Windows Media Center 2005

January 14, 2005 Jan 14, 2005 01/14/05
Heath Stewart
We received our Windows Media Center 2005 from Dell yesterday and I'm quite pleased. Not only is the machine a nice configuration but the capabilities of Media Center are great. There's nothing like kicking back on the home office couch and listening to music selected via remote on your 5.1 surrouned sound system or watching recorded TV ...

New MVP: Nick Parker

January 4, 2005 Jan 4, 2005 01/4/05
Heath Stewart
It's official: an old acquaintance of mine from DevHood that became my intern and then a close friend is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Visual C#, a member of the community that has shown outstanding commitment to helping developers (for development-oriented technologies) grow intellectually and to answer questions ...

Featured blog: Developernotes.com

December 31, 2004 Dec 31, 2004 12/31/04
Heath Stewart
My buddy and former employee (intern) of mine, Nick Parker, has his blog http://developernotes.com featured on the Visual C# Development Center: Blogs page, along side the C# team's own blog; our wonderful Microsoft Developer Network blogs you're reading now; and some of the leading C#, Common Language Runtime (CLR), and XML developers in the ...

Spaces.msn.com comes online

December 3, 2004 Dec 3, 2004 12/3/04
Heath Stewart
Spaces.msn.com is a new MSN service that ushers Microsoft into the growing blog space and offers several nice features, such as sending messages from a mobile device via SMS to be published immediately or entered as a draft.I decided to give this a try with a personal blog and can't wait to see what this beta service has to offer as time goes ...

Featured Visual C# MVPs

October 26, 2004 Oct 26, 2004 10/26/04
Heath Stewart
As I was routinely perusing the Microsoft Developer Network today I ran across a novel idea: a list of featured Visual C# MVPs. As a former Visual C# MVP myself (before coming to work for Microsoft), I think this is an excellent idea. MVPs are like the right hand of Microsoft, reaching out to the developers in ways that Microsoft can't ...

Wireless Gaming

October 22, 2004 Oct 22, 2004 10/22/04
Heath Stewart
In preparation for the biggest release in entertainment history - Halo 2 - I finally decided to buy a wireless bridge. The Linksys Wireless-G Game Adapter (WGA54G) seemed a little pricey at first glance, but after using it tonight I think it's well worth it. Not only should Wireless-G (802.11g) be around for a while, but the device was ...

Attack of the Tegenaria Gigantea!

October 20, 2004 Oct 20, 2004 10/20/04
Heath Stewart
No, this isn't about another campy 80's flick, but about the Tegenaria gigantea, or "giant house spider". Dubbed the world's faster spider by the Guinness Book of World Records, this rather large spider is commonly mistaken for the Tegenaria agrestis, or "hobo spider", which is commonly mistaken for the Loxosceles reclusa, or "brown recluse...

And the Winner is…

October 8, 2004 Oct 8, 2004 10/8/04
Heath Stewart
Tonight was the first time I've played Texas Hold'em and gambling with an actual cash buy-in. The first game was cut short but I took a portion of the winnings split between two of us (the other guy had to leave). The second game was full of daring actions from all players. At one point one of the other guys and I bet everything. He already ...

The Smart Client Revolution

October 6, 2004 Oct 6, 2004 10/6/04
Heath Stewart
MSDN TV has posted a video about .NET Smart Client Applications and "the buzz around the .NET Smart Client Application Revolution."Well, call me a revolutionary then since having architected such a large-scale solution during the .NET 1.0 RC2 I was doing ths several years ago. While I no longer work for the company I can attest that ...

Improvements to Localization in Visual Studio 2005

October 5, 2004 Oct 5, 2004 10/5/04
Heath Stewart
Designing and developing applications for the global economy can often be difficult, but the .NET Framework made globalization and localization much more simple. In Visual Studio 2005 resources are handled a little bit differently, providing you - the application developer - a class you can easily use throughout your application...