16 Nov, 2008. With the recent release of the WCF REST Starter Kit , Microsoft made implementing REST services via WCF much more approachable. The Visual Studio templates provided are great and the accompanying videos on channel9 via endpoint.tv are well put together ( Ron Jacobs has a good overview of these items ). One of the questions I had when I first started implementing REST services with WCF was how to add support for using the Content-Type and Accept HTTP headers to determine how objects are serialized. Dino Chiesa had some great suggestions on how to do this and even wrote some sample code to demonstrate one approach . Then, this past week I saw that Damian Mehers blogged another approach with sample...  Read the full post or  the first comment.

16 Nov, 2008. With the recent release of the WCF REST Starter Kit , Microsoft made implementing REST services via WCF much more approachable. The Visual Studio templates provided are great and the accompanying videos on channel9 via endpoint.tv are well put together ( Ron Jacobs has a good overview of these items ). One of the questions I had when I first started implementing REST services with WCF was how to add support for using the Content-Type and Accept HTTP headers to determine how objects are serialized...  Read the full post or  the first comment.

15 Nov, 2008. [An open letter to the Windows Live Hotmail team about my experience with the latest redesign.] Hi Windows Live Hotmail Team, Just want to share some feedback on the new redesign. For me the redesign has been refreshing and frustrating all at once.  I think the design of the main mail area is much better and I really like the rework of the typography.  Overall I think it has made the application more usable. However, there are several things that are very frustrating.  Multi-Select...  Read the full post or  the 3 comments.

14 Nov, 2008. I recently read The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp . It was an easy read and entertaining. I was intrigued by many of the ideas and questions that Tharp presents throughout the book. "What is your pencil? What is the one tool that feeds your creativity and is so essential that without it you feel naked and unprepared?" Questions like these are presented early in the book and could seem overwhelming if not balanced with the personal stories that Tharp shares...  Read the full post or  the first comment.

28 Aug, 2008. A few months back I had some dialogue with Nick Parker from uship.com.  He was wrestling with getting version control setup in a way that would meet the needs of his team and wanted to brainstorm a bit.  Here is a portion of our discussion that speaks directly to a couple of the problems Nick was trying to solve: “I’m trying to figure out the best way to set up our subversion repository to do a couple things: Facilitate peer code review. Always have an "uploadable" version of...  Read the full post or  the 3 comments.

12 Feb, 2008. In no particular order, here are the top ten things I've learned to pay attention to when dealing with production ASP.NET applications. Hopefully they will help you save you some time and headaches. As always, your thoughts and additions are welcome. 1. Generate new encryption keys When moving an application to production for the first time it is a good idea to generate new encryption keys. This includes the machine validation key and decryption key as well as any other custom keys your application...  Read the full post or  the 54 comments.

31 Jan, 2008. While flipping through some old notes , I was reminded of another idea that was discussed: Emotional Intelligence . Over the course of the semester, we investigated the value of Emotional Intelligence through several exercises and were challenged to try them at work and discuss the results. I do remember one "experiment" in particular. A Little Background At the time, I was working on a software application which included a moving map component. The importance of this component, led our...  Read the full post or  the 3 comments.

30 Jan, 2008. I was cleaning out some files a while ago and came across notes from a leadership class I took several years back. The notes read: * do the following once a day to reflect on the current status of a project * DO - What have you done/observed so far? STUDY/REFLECT - What did you learn from that event/observation? CONNECT/SYNTHESIZE - How does this connect with what you already know? PLAN - What will you do differently now? Common sense really. And probably the natural way most of us approach continuous...  Read the full post or  the first comment.

23 Jan, 2008. A few days ago, the Daily Dilbert really resonated with me. They usually are pretty funny; and even funnier when you've directly experienced what Scott Adams is poking fun at. When I read this, I was reminded of an experience I had while working at Lockheed . Lockheed had (and probably still has) a tradition of giving employees gifts on employment anniversaries. The one year gift was a nice pen with a fancy logo on it accompanied by a congratulatory letter. Now, the thing that surprised me most...  Read the full post or  the 3 comments.

20 Oct, 2007. Kevin Harder is blogging the Community Server Developer Conference live! Check it out .  Read the full post or  be the first to comment.

04 Aug, 2007. If you haven't heard, the deadline for the Community Server Theme Contest has passed . The good news is that now you can vote on your favorite themes and download them for your site(s). As part of the Theme Extravaganza, I submitted a single Blog Theme, Fluid, similar to the one currently used on daptivate.com (note that this is about to change, as I am currently working with a designer on a new theme). It is named Fluid for several reasons ... that is the name of the Arcsin template I used as...  Read the full post or  the 9 comments.