I was invited at NED.net user group to give an introduction on ASP.NET 2.0 last weekend. Event went great and I enjoyed the session. Audience were mostly beginner ASP.NET student developers and were quite passionate about this new release. I talked about new Controls, Page Framework, Services, API's, Execution Model, Compilation and Deployment. You can download presentation slides and source code from here. Here are a few snaps of the event. There are more events lined up by NED.net and I am sure you don't wanna miss any. For updates join NED.net mailing list at Yahoo Groups.

Did you ever think about using RSS as a datasource in your web applications? Well then think no more as ASP.NET team member Dmitryr has posted an awesome RSS Toolkit for ASP.NET 2.0 on his blog. This toolkit supports both exposing and consuming RSS from ASP.NET applications made on version 2.0 of the .NET Framework and it also includes full source code.

More on Scott's Blog.

I have just downloaded Anthem.NET, another library for using AJAX features in ASP.NET applications. First its an open source project and is hosted at SourceForge.NET. And the best thing about Anthem.NET is, it can be used with both ASP.NET 1.1 and 2.0. Soon after Atlas release, I always wanted to have some kind of similar library for previous version of ASP.NET.

By adding Anthem.NET library and some scripts, you can use AJAX features in the form of server controls. Just like Atlas, Anthem.NET provides server side control model for ASP.NET. Nearly all existing server controls are now AJAX enabled with this tool, and we can make our existing web applications AJAX enabled in no time. The only thing needed is to replace <asp:> tag with <anthem:> tag. Cool isn't it :)

You can read more about Anthem.NET here.
Download Anthem.NET from here.

Microsoft has released some addons for Visual Studio 2005, earlier this month. These addons are to provide more flexibility for the developers who are used to of making ASP.NET projects using the traditional model of ASP.NET Project system of VS 2003 or before. Due to many suggestions from the developers, ASP.NET team has provided this addon that will support the previous project system in VS 2005 as well as the the current model.

You can download these addons from the following locations:

VS 2005 Web Application Project
VS 2005 Web Deployment Project

I got an invitation from Hotmail to try Hotmail Beta Live and without wasting a single moment I jumped into the site, accepted the invitation and sign in to see the new Hotmail. First it took a while to load all the scripts to provide client side processing functionality. Hotmail live will give you feeling that you are working inside Outlook. Resize columns, Spell check, move between folders and download mails without refreshing the page all the time. According to them, Hotmail Live will take over current Homail within few weeks, and hopefully everyone will be repeaing the benefits from the new exciting services. The sad part is, it does not provide all AJAX functionalities with browsers other then IE. However, Hotmail team will provide all the features for all browsers before the final release. This is how Homail Live looks like:




You can sign in for an invitation here. See all the features here.

I was watching Discovery Channel lately and discovered about the FCX (Fuel Cell Vehicle) through an advertisement and I couldn't resist myself from finding more about it. So in search for more, I hit its own as well as other websites. FCX is a technology introduced by Honda Research Department and according to them its a simple but fascinating way to produce electricity to servce as fuel for the cars of tomorrow. FCX employs an electrochemical reaction between Hydrogen and Oxygen to directly convert chemical energy into electrical energy. Yes its the same experiment but done in a reverse order that we did in our ninth grade to separate Hydrogen and Oxygen from water through Electrolysis. These cars do not require petrol, diesel or gas and produces zero harmful emissions. It generates electricity from two virtually unlimited sources, hydrogen and oxygen and is already on the roads in Japan and the U.S.A.

For more information, visit:
We Love Challenges
HONDA Woldwide

There is a nice demo on Atlas on MSDN TV by Nikhil Kothari where he shows different examples of using Atlas in a web application. Client side scripting was never this easy before. Check out the episode here.