User21 - Yuval Atzmon » dev

The operation completed successfully, please tell Microsoft about this problem

Yuval Atzmon — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:36:17 +0000

I think by now I already installed Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 at least 4 or 5 times but today was the first time I encountered this message:

In reality, VS2010 installed successfully though there was some failure installing the Silverlight SDK. I would expect this sort of result to be conveyed differently, hopefully this would change for the RTM version.

Still had a good laugh though.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Developer Toolkit Stores Passwords in Plain Text

Yuval Atzmon — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:49:37 +0000

If you’re using Dynamics CRM Developer Toolkit it’s worth noting that when you specify a username and password in the Server Connection settings (CRM Explorer Options in Visual Studio) the password is stored in the registry in plain text.

The password is stored in the following registry path:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\DialogPage\
UKDynamics.CrmExplorer.OptionsPageCustom

This may not be a big issue for many developers, even when an administrator user is used, since most developers usually know the administrator password or are administrators themselves at least on dev\test environments, but still this is something you should be aware of.

If you’re concerned about this and cannot connect to your CRM server using default credentials, you can simply leave the password field blank and switch to default credentials every time you’re done working with the toolkit. This will clear the password registry key until the next time you wish to connect.

“Share on Friendfeed” Plugin for RSS Bandit

Yuval Atzmon — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 23:18:05 +0000

Personally I prefer using RSS readers which come in the form of client applications rather than online services. My favorite for many years was Omea Reader but unfortunately ever since JetBrains stopped working on it and made it open source, the product development is simply stuck. Combined with a few annoying bugs, I am gradually pushed towards looking for a replacement.

I haven’t settled on anything yet but lately I decided to give RSS Bandit another try. So, while working with it I thought it would be nice to add a “Share on Friendfeed” functionality. RSS Bandit supports the IBlogExtension plugin interface, and following Dare Obasanjo’s del.icio.us sample made it very easy to develop a Friendfeed plugin.

The IBlogExtension framework is supported by other RSS aggregators so this plugin may work with other applications but I only tested it with RSS Bandit. Let me know if you successfully use it with other apps.

Download and Installation

Share on Friendfeed Plugin (12Kb)

1. Download and unzip the plugin to RSS Bandit’s plugins directory. The default path is C:\Program Files\RssBandit\plugins .
2. Restart RSS Bandit.

Configuration

1. Right click any RSS feed item and then click “Share on Friendfeed – Configure”.

2. Enter your Friendfeed username and remote key (you can get it here).

3. Check the “Display confirmation” checkbox if you want to see a notification dialog after posting to Friendfeed.

Sharing Items on FriendFeed

1. Right click the feed item you want to share and then click “Share on Friendfeed”.

2. You can edit the URL and title (both are populated automatically from the feed item) and add your comment, before hitting the Post button.

3. If you checked the confirmation box in the configuration dialog, you’ll receive a confirmation message with a link to your newly posted entry.

Disclaimer

This is the very first version of the plugin. It is provided “as is” and under the “works on my machine” terms and conditions. I tested the plugin with RSS Bandit version 1.8.0.870 under Windows XP SP2.

Feel free to comment below or contact me with any feedback.