Jeffrey Vanneste

I was under the impression it was not possible to compile .NET 1.1 apps in VS2005 but apparently I am wrong. I haven't tried this out yet but pending it actually works this will be a great start to switching to VS2005.

A fellow coworker sent around this awesome Regular Expression link the other day that I thought I should spread as well:

http://www.regular-expressions.info/tutorial.html

I use regular expressions as often as the interval it takes me to forget most of the useful regex stuff I learn. Everytime a situation comes up that I should use regex I have to try and remember everything I knew about regex. Well, this tutorial explains regular expressions in such a way that I'm hoping it will stick with me longer this time.

To go along with this tutorial I couldn't very well not post an awesome regular expression utility. My personal favorite is The Regulator. It links in with the Regular Expression Library so you already have access to tons of regex. If you haven't heard of it, it's worth checking out. Another tool that I sometimes go back to using is Regex Designer which is made specifically for .NET applications. It has an option to generate some code stubs for you which saves some time.

Today there were a bunch of new services announced by Microsoft all with the "Live" title. You can see all the available services at http://ideas.live.com/. Everything is still in beta and only 4 of 7 current offerings are usable.

Live.com
This is the new start.com from what I can tell. Very similar to NetVibes where you can create your own home page and put all the content you want on it. I've never been a fan of these pages. Sure it's nice to have a single place to look at for all your web information but it still requires me to go to the page and check if anything is new. I prefer the model where something notifies me that there is an action to be performed.

Windows Live Safety Center
An online tool to check for virii and perform a "tune-up" on your PC. I'll pass on this one.

Windows Live Mail
This is going to be the new Hotmail apparently. I'm assuming this is what Kahuna got named to. There are a bunch of videos on channel9 showing some of the new features. From what I saw it looks a lot more simple than the current hotmail and also chalk full of AJAX functionality.

Windows Live Favorites
I'm guessing this was suppose to compete with del.icio.us but let's be honest, del.icio.us is too awesome. WLF has a limit on the number of bookmarks you can add so I couldn't even import all my del.icio.us bookmarks, strike one. WLF does not let me add bookmarks easily. To add a new site you have to either click the "Add favorite" button, paste the URL, enter the description and put in some keywords. You can also drag a link to the window. This requires that I keep this window open all the time. No deal. Strike two. You can share bookmarks but I don't see how I can find other peoples bookmarks or where my public URL is for sharing bookmarks. Strike three. WLF seems like it will work OK for non-geeky people to sync bookmarks for home and work. Granted there is no export feature so good luck getting all your bookmarks out of this tool if you ever decide to switch. One thing I will give it though is the AJAX functionality worked pretty slick.

Windows Live Messenger
Not active yet but sounds pretty promising. Sounds like it will have some Skype functions but probably won't be as good as Skype. They were advertising how it will have new emoticons and crap like that. I wish they would ditch that stuff and keep it more simple as a chatting, IM, voice client without all this other fluff.

Windows OneCare Live
A utility for keeping your computer safe, firewall, virus scanner etc etc. It's still not active but I won't use it so I don't really care.

Windows Live Search Mobile
This isn't live yet either but it sounds pretty cool. I'll stick with google on this one though.

Most of these new offerings have MSN spaces to go along with them. It feels a bit more personal when you can see who is behind each new feature. All the blog links are on http://ideas.live.com/ if you want to check them out too.