Right now I've got 4,234 pictures taking up 8.53 GB of space on my desktop computer.  As a matter of fact, I've got a boat-load of video files too since I recently bought an HD Video camera.  And 33 GB of music too.  So soon I'll be exploring ways to back up all of this information.  But for now, let's talk about tagging! 

The other night I wanted to organize all of the pictures on my PC.  Sure, I'm a Vista user but I still haven't figured out all of the features included with it.  I fired up Windows Photo Gallery to see what it can do.  It's a pretty intuitive application so before long I had all of my files organized and tagged.  Tagging is a cool concept.  If you aren't familiar with it, when you tag a photo (or another file), you assign it a category.  But unlike the folders that we store photos in, I can put many different tags on a picture.  So if I have a photo of my wife and I, I can tag it "Andy" and also "Rebecca".  Plus, if we are on vacation, I can tag it with "vacation" or "skiing" or whatever. 

Although Windows Photo Gallery is part of Vista, I also have Windows Live Photo Gallery, which is a free download.  It seems to have a few more features then the version included with Vista and, as far as I know, it works on Windows XP too.

Why tag photos?  Now that my collection is organized with tags, I can easily search my collection with Windows Photo Gallery for specific pictures.  If I want to see all pictures of my wife and I on vacation, I just enter "Andy Rebecca vacation" in the search box and BAM, I get what I was looking for.  Or I can search for "Rebecca Hiking" or "Friends Skiing" or "Family Beach".  Plus, I can sort the results by date, tag, folder, etc.  Pretty cool, huh?

It's really easy to do.  I started off tagging photos in bulk.  My files are already organized in nested folders with meaningful titles such as "Skiing-> Big Sky" or "Vacation -> Italy".  Andy I've (already) got tons of pictures of little Ben in folders like "Ben -> Week 1".  So to start, I selected every picture in the the folder called "Ben" (including 6 sub folders) and tagged every picture "Ben".  I did the same for the vacation photos.  I found folders named after various holidays with my family so I tagged all the photos "Family".  You get the idea.  Within a few minutes I put some simple tags on most of my pictures.  Since the thumbnail viewer is pretty good and I have a wide screen monitor, it was easy for me to then open folders, select lots of pictures at one time and apply more specific tags such as "Andy", "Rebecca", "Grandma", etc.  Plus, I removed the tags that didn't seem appropriate from my earlier "bulk tagging".  For instance, there were pictures in the folder Ben that were just of other family members.

The project only took about an hour and I was pretty well tagged up, but I am sure I'll keep on tagging my existing files to get more accurate.  From now on, I'll be tagging all of my pictures as I import them from my camera.  My tagging strategy is pretty simple.  I have tags for people such as:  Andy, Rebecca, Mom, Grandma, Grandmom, Grandpop.  Plus I use last names for siblings and their children.  So "Doe" would be used for my brother John Doe, his wife and all of their children.  And one for Friends too.

I also have activity/event tags such as Weddings, Vacation, Skiing, Sightseeing, Beach, Outdoors (hiking, etc).  You get the idea.

With 4,234 pictures and still growing, I've got a lot of great photos, and some that aren't so great.  But I hate to delete photos, (even though I should start doing so).  But with Photo Gallery, I can also Rate pictures!  So I can put 5 stars on all of my favorites.  By doing that, I'll be able to filter my pictures even more!

I've been working at Orbius since Oct. 1 helping the team to develop a new social media platform.  If you follow any of the news stories lately in the social networking arena, you've seen several problems being talked about.  The first is that there are lots of governance problems with the current state of social networking.  You've heard a lot of stories about people's photos and information being seen by the "wrong" people. For example, my wife works for a school district and a few months ago the superintendent asked all of the teachers to remove their profiles from several popular sites because the kids in the schools were looking at pictures of the teachers at parties, etc.  That's just one example.  The other issue that seems popular these days is that brand marketers are trying to figure out how to get into he social game.  There are lots of individuals using these social networking sites but companies can't figure out how to make it work for them.  It's because of issues like that that Orbius was created.

Here are a few reasons why Orbius stands out:

• Orbius is different from other players in the market because it is specifically designed to support not just individuals but groups - companies, brand marketers, clubs, and organizations.  We call these community sites Orbs.   It's really easy to create an Orb, apply themes, configure security and start communicating with groups of people.
• Orbius is designed to support multiple Profiles.  For instance, I have a public profile that everyone can see.  I also have a Family Profile, a Friends Profile,  and a Professional profile.  I can decide who get's to see any of my personal information.  For instance, in my Professional Profile I have my resume, links to technology sites and blogs that I like, etc.  In my Family profile I can keep family photos and a calendar that keeps track of where we'll be for different holidays, etc.  In my Friends profile I share pictures with Friends and I have a comment wall so we can joke around.  But these Profiles would be useless if I couldn't control who had access to each of them.  With Orbius it is really easy to organize my connections into various groups and then allow them access to whichever profiles I want!
• Orbius offers a unique way to join communities and "hide" your identity through Personas.  While this may not be useful in all situations, in many communities members share sensitive information about themselves (medical information for example).  In these Orbs, members can safely discuss important issues because the other community members will never know their real identity.
• Orbius provides a simple dashboard view of changes and updates to all of the communities you belong to.  In addition, all messages among Orbius users come through a central inbox, even if the communication is from different Orbs.
• By the way, Orbius is free to use.  Anyone can set up Orbs and/or Profiles.  However, companies who wish to take advantage of extra features including advanced themes, removal of advertising, custom applications and more can do so with a Premium, Corporate, or Enterprise Level Edition of Orbius.

Here is a list of some of the features we support.  Most of these can be added to Orbs or Profiles!

• Blogging
• Image Gallery
• Calendar with Events and RSVP
• Comment Wall
• Polls
• Discussion Forum
• Content Library
• Ask an Expert
• Fan Club
• RSS Feeds
• and much more!

There's a whole lot more to it than this, but I thought this would give you an idea of what we are up to.  Want to take a sneak peak at Orbius?  Send me an email and I'll add you to our Preview List (unless we fill up to quick).

I'll be posting more information about Orbius soon.  Meanwhile, here are a few screen shots from Orbius (click to enlarge them):

• Here is my Public Profile.  Note that since no one is logged in, only my Public Profile is seen.  You can see that in my Public Profile I have a Home Page, Connections, Pictures, Blog and more.

• Here are my Additional Profiles.  This time my wife is logged in.  You can see I've given her permission to see all 4 of my Profiles.  Also, you can see my photo gallery and calendar in my Family Profile.

• The last thing I'll show today is a screen shot of an Orb.  This is the start of what will be the Philly.Net Orb.  You can see that within this community we have a Calendar (named Meetings and Events) a Members list, a Discussion Forum, Document Library, Newsletter, and other pages.  I'll go into more detail on those features soon.

You really need to take a minute to watch these two videos.  This guy is a genius.  Johnny Lee takes a Wii remote and uses the existing technology to do some amazing things.  In the first video, he creates an interactive white board for a fraction of the cost of the real thing.  In the second video, he creates a head tracking system that gives an incredible 3D effect.  I wish I was this smart!

 

 

 

Mitch Ruebush is starting a new User Group for Software Architects - The Philadelphia Chapter of IASA.  This is a great opportunity to learn and share with other Software Architects.  Everyone is welcome, so check it out. 

Here's the text from an email he sent me:

You are invited to IASA - Philadelphia's first meeting on February 6th,
2008 at the Microsoft Malvern office. We have set up an official IASA
Web site at http://www.iasahome.org/web/Philadelphia/home to provide
more information on IASA and the Philly chapter. Please use this site to
keep up with the Philadelphia IASA community.

Agenda:
Refreshments & Network
Introductions
What do you want from an architecture professional group?
How do you want to help?

Topic:
What is Architecture?
Join us for a moderated discussion on the practicalities of what IT
architecture is. We will discuss what is the meaning of IT architecture,
roles and responsibilities, approaches to IT architecture, common
architecture processes and artifacts and what should be in the
architecture toolkit.

Moderator:
Mitch Ruebush is the Architecture Team Leader at ING DIRECT, fsb. He is
responsible for defining and coordinating the architecture for the
applications and infrastructure at ING DIRECT. He has written a number
of books and articles on .Net and enjoys spending his time as a father
of two great kids, a hobbyist film maker, playing piano and saxophone
and trying to write a video game.
Date: Feb. 6th, 2008
Time: 6:00pm - 8:00pm

Location:
Microsoft
Great Valley Corporate Center
45 Liberty Blvd., Suite 210
Malvern, PA 19355

IASA (International Association of Software Architects) is the premier
association focused on the IT architecture profession through education,
advocacy, events, and the development of best practices.

Diamond Technologies is teaming up with Microsoft to present: Technology Day.

Date: Tuesday ~ October 23, 2007

Time: 1:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Place: Diamond Headquarters

From the invite...

Do you have questions about IT, Vista™ , or Sharepoint? Would you like to see the latest technology in mobility solutions? Is your company looking for new ways to improve decision-making, productivity, or collaboration? Is your IT team challenged by evolving security threats, rising deployment, support costs, or increasingly complex desktop infrastructures?
As a part of our commitment to deliver quality products and services that help your business succeed, we are offering you the opportunity to participate in Technology Day.

Join us for lunch, participate in a demo or Q & A session, tour the Microsoft Bus and enjoy learning about the exciting new releases from Microsoft:  including Vista™ and Sharepoint.  Network and request a song from WSTW live at lunch.

Click here to get some more information or register to attend.

Quite a while back (maybe a year) I saw a great video on YouTube that demonstrated a new user interface that used a touch screen like never before.  They likened it to the awesome UI from the movie The Minority Report where guys drag "objects" around computer screen by hand.  Sure, the one in the movie was MUCH cooler then this, but this was a step in the right direction.

Today I worked from home which meant that I got to watch a bit of the Today Show before starting work.  Much to my surprise, they did a segment with Bill Gates where he introduced Microsoft Surface.  This is a pretty similar concept to the original product I saw a year ago.  Of course, I have no idea if they are similar beneath the hood. 

This is definitely worth checking out.  They said it would be available in retail uses this soon but not for home users to play with for 2 more years.

Lastly, I thought I would have a scoop on this since I doubt many other people who work watch the Today Show.  But I was scooped by Scott Cate.  He also mentions seeing this at the Microsoft Museum (I've never been there) and he also notes that it uses Flash, not Silverlight!  Now that is interesting.

When I started this blog I continually went to Google to see if I came up in the search.  I did some research and found that you can "register" your URL with Google.  You can go to Google's Add URL page and do the same.  I am not sure if it worked or not.  It could be that Google's spider just reached me on its own.  They make no guarantees that a URL added to the list will even get added to their search.  Also, you can go to Google's Webmaster Tools section.  There you can see when the spider hits your site, find out what queries people use to find your site, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

In my research I also found tips saying that I should include a lot of links in my blog posts.  And also TrackBacks from other blogs would help my ranking with search engines.

I can't tell you if these tips worked specifically.  But I do know that my posts are coming up in Google searches (and other engines too) and I am happy about that!  By the way, some of the other search engines have similar tools to Google.  But you'll have to do a little research on your own to find them.  Don't forget to be a little patient.

Philly.Net is hosting Code Camp on May 19th.  Registration is now open!  This event will most likely "sell out" so register here  now before it is too late.  This is a FULL DAY, FREE event!

Bill has already arranged a great group of speakers with a wide variety presentation topics.  While they are subject to change, here is the list of topics. 

ASP.Net/Sharepoint Internet MOSS InfoPath AJAX Dev Testing Sharepoint Workflows Content Types .NET 3.0/Orcas WCF Intro XAML, Silverlight WF WCF LINQ SOA/WCF

Coders Framework Development Enterprise Library Unit Testing Aspect Programming NHibernate CAB/Validation SQL MDX Data Mining DataFlows Schedule Performance TSQL SSIS Scripts

Utilities RSS XNA Tools Powershell Licensing Compact Framework

Sponsors:  In addition to all of the knowledge you will get, there is free food too!  Morning refreshments are provided courtesy of New Horizons Learning Centers. Lunch is sponsored by RDA Consultants.

Door Prizes/ Raffles (aka swag)  But wait, there is more!  We'll have lot's of prizes to give away at the end of the day.  This is my department (they call me the "swag man")!  I am currently working on getting door prizes from as many companies as possible.  If you would like to provide a door prize of any kind, contact me!  This is a great opportunity for any company to reach a great target audience: .Net developers in the Philadelphia area.  We've already got some great stuff to give away and looking for more.  Can you provide software,  books, hat, shirts, gift certificates, travel mugs, thumb drives, or anything else that would make a cool door prize?  Please contact me for more information.

 We were back again at SEI in Oaks, PA for another great Philly.Net meeting. 

 mark your calendars for the following upcoming events:

Wednesday May 16:  Philly.Net Pub night. Marc Ziss has set up the second pub night at the Great American Pub in Conshohocken.  Once again, Human Capital Management is coming through to sponsor the night.  Last time was a lot of fun.  Don't miss this chance to have a beer or two with other members of Philly.Net.  No topics, no presentations.

Saturday May 19:  Code Camp is back!  Code Camp is a great way to learn a lot.  A whole day (8:30-5:30) including about 30 sessions on a variety of topics.  Bill is taking volunteers now for speakers.  Don't miss this...you can't beat this free event!

 

My Disclaimer:  The following is my summary of the presentations from the evening.  Hopefully I got the facts right.  I've included as many links to the topics as possible.  Check out the presenters blogs and websites for the most accurate information.  I'm happy to correct any mistakes. 

Note:  I'll add the slides and content to this post as soon as I get them from the presenters.

 

Presenter:  Peter Laudati, Microsoft

Topic:  Windows CardSpace

Peter Laudati is the NY/NJ Developer Evangelist.  Since that job has been a vacant in the Philadelphia market for a while, Pete has been helping us out and supporting our user group.  Check out his blog for lots of information including postings about Microsoft events in the NY/NJ/PA area.  Pete started off with a quick overview of the different pieces of the .Net Framework 3.0.  CardSpace, formerly known as InfoCard, is one of those pieces.  To get the 3.0 Framework, you can download it from MSDN and run it on Windows XP or 2003.  But if you have Vista, it is already included.  CardSpace is part of a system that provides a digital identity designed to solve authentication issues that users experience.  It is meant to solve security issues on the internet such as phishing, fraud, password fatigue, and the multitude of authentication systems we must use.  Microsoft worked with several partners to create this system and they developed the Laws of Identity.  You can learn more about the that at:  www.identityblog.com.  Some of the key features they planned included consistent experience across contexts, it should be available on multiple platforms, and should have minimal disclosure for a defined use.  CardSpace is the client side identity selector piece that is implemented within applications.  The system includes self-issued (you create them yourself) and managed cards (such as credentials issued by a bank).

He showed a demo using CardSpace to login to the website www.sandbox.netfx3.com.  He also showed us an example in code of how to implement CardSpace.  Since there are only 4 key tasks to complete, implementation doesn't look too difficult.  Peter also brought some great prizes to include in our raffle...Thanks Pete!

 

 

Presenter:  Robert Green, MCW Technologies

Topic: Using Windows Workflow Foundation to Build an Order Processing System

Rob started out with a little background.  He has two blogs.  The code samples will be on this blog but his more active blog is here.  He started out giving us the basics of Workflow Foundation.  After a few minutes he left the slides and jumped right into Visual Studio.  That's a good presentation from my perspective!   In VS2005 he started dragging workflow items out of the toolbox, wrote a little code (yes, "Hello World") , and showed just how quickly you can create a simple workflow.  He then explained the difference between a Sequential Workflow (basically, the steps all occur sequentially) and State Machine Workflow (the workflow does something, saves its state, and then waits for something else, maybe an external event, to happen).  He then walked us through a more complex example with a State Machine workflow.  This was a pretty complex sample with several steps and events.  But in spite of its complexity, Rob made it seem pretty easy to accomplish.  He summarized with his thoughts on the current State of Workflow.  To paraphrase, he really likes workflow but the tools through Visual Studio need some work but he is hopeful that it will all be resolved with the next version of VS code named "Orcas".

 

Meeting Sponsor: 

   Provided excellent hoagies!  

Additional Door Prizes courtesy of:  ,    and Microsoft

I am planning to install Vista on my home PC. While I am really excited about it, I keep hearing about "little problems" that people are having and it is making me nervous.

Peter Laudati has a good post on his blog about the Microsoft on-line mapping service.  I really agree with the point he makes.  I don't know what the mapping service is really called but you can check it out here.  I've used this service before.  If you haven't used it, it is Microsoft's answer to MapQuest or Google Maps.  The product is pretty slick and the aerial photos on it may be the best on the web.  And it has some great 3D features.  But I am not going to debate the pros and cons of one mapping service vs another.  The biggest problem with the Microsoft service is the name.  The website says "Live Search" at the top and "Microsoft Virtual Earth" at the bottom.  And the URL is any of the many url's that you used to find the site. So which is it?  And what does Live Search mean?  How would I know that has anything to do with maps?  Plus they changed the name a bunch of times including local.live.com (or was it live.local.com?  Who can remember?) and maps.msn.com, etc.  You would think a monster company like Microsoft would have a better idea of how to brand products properly.  No one has to wonder what "Google Maps" or "MapQuest" means. 

In my opinion, this is not the first similar mistake Microsoft has made.  I am a happy C# developer and I love .Net, but I hate the name!  .Net???  What were they thinking?  What does that mean?

There is definitely a lesson to be learned here.  I hate to say it but no matter how great are code is, without good marketing guys we are screwed!

Philly.Net hosted its second Center City meeting on April 11 at Structured Hosting. Just like the last meeting in NJ, we had a capacity crowd again. I think these new meetings/venues are a success! If you missed the meeting (or if you need some details) here is my synopsis.

Meeting Date: March 29, 2007

Philly.Net has expanded.  We now host meetings in the Philly Suburbs,  Philadelphia (Center City), and now...South Jersey.  Thanks to Travis Laborde for getting the new South Jersey branch going.  Tonight's meeting was a huge success.  It was standing room only with about 50 attendees which is pretty impressive for a first meeting.  Pizza and location provide by New Horizons Training Center.  Plus, Travis' wife Jessica treated us to a cake to celebrate the start of Philly.Net in NJ.  It was a great meeting.  Please read on...

Presenter:  Travis Laborde, Data Deluxe

Topic:  Developer Testing

Not only did we learn a lot from Travis' presentation but we laughed a lot too.  Travis always does a great job to make sure his presentations are fun.  Tonight he talked all about developer testing.  And typically for Travis, he included bunch of great tools.  He demo'd the basics of NUnit, a FREE tool that assists with executing test classes.  He also showed MBUnit which he dubbed "NUnit on steroids".  This tool allows you to execute similar tests as NUnit, but introduces the RowTest attribute so you can run the same test in multiple iterations, passing in different parameters each time.  Next he went through testing for "Code Coverage" via TestDriven.Net and NCover.  He ended up with some quick demos of SeleniumIDE, a very cool FireFox add-on that allows you to record steps in the Browser so you can play them back.  This gives you the ability to test an ASP.Net UI over and over again automatically.

If you are into free tools and tips for .Net development, check out Travis' clipmarks site where you can read about all kinds of cool stuff.

 

 

Presenter:  Scott Watermasysk, Telligent Systems

Topic:  ASP.NET Tips & Tricks

Scott has been posting ASP.Net tips and tricks on his blog for a while.  Tonight he went through a bunch of them for us.

It is hard to summarize Scott's talk because he talked about so many items.  The good news is that most of the content is up on the web, check out the links included in my text. He provided us with a ton of tips for everyday use.  Some tips provided for controls:  Try to use <asp:Literal> control instead of <asp:label> and use <asp:Repeater> instead of <asp:GridView> where possible.  Some general ASP.Net tips included:  use Page.IsValid from button event handlers, use the AppOffline.htm page when you are doing "construction", use the new VirtualPath class to convert relative paths to absolute ones.  And Scott also spent a lot of time talking about State Management and Caching tips.  He also recommended a few articles:  one by Fritz Onion on Control State and "A Matter of Context" by Susan Warren.  I'll update this blog post and include his slides as soon as I can.

As a special bonus, Scott provided free copies of CodeSmith Professional for all attendees.  This certainly went over big with the crowd.

 

Meeting Sponsor:    

Additional Door Prizes courtesy of:  and Microsoft

I'm a big fan of anything that makes my daily grind easier.  Some time ago I was turned on to a cool VS2005 add-in for C#/ASP.Net developers:  ReSharper.  There are so many great features packed in to this tool.  Check out the complete list of features on the JetBrains site.

Here are a couple of the features that stand out to me:

Quick Fixes - When ReSharper detects a problem in your code, it suggests a solution.

Status Indicator and Marker Bar - ReSharper keeps track of whether or not your code will compile and reports the answer with the Status Indicator located at the top of the Marker Bar.  Within the Marker Bar are color coded stripes that link to all of the errors or warnings ReSharper finds in your code.

Refactoring - ReSharper includes a list of cool refactoring functions to help the coding process.

Navigation and Search- Ctrl-Click any symbol in your code to go to its definition.  Or Alt-F7 to find all usages of a variable.

Unit Testing and NUnit integration - If your project includes NUnit tests, ReSharper will put some icons in the left gutter of the VS editor.  Clicking on these icons will give a few options to run the tests.

Using Directives - ReSharper tells you when you need to add a using directive.  It also tells you when you can remove using directives that you included but no longer need.

Many, Many More - I could go on and on here.  There are so many great features.  I don't know how I ever worked without this.  Check it out for yourself.  Then convince your boss to buy it for you.  But it isn't too expensive.

Time for all of us to confess.  I know that don't do a good job of it.  Once in a while I copy a bunch of files from the hard drive on my PC to a portable USB drive.  I try to do a better job with photos so when I push them to my PC I also put them on the portable drive.  But it is easy to get out of sync.  Well, that is hardly a "backup plan".  I really need to come up with a better strategy.  Scott Hanselman had a post about this topic and it got me thinking.  

I am planning to install Vista in the next few weeks.  Vista seems to have some cool backup features built in so maybe that will help.  Once it is set up I will blog about it again to tell how well it is working.

Isn't it odd that we put a lot of thought into this for our clients and employers yet for our own data we are pretty lazy?  Good luck to us all.

The other night after the Philly.Net meeting I was talking to Peter Laudati about my new blog.  He suggested I check out Windows Live Writer (Beta).  Basically, it is a Windows application that lets you edit/save your blog posts on your PC and publish them too.  It has some pretty cool features that I am pretty sure will make my blogging easier too.

For instance, I added this picture of the Colosseum very easily (yes, I took the photo).  OK, that's no big deal.  But this made it VERY easy to adjust the appearance including the size, border, margins and add the water mark.  Plus, it was easy for me to wrap the text on the side of the picture.  I couldn't do that with my web interface.

 

Another cool feature is that you can add maps and aerial photos in!  This is all done with Live.com. So I added this map.  I tried to do an aerial photo of my house but each time I inserted it, it changed to a picture of someone else's house!  So I guess that is why this is called Beta software.  But otherwise this is a really nice tool.

 

So if you are blogging, check out Windows Live Writer (Beta). 

It is official.  I am registered for Microsoft Tech Ed.  If you are planning to go, I suggest signing up fast.  Many of the hotels that offer Tech-Ed pricing are sold out.

See you in Orlando in June,

Andy

We had a another great Philly.Net meeting on March 21, 2007, packing several great speakers into one night.

Philly.Net is expanding to include .Net Developer Usergroup meetings in South Jersey.

I recently got a new server, a Dell PowerEdge 2950.  Well actually, it isn't mine.  It belongs to a client so I didn't have to pay for it, but I get to play with it!!!
This baby really cranks.  Of course, I don't often get to play with fast machines like this.  Maybe to you this is no big deal but I am impressed.
Configuration:

• Processors:  2 @ Xeon 2.0 GHz - Each one is Dual Core
• Memory: 4 GB Ram
• Hard Drives: 3 300 GB Drives, SAS.
• Dual Power Supplies
• OS: Windows 2003 Server - 64 Bit.
• A bunch of other stuff!

Gary, our resident network/hardware expert, has got this thing tweaked out too.  It's all set up with RAID and a slew of partitions for stuff like data, page files, temp files, etc.  This should make it perform great. 

I am not used to the speed of this thing.  When we were formatting partitions you could get a sense of the speed.  A 128 GB partition formatted in about 10 seconds!  Note that this was NOT on the "Quick Format" setting.

 

I just checked the Tech-Ed 2007 site and I noticed that the session catalog is up.  I'd expect changes since Tech-Ed is not until June.  But it is nice to see what is planned so far.