MyVerbalOutlet

At the the Visual Web Developer Team Blog Microsoft details a feature that is being added for deploying a Web Application Project that will allow developers to specify sections in the web.config that will be replaced depending on the build environment. 

The example they show is replacing the connectionStrings section of the web.config when building for Release.  This is an issue I bump into all the time.  This is a feature that really should have been address in the 2008 release of Visual Studio.  The fact that Microsoft is only adding it in the 2010 release and only for Web Application Projects is pretty annoying.  I want this feature for Web Site Projects.

Ayende vents his frustration with here with a company that provides a specialized licensing tool for .NET developers.  Reading about the problems Ayende had with the company he was dealing with should teach a few valuable lessons about customer service. 

1. 1) Don’t ignore your customers problems
2. 2) Don’t tell your customers its their problem
3. 3) Don’t refuse to give a refund in a reasonable situation

If you are a technology company you should expect to hold conversations with your users in the public view of the Internet. A half way clued in technology company should take for granted seeing both praise and criticism of their products and practices on the Internet. Then to treat a community leader with a large audience who overlaps with your customer base so poorly is really dumb.

When a prospective customer researches your company’s product or service on the Internet and they come across a tale woe from dealing with your company from someone with a lot of Google juice it is going to negatively effect your bottom line and in the current economic climate that is going to hurt your company.

I see that new Windows Live programs are available. I use Windows Live Writer and its nice to see an update to it.  I will install the rest of the programs at home to play with. I will probably try the Movie Maker beta this weekend as I want to get some video off MiniDV tapes.

There seems to be an issue with the .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 and Windows XP.  I setup a web site locally on my machine and when I tried to do some debugging I kept receiving error 401.1 permissions error.  I finally tracked down the following Microsoft support article that details a registry fix for this issue.  Here is a link to article with the fix. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861

Since the big Macworld keynote is today I thought I would write up a list of the things I hope to see this year.  I am not looking for new notebooks this time since the new Macbook that came out in October is so nice, I hope to be able to pick one up this year. So on the Mac hardware front I am not really looking for anything since I have an iPhone already.

New Mac software is really what I am looking for this year.  I want new versions of iLife and iWork.  iLife and iWork are I believe at least a year and a half old.  I am hoping for new versions with some cool new features.  I also want to see a preview of Snow Leopard the next version of OS X.  Since Snow Leopard is supposed to be released this year I am hoping to see Apple show off its progress.