This is pretty cool.  Apple is partnering with educational institutions and using iTunes as a mechanism to get educational content to a user’s mobile device such as an iPod or iPhone. 

“Mobile learning” as it is dubbed, allows students to download content when it is convenient from a school-created website or from the iTunes Store.  If the student is using an iPhone, they can discuss the content via chats, email, and social networks 24×7.

“Today’s students expect constant access to information—in the classroom and beyond. Which is why more and more faculty are using iTunes U to distribute digital lessons to their students. And now, with the 3.0 software update for iPhone and iPod touch, iTunes U is directly accessible over both cellular and Wi-Fi networks through the iTunes Store.”

Educational content is delivered in the form of a podcast.  Podcasts can contain both audio and video which means that a lecture that contains both spoke as well as slideshow content can be integrated into a single download and automatically pushed to a subscribing student via iTunes.

Much if not all of the content from institutions like Yale, Oxford, and Wharton are free, so not only can students take advantage of this resource, but so can adults already in the workforce looking for a refresher from categories like Mathematics to Social Science, Humanities and beyond!

You can check out iTunes U here.  (iTunes is required)

I’m working on a project right now and have noticed that XAML seems to be incorrectly rendered in the Visual Studio designer, versus it properly being shown in the Expression Blend 3. 

It seems that sizes and alignments are completely off in Visual Studio 2008 where everything appears correct, renders properly, and executes normally when created in Expression Blend 3.

Here’s an example of XAML as rendered in Visual Studio 2008:

and in Expression Blend 3:

Ignore the black background on the Expression screenshot, but notice that the buttons and all aspects are alligned properly, where the screenshot from Visual Studio 2008 is not.

Here is the XAML source:

<Window x:Class="QuickTwit.AccountWindow"

    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

    xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"

    Title="Accounts" mc:Ignorable="d" Height="300" Width="300" ResizeMode="NoResize" WindowStartupLocation="CenterScreen">

    <Grid>

        <ListBox Margin="12,12,0,124" Name="listAccounts" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Width="188" SelectionChanged="listAccounts_SelectionChanged" />

        <Button Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Margin="0,0,12,7" Name="buttonOK" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Width="75" Click="buttonOK_Click">OK</Button>

        <Button Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Margin="0,20,12,0" Name="buttonDeleteAccount" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="75" Click="buttonDeleteAccount_Click" IsEnabled="False">Delete</Button>

        <Rectangle Stroke="#FFC9C9C9" Margin="13,0,12,41" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Height="75" RadiusX="10" RadiusY="10" Opacity="0.5">

            <Rectangle.Effect>

                <DropShadowEffect BlurRadius="1" ShadowDepth="1" Opacity="0.5"/>

            </Rectangle.Effect>

        </Rectangle>

        <TextBox Height="23" Margin="0,0,27,79" Name="textUsername" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Width="160" />

        <Label Height="28" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="28,168,0,0" Name="label1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="69">Username:</Label>

        <Button x:Name="buttonAuthorize" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Content="Authorize" Margin="0,0,27,49.04" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Width="75" Click="buttonAuthorize_Click" />

    </Grid>

</Window>

If you have seen this happen or know how to fix it, let me know.

The concept is simple.  You need to update your status or send a quick tweet.  You find an interesting link or article you want to post.  No time to catch up on what is going on in the Twitterverse or the 300 tweets you are behind on.  Just need to post an update.  That’s TweetNow!

TweetNow is a simple WPF application designed to allow for posting quick updates to a Twitter account.  It is currently in development and is actively being tested by our staff of testers.  Well, not really staff.  Just me.  And a few friends.

Initial Release Features

- Secure authentication via oAuth
- Multiple account support
- Automatic URL shortening

Future Release Features

- Minimize to system tray
- Hotkey activation
- Post photos to TwitPic

Seems like it should work without too much pain, but the fact of the matter is each time you increment the version on your application a new version folder will be created that is by default empty and the user.config file is empty which means the user config is lost and the user has to reconfigure the specific settings in the app.  Painful, and a bad user experience no less.

This is really simple to take care of by adding an additional setting in your application settings and modifying code in the settings.cs file.

Jim Scott covers the process here.  Happy Coding!

This can be a bit tricky … and you can either get enough exposure by doing it so many times that you just know what needs to be installed before you start, or you can get through a bunch of steps in the setup before it stops to tell you that the right things aren’t installed and can’t continue.

Exchange 2010 requires Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2.  You can use Server Manager to install the Web Server (IIS) role, however, there are many, many pieces to IIS that are broken out into individual components in 2008.  Which ones are required to get you the prerequisites you need to get through the Exchange 2010 installation?

Instead, consider using ServerManagerCmd.exe, which is built-in in Windows 2008 to automate the role installation for you.  This command is very useful in installing new components and making sure that you have the pieces you need.  From a command line, run:

ServerManagerCmd -i RSAT-ADDS Web-Server Web-Metabase Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console Web-ISAPI-Ext NET-HTTP-Activation Web-Basic-Auth Web-Digest-Auth Web-Windows-Auth Web-Dyn-Compression RPC-over-HTTP-proxy Web-Net-Ext –Restart

This will install the necessary components including ADDS which needs to be installed for remote administration of Active Directory and for the Exchange 2010 schema extensions to be installed.  Once the command completes, the server will restart.  After that, you’re ready for your Exchange 2010 installation.

You can find more information on ServerManagerCmd.exe on Technet.

Now you can watch your favorite shows on your PC. With your DIRECTV Plus® HD DVR receiver and PC connected to your home network, the DIRECTV2PC™ application allows you to stream the programs you recorded on your DVR to your PC, where you can watch them on your HD monitor.

Sounds like a pretty cool idea.  I installed it on my Windows 7 PC tonight.  The interface looks as if you were sitting in front of your TV.

The bad news was that after about five seconds the video stopped playing a dialog on the screen indicated that it “couldn’t apply hardware protection mechanism”.  In doing further research it appears that this has something to do with the video and support for specific features around protected content within the driver.  I am using an ATI Radeon X1650 Pro which is a dual port DVI out card that has 512MB RAM.  I thought this card would sufficient.  The built-in Windows 7 driver for it is up to date, and ATI doesn’t have any Windows 7 drivers for this model.  When you select Windows 7, it takes you to the Vista x64 drivers and says that “these should work” but are unsupported in Windows 7.  That’s kind of a bummer.

This weekend I will probably have to see what else I have laying around for video cards and give those a try.  I have heard that this actually works on a Mac when run from inside BootCamp, however, the DirecTV app is not supported on a Mac, only a PC.

If you want to give the DIRECTV2PC beta a try for yourself, click here.

Ever needed to export the contents of an entire mailbox (or mailboxes)?  The Export-Mailbox cmdlet that is available via the Exchange 2007 PowerShell console can export each mailbox to a PST file.  In addition, Import-Mailbox can be used to import the contents of a PST back into an existing Exchange 2007 mailbox.

Syntax:

Export-Mailbox –Identity <mailbox alias> –PSTFolderPath <path to PST file>

There are a number of additional parameters available to filter the contents and tweet the configuration of what exactly is exported.  Using Export-Mailbox can be very time-consuming. a 200 MB mailbox can take 20 minutes or more (or did so in my tests).

A few things to remember when using Export-Mailbox:

1. The account running the cmdlet must have full permissions to the mailbox in order for the export to complete successfully.

   

2. The export will export all mail contents including the contents of the dumpster for that mailbox.
3. Export-Mailbox requires that Outlook 2003 SP2 or later is installed on the machine from which the command is executed. 
4. Export-Mailbox can only be run using the 32-bit version of the management tools.  This means that you have will have to load the 32-bit management tools on a workstation, since production environments of Exchange 2007 run in 64-bit environments.

This is a perfect alternative to what required ExMerge in the past.

If you haven’t checked it out, do it now.  The Web Platform Installer makes your life a lot easier, especially when it comes to installing and configuring applications like WordPress on your own server.

I provisioned a new Windows 2008 R2 Web Server and needed to move my websites off of an old 2003 server and on to this new box.  In the past, installing mySQL, PHP, and other required components to get WordPress to work properly on a Windows server was a huge pain, that is, until the Web Platform Installer came along.

A number of applications have decided to use the WPI.  Applications like WordPress , DasBlog, Visual Studio Express products, and even SQL 2008.  You click through an interface, select the stuff you want to install, enter the requested config info, and the WPI takes care of the rest.  I actually used it to install WordPress flawlessly today.  It identify pre-reqs and other requirements and makes sure you have what you need before it gets started.

You can read more about, and download the Web Platform Installer here.

Not that all my desktops and laptops are running Windows 7, I wanted to get the newest tools for administering my Windows environment, including Hyper-V.

It took a little bit of searching, and a lot of the search results pointed to the beta tools or the RSAT for Windows Vista, neither of which will work with the released version of Windows 7.

So, if you’re looking for the link, here it is:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7d2f6ad7-656b-4313-a005-4e344e43997d&displaylang=en#filelist

From there, you’ll find the direct download links to both the x86 and x64 versions of the tools.  Happy administering!