I have been very appreciative of MS Office Communicator and its intuitive integration with Outlook Calendar. Unfortunately when corporate mergers and takeovers occurs often the best product does not necessarily make the cut. That is certainly the case with the loss of Communicator and the emergence of IBM Lotus Sametime Connect.

My main issue is obviously no Outlook Calendar support, and then a distant second is the application sharing feature which is a hold over from Windows messenger. To be fair this feature is temperamental on its best day.

There is one feature of the IBM Lotus Sametime I love and that is 'Geographic Location'. This handy feature is useful because once set, it automatically updates your geographic location, primary phone numbers and even time zone for everyone to see. For groups like mine that are able to work from home, and are distributed across the US, this type of information is invaluable.

I think this feature has officially become a glaring omission of Office Communicator.

Last year my company, Corillian, was purchase by CheckFree, unfortunately someone decided that there was no need for an additional office in Toledo. Not wanting to be caught out in the cold and considering that the job market in Toledo can only be described as anemic, I thought this was a great opportunity to move to central Ohio. CheckFree is a big company and the fact that they have now been acquired by Fiserv makes them a huge company.

My blog entries have always been sporadic, but for the next few weeks (until I find a house) they will be almost nonexistent!

As I become more and more comfortable with Vista the number of unsigned software that I am using is starting to grate on my nerves. I am not sure if I am more annoyed with the developers or the OS that keeps reminding me (even when I tell it not to remind me).

There is quite comprehensive article on signing of .NET applications, however, what the article does not go into is that getting a valid certificate from a 3rd party is not free. I can create a test certificate, but the application will have a test certificate that is not verifiable. What, pray tell, is the point of that!

The perfect scenario for me is to use a Uri that I own as the point of verification, that way I can have and own a certificate that is publicly accessible! So as long as you believe that my site is mine, by extension you can trust that I own and control the certificate at that Uri!

Please submit all ideas for this scenario here!

After my previous post I was kind of curious about sites that I have seen that have made the transformation into the world of Silverlight?

So this is the quick list I came up with!

• Microsoft - Of course there flagship site should contain Silverlight ... I will need to talk to Raja (Jim) about where they have buried most of it.
• dnrTV - I guess I am not surprised at this one, especially after Carl Franklin published a music video using Silverlight.
• Channel 10 - Channel 10 is a place for enthusiasts with a passion for technology.
• 2008 Presidential Campaign (352 Media Group) - These folks created a cool site that allows you to determine the best candidates based on some pretty shallow questions.
• James Bond - Dedicated to those whole love 007, not much to this site but still worth a mention.
• BMW - Really slick site, probably the best example of what can be accomplished, my German is a little rusty so I did not enjoy quite as much.
• MSN Movies - Another flagship site, I think I prefer it to the Apple Movie preview site.
• MLB - This was probably the first large scale site to go all in to the Silverlight experience, and if I were more interested in Baseball I am sure this site would be my favorite!

One of the big stories in CES 2008 was the fact that Microsoft will be partnering with NBC to provide the online video access for the entire Olympics experience.

What I am wondering about is why the current MSNBC beta video program is being completed in Flash. Should this not server as another golden (or silver)opportunity to push the Silverlight experience.

I did notice, however, that NBA.com has released some pictures using Silverlight!

My plan with CommonRSS was to have it run as a regular application (not a service, just did not want to be bothered yet). So one of the first problems that occurred to me was how you go about starting an application when the OS started. I also wanted to enable\disable that functionality through the registry so this is the class I came up with to support that. 

using Microsoft.Win32;
using System.Reflection;

static class UtilityFuncs
{
    private const string APP_NAME = "CommonRSS"; //replace this with the name of your application
    private const string REG_ENTRY = "Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run";

    /// <summary>
    /// Enables auto start
    /// </summary>
    public static void EnableAutoStart()
    {
        RegistryKey key = Registry.CurrentUser.CreateSubKey(REG_ENTRY);
        key.SetValue(APP_NAME, Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);
    }

 

    /// <summary>
    /// Disables autostart.
    /// </summary>
    public static void DisableAutoStart()
    {
        RegistryKey key = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(REG_ENTRY);
        if (key != null)
        {
            string val = (string)key.GetValue(APP_NAME);
            if (val != null)
                key.DeleteValue(APP_NAME);
        }
    }

 

    /// <summary>
    /// Checks if auto start is enabled.
    /// </summary>
    public static bool IsAutoStartEnabled
    {
        get
        {
            RegistryKey key = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(REG_ENTRY);
            if (key == null)
            {
                return false;
            }

            string val = (string)key.GetValue(APP_NAME);
            if (val == null)
                return false;

 

            return (val == Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);
        }
    }

}