Lycangeek

Enso

Wow - what a find. I read about this product in the Wall Street Journal the other day, and just got around to trying it out myself...and I have to say, I'm pretty impressed...

Want to spellcheck any text in LabVIEW? Any other program?

Want to quickly switch between VIs? Any other windows?

Then you want to try Enso...

Windows Home Server

First let me apologize for not posting much in the way of LabVIEW stuff recently. I'm pretty heads down at the moment in work, so unless I receive a specific request, I'll be postponing any demos/how-it-works/etc. until later.

However, with the CES going full swing, we finally got the official word on the new Microsoft Windows Home Server, and I'm pretty excited. We still aren't in the perfect solution for multiple home PCs, especially with respect to upgrading older units with new ones, but this release starts to address the fact that home networks are truly becoming networks, and we need better solutions.

Google Research Picks for Videos of the Year

It's a little late, and the videos aren't short (so plan ahead), but they are great watching!

.NET and the Mac

As reported here, Microsoft has released a beta version of their WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere). So what is this? Well, to quote from Microsoft...

"The “WPF/E” (codename) Software Development Kit, enables you to build web pages and web applications that include rich content such as vector-based graphics, 2D animation, high fidelity text, audio and video and use JavaScript (AJAX) to interact with the page content and your server."

What does that mean?

Online Advertising

Online ads are going everywhere - no longer just banner ads, they're showing up in animations, your cell phone, text messages, etc. etc. etc.

I've now found them in a new place - computer games...

Vista Security

As I reported earlier, NI has set up a webpage for Vista information. A recent addition is a good summary overview of many of the various changes in security that Microsoft put into Vista - including the whole "virtualization" support for legacy apps. Rather than repeat the information, I recommend that you check out the article here.

I've been living these issues for the last six months as I work with others here at NI to ensure our software is ready to go when Vista becomes widely available. If you have any questions about Vista, or the article, please feel free to drop a comment here or shoot me an email.

Vista is Out-a-here!

It's time! Now we wait to get it in our grubby little hands...MSDN subscribers should get it in the next 7 days, Volume License subscribers should get it by the end of the month and everyone else is looking at Jan 30, 2007.

.NET 3.0 Released

The Microsoft .NET 3.0 framework has been released and is available for download. As I've discussed earlier, the .NET 3.0 framework is really the .NET 2.0 release with additional libraries. The core .NET runtime engine has not changed in 3.0, nor has any of the basic libraries. Instead, this is a bundling of the .NET 2.0 engine with the new feature set that was once known as WinFX -

• Windows Presentation Foundation (aka Avalon)
• Windows Communication Foundation (aka Indigo)
• Windows Worflow Foundation
• Windows CardSpace (aka InfoCard)

The key one here for LabVIEW users is going to be the WCF, which is a very rich API for distributed communication between different platforms and languages - mainly through web services and the WS-* standards.

New XP Theme - Zune

With all the excitement around Vista, it's amazing to hear that Microsoft has finally released a new theme for Windows XP. They've talked about doing this for a number of years, but never managed to get one out (not counting the Media Edition theme, which was more like a new OS since you couldn't get it w/o buying a M.E. computer).

Anyway, the new theme is, surprise, surprise, based around the new Zune launch. The installer can be found here.

Vista Marketing...sort of

Okay...um....ooookaaayyyyy.....hmm......well....???

If the goal of marketing is to get people talking, then this succeeds. If the goal is to get them to talk about your product....hmmm....well....

You be the judge. Actually, I did find it kinda funny in a horror-facination kinda way...