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...

Yesterday Microsoft Hellas officially presented Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 in its regional Launch 2008 event hosted at Athenaeum Intercontinental. Although I've been working and testing those products for quite some time now, it was nice listening to Eric Rudder (Senior Vice President Technical Strategy της Microsoft) on Microsoft's strategy for Microsoft Servers and .Net Framework. I also enjoyed Daniel Moth's speech on Smart Clients and Sync Framework, although I had already seen most of the things he talked about on his screencasts. I believe that Daniel is probably among the best speakers...

I like trying out new software (although I'm not an MS employ I'm dogfooding ;-)). So I usually download and test every beta that comes out. To do that I use Virtual PCs, as I don't want to mess up my production machine. I create these virtual machines on a removable disk so that I can run them on any PC I work. So when Microsoft released its new Windows 2008 server operating system public beta program, I rushed to download it and install it. Unfortunately, it seems that Microsoft changed its Virtualization License scheme in Windows 2008 server OS from the...

Several events occurred this week making it a truly WOW week: Microsoft’s much awaited, new operating system, Windows Vista, was finally launched. British Library published a great WPF application that presents old historical books. The user experience is so rich that you think you’re actually holding the book. I think I had already seen a demo of this app on Mix06, but nothing compares with the real thing. A few days after the final release of Microsoft’s Ajax library, MS opened up its Source Code under the Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL). Microsoft released a new version of its browser enhancement module that enables browsers to...

I’ve been using Windows Vista RC1 for quite a while now and I have to say that I’m quite happy with its stability and performance. Today though I had to hard reset my computer at least 10 times. First my Trend Micro PCCilin antivirus software was running my kernel system process to 100% of CPU performance thus freezing my operating system. Despite running its “return to previous good configuration” feature the program kept freezing my system. So I’ve decided to remove it and try another one (I’m now trying the CA antivirus solution). After resolving my antivirus software Issue I’ve...

After installing Vista RC1 the problems I had installing VSS were resolved so for a while I was quite happy working with VSS on Vista. Today though I’ve just stumbled across the following problem: Assume that you have a network share containing a VSS database which you use to store your development team work, and that you’ve provided the right security privileges in that share so that everyone in your team can access and modify it. Also lets assume that you’ re working on a project that requires running Visual Studio as administrator (elevated...

It seems that the way visual studio understands the SQLExpress server name has changed or that security settings have disabled the .\SQLExpress syntax (which obviously meant local computer SQLExpress instance) on Vista. So if you try to create a new database from the AddItem menu item of visual studio 2005 or connect to an existing one that uses the above syntax in the connection string you will most probably get an error saying that “failed to generate a user instance of sql server”.What you'll have to do (this took me a while to figure out, so you should thank me...

Continuing my Vista setup and exploration, I begun installing all the software and components I used in order to develop software. Most of the MSI installation packages (including Microsoft's CAB) though failed to complete under Vista.It seems that some kind of privileged action needed in order to complete the installation, which is probably write access to the program files directory in order to write an InstallerState file is not allowed not even when the executable is running under an administrative account. The error message says that “Access to the path c:\program files\program\programInstall.InstallState is denied (P.S not event the administrator can change the access...

Installing all the software I need in my new Operating System, I’ve stumbled across my first real problem, (had various other small ones, which didn’t worth mentioning) Source Control. VSS 2005 does not install on Vista. I get a software requirement error, stating that Windows XP SP2 is needed in order to complete the installation. So if someone plans on checking out code from office and work at home with it in his Vista enabled laptop, he better forget about it, or use another source control system L. I wonder if there is any work around I could use…I’m curious...

This is my first post from vista.I've installed over the weekend windows Vista and I'm glad to say that everything went smoothly.After completing the installation most of my hardware was automatically identified and installed, except from the sound card, modem and camera, which was also installed though after my first OS update.The new OS looks great and it's quite fast (despite everything said on the internet about Vista so far). I'm running vista on a 1.8GHz Centrino Laptop with 2GB of memory, 80MB HD and a 256MB ATI X700 graphics card and the OS is as fast as my old...