Family Show – Showing Off WPF with a Genealogy Application

US Company Vertigo have a long track record in the development of showcase solutions for a range of clients, and have been involved in several proof of concept projects for Microsoft going back over the years.  Right now they have a very nice Windows Presentation Foundation project available for download called Family Show.  The latest version of this has been put together using Visual Studio 2008 and .Net 3.5, and certainly shows off some nice user interface design features.  If you are interested in UI design, or indeed if you have an interest in genealogy, this is worth a download.

Here’s a quick screenshot of how it looks (click picture for a better view):

(by the way, it’s not one of my relatives )

So if you want to take a look for yourself, the download is available here, and source code is available as a CodePlex project here.  Scott Stanfield from Vertigo has also recorded a video demo of Family Show which you can watch here.

Technorati tags: Family Show, WPF, Visual Studio 2008, UI, Genealogy

Trying Out Microsoft Servers With Virtual Hard Disks

I’ve posted before about various evaluation downloads available from Microsoft as Virtual Hard Disks – very useful if you want to try out a product without the need for doing a full evaluation install on one of your own servers.   There is now a single page on the Microsoft TechNet site which lists all of the VHDs available for download.   Take a look at Run IT on a Virtual Hard Disk to see what’s available.  Current offerings include Office SharePoint Server and Professional, Search Server Express 2008, Exchange 2007, ISA Server 2006 and lots more.

One point to bear in mind – Microsoft VHDs are normally configured with US settings and for a US keyboard.  So the @ character (often used in the login password) may not be where you expect if you have a non-US keyboard.

 

Technorati tags: Evaluation, Microsoft, VHD

Windows Service Pack Blocker Tool Kit

I noticed that Microsoft have made a blocking tool available if you would like to temporarily prevent installation of Service Pack updates.  Specifically it allows you to temporarily prevent installation of:

• Windows Server 2003 SP2
• Windows XP SP 3
• Windows Vista SP1

You can download the toolkit here.

Technorati tags: Service Pack Blocker