Soma made a few announcements on his blog and at TechEd Europe, but what does "Target multiple platforms" mean.

We have a very broad partner ecosystem with Visual Studio.  Some of our partners have needs to target multiple platforms.  As a response to our partners’ request, we are going to remove license restrictions with Visual Studio and the Visual Studio SDK to enable you to use the Visual Studio IDE and build applications that target the platform of your choice.

Is multi platform a .NET thing or a c++?  Does platform relate to windows versions or other OS? Or is this targeting versions of Visual Studio such as express?

According to CNN Money Microsoft has committed to an end of November release date.

Full story here.

With every fresh install of windows I am greeted with this message when I stop and think with the shift key firmly pressed down.

Its rather annoying, kind of breaks up your train of thought too.

To disable this wonderful feature few people use hit your windows key and type "ease of access" press enter(control panel->ease of access).

Now select Make the keyboard easier to use.

Select Set up Filter keys ( looks like a link.)

Uncheck Turn on Filter Keys when right SHIFT is pressed for 8 seconds.

Click Save.

Take a look how Firefox and a little CSS can dress up GMAIL and GoogleReader. Stylish

"Point is a bicycle

Encompass is a Cadillac"

Is this a complement or an insult.  Maybe I just like my bike to much.

We had a nice little earthquake this evening which will led to a long night of after shocks.  5.6 centered about Aum Rock. not so far from home.

http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Quakes/nc40204628.html

Brad Abrams is taking a poll, Allowing .NET EXEs to run off a network share.  There are a lot of useful solutions that are blocked by the current .NET policy.  I would like to see it go the way of the dodo.  It doesn't really offer protection since unmanaged code will execute from a network share.  Removing this default limitation would allow for true xcopy deployment.

Please vote early and often!

Things I learned today.

• Google wrote Google maps with asp.net and SQL.
• adding AJAX roll over data to a web client helps to increase scalability.
• Although you don't need any software to run a web client some how you still need a SQL server on the client.
• websites can be ergonomically designed!

Pinnacle Web does not require any software installation, local client, special downloads, or plug-ins, saving districts time and money in initial purchase costs and maintenance. Built using the same AJAX technologies employed by Google Maps, the gradebook provides users smooth scrolling, instant response rollover information, smart menus with drop-down options, and immediate, real-time information.
 
+ A new ergonomically designed interface, which reduces training requirements

+ Expanded mobility for educators, requiring access to only the Web and a SQL server

If your running Visual studio 2005 under Terminal services or Remote desktop and you find the editor constantly refreshing ( repainting, flickering ) Disable font smoothing on your remote desk top connection.  If you have your heart set on using font smoothing try courier as your editors font.

If you have not seen it yet Patrick Smacchia is showing off his free library to handle common and complex file path operations.  Its on CodePlex NDepend.Helpers.FilePathDirectory

Here is Patrick's class diagram

It nicely done some thing that MS should have offered in the DotNet Base Class Library.