Will’s Blog

Just finished reading the “Microsoft This Week” e-newsletter that I just received and noticed a download for a little program called “Microsoft TimeZone“.

I thought, hey, let’s check out what this does. Seeing as though I have a lot of friends around diffrent parts of the globe, i’m always unsure whether I should start the IM by saying “Good Morning” or “Good Afternoon”.

Looks like a nifty little app! Click once on the icon and it’ll show me the times of 5 locations that I set in a bubble alert box, which is pretty cool. The app basically sits in the system tray so it’s always there, but out of the way. (I’ve probably got too many System Tray Icons at the moment, and half of them at least seem to belong to Toshiba, hrmm…Yes, they were preinstalled when I got the laptop.)

What’s even cooler is that it looks like this little app uses the .NET Framework.

It’s pleasing to see more and more little apps done by Microsoft make use of the .NET Framework. It’s pleasing because users who find the apps useful will refer the app to their friends and that means there will slowly be a bigger install .NET base out there!

It’s always good for developers to know that there is going to be more and more people with the .NET framework. Before Longhorn is released, I really hope to see at least 90% of Windows users having a version of the Framework installed on their computers.

I wonder with Avalon and Indigo coming to XP will it mean users will be required to have the .NET Framework installed on their system as a prerequisite for them to install Avalon and Indigo?

If so, then I think that is a big plus! I’m sure it probably will be a requirement.

I’m sure users who want to “revitalise” their XP computer before they move onto Longhorn will be downloading it (Avalon) en masse.

Hrm, perhaps us developer types who are familiar with .NET should be be writing little utility type apps using .NET that we think could be really cool that our average user type friends would find useful.

I’ve gotten some individuals to install the .NET framework in recent times by showing them how good Lookout is at finding their email messages in Outlook. I showed them by demonstrating it on my aus-dotnet list archive in Outlook. Firstly I showed them how many messages were in there, and asked them to give me a random word and i’ll throw that word into the search.

They were all quite impressed, and then I told them it required the .NET Framework, they said, ok, so where do I download that? They didn’t seem to mind installing it because they were already won over when they saw the power of Lookout.

Everyone was saying hey, this is much better than the built in Outlook search. And a few were even asking why Microsoft didn’t have a search engine built into Outlook that was that powerful?

My response was, “well, Lookout was purchased by Microsoft, so perhaps this is something that we may see in the next version of Microsoft Outlook.”
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One minor gripe I came across when I was about to download it asked me if I wanted to validate my copy of Windows, so I decided, okay why not?

Then a problem occurred, it asked me to install the ActiveX component which tries to validate my Windows. It then told me it was unable to validate Windows.
*Heart rate starts going up*
My first reaction, hang on, that’s really odd… I know I do have a valid copy of Windows XP, it came with the Laptop, I even have the little Windows XP sticker stuck onto the base of my laptop (speaking of which, I think the sticker is going to wear out sooner or later due to the heat generated by my laptop through it being on for many long hours a day…).
*Breathing gets heavier*
Luckily it prompted me to type in product key, so I am forced to turn the laptop upside down and remember a few charecters of the product key and then typing it, and then flip the laptop again to find my product key. It now tells me i’m validated… *phew*
*Heart rate and breathing returns to normal*
And now I proceed to download the Microsoft TimeZone app.

Then I decide to blog about all this…

All the while, i’m listening to one of the MSN Radio Chanels… Rather enjoyable because it’s quite literally commercial free!

I wish Windows Media Player 10 had some sort of always on-top skinned mode like in Winamp. If it does have it, I haven’t found it. So what i’ve resorted in doing is use the nView options menu and telling it to keep this Window always on top. So it’s not a major problem, since nVidia has provided that additional menu with these additional functionalities!

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 19th, 2004 at 03:30 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.