After false starts of ObjectSpaces and non-existent O/R mapping tools from Microsoft, the LINQ family of technologies, which should be part of C# 3, are starting to take shape.
Firstly Scott Guthrie has a post on Using LINQ with ASP.NET where he explains some basic concepts with examples and how easy of grouping is:
Also Matt explains how to turn IEumerable into IQueryable:
It does seem like it is a good move to narrow the gap between data and coding, but would all this be quite so neccessary if Microsoft had more object persistance support in Sql Server and I don't mean what we have from Sql Server 2005? Whilst on the latest version, Brian Otto gives some good figures on the relevant performance differences in CPU/Disk IO when using
Xml queries over normal columns.
Previously where MSDN articles used to be the best place for new Microsoft technology advice, blogs seems to have taken over.
But I came across an article recently on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) which is a great introduction to a technology that is I think still waiting to really expand from the retail environment.
There are some great articles on The Code Project including Motion Detection algorithms by Andrew Kirillov which explains techniques along with working code to track movement from video streams.
Image recognition is one of those things that humans can do relatively easily but computers find much more difficult - an area where Amazon is trialing their Mechanical Turk service, the name comes from the chess-playing automation of the 18th century which hid a chess master inside. Another interesting direction from Amazon is their Simple Storage Service - Amazon S3.
Whilst mentioning the CodeProject, shameless plug about a few articles I wrote a couple of years ago which I still get quite a few hits and emails about.
Everyone at work is balancing time and resources, whether your own or your teams - so technologies to improve collaboration and efficient working can make a big difference - whether it is videoconferencing, multi-monitors or presense awareness in applications.
So this article on a workday for Bill Gates was interesting,
"The screen on the left has my list of e-mails. On the center screen is usually the specific e-mail I'm reading and responding to. And my browser is on the right-hand screen. This setup gives me the ability to glance and see what new has come in while I'm working on something, and to bring up a link that's related to an e-mail and look at it while the e-mail is still in front of me."
Also his use of SharePoint, which is often overlooked as a Microsoft product given how useful having one common standard place for all project/team information can be. Also announcements like the Knowledge Network for SharePoint 2007 could really help a lot of enterprises search their internal resources for expertise.
"I deal with this by using SharePoint, a tool that creates websites for collaboration on specific projects. These sites contain plans, schedules, discussion boards, and other information, and they can be created by just about anyone in the company with a couple of clicks."
Surprising he doesn't have a digital whiteboard,
"The one low-tech piece of equipment still in my office is my whiteboard. I always have nice color pens, and it's great for brainstorming when I'm with other people, and even sometimes by myself."
Especially given Microsoft Research have a number of projects on the go.
Just for polish I wanted to add the watermark effect similar to the one you find in the lower right of My Videos, etc.
This snippet of code from GotDotNet does the trick.
Seems the Microsoft Research Advanced Technology Center in Beijing are developing the listview control for WPF which will support all the styling you want.
Nice little visual enhancement that provides thumbnail previews (as seen in Windows Vista) for the Windows XP taskbar: Visual Task Tips.
Simple, useful, does exactly what it says on the tin.
