Another great news from the guys from Invoke Systems:

When doing any Microsoft CRM development effort, Project Managers will need to work with our clients to gather requirements and design solutions within Microsoft CRM. Typically a large part of this effort is to develop a Functional Design Document or Vision Document that describes exactly what we are going to build on the Microsoft CRM Platform. These documents typically include screen mockups of what the final UI may look like. The process of creating these mockups can be very time consuming, but the results are well worth the effort.

To make this process easier we developed a set of 29 custom Visio shapes, that when used in conjunction with other Visio Windows XP User Interface shapes, allow our Project Managers to quickly and easily design mock CRM UI screens that meet almost any client requirement.

Link: Invoke Systems Visio Shapes for Microsoft CRM 3.0.

Next month I will (would?) be in Thailand, where less than one hour ago coup attempt took place.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, in New York at a United Nations summit, declared a state of emergency in Bangkok, ordered troops not to “move illegally”, and told armed forces chiefs to report to acting Prime Minister Chidchai Vanasatidya.

The Thai armed forces and national police chiefs have set up a commission to decide on political reforms after troops and tanks took over government headquarters. At least 20 soldiers entered the Government House building, according to reporters inside.

Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai told CNN that Thailand’s leadership expects everything to return to normal soon. We hope!

Update, 19:05: seems that news channels have been cutted in Thai so CNN and BBC cannot be seen.

Latest cool stuff I found on The Web:

<jobRelated>

• Windows PowerShell Scripts Repository
  

  The Script Repository categorizes the best sample scripts designed to run on Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. The categories listed below connect you to sample scripts written using Windows PowerShell.

• Microsoft CRM JavaScript snippets
  

  I noticed that the articles dealing with JavaScript code are your favorite topics, so I decided to have a look at all of my posts in the Microsoft CRM newsgroups dealing with JavaScript samples. I found quite a lot of them, so instead of repeating some common solutions over an over, I’m including them on this page for easy access. Hope you find it helpful.

• Strong name an Assemblies which uses ActiveX
  

  If you try to strong name an .NET assembly which uses an ActiveX component, you will receive the following error message: Assembly generation failed — Referenced assembly ‘AxInterop.SHDocVw’ does not have a strong name Now, what can you do to avoid this error? The solution is very easy. You can’t strong name the ActiveX component, but it is possible to strong name the Interop assembly.

• Top 10 Ways to Motivate Geeks
  

  Being a geek myself, I think this is a subject I think needs to penetrate all levels of management in every company that values their geeks. By no means is this a rant, but for the last 10 years I’ve seen what motivates us and what doesn’t. I’ve seen the managers that just don’t get it. I’ve seen those that understand completely and react accordingly. So, I thought I’d share my observations and see what everyone has to add as well.

• SharePoint Server 2007 Resource Links

  A really extensive resource list. Check it out.
  

• Hawkeye – The .Net Runtime Object Editor
  

  Hawkeye is the only .Net tool that allows you to view, edit, analyze and invoke (almost) any object from a .Net application. Whenever you try to debug, test, change or understand an application, Hawkeye can help. With a unique option to Attach to any running .Net process, Hawkeye offers an impressive set of functionalities seen in no other product. Plus … it’s FREE.

• Adaptive Object Models
  

  Abstract: We have noticed a common architecture in many systems that emphasize flexibility and run-time configuration. In these systems, business rules are stored externally to the program such as in a database or XML files. The object model that the user cares about is part of the database, and the object model of the code is just an interpreter of the users’ object model. We call these systems “Adaptive Object-Models”, because the users’ object model is interpreted at runtime and can be changed with immediate (but controlled) effects on the system interpreting it. The real power in Adaptive Object-Models is that the definition of a domain model and rules for its integrity can be configured by domain experts external to the execution of the program. These systems are important when flexibility and dynamic runtime configuration is needed, but their architectures have yet to be described in detail. This paper describes the Adaptive Object-Model architecture style along with its strengths and weaknesses. It illustrates the Adaptive Object-Model architectural style by outlining examples of production systems.

• Reflective Program Generation with Patterns
  

  Runtime reflection facilities, as present in Java and .NET, are powerful mechanisms for inspecting existing code and metadata, as well as generating new code and metadata on the fly. Such power does come at a high price though. The runtime reflection support in Java and .NET imposes a cost on all programs, whether they use reflection or not, simply by the necessity of keeping all metadata around and the inability to optimize code because of future possible code changes. A second—often overlooked—cost is the difficulty of writing correct reflection code to inspect or emit new metadata and code and the risk that the emitted code is not well-formed. In this paper we examine a subclass of problems that can be addressed using a simpler mechanism than runtime reflection, which we call compile-time reflection.We argue for a high-level construct called a transform that allows programmers to write inspection and generation code in a pattern matching and template style, avoiding at the same time the complexities of reflection APIs and providing the benefits of staged compilation in that the generated code and metadata is known to be well-formed and type safe ahead of time.

• .NET naked – See these hitherto unpublished pictures of the .NET Framework architecture

  Cool! .Net Framework metrics analyzed.
  

• Understanding the TypeDescriptor: A Metadata Engine for Designtime Code

  Great post on TypeDescriptor and his functionalities, even those not related to design time.

</jobRelated>

<freeTime>

• Airport Security Cartoons – Mentos & Coke

  Simply go to see this!
  

• indexed – Original copies
  

  This site is a little project that lets me make fun of some things and sense of others. I use it to think a little more relationally without resorting to doing actual math.

• Project Gutenberg
  

  Project Gutenberg is the oldest producer of free ebooks on the Internet. Our collection was produced by hundreds of volunteers.

• Charles Petzold’s Summer Reading: “New Numbers”
  

  It was there in the mathematics section where I found F. Emerson Andrews’ little book New Numbers: How Acceptance of a Duodecimal Base Would Simplify Mathematics (Essential Books, 1944) with a dust jacket for just $1 more than its original price of $2.50.

• arget="_blank">Airplane with four engines

  How to build a flies-engined airplane…
  

• WeAreTheWeb.org

  Fighting for Net Neutrality and Internet Freedom
  

• 10 things you should do on Friday afternoon
  
• 10 Things you should never do on a Friday afternoon
  
• YKSIW – You Know Something Is Wrong

</freeTime>

It’s time to stop with those boring acronyms that made your email signature longer that your messages. Have you ever received an email like this:?

Ok, I will be there tomorrow.

John Doe
MCP, MCAD, MCSD, MCT…

and other tens of fucking chars meaning nothing, absolutly nothing. If you can’t renounce to exhibit your titles I recommend, instead, a much powerful way:

Link: The Daily WTF Gear, and, if you decide to buy one of those shirts, may be you will be interested in this amazing trick to fold them: Fold your shirt.

Note: I’m certifed too and I believe that certications can be valuable. But for you and for what you do, not for people knowing you are certifed. Every one who took some exams knows how easily you can pass them. I really don’t care about an acronym on the bottom of an email or in the sidebar of blog. The on-the-job verification is the only one that cares.

I recently discovered (thanks Mauro!) Google Page Creator, and, as it has been released more the six months ago, I’m surprised not to have heard about it before.

Is a simple web-based tool for quickly designing and publishing web pages. The service (accessible via a Gmail account) is, as always, free and comes with 100 Mb of space. If your free-hosted blog only allow to upload images (as mine…) this can be a nice and sure solution to attach files to your post.

I decided to try, I set up my Sharp Reflections Repository and published the first download available from my Wordpress blog: is a mkz package for Google Earth (OK, I must admit: I’m a little Google addicted) with places I will visit during my next trip. I will spend october in south-east Asia, but this story is for another post. You can download it here.

The last thing: if some Windows Live Writer lover is reading, what about a Plugin to make Google Page Creator a blogging platform?

Early this year I discovered (thanks Alessandro) something that immediatly made me enthusiast: software virtualization. To be more precise: Software Virtualization Solution by Altiris. Let me explain why I think it’s so cool.

Not sure, but I guess no one else is offering something similar at the moment, further more Altiris is giving this tecnology for free (for personal use). It consist in a simple application called Software Virtualization Admin (download here) that allows you to place applications and data in what they call Virtual Software Package or layer. You do this simply launching any application setup in wrapper that intercept all the activities, performed during installation, involving the file system and the registry. When setup finishes all files, directories, keys and values are in hidden positions and appear only when the captured package is activated.

Activating and deactivating a layer is a real time operation that influences the way SVS filter driver manage the calls (via Windows API) directed to the file system of the registry. For example, when the layer in which I virtualized Google Heart is active, automagically a folder named “Google Earth” appears in “c:\Program Files\Google” and the registry keys related the the application do the same in the registry.

This allow you to have different versions of the same appplication without conflicts and, most important, keep your OS light and clean. I successfully virtualized Sql Server 2000 and 2005 (both on the default instance!), Visual Studio 2003 and 2005, the Java Runtime, Microsoft Office and almost everything I need to work and my laptos still boot in less than one minute…

Further more IT Pros can (with the related commercial products) benefit the great advantages this tecnology can bring to software deployment in enterprise networks.

The tecnology is relatively new but both the development team and the community are really active. I bet this is only the beginning, stay tuned!

The complete reference:

• Software Virtualization Solution 2.0 Reference Guide.

Some example of what you can do with software virtualization:

• How to set up a complete, yet light virtual development environment
• Success Story: Mercy Health Services
• The World’s Greatest SVS Demo
• SVS, COM, and DCOM – Experience by Example

After years of great satisfactions today I found Google missing an important feature: correct punctuation marks evaluation inside queries.

I was looking some information about getting comments in RSS from .Text blogs (my old blog was hosted on a .Text site and I want to import the comments). So, I ask Firefox to show my homepage (= Google) and I wrote down this query .text rss comments. I get many result pages containing text, -text and other but no one with .text in the first 30 results (out of 107,000,000). Ok – I thought – I must use quotation marks, and I tryed with “.text” rss comments. No way: exactly the same results I got with the first try.

I spent some minutes reading Google documentation and I found this (full article here):

Google doesn’t recognize special characters such as exclamation points, question marks, or the @ sign. These types of characters are so common that including them in a search would greatly slow the delivery of the search results. Additionally, the use of punctuation on the web is so inconsistent (for example, there’s no obvious way to decide between Mr. and Mr) that including it in the query often does more harm than good to the relevance of your search results.

No guys! Generally speaking punctuaion has great importance, and in some languages much more than in English. Some times the meaning of sentence can be totally different with or without a comma or a dot. In italian, for example, punctuation marks can be so important that we have a proverb referring to this concept: “Per un punto, Martin perse la cappa!” (translated: “Because of a period, Martin lost his post!“). And the explanation can also be found on Wikipedia:

(the origin of this proverb is a tale, in which an acolyte monk, Martin, was told to write the latin phrase “Porta patens esto, nulli claudatur honesto”: “Be the door (always) open. Be not closed to any honest (person)”, referring to the door of the monastery. He instead supposedly wrote on that door “Porta patens esto nulli. Claudatur honesto.”: “Be the door open to no one. Be it closed to honest (people).” Thus, he lost “the cape” (i.e.: the right of taking vows as a monk) because of a period, or dot (Italian language uses the same word). That to symbolize how little details make a big difference in meaning or results.)

Another proof? Try this: “.net” learning. 7 of the firts 10 (and 2 of the first 3!!!) results are not related to the .Net Framework because Google handles “.Net” and “Net” the same way.

Update: September 1, 2006 – 18.30
Altavista and Lycos act the same way. But still I’m convinced that this is the is wrong way. The assumption “… the use of punctuation on the web is so inconsistent (for example, there’s no obvious way to decide between Mr. and Mr) that including…” shouldn’t ever be made. The search engine should not decide in this case, it should simply do what I want: search for “Mr” when I ask for “Mr” and for “Mr.” when ask “Mr.“.