Radical Development | 2009

May 31, 2009
by Steven Swafford
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Hulu coming to a desktop near you

If you recall from my 9-MAY-2009 post titled Change in Business I was touching on today’s cable television providers and how I believe the cost is to high when it comes to watching television. Now be honest, you have that 200 channel cable package and you find yourself watching 10-15 channels regularly. Why pay this high cost to the greedy providers? Well Hulu labs has just released Hulu Desktop for both Mac and Windows platforms at no cost. Hulu Desktop is a lean-back viewing experience for your personal computer. It features a sleek new look that’s optimized for use with …

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May 29, 2009
by Steven Swafford
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Developer Tool Belt

Here are a number of products and references that I find useful. Notepad++: is a free (as in “free speech” and also as in “free beer”) source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. It runs in the MS Windows environment. Based on a very powerful editing component Scintilla, Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size. Its use is governed by GPL Licence.(http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm) .NET Reflector: .NET Reflector enables you to easily view, navigate, and search through the class hierarchies of .NET assemblies even if …

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May 27, 2009
by Steven Swafford
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Turn your laptop into a tablet

Very cool and affordable tablet PC alternative. The Siso Tablo consists of a couple components. The transceiver which attaches to your laptop screen and plugs into the USB port. Next is the stylus and it simply provides full mouse or touchpad capabilities. Once you have the software installed and inserted the three batteries into the top of the pen you are ready to draw directly to your laptops screen. Tablo Advantage Easily transform normal laptop to powerful tablet PC Direct input on screen or on the air like Nintendo Wii with emotional handwriting (2D & 3D) Large coverage of laptop screen size up to 15.4 Perfect brush effect …

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May 27, 2009
by Steven Swafford
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Microsoft Launches Ramp Up

Now this looks to be very promising both for those just starting out and those old timers such as myself. So what is this you may ask? Ramp Up is a free, online, community-based learning program, with a number of different tracks that will help you build your portfolio of professional development skills. Ramp Up has a solid foundation of premium technical content from subject-matter gurus, and provides easy-to-access content in a variety of forms that guide you in learning the important skills. Join Ramp Up (it’s free!) and help advance your career – click on a track now to …

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May 26, 2009
by Steven Swafford
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Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 hits the street

Microsoft has released Vista and Windows 2008 SP2 for both 32bit and 64bit systems. A handful of items include Record Blu-ray discs. Feature Pack For Wireless Better Wi-Fi performance Provides the desktop search engine, Windows Search 4 Be sure to read the TechNet article Notable Changes in Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Vista SP2 for all the fine grain details. Download: [Vista SP2/Server 2008 SP2 32 bit] Download: [Vista SP2/Server 2008 SP2 64 bit]

May 24, 2009
by Steven Swafford
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Must Have Blackberry Applications

Here are just a handful of useful Blackberry applications: Google Maps is a great application to download for your Blackberry phone. You don’t have to carry around a paper map or worry about printing directions before you go somewhere ever again. Stay connected with Gmail on the go. Google Synch – Synchronize your phone’s calendar and contacts with Google. Viigo gives you instant access to News, Sports, Entertainment, Weather, Markets, Blogs, or any RSS Feed. Evernote for BlackBerry® lets you capture any experience, idea, or inspiration as it happens, wherever you find yourself. Evernote for BlackBerry also lets you search …

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May 11, 2009
by Steven Swafford
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Lines of Code Counters

Counting lines of code (LOC) is one of those necessary evils and while every project may not utilize this feature we as the developers should be interested within the the statistics a LOC can provide. Not sure what this is? Check out Wikipedia. One such tools you will find at TechNet from Microsoft and it is free! This tool can be ran alone or as a plug-in within Visual Studio .NET. Note, I am running VS.NET 2005 Team Edition as well as VS.NET 2008 and the plug-in only worked in VS.NET 2005. To start using LOC, go to View -> …

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