Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell (pre-release)

If you always wanted to learn how to script using PowerShell, this tool makes it even easier to learn and explore all the cool features. Very nice new experience of guidance and content. Check it out at https://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=29101

March 20, 2012 · 1 min · 38 words · Harry Kimpel

Skype app for Windows Phone is here

Finally, the long awaited Skype app for Windows Phone is here. This information has been announced today during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Please find a blog post here (original URL https://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/windowsphone/archive/2012/02/27/windows-phone-at-mobile-world-congress-2012.aspx). Just in case the Zune link does not work, please try it via marketplace (original URL https://www.windowsphone.com/en-GB/apps/c3f8e570-68b3-4d6a-bdbb-c0a3f4360a51) … this worked for me!

February 27, 2012 · 1 min · 54 words · Harry Kimpel

Windows Phone 7 - new update named Mango coming soon

If you have some knowledge of Silverlight and .NET it will be so easy to leverage your knowledge and develop for WP7 codenamed Mango. Please see this new ad for Mango update: youtube!

September 3, 2011 · 1 min · 33 words · Harry Kimpel

Yay! my first Windows Phone 7 Mango app officially published

A bit of context Windows Phone 7.5, codenamed “Mango”, was the version of WP7 that finally felt complete. It shipped in late 2011 with a serious upgrade story: multitasking, deep Twitter and Facebook integration into the People hub, threaded messaging across SMS / Facebook chat / Windows Live Messenger, IE9 with hardware-accelerated rendering, and a new Marketplace flow for both users and developers. For developers, Mango added Silverlight + XNA combined projects, Live Tiles you could update from the cloud, push notifications, background agents, and full SQL CE access on the device. ...

September 2, 2011 · 2 min · 411 words · Harry Kimpel

Windows Phone 7: application development caveat with ViewModel entity class

The other day I played around with the newest release of the Windows Phone 7 SDK (7.1 Beta 2) and started by using the base application template. I created a new class that serves as the entity definition for the view model. The data is bound to a list box. Nothing spectacular. In design time (Visual Studio) my static sample data that I created showed up just fine. During application start I created some “real” data and bound it to the list box. As a result, the list box is empty and does not show any data at all … no exceptions or other runtime errors. After a bit of testing I found out that the problem is with the entity class definition. The class was specified to be private instead of public. This little keyword led to an empty list box.

August 26, 2011 · 1 min · 142 words · Harry Kimpel

Entity Framework Code First Migrations ... sounds like a dream come true

Why schema management was painful in 2011 Before Entity Framework Code First Migrations, keeping a database schema in sync with your application code was one of those problems every team eventually built their own answer for. The typical setup was a folder of hand-rolled SQL scripts named with version numbers, plus a small home-grown runner that tracked which scripts had already been applied. It worked, but every project re-invented the wheel slightly differently, and merging schema changes between branches was a recurring source of pain. ...

July 29, 2011 · 3 min · 466 words · Harry Kimpel

SharePoint 2010: 'Access Denied' when using Managed Metadata Service terms in custom list

Background: the Managed Metadata Service and TaxonomyHiddenList SharePoint 2010 introduced the Managed Metadata Service as a way to define a centralised, hierarchical taxonomy of terms that could be reused across site collections. Instead of every site re-creating its own dropdown choices, an information-architecture team could maintain a global term store and let lists and document libraries reference it through a Managed Metadata column. It was a real step up for enterprise content management, especially for organisations standardising on terms across regions, departments, or product lines. ...

July 13, 2011 · 3 min · 580 words · Harry Kimpel

Samsung RS21KPSM Side-by-Side refrigerator not cooling (not it-related)

By way of exception, this post is not it-related. Since I have struggled to find some information on the web, I think this still could be interesting for some folks out there. A couple of days ago my wife noticed that our refrigerator is quite warm inside and it does not get to the specified temperature anymore. As you can see on the following photo is was quite hot inside: ...

July 4, 2011 · 3 min · 543 words · Harry Kimpel

Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA)

If you are interested in cloud technologies, this is a great place to learn more about all Microsoft Cloud Technologies. You will find information on topics such as Hyper-V, SQL Azure, Windows Azure, virtualization and much more. I think it is a great source of information and learning experience.

June 3, 2011 · 1 min · 49 words · Harry Kimpel

C# and .NET Framework for Java Developers

For all you Java developers out there, have a look at this link in order to learn more about C# and the .NET framework.

May 24, 2011 · 1 min · 24 words · Harry Kimpel