A Weekend in Saint-Petersburg

We’ve just returned from a weekend we spent in Saint-Petersburg, the “northern capital” of Russia. Definitely, this city is more than impressive. It’s magnificent! Being tranquil and stately in the daytime, it becomes a large party place at night (at least the central part, not sure about the rest); and I just can’t express what a fun atmosphere prevailing there! Petersburg certainly has its own energy or magic, almost tangible. I’m not sure if it’s explainable, whether the reason is just the beautiful architecture or something more mysterious.
August 20, 2007 · 1 min · DmitryV

Spring in Moscow

Obviously May is the best month of the year. Here in Moscow it is not usually very hot, although at the moment it’s 27 °C (~80 °F). However, it is always warm enough to wear T-shirt and have a walk across the city to admire its beautiful sights. May seems to be the most attractive month to visit Moscow indeed - winter or autumn will meet you with lowering sky, and summer is too sultry and dusty to enjoy the trip.
May 21, 2007 · 4 min · DmitryV

Microsoft Released .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 1

Frankly, I didn’t manage to duly investigate 3.0 so far. Yeah those guys are productive indeed. What’s new: Deep integration of Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and data awareness ASP.NET AJAX for quickly creating more efficient, more interactive and highly-personalized Web experiences that work across all the most popular browsers New web protocol support for building WCF services including AJAX, JSON, REST, POX, RSS, ATOM and several new WS-* standards Full tooling support for WF, WCF and WPF including the new workflow-enabled services technology
May 7, 2007 · 1 min · DmitryV

How to change Internet Explorer to open documents in Microsoft Word

Just found a nice Microsoft KB article that shows how to change the way Internet Explorer opens linked Microsoft Word documents. By default, they are opened in-place in the browser window; many users seem require another behavior, when the documents are opened in a separate instance of Microsoft Word. I have tested it and it worked. Hope this will be useful. You can read the article here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/254918
January 27, 2007 · 1 min · DmitryV

Happy New Year!

2007… Seven is a great number, it brings success… Whoever you are, the reader of this post, I wish you success in the new year. 2007… All troubles stayed in the old year, all sorrows… No pain anymore, but happiness instead… Whoever you are, the reader of this post, I wish you happiness in the new year. 2007… Just believe that your dreams will come true. Just believe in love, and it will be with you the whole year.
December 31, 2006 · 1 min · DmitryV

Microsoft Released Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2005

No doubt, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 is not merely a “tool” for development. It’s rather a powerful environment that includes everything we need for efficient and successful work. Unfortunately, it’s an established fact that the first release of the environment proved to be too raw. There are quite many bugs for a product of that class, and some of them are pretty annoying. Guys from Microsoft do realize this as well and finally, they decided to relieve us from most of the troubles.
December 17, 2006 · 2 min · DmitryV

.NET Framework 3.0 is Out, Microsoft Office 2007 is Golden... What a Crazy Day of Releases! :)

Well it seems like Microsoft has prepared a bunch of surprises for us… Just take a look what they have just released: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=10cc340b-f857-4a14-83f5-25634c3bf043&DisplayLang=en Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit for Windows Vista and .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C2B1E300-F358-4523-B479-F53D234CDCCF&displaylang=en Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (Windows Workflow Foundation) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5d61409e-1fa3-48cf-8023-e8f38e709ba6&DisplayLang=en Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP
November 7, 2006 · 1 min · DmitryV

Unbelievable But True: Windows + Linux = Love?

No comments. I only hope this will be really useful for the industry as stated, not merely for the money makers: Ron Hovsepian and Steve Ballmer take the stage together to announce a new collaborative relationship between Novell and Microsoft. Novell and Microsoft are announcing an historic bridging of the divide between open source and proprietary software. They have signed three related agreements which, taken together, will greatly enhance interoperability between Linux and Windows and give customers greater flexibility in their IT environments.
November 3, 2006 · 1 min · DmitryV

Internet Explorer 7 Final is Out

It’s not a secret that the vast majority of websites are designed for and thus best viewed with the most popular browser in the world by Microsoft. That was the main reason for me to use Internet Explorer rather than “alternative” browsers which were apparently much more fast and convenient than IE 6. Indeed, running one instance per site instead of handy tabbed browsing was a really bad idea… And here it comes.
October 20, 2006 · 1 min · DmitryV

Microsoft Released Visual Studio 2007 "Orcas" CTP

Recently Microsoft released a CTP of the next generation visual development tool. It is available to download here. If you don’t like to install raw versions of software onto your working machine, there’s a little surprise for you: the CTP is distributed as a Virtual PC image so you can download it and start playing immediately without impacting any existing software installations! Actually, the process of getting the CTP to run is slightly more complex as you also need to download another image containing a host OS etc.
October 10, 2006 · 1 min · DmitryV