I was looking for a Bittorrent framework targeting the .NET platform a while back, however I couldn’t come up with anything searching around. Carl Franklin to the rescue with a post entitled Pwop gets new life where he mentions an application he’s writing which takes advantage of a C# Bittorrent library.

The framework is not in an advanced state at the moment but it looks like it’s getting there. I’ll be following the progress from here on in, maybe even donate some of my time.

Go check put Btsharp (registration required).

If you work with Commerce Server you will find the following tools invaluable. These tools were created by Max Akbar, who recently joined our Program Management team, but has been working on Commerce Server for a long time and has a very detailed knowledge of everything Commerce Server. Kudos to Max for sharing these out (for all these years!) with the community.

[Nihit Kaul's WebLog – Cool Tools for Commerce Server]

Just found an e-mail in my inbox from Flickr where they state that my subscription time has been doubled from the two years I originally paid for to four years, and they are giving me two pro accounts to give away along with a 2 GB monthly upload limit; previously 1 GB. Now there’s a way to run a subscription service

Enterprise Library is a wonderful thing but come deployment you may end up in a situation where you spend more time on deployment than actual development so here are the complete steps to take when deploying a Enterprise Library enabled application.

Note: For simplicity’s sake I deploy the entire Enterprise Library regardless of what is actually used in the application.

1) Copy the Microsoft Enterprise Library binaries folder to the deployment server, usually Microsoft Enterprise Library\bin.

2) Run either InstallServices On Windows.bat or InstallServices On WinNT.bat depending on which folder Windows is located in. They need to be place in the Microsoft Enterprise Library\bin folder.
This step runs installutil on a couple of the assemblies which in turn create performance counters needed for Enterprise Library to run.

Note 1) Be sure to create any databases you need. E.g. the logging database sink.

Note 2) You may encounter errors in the EventLog saying something along the lines of, “Access to performance data was denied to ASPNET as attempted from  C:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\aspnet_wp.exe”. As you can tell from the message the ASP.NET worker prcess does not have access to the performance counters which luckily is easily remedied by following these steps:

• Open the "Computer Management" app
• Expand the "Services and Applications" section
• Right-click the "WMI Control" entry & select "Properties"
• Go to the "Security" tab
• Expand the "Root" node and then select the "WMI" node
• Click the "Security" button
• Add the "ASPNET" (or which ever account ASP.NET is running under) user & give it access
  
  
  
  
  
  

As a follow-up to my post entitled Jetbrains .NET IDE I’d like to point you in the direction of Sneak Preview of ReSharper IDE which has just been posted on Jetbrains’ web site. This essentially seems to be a reply to my errornous post where a screenshot of the ReSharper IDE was mistaken for a screenshot of ReSharper 2.0.

Great to see Jetbrains on their toes. I’m liking this company more and more for every day which goes by. Their Omea product is helping that along as well. Expect a full review of both Omea Reader and Omea Pro.

Caledonia was kind enough to post a comment containing a link for A Patch which is a small program which modifies MSN Messenger. It basically removes all the annoying gunk which was added to version 7 leaving only the clean Messenger interface we know and love. It actually makes Messenger 7 appear much like Windows Messenger 5, only with the groups still in place and the slick interface intact.

A-Patch

Now here’s something really interesting. Looks like the screenshot I posted earlier is not ReSharper 2.0 but rather a new IDE in itself. Looks like the .NET community is getting a IntelliJ-ish IDE from JetBrains. VS is a great tool but it’s always great to have alternatives, especially if those alternatives force Microsoft to push the envelope on development even more.

NET IDE Forging Begins

Finally, those of you who have yet to hear the good news, we here at JetBrains have begun to hammer out our own .NET IDE, tentatively lacking an official name (we will have one soon, but if you have some suggestions, bring it to our forums!). If you are familiar with our Java IDE IntelliJ IDEA, we are going to be implementing many of the same navigation and usability features from this IDE into our own .NET IDE. Users can look forward to close integrations with VCS systems, industry leading refactoring support, powerful intelligence features, and a whole lot more. However, the final feature list is still under consideration, but you can start pushing for the features you would like to see in the IDE in our USENET group

Once more about the .NET IDE becomes ready for public consumption, I will be sure to pass it along to the rest of the community.

I was looking around the JetBrains newsgroups and found a screenshot of ReSharper 2.0.

Update: As stated in the comments this is in fact not a screenshot of ReSharper 2.0 but rather a whole new IDE being developed by JetBrains. You can read more about it in my post Jetbrains .NET IDE

Looks like MSN Messenger 7 is ready for prime time. Neowin found a download link for the final build of the program. MSN Messenger 7 Build 777 - Final.

According to reliable sources, MSN are preparing to go live with the next version of their widely popular instant messaging client, MSN Messenger.

[MSN Messenger 7 Final Due Tomorrow - Download Now!]

… or at least it will be eventually when they get a release put together. Right now there’s nothing more than a GotDotNet workspace but it sure would be nice to have now that Microsoft has announced the price of the Visual Team System.

NTeam will be an open source alternative to the upcoming Visual Studio Team System(r) and will utilize many existing open source applications such as NUnit, NAnt, and will link with various open source project, issue, and task management applications. NTeam will integrate with both proprietary and open source IDEs and will target small- and mid-sized businesses.

[NTeam: Workspace Home]

For even more information about NTeam please check out their forums where information about the Feature list and road maps is available.

At more than one occasion I’ve heard people from Microsoft state that a smaller version of Team System will be forthcoming which will suit smaller shops better both feature-wise and in terms of pricing. I wonder whether the NTeam team (?) will be able to put together a release before that, and even more importantly be able to match the features of this new version to hopefully come out of Microsoft.

Great article on MSDN about Indigo complete with code examples.

Summary: Provides an architectural overview of "Indigo," Microsoft's unified programming model for building service-oriented applications. The paper covers Indigo's relationship to existing distributed application technologies in the .NET Framework, the basics of creating and consuming Indigo services, and an overview of Indigo's capabilities, including security, reliable messaging, and transaction support.

[Introducing Indigo: An Early Look]

Also be sure to check out Clemens Vasters’ mini series entitled A Weekend With Indigo which goes all the way from basic one way communication to more advanced concepts such as addressing.

Here’s something interesting for those of you interested in Reporting Services. Looks like Microsoft release some reports which grab information from the IIS logs to make reports of the activity on your web server.

The Microsoft SQL Server Report Pack for Internet Information Services (IIS) is a set of 12 Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services reports that works with a sample database of information extracted from Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) log files. This database can be populated with your own data using the Log Parser included with the IIS 6.0 Resource Kit. You can use also the sample reports as templates for designing new reports.

Microsoft SQL Server Report Pack for Internet Information Services (IIS)

The C# Team has scoured the Web for other implementations of the CLI, cool object browsers, IDE tricks, add-ins, obfuscators, and other useful tools and utilities that will help you get your job done faster.

Tools

I just received an e.mail from Valentin Kipiatkov who posted the ReSharper 2.0 Plans. He states that while the upgrade for 2.0 is free for existing customers an adjustment of the price is expected for new customers. The new price will probably be $199 so if you’re contemplating buying ReSharper you should buy version 1.5 now and save $100 on version 2.0.

Upgrade to ReSharper 2.0 will be FREE for all customers of ReSharper 1.0 and ReSharper 1.5. The pricing for new customers is not defined yet and it's likely that it will be increased to, say, $199.

Even more information available in the post ReSharper Returns to Intended Price which states that the current price of $99 was temporary all along. The normal price for ReSharper is $149; all the more reason to go out and get ReSharper today. Even though it looks like VS 2005 provide much of the same, I can tell you right now that that isn’t the case. Running VS 2003 with ReSharper feel considerable more powerful than running VS 2005 without ReSharper. It’s that good.

Oh yeah, the $99 offer ends April 5th. Go buy now!

Google is set to increase the storage available to Gmail users from 1 GB to 2 GB. As of now my account has been boosted to 1166 MB which is considerably lower than the 2 GB promised, but bear in mind that the increase is still 164 MB more than I get on my current Hotmail account which is still stuck at 2 MB. Frankly a 2MB e-mail account is just ridiculous; spam fills my inbox quicker than you can say, “diet pills casino poker on steroids”!

By the way I have 100 Gmail invites available should you want one for yourself.

Some insight into the challenges of developing a MMORPG.

Lucasfilm's Habitat was created by Lucasfilm Games, a division of LucasArts Entertainment Company, in association with Quantum Computer Services, Inc. It was arguably one of the first attempts to create a very large scale commercial multi-user virtual environment. A far cry from many laboratory research efforts based on sophisticated interface hardware and tens of thousands of dollars per user of dedicated compute power, Habitat is built on top of an ordinary commercial online service and uses an inexpensive -- some would say "toy" -- home computer to support user interaction. In spite of these somewhat plebeian underpinnings, Habitat is ambitious in its scope. The system we developed can support a population of thousands of users in a single shared cyberspace. Habitat presents its users with a real-time animated view into an online simulated world in which users can communicate, play games, go on adventures, fall in love, get married, get divorced, start businesses, found religions, wage wars, protest against them, and experiment with self-government.

I just noticed that MSDN Channel9 has some new videos up, so what? Well this time is different; they have interview with one of the architects of the Windows kernel: Dave Probert.

Also in there is a short and clear definition of what Hyperthreading is … finally!

Going Deep: Windows, Part I - Dave Probert

Going Deep: Windows, Part II - Dave Probert

I’m slowly getting started with digging into the world of service oriented architecture. Regular readers of this blog knows that a pretty fricking huge SOA project is coming up, so I need to be ready.

When I prepare for learning new stuff, I usually make a book my starting point to give me a solid foundation on which to build. Previous experiences have taught me that learning by reading articles on the net doesn’t work for me, there’s simply too much context switching going on for me to really grok the material.

On to the point of this post which is that I found a great list on Amazon called Service Oriented Architecture and Web Services by Michael Hoffman which lists a lot of interesting books of which I have to get at least a couple. The one book which keeps coming up in my research is Service-Oriented Architecture : A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services so that one is a given at this point.

Interested in GUI design and? GUIdebook has a lot of interesting stuff to look at. I particularly like the page where they contrast various icons from operating systems over time such as the obvious MacOS and Windows, and the not so obvious Linux variants and even OS/2.

As a happy user of ReSharper 1.0 and general software update junkie I’m eagerly looking forward to the next version of ReSharper.

JetBrains has released a detailed list of new features found in the next release. Now we only need to know whether existing customers can upgrade for free.

Update: David Stennett of JetBrains says the following in the comments, “Yes, current ReSharper 1.X customers will upgrade to ReSharper 2.0 for FREE.”. Free upgrades for everybody, happy days.

Spam Bully could learn a lot from JetBrains if you ask me.

I’ve raved about Reflector many a times, so it’s only natural that I should point you in the direction of Darrell Norton’s post entitled List of Reflector Addins which lists … wait for it … Reflector addins

Among those i see myself using in the near future is Reflector.Diff and Reflector.ClassView.

Update: Looks like the site is hosted on a free service with a monthly bandwidth cap. Luckily tomorrow is a brand new month so be sure to check it out then.