Long ago, before search engines added automatic spell checking to their bag of tricks (did you mean to search for MASSACHUSETTS?) I knew people who used Google (or before that, Altavista) as a spell checker. Just search for the word spelled one way, then another, and compare the number of hits. If you get 125 hits for one spelling and 13,456 for the other, you have a pretty good idea of which is right.

Today I found myself using Google News as a sort of voting fact checker to establish (forgive my ghoulishness) whether Yasser Arafat has or has not died. You can count votes from different news organizations. The main news.google.com (or .ca for me) gives you a handful of stories, but click a link under “In The News” and you see a lot more. For example, http://news.google.ca/news?num=30&hl=en&ned=ca&ie=utf-8&q=Yasser-Arafat.  Perhaps not what they had in mind, but an intruiging thing to be able to do.

Kate

I'm going to kick off the Smart Client User Group Tour with a talk in Winnipeg. I'm expecting a slight contrast between South Africa in late October and Winnipeg in early November . The talk is November 10th, details on the Winnipeg UG site.

Kate

 For November, the Toronto-area user groups are combining our meetings to participate in the MSDN User Group Tour.

Building Smart Client Application using Visual Studio Tools for Office Version 2003

This session provides an overview of how you can use the Visual Studio .NET 2003 project templates provided by Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System to create Smart Client solutions that use Microsoft Office Excel 2003 and Microsoft Office Word 2003. This session will also show the value of InfoPath, how to build solutions and review many of the new features and managed code support. Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 is a hybrid tool that combines the best of a traditional document editing experience, such as a word processor or e-mail application, with the rigorous data-capture capabilities of a forms package.

The speaker is Derek Hatchard, and the meeting is at 200 Bloor St East in downtown Toronto. For directions and to register, please visit http://www.metrotorontoug.com/User+Group+Events/116.aspx. This meeting is being held on the regular East of Toronto meeting date, November 16th. Doors open at 6 and presentation starts at 6:30. Please register in advance not only for the usual food reasons, but to simplify the job of the door security at this downtown building.

See you there!

Kate

I had a thoroughly enjoyable but oh-too-brief time here. My third talk, this morning, went well like the others, and now I'm at the airport with about 27 hours between me and my own home -- and it's 4 hours since I walked out of the conference centre.

I'm going to put the code from my sessions on the SA Developer website when I get home.

Kate

My latest whitepaper is on MSDN now.

Summary: This article is for C++ programmers who are (at least for now) not targeting the Microsoft .NET Framework in new or existing applications. It provides some guidelines for moving to the .NET Framework without leaving behind the investment in existing code, and explains why you should consider moving to the .NET Framework not only for new development, but for existing applications as well. (9 printed pages)

Kate

As a presenter, I use the /fs switch on Visual Studio quite often. It makes the product come up with larger fonts in Solution Explorer and other “chrome” that you can't control with Tools, Options. If you present, do everyone a favour and use this switch yourself. Also change your highlighted text from white-on-darkish-blue to black-on-yellow and crank your editor fonts to at least 14 points.

Well, Scott Hanselman alerted us all that the /fs switch is gone in Whidbey and urges us to vote on the importance of this omission. It's not just about speakers, it's about accessibility. My firm has done quite a bit of accessibility work, and we're sensitive to it. How can one team be changing ASP.NET so it emits accessible HTML while another removes a working switch that wasn't hurting anyone and that made programming feasible for someone with low vision? It must just be an oversight, right? Well give the bug a vote and the oversight is more likely to be corrected.

Kate

It's still gorgeous, sunny, and HOT here. I did two talks today -- the C++ and the VSTO ones. I was really pleased with the C++ attendance, and people saying “I'm going to switch back” after seeing what Visual C++ 2005 is going to be like. And that was with no demos! VSTO is a very fun product, and easy to demonstrate too. So two pleasant sessions with very nice audiences and great logistics.

One more day, one more talk, but first I think I'm going to go for a swim...

Kate

Wow!

This is an amazing place. The heat, the colour, the vibrancy. I am constantly being surprised by something. Then I go inside and I could almost forget where I am, because Tech Ed is Tech Ed everywhere. At the keynote this morning, they showed some language packs for Windows in Afrikaans and Zulu, reminding me of my old post on Windows in Inuktitut.

My sessions are tomorrow and the day after, so I'm just going to soak up some atmosphere and go to some talks. Several nice touches here: RFID cards for everyone so there's an accurate count of how many people went to each session, and so you can only evaluate sessions you went to. Staff everywhere who can answer not only Tech Ed related questions but “what is this fruit?“ (Hey, I'd never seen fresh guava before, what did I know? It looks a lot like a tomato, only firmer.)

I've already seen plenty of SADeveloper.net shirts and hats (I have my own set now) and a We Heart Our MVPs shirt. There's plenty of community here!

Kate

I'm on vacation at the moment (travel blog entries to come if I get any free time) but had to take a minute to mention that I'll be speaking at Tech Ed South Africa at the end of the month. I'm doing three talks: better performance in VB, programming with Word or Excel as your user interface with VSTO, and Visual C++ 2005 and the C++/CLI features -- which the organizers were nice enough to add just because I asked them to. I'm really looking forward to the trip and the people!

It must be the user group

Apparently the number one city to move to in all of Canada last year was Oshawa. I heard the head of chamber of commerce on the radio tonight and had to laugh when he listed one of the big assets of Oshawa is that it's close the Kawartha Lakes (I live in Kawartha Lakes and honestly I prefer it to Oshawa.) Oshawa is not a grimy industrial town, it's pretty and clean and friendly. And if you want to see what all the fuss is about, come to our next meeting, October 19th, and come a little early so you can look around the town.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1096495811790&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2004/09/29/648677-cp.html

Kate