Bruno Silva

What I almost can’t wait for from E3

2009-06-03T10:49:10Z

Yesterday I assisted to the 3 E3 main press conferences by Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony. Lately I haven’t been such an active video game player as I used to be some months ago, but now I’m feeling that during this year and the next one I’ll come to my roots Microsoft XBox 360 From Microsoft, as a XBox 360 owner I was glad to hear that XBox Live will have integration with Facebook and Twitter, my two main social networks. For gold membership owners will get full access to Last.FM...(read more)

User Styles in Internet Explorer

2009-06-01T14:50:46Z

As a Firefox user, one of the extensions that I can’t live without is Userstyles . They allow me to remove tons of ads and format some webpages that I use in my daily life in the way I want. A few months ago I started using IE8 as my main browser in my personal laptop. And very happy about it because it’s lighter than Firefox, and I don’t really need all the extensions outside work. But I missed Userstyles… After searching for a while I found information about custom cascade...(read more)

I just have April Fool’s Day…

2009-04-01T15:01:10Z

… because while reading my RSS feed subscriptions, there are a lot of news that are fake (clearly), and someones that I can’t tell if they are....(read more)

2º Seminário de Tecnologias Móveis IT PRO & DEV

2009-02-23T09:30:14Z

A segunda edição do evento da comunidade PocketPT.net para os Profissionais de tecnologias móveis e relacionadas, dá continuidade ao sucesso obtido pela primeira edição. Este ano, de modo a oferecer um conjunto de conteúdos mais alargado, as duas tracks foram divididas em dois dias, sendo o primeiro dia reservado a programadores e o segundo a profissionais de TI. Consegue-se assim uma maior riqueza e abrangência de conteúdos e intervenientes. Mais um evento sobre Windows Mobile promovido pela comunidade...(read more)

ASP.NET Output Cache - Cleaning all at once

2009-02-05T15:52:20Z

I’ve been using a feature of ASP.NET called Output Cache. It allows you to have server-side cache for your ASP.NET webpages. You can define several profiles and cache expiration rules. You can read more about it in a simple and short article at MSDN or in the full documentation also at MSDN. A feature that I wasn’t able to find was cleaning all the cached data. You can remove cache for a specific page using HttpResponse.RemoveOutputCacheItem(”pagename”) but to remove all pages...(read more)

List Random Order in .NET using Linq

2009-01-27T17:03:57Z

While refactoring some C# code I came across some lines that seemed a bit awkward. I was trying to sort a list or an array randomly. That code was written before Linq came into the .Net Framework, so now I was able to figure out a new approach. Since Linq to Objects has some similarities with SQL, I got the idea of trying the same approach that I used several times in SQL, which was ordering a SELECT statement using ORDER BY RAND(). The result is shown bellow. It uses the Extension Methods syntax...(read more)

List Random Order in .NET using Linq

2009-01-27T17:03:57Z

Using web.config for custom configuration settings

2009-01-22T10:13:54Z

If you are an ASP.NET developer you must be familiar with web.config . Something that maybe you haven’t tried yet is to create custom configuration sections to store you application specific settings. Bellow you can see a web.config file that uses a custom configuration section. In the configuration/configSections element you must define which class is responsible for handling your configuration section. Then you can add your custom settings to the file as shown bellow. The usage of your settings...(read more)

Linq - Adding element to collection, Union vs Concat

2009-01-21T11:45:50Z

Some time ago while developing a project I came across a problem related to Linq to Objects. I wanted do join a single object with a collection in order to transverse them with a foreach statement (the item was not allways present and I wanted to treat it as a regular element in the original collection). Using the intellisense to find a Linq to Objects extension method that fitted my needs I didn’t find that particular functionality, but I thought about an alternative: creating a collection...(read more)

Novo portal Sapo Kids

2009-01-16T17:12:23Z

Foi lançado hoje um novo portal português destinado aos mais novos. É o Sapo Kids! Além de diversos conteúdos lúdicos e didácticos reunidos a partir dos diversos serviços do mundo Sapo, conta com parcerias como a Porto Editora ou até mesmo o MIT. Realço a integração do Scratch no portal. O Scratch que nasceu no MIT permite aos mais novos criarem animações interactivas de forma simples e divertida enquanto aprendem. O Sapo Kids tem a plataforma Scratch totalmente em Português, tornando-a ainda mais...(read more)

O marketing nas grandes superfícies…

2008-12-19T09:14:44Z

No outro dia fui ao Media Markt de Sintra para comprar um pack de 4 pilhas recarregáveis. Encontrei um pack da Duracell a 14 euros (ou 13.90 e tal, whatever). Ao lado estavam um pack de 2 pilhas a 6 euros. Portanto, 6 euros x 2 packs (2 pilhas cada) = 12 euros 14 euros * 1 pack * (4 pilhas) = 14 euro O senso comum não nos diz que os packs de maior número de unidades deve sair mais barato? Ou pelo menos ter o mesmo preço? O meu diz que sim. Ou é um engano de marcação de preço, ou stocks distintos...(read more)

New Windows Live Hotmail - What was wrong about the icons?…

2008-11-05T17:03:11Z

Today I got access to the new Hotmail interface. Pretty, but lacks the usual icons. I feel lost. The icons were a great help on finding what I needed. Now I just have to read the labels… I’m not feeling as a happy user right now… Keep it simple, but not too simple....(read more)

How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

2008-11-04T17:38:57Z

77% How Addicted to Blogging Are You?...(read more)

More about Azure Platform Services

2008-10-29T15:27:46Z

Some highlights from a nice article that I found in my feeds . They are excerpts of the document, text in italic was written by me. Please note that the lines lack some context. .NET Services .NET Access Control Service All communication with the Access Control Service relies on standard protocols such as WS-Trust and WS-Federation. This makes the service accessible from any kind of application on any platform. Claims-based identity is on its way to becoming the standard approach for distributed...(read more)

First toughts about Windows Azure

2008-10-28T12:33:30Z

After the yesterday’s announcement of Windows Azure , the brand new cloud-based Windows, today I started reading a little bit about it. This new platform seems promising, and I’ll write a bit about it in some of my next blog entries. First of all I’ll talk about the Windows Azure, which is a part of the Azure Services Platform. It allows you to run applications and store data on the cloud (replace cloud by “a bunch o Microsoft data centers”). You can reduce the Total...(read more)