The data connection builder dialog is a database tool component that’s included in Visual Studio and helps you build a connection string to a database. Last week though the standalone source code was published at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Connection/, so that anyone can use it to build a data connections independently of Visual Studio. According to the license, you can integrate and redistribute the source code with your application. With the data connection dialog, you can perform following tasks: Build/Modify connection strings. Customize the data connection dialog. ...

If you’ve started playing around Microsoft Azure then you are probably going to appreciate this post ;-). I know I did. Kudos to Ryan Dunn On Tuesday an azure table Browser service was launched for developers at MyAzureStorage.com. The service was build using ASP.NET MVC on a rich AJAX interface.  and its goals are to provide developers an easy way to create, query, and manage their Windows Azure tables. with it you’ll be able to: ...

Back on February 2007 I blogged about a prototype project of Human Productivity Lab, code named Bumptop and was claiming that we’re really not that far from seeing something like that becoming available for end-users. Well today I found out that I wasn’t wrong. Bumptop is officially released and available in two versions a free one as well as a Pro one for a small fee. Check it out in the following video. Now imagine that desktop running on Windows 7 at a multitouch screen ;-) Unfortunately I’m using the default windows 7 beta graphics...

Having some free time durring the Christmas holidays gave me the oportunity of doing a couple of things to myFacebook gadget. So except from the necessary bug fixing ;-) version 1.2.1 of myFacebook contains three major updates: First I've removed the verb "is" from the user status as Facebook finally listened to all the users that complained about it and removed it from its platform as well. Remember that you're now expected to fill in the verb yourself. I've also noticed that my friends' status feed contained entries that were a lot older than the ones I expected to...

Today I received an email from yahoo that notified me that its new Vista IM software, Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista, is ready for testing. Of course I immediately downloaded and installed it (as I usually do for anything new ;-)) as I remembered that it was pretty cool when I first saw it at last year's MIX. Once loaded though, I got a bit discouraged, since I found out that I could not login using my live credentials :-(. When I registered, I was able to sign in and start adding contacts, thankfully Live messenger contacts could...

A lot of people have been complaining on not being able to login to MyFacebook gadget and I really didn't know what was going on as I followed Facebook API's authentication instructions to the letter. So I've decided to change it's authentication method. It now uses the same authentication method Popfly uses in its Facebook Data source block. To login you'll have to click on the first page link in order to get an authentication token, then you'll have to add that token to the gadget settings page. Note that if this is the first time...

It's only been a couple of weeks since Linq's final release with Visual Studio 2008 beta 2 and great tools have already started coming to life. A great one I discovered from SoCalDevGal is the LinqPad - a Linq query expression tool which allows you to run queries against databases using Linq. If you're exploring Linq this is a great tool.

I've been really close to the "Live" development platform and have tested most of its products from their beta versions so when I found out today that Microsoft has released two new Live products on public beta namely Windows Live Gallery and live folders I've rushed to the Live Web site to download and try them. Unfortunately I was too late. For some reason Microsoft decided to pull back its releases and disabled us (people on the other side of the Atlantic that sleep when US is awake) the download of those new products. At least the folders live program, clearly stated from the...

After investigating the missing Live Writers's spell checking problem for a while, I discovered that the problem was caused by my computer's regional settings (Greek). As it turns out, spell checking is only enabled when Live Writer is started using the en-US regional settings. The unfortunate assumption by the Live Writer's team was that since spell checking works only for English, it should be disabled for any other regional settings :-s ... If that assumption was correct, then other programs like Office for example shouldn't have spell checking either, for non English regional settings PCs. Anyway, searching the web I found a...

One of the features I really loved about Microsoft Live writer was its spell checking one, so I made sure before downloading the new beta2 version that it wasn't removed. As I read it was instead somewhat enhanced by enabling inline spell checking. So I downloaded and installed it only to find out that my spell checking capabilities were gone. There's no Spell Check button as there was in the previous version (it explains, as if you have inline spell checking you don't really need it) and inline spell checking doesn't work. Does anyone know where Live Writer's spell...