Office 7 !!!!!

I have been using Office 7 for a while now, and have to make a comment on the new UI.  I hate it, and for one very big reason, I had to re-learn how to the navigate the environment.  Why did microsoft see the need to radically change the look and feel of the application, this will, I am sure, alienate many users?  Scratch below the UI surface, and there are many new features like the Document Workflow, that are pretty interesting, tighter integration with SharePoint and the new Excel Services, also add to the upgraded product.  Even with the new feature sets, the UI has left me with a very bad taste, I am sure that I will get over this, as Microsoft will expect the masses to do as well.

Decompiling C++

I have been recently asked if C++ code could be decompiled, I had always held the belief that it was not possible, but this article says otherwise.  An interesting read, if a little out dated.  Another article that is worth reading is the case of the lack of decompilers for C++

Buisness Winks

Winks have been available in Windows Live Messenger for a while now, so far they have been limited to fun things, I have wondered if there would be a more business usage for them, i.e. communicating market information to traders, in new and interesting ways, and delivering this in real-time.  Allowing traders/researchers to communicate information between each other, not that shouting across the room is more or less effective.

There appears to be little on the Web regarding the development of Winks, it seems that the API for this technology has not yet been made available for public usage, check out the following posting, so the jury is out for a while until a better understanding of the structure of Winks is available.

On a slightly different note: The Windows Live Messenger : Development Forum has some information, but not a great deal yet, but worth a look if you plan on extending Messenger, or have questions that you need answering.  Also worth a look is the Windows Live Messenger SDK.

SQLPrompt

Originally http://www.promptsql.com/

Now available free of charge for a while at http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql_prompt/index.htm

This is a great tool, I have been using for a while now, and it has saved me some serious development time, I highly recommend this product.

Coding Examples

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/downloads/101samples/

Check out the above as a spring board for your .Net development