Fridathon: unstructured learning or hacking you can opt-in to do on any random Friday.

  • Search with Google Desktop from within Outlook!!!

    Posted on September 9, 2005

    I may be a little late, but I’ve just downloaded the latest version of Google Desktop and it’s * amazing *. I love the sidebar (although I don’t like the all-COM-API for developers of panels :( ), but my favorite is being able to search using GDS from within Outlook :D (although the UI is very simple and there are a lot of features that I’d like to see in the future). Definitely, Google is getting closer and closer to killing the application I hate the most in my life with computers, that fat dog that eats 120+Mb RAM and... [Read More]

  • Google to kill Exchange Server?

    Posted on September 9, 2005

    There are a lot of mail servers out there. Most web UIs for them suck really bad. The only one that is usable is OWA, bundled with Exchange. But Gmail is different. Even being a web app, it’s way more responsive than Outlook itself, IMO. Everything works fast and as expected, and I can even add cool extensions to it like search folders and a delete button ;). Now, when will they offer a mail server with their cool WebMail GUI for sell?? I know for sure that I will certainly be interested in buying such a product for my... [Read More]

  • I hate sealed classes!!!

    Posted on August 29, 2005

    Sealed keyword is by far the most annoying showstopper to extensibility. I hate it so much. I wish there was an FxCop rule that would enforce that: 1 - If a class is sealed, then it must implement an interface that extenders can implement to hook custom implementations. 2 - The sealed class cannot be used anywhere in an “if (foo is MyDamnSealedClass)” statement. The required interface from 1) must be used instead. 3 - If a method is sealed, the class should be sealed too, or an equivalent method called from the sealed one is provided for inheritors (implementation... [Read More]

  • The Whidbey provider pattern was the tip of iceberg

    Posted on August 16, 2005

    I have complained in the past about the shortcomings of the Whidbey provider pattern (ASP.NET should I say?), which I always regarded as woefully inadecuate as a general purpose pattern for complex blocks and pluggable providers. At ClariuS it’s not our style to just complain, so we got one of our brightest brains to work on Enterprise Library and do something about it. The result is amazing: both simple yet incredible powerful and flexible. I would bet you will see his code in VS Orcas! Don’t miss his first post explaining what it’s all about. [Read More]

  • What it takes to be a Dev Lead at patterns & practices

    Posted on August 12, 2005

    One very important area where a dev lead must excel, specially at patterns & practices where there’s a lot of interaction with product groups across Microsoft, is to be able to handle situations smoothly, keep several mind-threads and tasks running at the same time, etc., in other words, you have to be kind of a juggler with regards to people, projects, and so on. Peter is very good at it, not only metaphorically, as you can see ;) [Read More]

  • Presenting GAT @ MS Argentina

    Posted on August 12, 2005

    If you happen to be around Buenos Aires, don’t miss today’s TechNight that will be an extended version of the presentation Wojtek and myself did at the TechEd’05. It’s tonight (Aug-12, 7PM @ Microsoft Argentina). Here are the slides that I’ll be showing (along with lots of demos/code!!). [Read More]