modern.IE launches with two great offers for web developers.
The http://modern.ie site has launched today and has two real gems in stock for web developers.
First, an online suite of tools that scan your website and give you feedback on common compatibility problems.
Second, modern.IE offers a free 3 month subscription to BrowserStack.com, hosted and locally managed virtualization that can help provide quick access to a large number of browsers and operating systems for you to test your site against.
Dropbox to enable 2 factor authentication in the next few days.
This is great news! Relying more and more on cloud services, I just recently enabled Google’s 2 step verification.Now Dropbox is joining the party by announcing their own 2 step verification in their forums.
It can be activated by downloading the latest forum build of their client software.
You can receive the authentication codes needed for logging in with unknown/new computers or web browsers either via SMS or the following existing authenticator apps for mobile devices (which can generate valid codes even if offline – very useful if you are traveling).
- Google Authenticator(Android/iPhone/BlackBerry)
- Amazon AWS MFA(Android)
- Authenticator (Windows Phone 7)
And yes, there is a client available for Windows Phone! 
Joe Belfiore to Keynote MIX10, Eleven New Windows Phone Sessions Announced (Microsoft MIX10)
Corporate Vice President of Windows Mobile Program Management at Microsoft, Joe
Belfiore, will be speaking at MIX in March. Belfiore is responsible for
the overall design and product definition of the software that powers Windows
Phones. A huge consumer advocate, Belfiore has led the design and
development of some of Microsoft’s more consumer-friendly products, including
Zune, Windows Media Center, and the user experience for Windows itself.
Along with Belfiore’s keynote, eleven new Windows Phone
sessions have just been added to the MIX10 agenda.
At Hulu, ‘free’ may soon turn into ‘fee’ (via latimes.com) and why this might be good for me!
At Hulu, ‘free’ may soon turn into ‘fee’
The video website, launched by studios to distribute TV shows over the
Internet without charge, now is considering ways to draw revenue, including
charging for some episodes of popular shows.
Of course this sounds bad to everybody who is using Hulu for free now, but for us non-US-residents, this might mean, that we can join the fun as well when we are ready to pay for Hulu’s services, as their ads are not relevant for our market. I would certainly be in – being able to see my favorite series in English and only days after they are broadcast in the US – priceless!
Taking Seesmic Look for a spin. A very artsy, WPF based Twitter visualizer.
I like this app sitting on my second screen, showing tweets flowing by while I am trying to be creative writing a presentation. Go check it out at: http://seesmic.com/seesmic_desktop/look/
http://search.sobees.com uses great Silverlight UI to combine a search across the social web into one UI
This is mindblowing. http://search.sobees.com uses great Silverlight UI to combine a search across the social web into one UI, able to show images and play videos inline.
Windows Phone content at MIX2010 officially announced on the MIX site.
Windows Phone at MIX10!
Yes, at MIX10 you’ll learn about developing applications and games for the next generation of Windows Phone. Yes, we’ll have Phone sessions, and we can’t say more…yet. Stay tuned and check back often or join the MIX mailing list.
VERY nice! Thank you, Mix!
Hands-on Lab: Silverlight 4 Line of Business Application using WCF RIA Services
After building this lab from the ground up and running it successfully in three classes last week, we are now ready to publish it.
In this 108 page hands-on lab you will learn how to use Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2010 and Beta 1 of Microsoft Silverlight 4 to create a data driven line of business style rich internet application that implements many of the new features that Silverlight 4 introduces. We will base our solution on the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) RIA Services.
The solution will be an order-management system that shows a list of orders in a data grid and details of a selected order in a details pane. The system will validate user entries and have the capabilities of printing order reports and exporting order lists to Microsoft Excel.
Download the hands-on lab manual in PDF and Word format, the database and the final sample solution.
These features are implemented in the lab:
True multi-tier architecture.
The following are the system requirements needed to complete the hands-on lab. The links point to the download location of the product or a trial version.
One of the following operating systems:
Windows XP (x86) with Service Pack 3 – all editions except Starter Edition
Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Professional
SQL Server 2008 Express Edition
Silverlight 4 Beta 1 Tools for Visual Studio 2010
Silverlight 4 Beta Toolkit November 2009
Optional Components
Microsoft Internet Information Services
Microsoft Excel
The hands-on lab manual has detailed instructions on installing all the prerequisites.
ZyXEL sells ZyWALL firewall appliances that rely on the “MyZyxel.com” domain, which is never up. Is this the sign of a dying brand?
I like the hardware a lot and I would recommend it any day. But seeing this crucial site just being offline for days makes me very uneasy.
What is happening to ZyXEL?
Sascha Corti aka. TechPreacher 
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