The Iowa .NET User Group has won an eternal place in my heart. The reason? Just click here.

won't install because a newer version of Windows Media has been detected. Arghghghghghghhghhghghghhhhhh (again)... who does this crap? I Googled (errr... MSN Search'ed) and found NOTHING - I MEAN NOTHING - that addressed the problem. Apparently, the only solution is to rollback WMP 10 (very painless by the way), install the Series 9 Encoder, then reinstall WMP 10 (requiring a reboot - say what?). All of this because I wanted to try some screencasting (or some semblence of it) during my Overlay Project.

So the question is, if you are going to release a new version of the Player, and hype it to all get out, shouldn't you either release an updated set of encoding tools for WMP 10, or at least modify the setup of Series 9 so that it will install on WMP 10 enabled machines. Mind you, I have not actually tested the Encoder tools in this configuration, so if the Encoder and/or WMP 10 do not work, I may have to really get mad. Ohhhh, and those Windows Media guys don't want me to get mad. I may send a terse email or something!

I am officially announcing the Overlay Project. What is it? Well, per the project home page:

Overlay is a software project that will build a virtual desktop comprised of "Widget" components. The main highlights of Overlay include:

• Virtual desktop accessible from a TaskBar icon or "hot key" sequence
• Component model for the creation of Widgets that can be easily created and added to Overlay
• "Toast" notifications to allow Widgets to notify user of important events
• Configuration management to store user preferences of Overlay and Widget settings
• Security to protect against malicious or ill behaved Widgets
• Other stuff I haven't thought of yet

I am also going to try and leverage as much free code as I can. As I build out this project over the next few weeks (or months), I will provide references to the code, articles, concepts, whatever that I am borrowing from aroudn the web. I have been thinking about this for a while, so I already have a good idea on where a bulk of the materials will come from.

The project itself probably has no real value, but its may be an interesting excercise and will provide me a chance to code for the sake of coding. (I know, SlickThought was to do the same thing but I have been in a bit of a coding hiatus since I am waiting for Beta 2 and the GoLive licensing before I make any more signficant changes). Some things I expect to use in this project include: P/Invoke, reflections, Enterprise Library, WinForm trickery, .NET security, appdomains, and other stuff I haven't thought of yet.

I will be posting updates on Overlay in a new blog category, so those of you with custom filters will need to update your filter if you are interested in the updates.

FTPOnline has a simple overview of how code-behind will work with ASP.NET 2.0. A good place to start if you are interested in some of the plumbing changes coming in ASP.NET.

In case you haven't already seen JRoxe's call for apps, this is a good opportuntity for some lucky few to get into the game.

Sure I get the point and agree to some extent (RSS is still not mainstream Robert, at least in my neck of the woods), but just because you have a pulpit doesn't mean you need to use it. I could go on....

As referenced in Miguel de Icaza's blog, "For those of you that are missing ObjectSpaces, you might find db4o not only interesting, but faster than what ObjectSpaces could have been." I haven't had a chance to look at db40, but it could be interesting.

ObjectSpaces - hard to believe that term has been around for four years now and still no product. Ok, maybe not that hard to believe.

Sooooo.. there will be an IE7 after all. I think anyone that is into reading tea leaves should have reconginzed that there was a strong possilibity of this happening. I mean, who was fooling when when the IE team all of sudden had a blog - how does a team that does not exist have a blog? I imagine coding has been going on for a while already since a lot of this work will probably leverage some of the stuff that was supposed to be in Longhorn (no inside knowledge, just a guess).

My big question is how or does this relate at all to the Avalon down-leveling that was announced a while ago. It raising some interesting questions:

• Will IE 7 be able to leverage Avalon? If so, then we already have a rough idea of IE7 timelines.
• Is it going to be just a browser or will it have some "smart client" like hooks in it to differentiate it from "regular" browsers? i.e., any special sauce for combo browser/winform/clickonce/whatever stuff. Not sure what exactly that would look like or why, but there are some interesting possibliities.
• How much of IE7 will be what we can expect to see in Longhorn? If its a lot like Longhorn's browser including Avalon support, how does that impact a developer's need for Longhorn.

I could go on and haven't put more than a nanosecond thinking about any of these things, but it will be interesting to see what we get this summer.

Ok... maybe not a real rant but I feel like calling it that.

Chris Pirillo has some comments on the recent IE7 announcement (by way of Microsoft Watch). Now let me start by saying this, and I want to be very clear, I agree with everything Chris is saying! However, and you knew that was coming, I always find it amusing when people get put off by "corporate speak". Seriously, what did Chris (and others) think Microsoft would say. We cut now to this breaking story from Microsoft:

Official Microsoft spokesman (no, not Scoble):
Firefox is a way better browser than IE in a lot of different ways. It really yanks our chain that we are losing market share. We really like having 90%+ market share and now that that is slipping we figure it is time to do something. We also are getting tired of all the security problems with the existing browsewr. So having said all that, we are happy to announce that there will be a new version of IE - IE7.

Yes, we all know why Microsoft is doing what it is doing. But do you really expect us to say that in official announcements? Never gonna happen.