Falafel Software showcased ActiveFocus on Telerik's web site. This is a great illustration of what ActiveFocus can do and it can do a lot!  I was the lead developer for the Windows version of ActiveFocus and I have to say, Falafel has really taken this project to levels I never imagined. It is extremely easy to use and richly functional.

You have to see this video - watch the filtering capability on how the graphs interact with the grid - wow!

One thing Lino (the president of Falafel) discussed was how the skins can be customized for different industries. Therefore, the terminology can be customized to a specific industry. I need to add, that for those engaged in Agile development, it would be easy to rename requirements to stories, events to iterations and so forth.  AF also maintains important information like estimated and actual costs and efforts - critical for teams trying to achieve repeatable processes and cost analysis.

You'll hear in Lino's video that the team plans for integration into Microsoft's Team Foundation Server - that's smart!

Falafel software will be showing ActiveFocus at TechEd 2008 in Orlando, Florida in June 2008 and at the PMI Global Congress 2008 in Denver, Colorado in October 2008.

If I sound partial to ActiveFocus, I am. Having conceived the idea, developed its first iteration and then seeing it turn into a state of the art web application by a rock solid team has been exciting to say the least. I am looking forward to using it with my clients and I will be showing how to use ActiveFocus in an Agile (Agile/hybrid) development setting. More to come later. For now, CHECK IT OUT!

I decided to start experimenting with Blogengine.net, an open-source ASP.NET blogging platform.  Installation was brainless.  Basically, unzip the zip file which you download from here into a directory.  You have the option of downloading just the web site or you may download the entire source. I opted for the web site this time.  You'll need to add a virtual directory under IIS. Make sure it is configured for ASP.NET 2.0. The installation instructions are very good. Follow them and you'll be fine.  Literally, it took me less then 10 minutes to get this site going.

After installation I could run the site flawlessly - quite impressive.  First thing was to change the theme as I wasn't too happy with the default.  This was another simple task. Simply login with the username/password, admin/admin. You'll get an extra set of links for maintaining the blog.  I took care of two things right off, I changed the theme and added my own account.  One of the features of Blogengine.net is the ability to have multiple user accounts. 

I logged off and that was it. I had a blog. The next thing I wanted to do was to get it setup with Windows Live Writer (WLW).  This part didn't go so flawlessly. 

I followed the typically procedure of adding a new Weblog account.  I specified that this was another web log service (not one of the defaults in WLW).  The next page asks for the blog's URL and username/password, I entered those and pressed next.  The next dialog (see figure) surprised me because it asked for a provider type.  I was under the impression that WLW would detect all that information.  Further research indicates that this is not necessarily so.  After several attempts, I could not get WLW to detect my blog.  Fortunately, this can be done using the Metawebblog API (one of the items in the drop down). You'll need to enter the path to the api which is in the format:

http://thedomain/metaweblog.axd

so mine was http://camaro/blogengine/metaweblog.axd

After entering that information, WLW detected my blog and from what I can tell, functions properly. I'll continue to experiment with Blogengine.net and will report my findings. I'm going to be looking into adding additional pages (non blog pages) which is a feature I've been wanting in dasBlog but is not there.

If you're like me, and I am, then you appreciate the ease and debugging capabilities of browsers like Firefox.  However Visual Studio continues to use IE even if you've set Firefox as your default browser in your environment.  Gladly, this can be changed, here's how.

1. In the Solution Explorer, right-click over the .aspx page such as Default.aspx to bring up the context menu.  Select "Browse with..."  This will bring up a Browse With dialog (see figure). 

2. Likely, Firefox will not be in the list. Simply press the "Add..." button, browse to the program directory (c:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox), and select the program (Firefox.exe).

3. Press the "Set as Default" button with your preferred browser selected in the list.

4. Note, you can even set the default size of the browser window.

This it! 

I'm always looking for great tools (particularly free/open source tools). Here's one called PDFCreator that allows you to create PDFs from any document that can print to a Windows printer.  Furthermore, it is free because it's an Open Source tool.  It's extremely simple to install and use. After running the installation program, PDFCreator shows up a a printer in your list of printers (see figure).

Here are a list of features directly from the PDFCreator website.

• Create PDFs from any program that is able to print
• Security: Encrypt PDFs and protect them from being opened, printed etc.
• Send generated files via eMail
• Create more than just PDFs: PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, PCX, PS, EPS
• AutoSave files to folders and filenames based on Tags like Username, Computername, Date, Time etc.
• Merge multiple files into one PDF
• Easy Install: Just say what you want and everything is installed
• Terminal Server: PDFCreator also runs on Terminal Servers without problems
• And the best: PDFCreator is free, even for commercial use! It is Open Source and released under the Terms of the GNU General Public License.

I have to say that I am very happy with dasBlog's technology. It has been relatively easy to deploy blogs sites.  My only gripe is a combination of the lacking dasBlog themes and my own artistic inability to create my own theme. Then, I discovered that numerous designers make their designs freely available. One is simply required to credit the artist accordingly.  It took me only an hour or so to theme my personal site at www.xavierpacheco.com.  To find free themes, simply Google "Free CSS Templates". 

Have fun!

I can say unhesitatingly that every project on which I have worked has been a collaborative nightmare.  The reason? Because Email has been the primary means of team collaboration.

I am pretty much sold on the Wiki approach to team collaboration. At this point, I have not personally implemented a Wiki, I am currently in the process of reading about the various options available. Needless to say, I am only interested in free / open source options.  At the moment, I'm considering ScrewTurn Wiki.  I am also anxious to see what Google does with their JotSpot acquisition.

In the meantime, to see why Wiki is good for collaboration, watch this video.

If you have any comments/suggestions on Wiki tools - do tell!

I found this on the Microsoft Learning site.  These are 3 2-hour clinics and according to the site:

This collection of 3 2-hour premium clinics teaches about the new capabilities provided by the .NET Framework 3.0. These clinics are for experienced Developers and Software Architects who are looking to adopt Microsoft's next generation technology within their solutions.
Topics covered within the collection include:

• Windows Presentation Foundation
• Windows Workflow Foundation
• Windows Communication Foundation

I'm going to take a look at these and will report how they are when done. Here's the link:

https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/offerDetail.aspx?offerPriceId=127367

Every now and then, I find something free ( or open source) that is absolutely valuable to my job. Occasionally, I'll announce them. here are some that I use

Notepad++

"a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment."

7-Zip

An open-source file archiver supporting numerous formats.  

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Here are some others I've used over the years:

PDF 995

Pdf995 comes with a PDF printer driver and PDF creator so that you can create PDF files. It displays a popup add which can be removed when purchased. Otherwise, it's totally free.

Skype - Free telephony.  This is essential for communication with people and you can buy an inexpensive account so that you can all regular phone numbers.

Color Detector - this tool has been helpful when I've needed to determine the color of something an artist has created when I work on user interfaces.

Not Free but extremely useful

Camtasia Studio - Screen recorder. I use this to create flash recordings for clients so that I can show them something I've done or something we need to look into.

GotoMeeting.  Online meetings with conference calling, Fifty bucks a month - unlimited meetings.   This tool is a must!

Beyond Compare - My favorite file comparison tool.

Have fun!  Any others I should add?