BBC News has just released an article referring to a deal made between Microsoft and Nokia to put Silverlight on mobile phones. Yet another reason to get polishing those WPF skills.

My favorite conference is about to start: MIX 08. It’s a great conference for Microsoft developers with an interest in the web. Last year they had some great talks about user experience and architecture. There’s always something interesting to learn. Unfortunately I can’t be there (as usual), but all the sessions will be online. Tim [...]

While surfing around tonight, I came across ExtensionMethod.net, a database of useful Extension Methods for C# 3.0 and VB 9. I thought it might be useful, so I added a few of my own extension methods. IComparable<T>.LessThan int.Times int.To There aren’t many there yet, but there are one or two on there from Scott Guthrie. [...]

I just read a fantastic quote about LINQ from the book Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 by Joseph C. Rattz, Jr.: I prefer to think of LINQ as a data iteration engine, but perhaps Microsoft didn’t want a technology named DIE. I think they already built the technology for such a product, [...]

Visual Studio 2008 has lots of goodies in it, like LINQ syntax, CSS editing, and testing tools. There’s a lesser-known feature which I really appreciate though – the “Remove and Sort Usings” command in the C# editor. You activate the command by placing your cursor over the using statements and clicking on the right mouse-button.

I was recently reading Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers’ Guide, Second Edition, and came across this piece of example Ruby code: [1,3,5,7].inject(0) {|sum, element| sum+element} -> 16 [1,3,5,7].inject(1) {|product, element| product*element} -> 105 Inject is a method which acts on an array by aggregating or accumulating the values within that array. It loops through the [...]

One of my favorite bloggers is Matt Berseth. Nearly once a week he comes up with a post where he does something amazing with the standard ASP.Net controls. I usually read his posts in awe. He’s really good. But he’s not only is a good developer, he’s a great writer. Even though his posts are [...]

Now this is exciting. (Well, if you’re a geek.) Silverlight 2.0 is on its way, and Scott Guthrie has posted 8 tutorials about using it. I’m off to read them now…

Yesterday I thought I’d learn about the LinqDataSource in ASP.Net 3.5, and got an interesting surprise. The new LinqDataSource can also be used with a LINQ-to-SQL model to perform updates. You simply add the DataSource to your page, set the table name, and set EnableUpdate to true. Then, using a standard DataControl, you can make [...]

When learning LINQ-to-SQL, it’s not immediately obvious how to do an update. Querying is easy, and there are methods for inserting and deleting. Updating usually occurs by modifying an object already known to the DataContext and then calling SubmitChanges on the context. var product = (from p in dataContext.Products where p.ProductID == 1 select p).Single(); [...]