Tuesday being Plyo-day, I thought I’d drop a short tip: When you’re recovering between moves, make sure you relax, especially when breathing out.

Make a mental note and check next time. I bet you you’re constricting your throat somewhat. You’ll notice it when breathing out. Relax and you’ll recover faster.

Obviously this applies to other exercises, too.

I know I’ve seen the solution to this one somewhere, but if you’re getting the following error on a 64-bit platform, the solution is to set your application to compile as “x86” and not “Any CPU”:

ERROR: 'Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0' provider is not registered on the local machine.

There have been several people requesting help using the Yahoo! Address Book web services in the .NET Developer Forum. People are getting 403 or 404 error codes back.

I did some digging into the issue this morning and the cause for the 404 error turns out to be an invalid URL for the DOCTYPE declaration for the returned XML data. In short the URL http://l.yimg.com/a/lib/pim/r/abook/xml/2/pheasant.dtd set as the DOCTYPE for the resulting successful web service call XML data is invalid.

This causes problems when using the Yahoo.Authentication class methods, such as GetAuthenticatedDataSet(), resulting in a 404 when the .NET XmlReader attempts to validate the data against the DTD.

The way to work around this issue is to use your own XmlReader with custom XmlReaderSettings specifying to ignore the DTD.

Some mighty trippy default images seem to be in store for Windows 7.

See them all here.

The plug got pulled on OAuth this week in several places, including Twitter and Yahoo!, with Twitter taking a lot of heat on the subject.

Yahoo! is now allowing users and developers to authorize applications, but with some additional messaging letting users know that their data may be at risk if they continue. The main idea here is obviously that developers can still continue their work while the protocol level problem is resolved.

Additional information

Yahoo!’s OAuth Update #2

OAuth acknowledgement of issue

Details on the issue from the advisory

Kent posed the question whether the NetGear GS108T would solve his stuttering problem with HD and the XBOX and whether the SRW2008 I bought required any settings to be modified.

The GS108T might actually do the trick. The determining factor is said to be the size of the buffer memory in the device. The GS108T is listed as having “128kB per unit”. The GS108 I was using before lists “192kB on-chip buffering”.

Now the problem in comparing these two numbers is that the first might mean the device has a total of 1MB (8 ports x 128kB) and the second might mean a total of 192kB (Amazon lists 32kB per port, but the math there doesn’t add up with the specs (8 ports x 32kB = 256kB). I just don’t know if that’s the case, I can’t find solid info on that. But it doesn’t make sense that the cheaper non-smart model would have more memory.

As for the SRW2008, Linksys doesn’t make it easy to find the buffer memory size. I actually found it here:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/29915/51/1/9/

In the table at the end, the SRW2008 is listed as having 1MB of buffer memory. So if that means it’s a total of 1MB, then it has the same amount as the GS108T you are looking at (1024kB / 8 ports = 128kB per port). In short, I don’t have a simple answer to your question. If you do go with the GS108T, please let me know if it works.

One other thing to take into consideration with smart switches is that many of them have fans in them, often noisy. This is simply because these devices are meant for businesses and a living room. This shouldn’t be a problem with the GS108T, it’s listed with “Acoustic noise: 0dB”, so it shouldn’t have any fans.

As for configuring the Linksys SRW2008, I didn’t have to fiddle with the settings. All I did was set an IP and password for the device and left everything else at their defaults.

UPDATE: Kent bought a NetGear GS108T and it solved the stuttering he was seeing. Anyone else have switch models that have resolved the issue?

I couldn’t find any info online about the audio formats on Josh Groban’s Awake Live Blu-ray. It turns out that it does have DTS-MA 5.1! Now I only wish they had toned down the crowd cheering in the mix a little.

So… I know UPS routes their deliveries to avoid left-hand turns to optimize speed and minimize gas usage, but I wonder if they also take into consideration the weight of the items they are delivering.

For example, a formula could be created to influence the route decision to deliver heavier packages first, thus improving mileage. I’m also surprised they haven’t done anything innovative to reduce the air drag on the trucks (boxes) they drive around.

One big surprise for me was that out of browser support made it into version 3. While it is nowhere near as comprehensive as Adobe Air, its main advantages are that users don’t need a separate runtime download and for developers the programming model is pretty much the same for in and out of browser.

View the session.

Installation

Installing a Silverlight application is easy for the user, and making an application available is easy for the developer.

• Shortcuts can be placed on desktop and Start-menu.
• No Control Panel Add/Remove Programs item added (listening to feedback).
• Right-click: Remove this application.
• Multiple icon sizes can be provided. Must be PNGs (transparency supported).
  • Install dialog
  • Taskbar
  • Window
• Applications can be “previewed” in the browser before installation since the application is the same in both the browser and out.

Detaching APIs

“Detaching” is the term of moving (installing) a Silverlight application from browser onto the desktop.

• Manifest
  • Name, Title, and Description
  • Application icons
• APIs on Application
  • Detach method (must be called from a user interaction)
  • ExecutionState property
  • ExecutionStartChanged event
  • RunningOffline property

Updating Applications

• Optimized for “instant on”. No check for “new version” is done when the application starts.
• Silverlight downloads update in the background.
• Next application launch runs the new version.
• Event raised when an update has been downloaded. This lets you prompt the user to restart the application if necessary.

Network Availability

• Network access information is key for out of browser applications
• Silverlight adds functionality
  • IP address changed event
  • Network availability property
    • Any net interface, connected, not looped back
• Best practice is to “ping” server by attempting to download a small file when state changes and a valid IP address exists. There maybe cases where the network is “available”, but limited to the local network (automatically generated private IP address).

Saving Data Locally

• OoB Isolated Storage limit is increased to 25MB
  • Limit is increased when the application is detached
• SaveFileDialog
  • Allows you to set file types (filter)
  • Application gets access to a Stream, but not the path

Details

• HTML DOM Bridge is not available
• Shortcuts point to a small Silverlight host application that contains a browser instance
• LocalLow\Microsoft\Offline\[ApplicationName]
• LocalLow\Microsoft\is\[random]\[random]\[etc…]
• Bundles are used on Macs

Debugging

• Use MessageBox for startup with Application_UnhandledException
• Use Attach to Process on slhost.exe in Visual Studio. Will be improved post beta.

Differences vs. In Browser

• Additional key access (Function keys for example)
• No HTML DOM Bridge
  • No mouse wheel
  • No XmlHttp
• Currently no HTML interop or rendering.
• Out of browser will currently always have operating system window chrome.

Best Practices

• (See above for network availability testing)
• Download local data in the OoB instance after the application has been detached. 
  • Check RunningOffline to see if you’re out of browser
• Don’t fire off more than one HWR at a time.
• Keep all your code in the XAP
  • Silverlight versions for you making updates easy to manage
  • Assets can go outside
• If your data model changes, require a restart.
• Show UI for major updates so user knows things have changed.

Links

Mike Harsh’s Slidentity Silverlight “PowerPoint” application.

MSDN pre-release documentation.

Here’s a quick rundown (mostly of the slide content) presented by Joe Stegman. View the session.

As I mentioned in my previous post, there were a couple of nice surprises that I didn’t believe wouldn’t make version 3, but in addition to those there are a ton of new features as listed below.

Graphics

• Perspective 3D
• Rotate any visual object by its X/Y/Z axes
• Effects and Pixel Shaders
• Pixel APIs
  • Dynamic bitmap generation
  • Render a visual tree (elements) to a bitmap
  • Image editing and effects
  • Clone visuals
  • DirectX SDK used to generate

Raw Audio/Video APIs

• Dynamic sound generation
• Custom audio/video decoders

Local Messaging

• Cross plug-in Silverlight communication: cross plug-in/tab/browser/out-of-browser
• Shared memory implementation
• Exposed like "named pipes"
• String based messages only (no byte-based, maybe later based on feedback)
• Same domain required with opt-in

UI Framework Improvements

• Merged Resource Dictionaries
• BasedOn Styles
• Styles can be “cleared”
• Multi-select ListBox
• Listening to “handled” routed events
• New VSM “Invalid” states
  • Supported on TextBox, CheckBox, ComboBox, ListBox, RadioButton, PasswordBox (coming later)

Other Improvements

• SystemColors
  • Especially useful for “high contrast” settings
• Text Improvements
  • ClearType Text (post beta)
  • CaretBrush (SL 2 caret was black)
  • Flag to optimize for animating text
  • Glyphs support for system font
• Image Refinements
  • Getting size
  • Bypass cache

New SDK Controls

• DockPanel
• Expander
• Label
• etc

Other Big Additions

• Save File Dialog
• Navigation Framework
  • “Native” integration with the browser history
• Data Control Additions
• SEO Support
• n-Tier data support
• Binary XML, SOAP faults, Credentials

Out of Browser

• Silverlight runs sandboxed on desktop
• Built into the core Silverlight runtime
• Enabled per “application”
  • Manifest update required
• More storage space by default: 25MB
• User gesture required to take “out of browser”
  • Right-click context menu option
  • Custom buttons (user action required to trigger event)
• New networking APIs
  • Connected, disconnected and changed state
  • Available in the browser, too
• Offline APIs
• Launch state, update APIs
• Add icon to install dialog
• “Take a XAP offline” – easy to deploy if everything is in the XAP. Doesn’t have to be.

Miscellaneous

• No printing support.
• No FlowDocument.
• 3 behavior changes that aren’t backwards compatible
  • Quirks-mode available
• No Commanding support
• Isolated Storage performance problems fixed