Hi In preperation for my chalk and talk session at the Microsoft Launch 05 event next week I stated using my i-mate JasJar for CF 2.0 development and was initially extremely frustrated when I got the following error: “Installation error. Stop all applications and process, maximize available storage space, and run install again. Suport inf 4.” That is until I found this post which helped me solve it: http://groups.google.co.uk/group/microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.compactframework/browse_thread

OK, so today over lunch Mike Taulty and Benjamin Mitchell gave me a hard time about being behind on both reading and writing blogs. I tried to deflect this by pointing out Benjamin's choice of the pink PDC t-shirt created questions around his sexuality however his point was valid - I have been so busy with Sentient and Mobile GPS software for sports people that I hadn't kept up. So, this afternoon I've downloaded the latest version of SharpReader and started adding blogs to read. By accident I found

OK, I'm here sitting in my room in the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel. Yesterday was spent getting here. A very early start to catch the 6.35 flight from Heathrow to Amsterdam to join the Microsoft PDC Jumbo to LA. The PDC Jumbo was due to leave Amsterdam at 11.15 however security look a little longer than expected so Benjamin, Clemence and I found time for a quick pre-flight beer! Actually Benjamin wimped out and took a coffee complaining about already feeling a little rough after the night before

You've got to love those people at Microsoft. They've kindly invited me to attend PDC in LA next week as their guest. Something about a "key influencer" :-) So, next week I return to blogging possibly for one week only due to the madnesses of my regular work life juggling Sentient and Sportsdo activities but at least for next week I plan to geek out totally, get some geeky R&R and get blogging. Yippee, LA here I come. J.

I am currently working with a client who is transitioning from VB.net to C# and as part of my preparation for a conversion workshop I found this very handy resource: http://www.harding.edu/USER/fmccown/WWW/vbnet_csharp_comparison.html Thank you to Frank McCown for making this available. It is also interesting to see he has prepared a Java to C# comparision for those of you who have seen the light and are coming over to join the C# fun! Jonathan

It's been a couple of week since I attended the Indigo SDR event in Seattle and my head is still buzzing with excitement about it. The SDR was the first time I've gone deep on what the Indigo team have been doing and I'm impressed, infact very impressed. The balance between capabilities, extensibility and simplicity seems to be spot on. The bit I love the most about Indigo is the worlds simplest sample code will still provide you with a secure, reliable and potentially authenticated web service call

Over the past couple of months I have been focusing my time on creating a new business division within Sentient called Sportsdo. Our new Sportsdo division creates software for sports people which runs on SmartPhone and PocketPC. www.Sportsdo.info We have been through a very steep learning curve with the .NET Compact Framework and are now participating in the beta program for the next Windows Mobile platform release (Magneto). The current suite of applications we have developed include Rundo, Skido

In our System.Threading talk we cover the impact of threading in an ASP.NET application and specifically how damaging to your applications scaleability it can be to call external systems with unpredictable performance characteristics. (eg. SQL-Server, WebServices, COM component, java, etc). The problem here is you will be "hogging" your ASP.NET thread for the duration of the transaction. You may not feel this is a problem because you clearly can't return the page until this external transaction has

A friend of mine recently commented on the apparent stupidity of having a Milk Helpline listed on your regular bottle of semi-skimmed. To his surprise I told him this was a Maven Trap. The obvious next question is "What is a Maven Trap?" To answer this properly I decided to buy him a copy of Malcolm Gladwell's excellent book The Tipping Point which is where I first came across the term. To my surprise the chapter which talks about Maven Traps has been deleted from the current paperback edition of

We are next running our very popular "New Technology Seminar" on Wednesday 27th April. http://www.sentient.co.uk/newtechnologyseminar.aspx Microsoft has kindly sponsered this event which means we can offer FREE entry for this time only. In the seminar we will be showing you how you can use the following technologies to improve your business effectiveness: Blogging - weblogs, blogs, rss, ezine replacement, subscription revenue Bluetooth - bluejacking, tracking, prescence Google - SEO, AdWords, AdSense