Archives | Chris Leong

April 16, 2009

Silverlight DeepZoomPix – A new way of showcasing your photos

This is a technology demonstration by Microsoft that allows you to view your photo’s in a whole new light. It’s really quite cool and I’m sure you will find it useful too. View a sample from Chris Leong’s DeepZoomPix Album

Here’s some overview of DeepZoomPix

Using Silverlight’s exclusive Deep Zoom technology, DeepZoomPix enables you to interactively explore and share photos like never before:

Enable a seamless experience for navigating large numbers of images regardless of Internet connection quality.

Make possible a “tactile” way of exploring and interacting with photographic images on the web.

Empower users to dynamically zoom in on photos without having to navigate to higher resolution versions.

You can directly access photos from Facebook, Flickr or any photo RSS feed and share your DeepZoomPix creation with the world through your blog or website.

Here are some snapshots of what you can do in DeepZoomPix

1) Different Layouts you can choose from

2) Zooming in to your pictures

3) Slide Show View

4) Some different layouts

P.S

These photos are from my buddy Daren Chong. Check out more great wedding photos @ Daren Chong’s Blog
I’ve also share a similar post few months back. Check it out here

Leave a comment

April 15, 2009

Error when open Excel Doc in TFS

For those who are getting error when open Excel documents stored on the Team Foundation Server (TFS). Courtesy from Poh Sze.

“TF84037: There was a problem initializing the Microsoft Excel Team Foundation Addin. Re-installing the Team Foundation Client may be required.”

The reason is because the Office .Net programmability support is not installed. You need to modify your installed version of Office and install this option.

1. In Add/Remove programs, locate your Office application and select it.
2. Click on the ‘Change’ button
3. Select ‘Add or Remove features’ and click ‘next’
4. Select ‘Choose advanced customization of applications’ and click ‘next’
5. In the tree view, expand ‘Microsoft Office Excel’ and make sure the .NET Programmability Support option is set to ‘run from my computer’.
6. Click ‘update’

Leave a comment

April 14, 2009

DevTalk – Improving Software Quality

Apologies for not posting this up sooner. It has slipped my mind with all the deadlines that i need to catch.

Here’s the link to my slides for both session “Build Better Software – Code Performance” and “Governing Software Quality with Visual Studio Team System”

Link to my slides

In the link, you can also find an excel spreadsheet with some recommendation on Capacity Planning. This is courtesy from the ACE team. ACE team is

The ACE (Application Consulting & Engineering) Team is responsible for application performance, security & privacy engineering @ Microsoft. Our mission is to drive application excellence into production by providing application engineering leadership through world class performance, security & privacy analysis services.

Here is also some great information on Performance Testing Guidance Patterns & Practices and a Quick Reference Guide on Testing with VSTS

Leave a comment

April 10, 2009

Excel Tips – View Worksheet Side by Side

It’s been very long since i posted another office tips and tricks page. I sometimes needs to do that and it really is frustrating when you need to switch between Excel files. I guess this tip will be useful for those who needs to compare worksheet side by side.

So here how you can view your worksheets side by side.

On the View tab, in the Window group, click New Window.

On the View tab, in the Window group, click View Side by Side .

In the Compare Side by Side dialog box, click the worksheets that you want to compare. To scroll both worksheets at the same time, click Synchronous Scrolling in the Window group on the View tab.

Thanks to Lee Chun Onn that provide me. Have a tips and tricks that you want to share. Email me 🙂

Leave a comment

April 1, 2009

Quick Test Reference for Visual Studio Team System

Finally you can get a cheat sheet on how to test in VSTS. Thanks to VSTS Rangers in providing a quick reference for the test features in VSTS.

This guide covers.

Setup Considerations
Web Test Considerations
Web Service Test Considerations
Unit Test Considerations
Load Test Considerations
Load Test Rig Consideration
Performance Data Collection And Usage
Load Test Results Store Information
Test Customization
Items Changed Or Fixed In Vsts 2008 Sp1
General Commands And Tricks (Not Vsts Specific)

Download it from http://vstt2008qrg.codeplex.com/

Leave a comment

March 31, 2009

Info in protecting yourself from the Conficker virus

Just got some information on how to protect yourself from the Conficker virus that is creating havoc around the world. Microsoft even offer a USE250k reward to find the culprit.

Anyway, here are some links that offers good information about getting yourself protect.

Microsoft has published new information today on the following web pages:

Microsoft Conficker guidance page for IT Professionals and those focused on security in the enterprise: HTTP://www.microsoft.com/conficker.
Microsoft Conficker guidance page for consumers and home users: http://www.microsoft.com/protect/computer/viruses/worms/conficker.mspx.
The Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) encyclopedia page for the Conficker family of malware: http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Entry.aspx?name=Win32/Conficker.
The Microsoft Malware Protection Center blog: http://blogs.technet.com/mmpc/.
The Microsoft Security Response Center Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/.

On a separate note,

A friend of mine, who is knows a lot about security has recently gave me some decent advise about security. He mentioned these few tips.

You should not log in as an admin to do your daily work/web surfing. Log in as normal user and only use admin when necessary
If you have more than 1 pc, don’t use the same PC for downloading all your torrents, mp3s, movies and etc, and do your online banking. Use a different PC
Make sure you update all your patches and anti virus

It make sense, but I’m also guilty in not applying some of his advice. I guess i need to remind myself to be discipline.

Anyway, to learn the 4 steps to protect your computer. check it out @ this site

and check out my friends blog @ http://www.myownenemy.net/

Leave a comment

March 31, 2009

Snippets: MySpace supporting Microsoft Platform & Twitter is hiring a VIP Concierge

Silverlight on Myspace

Looks like MySpace is supporting Silverlight and Windows Phone. Check out the link to the article

MySpace, the world’s premier social portal, today announced support for Microsoft Windows Mobile and Microsoft Silverlight. The new MySpace mobile application, available this summer, will run on Windows phones and utilize Silverlight, Microsoft Corp’s free browser plug-in that powers rich Internet application (RIA) experiences, into the MySpace Open Platform.

For developers out there, Here some news from Synergist’s blog about a kit for building Silverlight applications in MySpace Developer Platform.

On Thursday, April 2, MySpace and Microsoft will jointly release a kit on the CodePlex Open Source site (with the MS-PL License) that will make it easy for developers using Visual Studio and designers using Expression Blend to create Silverlight applications on MySpace’s OpenSocial-based developer platform.

Also check out his blog for some examples on how he uses the kit to do Silverlight in the Myspace Developer Platform. http://blogs.msdn.com/synergist/archive/2009/03/30/silverlight-for-the-myspace-developer-platform.aspx

Twitter Hiring VIP Concierge

Was reading some news about Twitter hiring a concierge to pamper said celebrities and VIPs to keep tweeting their hearts out. Got this article from TechCrunch. Funny how technology comes out with jobs that nobody heard of 10 years ago. For instance, SEO analyst/engineer and now Twitter VIP concierge 🙂

Leave a comment

March 25, 2009

Microsoft Virtual Tech Days for Developers

What is it?
A 24 hour Virtual Event where you can learn about all different development technologies that Microsoft offers.

When?
1st April, 2009

Topics?

Windows Development and Frameworks
Windows Mobile Development
Office and SharePoint Development
Developer Tools, Languages & Practices
Web Development & User Experience

Get some details about the sessions here

Check it out at Microsoft Virtual Tech Days

Leave a comment

March 20, 2009

Snippets – What I have been reading about (Tony Robbins, IE8, Gmail)

Quote about Faith & Fear

What’s the difference between fear & faith? Both are made up. Fear is imagination undirected & faith is your power to direct imagination – Got from Tony Robbins tweet

A fantastic video about the “Failure: The Secret to Success” By Honda

Love this short video. Since I’ve been facing some obstacles lately, its a good dose of motivation and inspiration for me.

The official launch of Internet Explorer 8

Been trying out IE8, Chrome and Firefox for a while. But Microsoft just launched IE8 officially. So for folks who do not like to use beta software, here’s a chance for you to try it out

Something about IE8

Safer. Built-in phishing and malware protection along with click-jacking and cross-site scripting prevention protects you from threats on the Internet. InPrivate browsing & filters let you maintain confidentiality when needed. See the whitepaper here.
Easier. With Web Slices, content updates from your favorite sites are now accessible right from your favorites bar no matter where you are on the web. See the gallery here.
Faster. With IE 8, it takes much fewer steps to complete key tasks than in FF. E.g. Mapping an address in IE8 takes 3 steps, while in FF, it takes 7. In side-by-side measures of speed in opening the top 25 websites worldwide, IE8 was as fast or faster than Firefox and Chrome. IE8 is faster than IE7 by 80% in common micro-benchmarks. See the video here.

Download Internet Explorer 8 here

Gmail’s new feature – Undo Send

This got to be a life saver for me. I don’t know bout you folks, but I’m one of the few who manage to “jump the gun” by sending emails out without attachments. I always think how nice if i could “stop” the mail from being sent out. This folks from the Gmail team added a new feature that would be useful. This is especially true for folks who often write angry emails and sent it out.

Check out what they are saying in Gmails blog. To use this new feature, go to Settings –> Labs and look for undo send

1 Comment

March 20, 2009

Free Outlook add-in to organize your email and make your inbox better

Recently I am playing around with a free outlook add in to help me organize my inbox better. It’s call ClearContext Personal

Here are some things that it can help you with

suggesting the right folders to instantly file messages and entire conversations with a single click
highlights the most important messages in your Inbox from your most important contacts.
Easily follow the conversation with a threaded conversation view as part of each email message
Explore and preview attachments within Outlook just like folders on your desktop

So far i haven’t got use to the add in. I believe it takes some effort to adapt to it. But i guess once you got used to it, your productivity and efficiency in Outlook will increase.

But overall the best feature for me is the email thread function it provides. One of the things i like about Gmail is that it groups all similar emails. I find it easier for me to search for all my emails. It offers something similar, so far i like this feature the most.

In every mail, it will show you the email threads as highlighted in the picture below