Two people doing their own thing.

Microsoft Certified Partner Soul Solutions
Author: Soul Solutions Created: Sunday, 6 August 2006
Tips and Tricks as we come across them

By Soul Solutions on Friday, 30 November 2007

BronwenWeeGo.jpgSpent the last 2 days in an office where i'm not allowed to blog, use facebook, twitter, msn or check my various email accounts.  I've definatly been suffering withdrawal and feeling completely cut-off from the world.

Trying to decide if i should up the dataplan on my phone or get a wireless broadband thumb for the lappy..so then i can at least have contact at lunch, to/from office.

By Soul Solutions on Wednesday, 28 November 2007

johnWeeGo.jpgI am very proud of the growing community around Virtual Earth. In only six weeks since it was released the community site that I run, http://www.viawindowslive.com/ has had ten articles submitted using the latest version 6 of the API.

The articles range from getting started / whats new to using Traffic or Weather data, extending the infobox or using other technologies like SQL 2008. I have enjoyed reading all of them:

  1. Invoking server side code using AJAX and .ashx handlers
  2. What's new in Version 6 Routing
  3. ... Read More »

By Soul Solutions on Wednesday, 28 November 2007

johnWeeGo.jpgDerek Chan has published a great introduction to communicating with Virtual Earth from server side code. The article is a good read to understand the basics of ajax before proceeding onto more complex examples or using asp.net ajax extensions. Read the article here:

http://www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/VirtualEarth/InvokingserversidecodeusingAJAX.aspx

Thats makes 10 articles for Virtual Earth 6, well done!

By Soul Solutions on Sunday, 25 November 2007

BronwenWeeGo.jpgWe went to the first Brisbane Barcamp yesterday.  We rocked up pretty late..about 2:30 as we were both flat out working in the morning, and then had to battle the queues to cast our vote.

It was a good afternoon, chatting about "stuff" and playing some lawn bowls, drinking some alcohol.  All very relaxing really...just what i needed.

It was at the East Brisbane Bowls Club which i've probably driven past 100's of times in my life without even realising it's there.  I'm in love with the grass on the bowling green...i want some at home...but i don't want to mow it :)

Spent a bit of time watching the Croquet next door...didn't even realise people still played it.  Quite an intruiging game to watch...m ... Read More »

By Soul Solutions on Friday, 23 November 2007

johnWeeGo.jpgDerek Chan is back from holidays and shares with us the new routing methods in Virtual Earth 6. Another great read:

http://www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/VirtualEarth/WhatsnewinVersion6Routing.aspx

VE6Routing.jpg

That makes nine articles on Virtual Earth 6 from the community and counting...

By Soul Solutions on Friday, 23 November 2007

BronwenWeeGo.jpgThe first Brisbane BarCamp is on tomorrow.  We'll be heading over for awhile to check out the action..think I could do with a drink by then ;)

Details can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=5584407845 

Let us know if you're going and when so we know when the cool kids are turning up

By Soul Solutions on Thursday, 22 November 2007

johnWeeGo.jpgEvery so often you come across a little tool that is super useful. This is one of them.

http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/

If you ever need to scale a logo and don't have it in a vector format this tool is simple amazing. Fully web based you simple upload you low resolution jpeg logo and follow some simple steps. The output is a vector based file you can scale to any size.

My first test was the good old SoulSolutions logo:

SSIcon.jpg

Its hard to see but the results are a clean logo we can scale to any size:

VSSIcon.png Read More »

By Soul Solutions on Thursday, 22 November 2007

johnWeeGo.jpgI just finished my first SQL 2008 Spatial Article for Virtual Earth.

http://www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/VirtualEarth/SQL2008Spatialafirstimpression.aspx

diag2.jpg

It is very introductory taking you though creating a table, importing some basic data and a VE application based on a well structured ASP.NET AJAX Web service model. I do a simple query for points within the current map view. I also add a spatial index. I hope you enjoy it, the full source code and data to import is available.

By Soul Solutions on Wednesday, 21 November 2007

BronwenWeeGo.jpgHave been using Visual Studio 2008 for awhile now so I thought I'd share some great features.

1. Split View - gives us the ability to see both Design/XAML or Design/HTML view on the same screen with real time update ..very cool

2. Document Outline - to turn this guy on goto View -> Other Windows -> Document Outline.  This gives you a tree of all the objects on your page.  You can use it to navigate to a specific item and it gives you a visual queue of what it looks like + with split view selects the item in desgn and code view.

Using both of these features together is really useful to get to "hard to find elements".

I've attached a screen shot to show both these features in action at once.  Here I've selected a button in the Document Outline..it shows a popup of the but ... Read More »