This is just a quick update on my ongoing side projects, I have been working on a series of social news web applications where users can submit content and decide, through commenting and votings, what's good (kiffs) and what's junk (zaps). Links that receive community approval raise towards the top, so the first pages are constantly in motion and (hopefully) filled with fresh, interesting links. Nothing impressive, but it gives me a good basis for making a web platform, as in, the common features:...

The quiz is now over. We have 5 winners and they have all been e-mailed their prizes. Here are the right answers to the quiz questions (you can click on them to find out more) :...

Here is a chance to get an enterprise-class toolkit with many unique controls for any of the following platforms : ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Mobile MVC, Silverlight, Windows Forms or WPF. Each pack is worth $1000 but you get the one of your choice for free if you can quickly reply to the 5 questions below :...

I just published a beta version of my first complete game. If you have a moment to try it, I hope you will enjoy it : http://babifraya.com/...

Furtivue : a furtive view over your messages. (www.furtivue.com) Furtivue is a web service that allows you to send temporary (self-destructing) emails, as in, you can control how long the message is going to stay with the recipient. When they open your Furtivue message, it appears for a specified number of seconds, then self-destroys. The duration will depends upon the length of the message (Or you can choose how long you want the message to be displayed)....

Phidgets are a set of "plug and play" building blocks, some low-cost electronic components that you can control from your personal computer via USB. They provide you with some extra input/output methods beyond the classic mouse + keyboard + screen. As Harold Thimbleby mentioned in his book Press On, phidgets are a very nice way to get into hardware programming, as you may want to build real systems, not on screen or web browser simulations : phidgets are so-called because they are the physical equivalent of on-screen widgets (Windows Gadgets). Phidgets = Physical + Widgets (Widgets = Windows + Gadgets) Where to find them ?...

When you create a Windows Service project under Visual Studio, you may have noticed that the following dialog box appears when you try to run the service. In summary, it is simply impossible to run a windows service in Visual Studio, you must necessarily go through the NET START command to start the service after having previously installed it with the command INSTALLUTIL. Except that this method prevents us from easily debugging the Windows Service. As a matter of fact, to debug our code, we must install the service, start it, then link the debugger to the relevant service process from Visual Studio. And by the way, let's keep in mind that we will also have to stop, recompile and restart the windows service in order to load up any change we make to the code. In short, it's kinda annoying. There is a simpler solution though....

There are a lot of great skills you get from school/university lectures, no doubt. But on the other hand, for some specific and practical "super powers" you want to acquire or enhance, you have no other choice but teach yourself. The potential reasons are legion. That could happen by mere interest or if you want to deepen your knowledge in one of your subjects. Or maybe for the sake of personal projects, say learning some essential life skill they don't teach you in class. So yes, when college doesn't prepare you for life battles, you have to coach yourself. Anyway, I am not here to complain about any education system. I am writing this post because I would like to share the best and most useful books I went through, as I have been reading a lot lately. I read on a variety of fields and for each of them I am suggesting the top books (according to my humble opinion). Here we go:...

If you are not into programming, I need to start by telling you that a programming language is basically an artificial language (system of communication) designed to communicate instructions to a machine, typically a computer. Now there are a lot of programming languages out there. Some are more popular than others, some are more recent, some are more powerful to some extent. In an ideal world, each programming language serves a specific purpose. So an engineer should be able to adapt to the on going project and choose the optimal technologies. But the truth is,...

In this post I will show you two methods to configure your .NET applications so that they would launch as soon as Windows starts. These two methods do not require any change to the registry, hence you don't need to worry about cleaning up that database if the user uninstalls your application. The first method: From the Windows Installer Deployment Project, follow these steps:...