Lycangeek

That's my kind of Home Depot

A rather jaw-dropping list of tools for Windows developers!

Wifi Locator

Now, here's a handy tool from Microsoft - a free Wifi search engine!

Apparently, there's a lot more planned for those of you who have shrugged off the tyranny of wires. I've not signed up for the beta, as I'm still firmly connected with a desktop unit (although my wife's laptop is another story). So, if you do get into the beta - and are allowed by the EULA - please post your thoughts and comments.

And then there were two

Brians...I'd like to welcome to the blogsphere Brian Powell. Brian's been with LabVIEW for a very, very long time. If you've ever talked with someone in R&D about LabVIEW, there's a good chance it was Brian at some point.

He and I actually sit just a koosh-ball throw away from each other, so we'll make sure that the other keeps posting!

However, I'll let him introduce himself, since he's already done that.

Getting Ready for Vista

Ran across this very important tool for application owners. If you haven't heard yet, or didn't get to see my NIWeek presentation, Vista has locked down file and registry access considerably to make the OS more secure. This has become known as User Access Control, or simply UAC.

.NET: The Naming Wars

I ran across a petition today to ask Microsoft to reverse it's naming decision regarding WinFX and .NET 3.0. You can read more about the change on my previous post.

Now, when I wrote about the name change, I tried to stay neutral in my announcement. But this time I'm coming out of the closet on the issue...

PetAPalooza 2006

Thought I'd drop a Chance update for those that have followed his career with me so far (just look at the dog category - many of them are Chance). Quick refresher - I'm in Sheltie Rescue and he's my current foster dog. When I got him over a year ago, he was a real mess, physically and mentally - it took me 3 weeks (seriously) before he would come up to me for a pet.

Well, he's still very shy, but he is getting better every day. Case in point - PetAPalooza 2006. This is a big dog/cat/etc. event here in Austin, and Austin Sheltie Rescue had a booth. I brought Chance along with me so that we could "shop" for a forever home. Didn't get many hits (needs to be a home with no small children), but I was so impressed with him - he didn't wig out! He even played with me several times - something he normally only does if no one else is home!

The photo doesn't really show the event well, but at least you can see he's calm (no tucked tail) and happy :)

Making LabVIEW easier to try

So, as part of the whole LabVIEW 8.20 launch, we've set up a virtual server where you can log in and try out LabVIEW, without having to download the entire thing! Just go to this site and choose the third option - Try LabVIEW Online.

Something new we're trying this time is to have a more interactive experience. We've created an "interactive multimedia" version of the Getting Started guide. Give it a try and let us know what you think of it.

I'm particularly interested in how well this works as my wife works in Computer Based Training, creating interactive training material. Gotta grow this market so she can stay employed, keeping me in the style to which I've become accustomed! :)

LabVIEW in Chinese

I'm very excited that the whole blogging concept is starting to catch inside LabVIEW's development groups. We've got several up now (See my blog roll or just go to the NI blog page), and a few more in the works!

One that I heard about this morning is different from all the others - it's from our R&D branch over in Shanghai, China. Qizhen Ruan has started up a blog on LabVIEW for the Chinese language population.

Diagnosis of WinSxS failures

I ran across this very handy blog post today regarding debugging WinSxS load failures. Similar to the Fusion Log tool I've talked about before for .NET, this new tool, called sxstrace, reports Fusion's attempts to locate your unmanaged assemblies.

Unfortunately, it appears that the tool is only available on Windows Vista - but there is some integration with the event logger, even back on XP.

For those of you planning on building CINs or DLLs in Visual Studio 2005 that you want to load into LabVIEW, this is one to remember.

Value vs. Reference based Classes

During NIWeek, I talked to a few customers about the new OO feature in LabVIEW 8.20 (see previous post). I was surprised by how many of them were upset that the design was value based instead of referenced based, so I thought I would add my 2 cents to the debate and explain why it's a great idea - although you do really want both available to you. However, as there are other implementations of referenced based OO in LabVIEW, the new value based approach was the right first step, in my opinion.