & Crown pub — a common ritual after our GSDF meetings.
The reasons why I adopted .NET as my primary platform despite being tied to a single-supplier are: