Welcome to the USA: Address Book script that changes my contacts french phone numbers into international format

Well, I'm in now!
I've decided to make the big jump to the USA. Since I still have a lot of french relatives, I was confronted to a painful situation: I had to manually update my contacts to append a +33 on their phones.
And then came AppleScript.... and MobileMe!

A simple script does the job, and MobileMe does the rest.
And ka booom, my iPhone is updated too !!!!!!

Here's the script:



The good thing is that thanks to MobileMe, every device updates smoothly !!!

A Google Map Directions plug-in, and a Linkedin search plug-in for Apple Address Book

I wonder why Apple did not provide a simple way to give the itinerary to a contact.
I wrote this plug-in in 5 minutes...
Simple, isn't it?
I also provide a plug-in for Linkedin search.

Google Map directions plugin
Source code: here
Plug-in: here


Linkedin search plugin
Source code: here
Plug-in: here


Install instructions:
Download the plug-ins and unzip them to /Library/Address Book Plug-Ins/


Using the Google Maps Directions plug-in:
Start Address Book application, select a contact, and click the address field.
You will then have a contextual menu which uses the address in your card (if any) to compute the direction to your contact.

Using the LinkedIn Search plug-in:
Start Address Book application, select a contact, and right-click the last name field.


Please feel free to use these plug-ins, and give me your feedback !

Wenoke

Solving Silverlight_chainer.exe setup issues

Some of you may run into trouble while installing the Silverlight tools for Visual Studio 2008.
Here's a workaround to make things work:

1. Run the Silverlight_chainer.exe
2. Do not close the error window
3. Browse your startup disk at the root level. There is a directory which name looks like a GUID. Open that directory to find a Silverlight 2.0 tools.
   
4. Run the following apps (in this order)
1. Silverlight 2.0.exe
2. Silverlight_sdk.msi
   
3. VS_SilverlightTools_Beta1_Setup.exe
4. VS90-KB949325.msp

Normally, this should solve the problem.
Have fun!

Silverlight 2.0: a brighter day...

Ronny Jordan's "Brighter day"is one of my favorite tunes.
Well, today I'm doing a flashback to a previous post I did about missing controls of Silverlight 1.0.
I had a very interesting discussion with the Silverlight Technical Evangelist at Microsoft. It is likely we will have ALL of our missing controls in an upcoming version, I mean very very soon.

This leads me to cancel the development of my prototypes...
Please come back later for more news.

Protecting your application against piracy

A brand new actor is coming to the software protection market.

His name is... MICROSOFT!

I've been using a solution named Interlok for years (http://www.paceap.com).

Unfortunately, these guys do not really have the sense of the details: the last update of their web site states that a new version (5.3) shipped in October 2005.... :-(

The version I'm using is 5.6 for Windows. Well, it does no longer matter, as I'm going to switch to Microsoft's solution.

Why?

Reason #1: Interlok does not allow me to protect my managed code. They have no intention to change that. This is not acceptable since most of the market is moving to .NET.

Reason #2: Setting up the solution is a kind of.... hard! On the paper, things look simple. But once you've coded a custom solution do avoid their ugly screens, it becomes a nightmare. Even though their API is well written, the things happening behind the scenes are unpredictable. For some odd reason, the simple fact of disabling your network adapter will cause your application to loose the license...!

Reason #3: The cost of Interlok is almost 1$ per activation. This cost will not include the infrastructure. Actually, I'm spending:

- 1$ per license -> almost $10000 per year

- hosting: 2 dedicated servers for the activation --> $15000 per year

- support cost: lot of complaints --> 3 support guys at almost $20000 per year

This makes a total of $45000, which does not include hidden costs.

I will certainly be one of Microsoft's solution early adopters.

For more info, see:

SLPS Web Site

http://www.microsoft.com/slps

SLPS in MSDN

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/slps/default.aspx

Stay tuned for more news about my tests of that technology.

MacWorld Expo '08

Nothing special this year...

But maybe a special thing to say about the new MacBook Air?

Later, I'm tired..

I'd better show my pictures shot with my new Canon Powershot G9. It looks like my old Canon 30D will have a peaceful rest for a while...

Here are the pictures..

San Francisco 2008