Andrej Tozon's blog

... I added Encarta® Instant Answers <encarta@conversagent.com> to my MSN contact list today. It's very smart and always willing to talk to you. It can tell you pretty much about anything. Just ask, when Napoleon was born or how big is Mexico. Ask it to do some math ("solve 2x^2+7x=5", "add 1 and 1")... It also has a sense of humor:

Andrej says: how are you?
Encarta® Instant Answers says: I'm doing great. You?
Andrej says: super
Encarta® Instant Answers says: Super, huh? OK, good.
Andrej says: how are you?
Encarta® Instant Answers says: I'm doing well.
Andrej says: how are you?
Encarta® Instant Answers says: I'm doing great. OK, should we get back to the kind of questions I was designed to answer? :) I'm sure you've heard about Uzbekistan... but do you know where it is? Just ask me and I'll show it to you on a map.

... ;)

Now seriously... this automated service agents are great, and because they live inside your IM client, they are always at hand when you need help with something. Until now, I used Google for my "define"s and "calculate"s, but now, Encarta agent is my new best schoolmate.

Imagine this kind of an agent as your 24/7 online product support technician. Users don't want to read through dull help files, they want to interact with a kind, supportive "person". And it shouldn't be difficult to program: add some human relation skills to your search engine, and you'll get a new, invaluable member of your team ;)

I want my MSDN agent! I'd ask it questions like "what is StringBuilder?",  "list XmlReader members", "tell me more about generics", "show me ExecuteNonQuery examples". We'd have so much fun together...

 

 

[Found Encarta agent through Chris Sells]

I've recently replaced my existing RSS feed reader with JetBrains Omea Reader 2.0, which offers everything I need while working with my feeds: categorization, aggregation, comment support, efficient search and custom views (search folders). It's fast, can read newsgroups, and you get a free license! Certainly worth a look.

New features packed version of the blog/forums engine (and much more) Community Server has hit Beta 1!.

Download link and more information is available from the the official site.

New month, new release... I kept installing all to-date VS2005 Beta/CTPs on a fresh VPC, which costed me some extra time to set up the whole working environment. So, with the latest RC I decided to reuse the August CTP VPC, which I successfully cleaned using the latest version of VS2005 Beta uninstall tool. The process was quick and painless. As for the RC... VS appears to run a bit faster, but I haven't had time to check it out quite yet, since some control incompatibility issues keep me working on the July CTP :(

VS2005 RC was one of the many new tools/technologies presented on this year's PDC, including Atlas, Linq, C# 3.0, VB 9.0, Office 12, VSTA 2005, SQL2005 (VS2005 RC is compatible with SQL2005 Sept. CTP!), and my long time wish, which is now coming true. Busy week.

I installed not one, but two IM clients today. The first was MSN Messenger upgrade (7.5). Nothing radical here. Then I tried freshly baked Google Talk... Installation went smoothly and while installing, it detected existing installation of Gmail Notifier, unistalled it and replaced with new Google Talk client, also able to check my gmail. A fair trade... :)

Like the name suggests, Google Talk looks as it's primarily meant for voice conversation, although chatting works well too. Not much fancy stuff, basic iconography, but smileys are recognized and there are some neat text tricks like *emphasizing* text. The one thing that bugs me is the need to build another contact list. I'm using MSN Messenger, Skype, and now Google Talk, each with separate contact list. Also, currently Google Talk requires gmail account to use it, but that's going to change. All in all, a nice start.

On a side note: congratulations to Peter, for winning the C9 contest with this Outlook 2003 plugin! Way to go, man!

If you happened to miss any of these...

• From Longhorn to Vista, from codename to code name. Beta 1 available for MSDN subscribers. More about codename changes
• Internet Explorer 7, tabbed browsing, shrink-to-fit Web page printing, RSS support, Beta 1 available for MSDN subscribers (standalone for XP SP2 or built in Windows Vista).
• MSN Messenger 7.5, voice clips, dynamic backgrounds, Im hoping for some useful stuff too. In private Beta for closed testers group.
• MSN Screensaver (Beta) , yet another thing to make your computer busy while you're away... Free download.
• VSTS 2005, July CTP, the last drop makes the VS 2005 July CTP family complete. Available for MSDN subscribers.
• SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Advisor, CTP June Refresh, free download.
  ASP.NET 2.0 Webcasts, new 15-part series begins on August 4th.
• ASP.NET 1.x to 2.0 migration page, including some cool upgrading papers.
• Escape from Yesterworld. Hehe.

I've been working with Visual Studio 2005 intensively for over a month now and one thing that annoyed me most was this bug, which caused certain keys to stop responding in VS IDE. It first happened during my VSTO presentation on NTK and its been haunting me ever since.
I downloaded and installed July CTP a few days back and after experimenting with it a bit, I decided to go with it completely. Keys dont seem to freeze anymore, IDE looks more responsive, there are a few new settings and some cosmetic changes (like tabs).
VS installation, however, indicated that SQL Server Express did not install correctly, but looks like its working anyway.
On top of all, WSE 3.0 July CTP, which goes along with VS2005 July CTP, was also released yesterday.
Busy summer

On a side note VS 2005 Beta 2 VPC image is also available for MSDN subscribers. Yes, the whole shebang (Windows 2003, Office 2003, VS 2005 Beta 2, SQL Server 2005 CTP) already installed and ready to use.

Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 (VSTO) family is getting bigger: after initial Word and Excel support and InfoPath refresh (available for MSDN subscribers), now there's Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Outlook (Beta), allowing developers to write Outlook Add-ins in managed code.