Travis Pettijohn: Blog

Edit: This is the lame. All it does is make links that you send clickable. All incoming URLs are still plain text.

Source.

1. Open registry editor and go to the following registry entry:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator
2. Add the following key to above mentioned entry
   EnableURL (Type:DWORD), value can be either 0 (URL will appear as plain text) or 1 (makes URL clickable)

Now close the registry editor and restart Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, URLs should now be clickable. Administrators can control values of this feature via group policy settings.

I'm a few days late with this one, but Microsoft has released a Sideshow application for Windows Mobile. Download link for the Developer Preview.

This weekend I added a second hard drive to my Toshiba M9 laptop (in the CD-ROM bay). I then was able to install Windows Server 2008 on a second partition on the primary drive. After that was up and running, I set up Hyper-V with the goal of migrating my primary Vista installation (the one on the first partition) to a virtual machine. The process was easy enough: in the Hyper-V Manager, create a new VHD and tell it to clone a copy of the existing first hard drive. A few hours later, I now had a VHD on my second hard drive that was an exact clone of the first drive. I mounted it in a virtual machine and booted: to my surprise, there were my boot options, Server 2008 and Vista. And Vista x64 started right up (amazing it didn't blue screen during boot with all the hardware changes; also amazing, a 64-bit guest OS). But, here's the rub and the deal breaker: I couldn't install the "virtual machine additions" (I forget the correct Hyper-V term), as they aren't supported on 64-bit Vista. Performance was quite good, and I was able to share both physical CPUs inside the virtual machine. Here's to hoping they fully support 64-bit Vista as a guest!

Saw a commercial on TV: buy an '08 Ford, get a free upgrade to Sync, and get a free iPhone. Microsoft and Apple, together at last! Thanks, Ford!

Don Box weighs in on Google deprecating their SOAP search API and releasing an AJAX one. Choice snippet:

In my mind, this is a significant step backwards.

It's one thing to say move from SOAP to POX or even XML to JSON - the former move trades off extensibility in the spirit of YAGNI, and the latter move trades off SGML synergy for a better impedance match to most people's programming languages.

It's another thing entirely to require someone to use a specific language, runtime, and even local API to get at your service.

No matter how you define "web service," I don't think this newest offering qualifies.

I'm hoping this is just an anomaly and not a trend, lest we all fall back into the world of opaque/closed protocols.

Been there, done that.

Yes, this is Microsoft advocating openness...and Google advocating proprietary-ness. Right on, Microsoft.

Check out how convoluted this Hello World is using an anonymous method in C# 2.0:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

namespace HelloWorld
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Declare a delegate that will do something with a string.
    /// </summary>
    public delegate void AcceptString(string s);

    public class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            //create the delegate using an anonymous method
            //in other words, this object is really a method
            AcceptString writeConsole = delegate(string s)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(s);
            };

            //call the object/method
            writeConsole("Hello World!");
        }
    }
}

Windows Vista includes a new command, mklink, for creating symbolic links on NTFS. More info. Very cool... although the linux guy buried inside me is quietly sighing, finally.

The best thing to ever happen to Lotus Notes. Thanks, Microsoft!

Outlook Connector for IBM Lotus Domino enables you to use Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2002 to access your e-mail messages, calendar, address book, and To Do (task) items on an IBM Lotus Domino Release 5.x or Release 6.x server.

I got a new cell phone today, the Audiovox SMT 5600. So far, I've been really impressed. It runs the Windows Mobile 2003 SE operating system, so it syncs with Outlook beautifully and effortlessly. I did have trouble getting my laptop to recognize the device when plugged in via a USB cable. A trip to Best Buy to pick up a Bluetooth USB adapter fixed that problem. I can sync wirelessly and get pass-through Internet access via ActiveSync.

Transferring contacts has been a huge highlight: I had all of my contacts stored on the SIM card, so putting that into this phone brought it all over. But I'm switching providers to get in on the corporate cell phone plan (from Cingular to T-Mobile; I bought an unlocked unit). On the phone, I launched the SIM Manager application, selected all contacts, selected Add to Contacts. Sync with the Exchange server, and instantly my Outlook and cell phone contacts were unified. Beautiful. When I get the new SIM, I won't lose a thing. And if you've ever transferred contacts by typing them on the new phone while reading them from the old phone, you know why this is so nice.

A few other niceties: to find a contact from the home screen, just type as if you had predictive input. The phone will filter all possible matches from your contacts. I can use POP3 to check my Gmail account as well as my Exchange account. I'm getting an unlimited data plan with the T-Mobile service, which will be fun, but it's not all that useful now (I have to be within 10 meters or so of my computer with Bluetooth). The camera is average for a phone--as expected--but it takes videos with sound, which might be fun. I also didn't have to download any contraband software in order to transfer pictures, movies and files between the computer and the phone: ActiveSync makes it easy. (I always resented providers for locking out features like that and forcing you to pay to use their network.)

So far, I'm impressed with my Windows Smartphone! I'm starting to think about getting a Bluetooth GPS unit with mapping software. (Developers, check out this open source GPS API for Smartphone and .NET...I'm picturing grabbing live data from Google maps instead of pre-downloading maps to the device.) Gadgets are fun!

Chris Anderson of Microsoft bought his wife an iPod. He writes:

I picked it up two days ago, and since have been in process of converting our 3000+ songs from WMA to MP3. I decided that I wasn't going to ever again rip to a proprietary format. I want my music where I want it, not where Microsoft or Apple dictates.

That cracks me up...a Microsoftie publicly renouncing WMA. Someone should remind him that MP3 is a proprietary format. It's just "de facto" and thus it has broad support.