The last couple months at work, I've been working a lot on a new real estate mapping product that was launched last week called eNavigator (Try out eNavigator here). It utilizes AJAX and the Microsoft Virtual Earth v1 Commercial control and supports IE and Firefox. The coolest feature is the Interactive Map search that allows you to click and drag the map around to find that home of your dreams.

Something I started working with tonight is the new Virtual Earth v3 control that Microsoft released on May 23rd. Some of the new features include Geocoding, Driving Directions and built-in Pushpins and Popups.

There is currently a bug in the Virtual Earth v3 API. When you create a map on the page the follow JavaScript error occurs:

Line: 2
Char: 159480
Error: 'footer' is undefined

What's this "footer" it's looking for? I don't see it in the documentation; the error even occurs on the Virtual Earth Interactive SDK site. It's been a couple days already; I wonder how long it will take for them to fix it.

More Info on Virtual Earth:
Virtual Earth Map Control v3 – Great new features!
The Virtual Earth Interactive SDK
ViaVirtualEarth.com

Most programmers hate JavaScript (I used to), but I've actually come to like it. It's takes a bit to get down what works in which browser and what works in all browsers, but once you get a good base of familiarity it's actually quite nice. I think I've crossed that boundary to becoming somewhat of a JavaScript "expert". (I'm not claming to be one, I just think I'm on my way as long as I keep working with it more and more.)

Another thing I've been working with lately is WebParts. They are actually quite easy to use. I especially like how easy it is to use the Import/Export feature of saving/loading a WebPart XML file. They guys on the ASP.NET team did a great job with this feature set.

I've found there really aren't very many articles or code examples out there on using Virtual Earth. So, I plan on blogging more about Virtual Earth in the next few months. Tonight, I actually started working on an ASP.NET Virtual Earth v3 library that I plan on releasing once I get it far enough along. So, look for it's release in the coming weeks.

Enough rambling for now, I should probably get back to programming or go to bed.

The latest episode of the MSDN .NET Show features a great interview with Scott Guthrie and Bill Staples on IIS 7.0. The show includes a 30 minute interview about the product, along with 30 minutes of demos.

IIS 7.0 on the MSDN .NET Show

The latest IIS 7.0 Beta will be included in Windows Vista Beta 2. Also, it will be shipping with Vista, and will be included in the "home" editions as well. I'm hoping the final release of IIS 7 will ship with the RTM of Vista, and I don't have to wait for the Vista Server RTM to use it.

Last weeks episode of Security Now! has a great explanation of how buffer overruns work.

Security Now! Episode 39 - Buffer Overruns

At the next Wisconsin .NET Users Group, Dave Wanta will be presenting an introduction to Regular Expressions, also known as RegExes. The presentation will be covering the basic Regex operators, metacharacters and pattern matching. Then he'll move into advanced groupings, replace and logic branching. This presentation sounds great! I'm a little familiar with regular expressions, but I'm sure I'll learn alot from this presentation. I'll probably be bringing my laptop to this one.

June 13, 2006 - Regular Expressions with Dave Wanta

I've come across two cool WinXP TaskBar enhancement tools.

Visual Task Tips - This tool provides a thumbnail screenshot of each app when you mouse over the it in the taskbar. You may have seen this feature in some of the screenshots of the Windows Vista Beta, but this tool brings that functionality to Windows XP. I noticed the thumbnail is a somewhat live preview; just open up a video in Media Player and watch a somewhat choppy version of what's playing be shown in the thumbnail.

Taskbar Shuffle - This tool allows you to reorder the apps in your taskbar by dragging and dropping them. This isn't a major feature, but nice when you want to do it.

Both of these tools don't really support the task grouping feature of Windows XP, so you may want to turn that off in the taskbar settings. Maybe they will support this in the next release.

These tools are completely FREE, so there's no reason not to check them out. They are both currently at version 1.0, so they may not be perfect.

Sweet! I finally recieved my MSDN Subscription ID today! It only took two weeks since I signed up on the MVPInvite.com website using my secret Invite Code. Everything is so automatic these days, I was almost thinking something got screwed up and I wouldn't get my subscription.

The MVPInvite.com domain name isn't registered to Microsoft, so it must be a third party that runs that site. I figure they had to write my info on a piece of paper, then snail mail it to Microsoft's MSDN department who then manually entered the info into the computer. Once entered into the computer they had to write it down onto a different piece of paper and snail mail it back to the third party and wait for a confirmation snail mail letter before sending me a confirmation email with my MSDN Subscription ID. At least that's my guess as to why it took so long.

And, I'm still waiting for the CD's they are sending me to come in the mail. They say I should get the first shipment of them within 7 to 10 bussiness days, but the way things went, who konws. And "first shipment"? How much stuff are they sending me?

Anyway, I now have licenses to more Microsoft software than I know what to do with. I'll have to figure out some way to put it all to use.

The next Wisconsin .NET Users Group meeting is just two days away. One of our local MVP's, Sean McCormack will be speaking on the topic of "Object Relational Mapping Frameworks: Simplify & Improve Your Data Access Layer". I'm looking forward to this months meeting since this is a topic that I don't know a whole lot about. Several frameworks will be covered; including NHibernate, Codus, Elementary and the DLinq specification among others. Other ORM capabilities will also be covered; such as lazy loading, object caching, composite keys, saving and retrieving nested objects, OQL, dynamic objects and more.

Meeting Time: May 9th, 7:00 PM

Wisconsin .NET Users Group