Unfortunately, the hard drive hosting the virtual instance of casadehambone.com completely failed. It will take another day or so to get everything back up and running again.

[Update: Saturday, December 30, 2006]

Windows Live Writer has saved my bacon! I was able to repost everything that was saved by Windows Live Writer and recover > 90% of the last four months of content on casadehambone.com. I also found some cached entries on Google that will let me recover the few posts I wrote outside of Windows Live Writer.

Through a bit of DasBlog hacking on the content files, I was able to get everything back into to the month in which it was written. December, November and September are actually updated with matching dates and times from their original entries. Presently, all of Octobers posts are dated 2006-10-01 but that will change when I have a bit more time to walk through the 50 or so posts and hand-edit their timestamps.

I'm also blessed in that I have all of the XML files created from when I migrated from .TEXT to DasBlog, recovering history dating back to my first ever blog post, March 2, 2004!!

I woke up one day last week and decided to join the social. That's right - the marketing from the billboard I see each and every morning, combined with the desire to see first-hand how we are competing with the iPod, forced me to get a Zune.

Let me say that Zune Marketplace combined with a Zune Pass (i.e., all-you-can-eat music for $14.99 each month) is simply awesome. And I hate to admit it, but I love the concept of a music subscription service so much that if Apple were to come out with a subscription model for iTunes, I would likely subscribe right now. And I would do so despite considering iTunes to be the devil - after owning two iPods for well over two years, I have bought all of two albums from iTunes (both of which were done so I could see the process.)

So for as much as I love the Zune Pass and the subscription model, there are a few key items lacking in my Zune experience that I desperately want: support for podcasting, audiobooks and native integration with car stereos.

Support for Podcasting

It's no surprise at this point. The Zune sucks at podcasting. Sure, it can play back podcasts as they are nothing more than MP3s, but the Zune software has no discovery or download mechanism for podcasts. Once you manage to get a podcast onto Zune, it doesn't actually know that these are podcasts. It thinks they are MP3s just like any other MP3. What I want is for the Zune to treat podcasts as spoken word and perform two very important tasks:

1. Bookmark the audio track. When I navigate away from a podcast Zune needs remember where I was and return me to that exact same spot. Do not force me to fast forward 45 minutes to get back to where I was listening in .NET Rocks.
2. Provide the ability to speed up or slow down. Yes, most of the time I listen to podcasts at normal speed, but there are times where I want to speed things up.

You would think that in joining the social, the Zune would be more open to the new social media. Maybe it's just angry for not being invited to the party earlier.

It's a sad statement when your competitors software is a better client for your premier device, too. For as much as I hate the way iTunes organizes and presents my music library, it does a rockin' good job of organizing, finding and delivering podcasts - which Zune Player will gladly sync to Zune without even asking.

Support for Audiobooks

This one is closely tied to support for podcasting, above, and both requirements apply here as well. Bookmarking with audiobooks is vital. Given that an audiobook can sometimes run in excess of 10 hours, you do not want to find yourself in a situation of performing a binary search of your audio to figure out where you left out.

So what makes support for audiobooks different than support for podcasts? Zune does not support Audible (or is it Audible does not support Zune? In either case, it doesn't work.) No Audible, no audiobooks. Its surprising, given that most of the other WMA-based players out there are indeed compatible with Audible.

I drive. A lot. Any time I'm going to be on the road for more than 30 minutes, I like to fire up an audiobook or a podcast and gain some enrichment. I have an Audible Listener subscription (I told you I was big on subscription content) and burn through my two credits each month (I'm currently listening to Babylon Rising by Tim LaHaye, author of the very popular Left Behind series.)

So Zune doesn't cut it for me in this case.

Support for Car Stereos

My BMW 325i benefits from the whole iPod Your BMW experience. And with the only drawback of that experience being that you cannot fast forward a track, it is an awesome experience. The iPod acts as the car's 6 disc CD changer, allowing me to drive the iPod from the steering wheel and stereo controls.

What is Zune's answer to this? Zune Car Pack with FM Transmitter. An accessory that, in a word, stinks. Dave had actually warned me about this one, but I thought how bad could it really be? The truth is, really bad. It has a feature that automatically picks the "best" FM station on which to broadcast. It selected 106.9 and upon tuning my car's stereo to that station heard nothing more than a ton of static. I tried the lower stations (87-89) with better luck but the audio quality was horrible and littered with interference. It was so bad that I broke out the CDs I ripped of the audio book I'm currently listening to (I would have normally listened to them on my iPod, but my in-dash dock connector is having issues so the iPod isn't working either ... hence this entire trek into Zune territory.) I'm likely challenged in that most of the FM band here in Chicago is in use, but the Zune FM transmitter failed to deliver a workable experience. Needless to say, this accessory is going back to the store when I get back to Chicago tomorrow.

Zune needs one of two things. Either a direct competitor to the iPod Your BMW effort or an adapter that makes Zune compatible with iPod accessories. i.e., a bridge that takes the iPod dock on one end and connects to Zune on the other, and is able to translate commands and audio between Zune and iPod dock connectors. That would be an extremely valuable device.

Where Does Zune Work for Me?

Mostly on the treadmill. I can download a ton of new music and gain exposure to stuff I normally would not try via Zune Marketplace with the Zune Pass.

When I think about my iPod, it really does live in the glove box of my car. It has become, for all intents and purposes, my CD changer. Yes, I take it out and dock it to load new music on it. If I'm into a really good book or podcast, I'll bring it to bed with me. But it lives out 95% of its existence in my glove box serving up podcasts and audiobooks.

Zune is also a cool way to show off videos and pictures of my kids - something that lasts for all of about 10 seconds because no one really wants to watch videos of other people's kids. However, I cannot under estimate the value of video. When we were roaming around on vacation with a Creative Zen Portable Media Center, we were able to keep my kids entertained with content from our Media Center PC. Maybe the next time we travel Zune can accompany us and entertain the kids.

A Word About Zune Software

Why on earth does Zune's software not minimize to the tray? For that matter, I find myself using Zune software to browse Zune Marketplace and sync my Zune, but then I fire up Windows Media Player to listen to all of my music when I'm at my desktop. I shouldn't have to do this. The Zune software should be a plug in into Windows Media Player just like URGE. Oh sure, I understand the desire for us [Microsoft] to brand Zune similar to the way iPod and iTunes are branded ... but do we really need to create as poor an experience as iTunes, too? Bring back my integration, please.

In Summary

Zune has a lot of potential. In fact, should my three items be addressed I will hold a public destruction event for my iPods and invite everyone to come and participate. However, until then my Zune will be a niche gadget. And while I mentioned that should iTunes provide a subscription service that I would use in a heartbeat, I will drop the iPod and iTunes as soon as I can replace them with Zune for my usage scenarios.

If you build it, they will come. Head on over to Perpetual Motion and read about the their identity selector for Firefox.

While on vacation for Thanksgiving, I accidentally pulled my iPod into the bath. It dried out and everything is operable except for the backlight. I purchased it at Best Buy with a service plan and figured it was time to find out how good their service plan really is - knowing full well the problem is completely my fault and not expecting anything should anyone find out that my iPod got to relax in the bath.

I'm not one for maintaining paperwork. While I know that my receipt and service plan agreement are safely tucked away in the file cabinet from hell, I wasn't in the mood to go digging. True to their word, Best Buy was able to pull up my purchase history and service plans just from my phone number. And in no time flat. Plus points for that.

While I thought had purchased a replacement plan, turns out I had actually purchased a service plan. I seem to recall that when I bought the iPod, the service plan was sold to me as, "The batteries in these die out. Get the service plan and the device gets replaced." In reality, the device gets sent back to Apple for repair and could be replaced at Apple's discretion. Minus points for that. The customer service rep kindly directed me to the Geek Squad.

So send in my iPod I did. Armed with my service contract number provided by the customer service rep, a Geek Squad representative took down my vital information, took my iPod and handed me a receipt. I could expect to see it again in about two weeks.

My good friend Dan informed me that most electronic devices have a little piece of white paper in them that turns red when exposed to liquid - starting at a light pink for little exposure all the way up to a crimson blood red for the most grievous of mistakes: allowing your electronic device to become completely submerged in water. Apparently we have a joint friend who can demonstrate this little "feature" across a number of Audiovox SMT5600 smartphones he has owned. I really don't what to know what kind of liquid is responsible for all of his "issues."

Today I got a call back from Best Buy, who was passing along the word from Apple that the device was subjected to "liquid damage" and is being returned "as is." About what I expected, but still nice to know that my iPod ran the gauntlet and Best Buy's claim of being able to always locate my service information is indeed true. Unfortunately, knowing that it was subjected to liquid damage I'm pretty certain the service contract is useless at this point.

First, go watch this video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SZzAT-S5DQ. Trust me. You'll be entertained and educated. It makes me laugh to see the number of comments that claim this is a "fake." What makes me laugh even more is to know that we actually released something like this.

Then, go visit http://www.powertogether.com and find out how you can get your own free, fully licensed versions of Windows Vista Business and Office Professional 2007.

In short, you need to complete three webcasts or virtual labs in each of the series to get your free copies. What better way to get your hands on the hottest software releases for the desktop this Christmas than to actually participate in free training?

During the early integration of information cards and Windows CardSpace into casadehambone.com, I required validation of your information card by e-mail address. I'm now removing all registered users from the database.

There are a couple of reasons as to why I'm doing this.

First, with the release of .NET Framework 3.0 and Windows CardSpace, a breaking change to the information card schema was introduced that forces you to create new information cards. With the creation of a new information card comes a new personal identifier, and it is your personal identifier that I stored in association with your account.

Since the work I've done to date on DasBlog does not support associating a new information card with an existing account, it does not make sense to hang on to the old personal identifier at all.

Second, I settled on an implementation that does not require validation in order to sign in to casadehambone.com. Rather, your information card is used to simply present your identity which I gladly accept. You're free to lie about your identity. Primarily your identity is used to form-fill comment pages. You can, in fact, not authenticate and still leave a comment. I'm not picky.

I do plan on some more work for DasBlog shortly that will require you to provide your identity, but again I will not validate your identity. It is simply an added barrier to avoid automated comment spam.

The fine folks over at TechSmith have made available a beta version of Camtasia Studio 4.0.1 that works on the RTM version of Windows Vista.

I've now successfully recorded audio and video simultaneously to CAMREC and opened the recording in Camtasia Studio for editing.

This makes things a ton easier and I can get to finishing up some projects that I was delaying due to not having the energy to jump through hoops. Now, no hoop jumping.

For reference, here are some of my posts that documented to get journey where I am today:

Recording screencasts within Virtual PC 2007 using Camtasia Studio

Grrrr. Camtasia Recorder crashing on 64-bit Windows Vista RC2

Success with Camtasia Studio 4 on 64-bit Windows Vista RC1

Doh! Still need a Windows XP machine for my Camtasia stuff

Earlier this week I had a customer who shared some strongly worded opinions about how he cannot trust Microsoft because we change things that break code between beta and RTM. In my quick retort, I responded there are two things he can be sure of: he will die, and we will break things between beta and RTM.

My flippant comment got paid back today when I went to restore my information cards from my USB stick into CardSpace on my new Windows Vista installations.

Turns out there is a breaking schema change in the information card between the RC and RTM that makes it impossible to import your RC cards into the RTM CardSpace bits.

That's right ... you'll have to create new information cards. Sad, but oh so very true.

There's been a lot stirring in my head as of late and these are just a few of the things that are in my publishing pipeline:

• Narrated interoperability demonstrations between .NET Framework 1.1 and WebSphere Application Server v6
• How to CardSpace-enable your existing ASP.NET 2.0 web application
• A step-by-step guide to a Windows Communication Foundation solution
• A step-by-step guide to federation with Windows Communication Foundation

And the super secret thingy that you should be really excited about if you're part of the Chicago .NET Users Group ...

• You'll find out soon enough

I'm taking the next week off for vacation as I celebrate Thanksgiving with family. I'll be traveling and not taking my computer, so there will not be any blog updates over the course of the next week.

Of course, I thought about blogging from a café by logging directly into my instance of DasBlog (you know, the old fashioned way of using a username and password) except I forgot to set the new authentication cookie when logging in with username/password credentials.

So, I get a break from everything while I'm gone. I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and hope to see ya when I get back.

I recently had to put together a presentation for a customer on how to perform asymmetric data encryption and decryption using .NET Framework 2.0 and X.509v3 certificates.

The presentation provides examples on how to encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify the signature of messages, including how to combine these activities for integrity (signing) and confidentiality (encrypting.)

Knowing there can never be too many examples of this stuff, I've made the presentation available here and the sample application available here.

Last night I finished Gears of War. Simply put, I was disappointed it was over. I even felt cheated. After all, it's only been just over a week of casual game play in the evenings and the casual mode campaign is over. I expected more. A lot more. Maybe the original Halo spoiled me with its plot twist right about the time it was becoming repetitive and then yielded a ton more game play. Of course, the ending of Gears of War was left completely open for Gears of War 2 but it just didn't feel right when it was over. I was sitting there excited for the next act ... and there was none to come. Only the credits.

I plan to return and complete the Hardcore and Insane campaign modes and am looking forward to some online play. But when did we reach a point that a killer title like this can be completed playing only a few hours over the course of a few days in a week?

For years, I've said that the next big thing is wireless power. Of course, I usually meant it as a joke and people would laugh along with me. But check this out.

I just read Jim Allchin's response to journalists and bloggers who claimed he said you don't need antivirus software on Windows Vista.

But that's not the point of this post.

The point of this post is to say this ... would someone please, please, please change the style of windowsvistablog.com. After reading Jim's post, the contrasting white-on-blue text has been burned into my eyes and everything I'm looking at right now has "stripes."

I've heard about the ability for your Xbox 360 to blog about you, but until today I had never looked into it.

Endlesscrowd, one of the employees at my local GameStop, mentioned her Xbox 360's blog so I looked into it.

The service is available over at 360voice.com and I've set up my Xbox 360's blog. This is damn cool. I fear what my Xbox will say about me, as I've spent far more time playing World of Warcraft over the past year than I have my Xbox.

I was using speech recognition in Windows Vista RC 2 today to dictate a post that will be forthcoming and notice a little issue.  Because Windows Vista speech recognition was working so well I hadn't touched the keyboard in a while.  Unfortunately Windows Vista detected this as a lack of activity and kicked in the screensaver.  Not to behavior I was expecting.  Let's hope this is fixed in RTM.

By the way, this post was done completely with Windows Vista's speech recognition using Windows Live Writer ... including the insertion of Technorati tags.

From MSDN Subscriber Downloads:

MSDN Subscriber Downloads Service Outage Notification
MSDN Subscriber Downloads will be unavailable from 7:00PM to 9:00PM Pacific time on Friday, November 10, 2006, for planned maintenance and upgrades. Both downloads and product keys will be unavailable, though downloads already in progress will not be interrupted. We apologize for any inconvenience.

All of the servers here at Casa dé Hambone are getting the RTM version of .NET Framework 3.0 installed today. The Visual Studio 2005 development servers will also be receiving Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (Windows Workflow Foundation) and Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP.

I'm tempted to go hunting for the RTM bits of Windows Vista so my desktop machine can be on the same development bits as the servers. I'm just not sure I'm into sucking down the 1.6GB download that is the Windows SDK for Vista and the .NET Framework 3.0 along with ISO images for Windows Vista. Furthermore, www.casadehambone.com is hosted within a beta version of Virtual Server that is known to be working with Windows Vista RC2. Do I dare bring the host machine up to Windows Vista RTM?

The F bomb was dropped last night in Gears of War. Not once, but twice. And not by me. By the game. I must admit that I'm surprised by the level of foul language.

I stopped by GameStop this afternoon and scored my copy of Gears of War: Collector's Edition. I had pre-ordered and when I arrived this afternoon, got the last reserved copy of the Collector's Edition they had received in today's shipment.

I'm excited about this one. Mostly because I know nothing about it but was really drawn in by the trailer that I watched from XBOX Live Marketplace. My hope is that it is not another Brute Force which was a real let down.

By the way, another kudos to GameStop for following up with a phone call today to let me know that my copy would be available for sure tomorrow. I continue to enjoy their customer service in this area.

I'll be firing it up tonight after everyone's fast asleep. Maybe I'll see you online!

Take a lesson from Game Stop. Their automated system called me today and left a voice mail. It got my attention right off the bat with, "Attention Halo fans!" Every other automated telemarketing pitch I've ever received on my cell phone was immediately deleted or promptly hung up on.

But here was one that knew exactly what my gaming passion was and followed up with exactly the information I needed to make a purchasing decision right there. Right then.

"Pre-order your copy of Halo 3 today ... just announced ... available in 3 versions. Regular! Collectors!! And Legendary!!!"

Sign me up for Halo 3 Legendary Edition with Halo Spartan Mjolnir Mark VI Helmet right now! I don't even know where I'm going to put that thing. It's huge.

Why was this effective? Game Stop understands my customer profile. They've paid attention to my buying habits. They delivered a marketing message that was tuned exactly to what I needed to hear to make a decision.

I stopped in at my local Game Stop tonight (which, conveniently enough is in the same parking lot as Home Depot, so I was able to mask my trip to "the dealer" under the guise of needing pluming supplies to fix a leaky bathroom sink. Heck, I even took the kids with me. Bonus points for giving my wife a break!)

I was charged only a modest fee for my pre-order. Seemed reasonable enough. Then I had the sense to ask how much, exactly, is the Legendary Edition. "$100 bucks," the cute girl behind the counter informed me. Did I even flinch? Nope. Heck, we even traded XBOX Live gamer tags.

Kudos to Game Stop for running an effective telemarketing campaign that got me to buy not one but two high-end game packages from them. I also pre-ordered Gears of War which is available next Tuesday. Go buy it and look for me online. My gamertag is kevinha.

Got a successful telemarketing story? Share it with me here.

In this week’s edition of HanselMinutes on identity, Scott Hanselman and Carl Franklin chat about information cards and Windows CardSpace. Scott gives me mention for the work I did to enable information cards and Windows CardSpace on www.casadehambone.com.

There's some great content about how information cards can (and I believe will) change the way we manage identity overall. Go check it out.

Rather than wait for perfection, I'm making available an SVN patch of my work-to-date for information card support in DasBlog 1.9.6264. You can get it here from the Casa dé Hambone Download Center.

Due to the dependence in my current build on Microsoft.IdentityModel.TokenProcessor, you will require .NET Framework 3.0 and Visual Studio 2005 with the Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Projects add-on installed in order to open and build the project after applying the patch. Furthermore, you must run this instance of DasBlog as an ASP.NET 2.0 application.

A version of Microsoft.IdentityModel.TokenProcessor that works with .NET Framework 1.1 is forthcoming. As my implementation of information card support in this patch is provider driven, a .NET Framework 1.1-compatible TokenProcessor can be dropped in and the project returned to Visual Studio 2003 and ASP.NET 1.1.

I'm testing out a slightly modified information card login process on Casa dé Hambone.

Previously, I validated your email address in your self-issued card. An email was sent to your email address asking you to click a link to activate your account.

Currently, I'll take whatever claims you provide in your self-issued card and sign you on directly with no need to perform email address validation and no account created for you. In short, your information card acts as form fill mechanism for comments.

What do you think of this model?

I spent a little more time this afternoon polishing the info card login process on Casa dé Hambone. Let me know what you think.

I really liked how sxcore and sandbox.netfx3.com are handling their info card login. Sxcore specifically has a nice way of using a GET to kick off the process which eliminates the need to have a separate form element on the web page for the information card activator.

In addition to cleaning up the code, I

• Eliminated the "This page contains both secure and nonsecure items" warning by having Login.aspx fire off a GET to a handler that is 100% secure
• Activate the CardSpace UI from a separate dedicated handler page; the result is no CardSpace UI popping up if you attempt to anything else from the login page other than sign in with an info card
• Properly handle cases where you cancel submission of your info card and/or your browser does not have support for information cards
• Implemented a unique identifier for the click back handler that verifies your email address
• Automatically approve comments from information card users, even if comment moderation is enabled
• Turned off caching of the start page to accurately display the logged in state of normal users

What started as a simple project to Windows CardSpace-enable the DasBlog admin account has yielded a ton of key learning and design that you'll have to consider when adding support to your own site for information cards. The technology itself is cake ... the devil is in the details. Fortunately, I captured all of those details and decision points along the way and will be starting a series of blog posts on each one soon.

My information card support in DasBlog 1.9 for Casa dé Hambone has been refactored into a provider model that allows for pluggable identity token processors. In short, this means that my implementation can support both ASP.NET 1.1 and ASP.NET 2.0 installations where previously it required you to build DasBlog with Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0.

I'm getting really close to completing the fit 'n finish work here and making a SVN patch available to anyone who is interested.

Would you look at that. The fine folks over at WinZip finally got around to delivering a 64-bit version of their shell extensions. Maybe its time to come back, but I made a switch some time ago to WinRAR because of the stock "there's no demand for 64-bit shell extensions" response from WinZip.

What could be better than yesterday's announcement that I've added authenticated comments and support of Windows CardSpace to DasBlog? Well, lots of things - like the gnocchi in a meat sauce from Dino's Pizzeria that I'm going to go pick up right after I finish this entry.

But the additional features I'm thinking of for DasBlog include:

• New user registration without an information card (i.e., registered users for the rest of us)
• Password recovery (for those users who choose to not use an information card)
• Self-editing of the user profile (including hose who choose to not use an information card)
• Support for auto-approval of comments on moderated blogs when left by authenticated users

Its interesting, actually, how my simple desire to support information cards as a form of authentication has kinda opened the door to a whole host of features that "just make sense" once you cross that bridge. The saving grace throughout all of this is the architecture of DasBlog makes it pretty straightforward to implement these features.

What else do you think falls into this bucket?

DasBlog 1.9.6264.0. Authenticated comments. Windows CardSpace. Working. Try it out right now by signing in with your information card and then leaving a comment on this post. Inclusion of your web page claim is optional; include during the initial card selection if you want your web page linked to your name when leaving a comment. Let me know what you think.

Has this guy ever sat inside a high rise office building or even the basement of a Midwestern home and struggled to get a reliable cellular signal? In his article about how once again the browser will make Windows irrelevant, he sings the joys of living with an Internet-connected mobile device:

Things will get more exciting for entrepreneurs when we all start walking around with new Internet-ready portable devices such as the Nokia 770 Internet tablet or smartphones such as the Motorola Q and Nokia E61.

These pocket-size monsters with keyboards, luscious displays, and brisk 3G connections will soon replace laptops. All they need are browsers that can access Web-based software as easily as your desktop can. (I already use a Nokia E61 to help manage my website and write short blog posts from within the phone's browser. Soon I'll be able to run the whole site from my phone's browser.)

Pocket-size monsters? Luscious displays and brisk 3G connections replacing laptops? Please. Have you looked at the trend lately in flat panel monitors, HD televisions and laptop computers? Bigger. Wider. Not some 800x600 web-only display that requires a stylus for input. And brisk 3G connections? Surely you must mean the brisk 3G connection that is always reachable and never (ever) manages to crap out right about the time you either really need it or want to demonstrate your cool new Internet-ready portable device to your friend.

When I'm working with an office productivity app... excuse me. When I'm working with 2007 Microsoft Office, I don't want to worry if Ctrl+S is really going to work or not because my "brisk 3G [Internet] connection" may or may not be available. I don't plan on reducing the speed in which I type to fit that of a stylus or T9 text input. I don't plan on growing smaller thumbs to tap out brief messages on the keyboard of some device that makes my Dockers look I'm trying to impress the ladies.

The dream is there. I'm sure we'll reach it some day, likely even within my lifetime. But laptops are not going away any time soon. Speaking of which, I need to get busy on that order of Dell Latitude D820's ...

Taking inspiration from Kim Cameron and how he CardSpace-enabled WordPress, I did the same with DasBlog 1.9.6264.0. casadehambone.com now supports logging into the administrative account using Windows CardSpace allowing me to throw the use of passwords to the wind!

The great thing is that it only took minor changes to three source files and the introduction of one new configuration option each to site.config and siteSecurity.config. I have a little more work before me to make configuration just a tad easier, but the great thing is that this works really well.

I owe special thanks to Clemens Vasters who suggested this morning that the proper "hack" to get this working was to build DasBlog with Visual Studio 2005 and the Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Project add-on. DasBlog built out-of-the-box without issue, making the integration of TokenProcessor.cs to decrypt the SAML token a piece of cake.

If you haven't looked at Windows CardSpace yet, head on over to cardspace.netfx3.com and start reading. Now that Windows Internet Explorer 7.0 is released and Release Candidate 1 of .NET Framework 3.0 is available, you'll find the mainstream barriers to adoption are quickly eroding.

Get yourself over to http://ajax.asp.net and check out the just-released content for ASP.NET AJAX!

ASP.NET AJAX. is a free framework for quickly creating a new generation of more efficient, more interactive and highly-personalized Web experiences that work across all the most popular browsers.

One of the more painful processes on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 is granting read permission to the private keys of a certificate. It typically requires a few trips to your favorite search engine, msdn.microsoft.com and running winhttpcertcfg.exe.

In Windows Vista, the Certificate MMC snap-in has a new feature that enables you to directly manage the permissions of private keys associated with a given certificate.

Assuming you already have your certificate installed in the Local Machine store, fire up mmc.exe, add the Certificates snap-in to the console and choose Computer account on the Local computer. Expand Certificates | Personal | Certificates and locate the certificate to whom's private keys you'd like to grant read permissions. Right-click on the certificate, choose All Tasks | Manage Private Keys ... and you'll be starting at a standard Windows ACL editor. No muss. No fuss. Nice 'n clean the way it should have been from the beginning. If you're using a stock ASP.NET 2.0 configuration, you'll want to grant NETWORK SERVICE read rights. If you're running your application pool under another identity or performing impersonation, you'll need to adapt accordingly. In either case, this is far easier than the old hunt 'n peck method.

As I mentioned here, Scoble points out that IE7 renders TechMeme slower than Firefox 2. A true statement. Another true statement is that Firefox isn't respecting the <META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="now"> tag. Furthermore, Firefox doesn't respect its own "Always clear my private data when I close Firefox" option. And this, my friends, is the heart of the performance difference in this test.

So let's we peel the onion just a bit, shall we? Fire up Fiddler, configure both browsers to use it as their proxy and rerun the TechMeme test. You'll see that Firefox makes only a few requests for page content whereas IE7 requests the entire page. The result is that Firefox makes that page pop because it is pulling its page content from cache. If you select Tools | Clear Private Data... in Firefox, shut it down and run the test again, you'll find that the experience is identical to that in IE7. IE7 is doing the right thing. Firefox isn't.

I did some more digging and played around with Firefox's "Always clear my private data when I close Firefox" option. After enabling it and exiting Firefox, I relaunched it for for TechMeme home page again and was surprised to find that it was still pulling data from cache ... despite having been set to erase Browsing History, Download History, Saved From Information, Cache and Authenticated sessions when closing Firefox! Note this is distinctly different behavior from choosing Tools | Clear Private Data...

[Edit: Firefox does respect the "Always clear my private data when I close Firefox" when the last instance of Firefox exits rather than for closing each window.]

Scoble knocks IE7's performance compared to Firefox 2 and I had to see it to believe it. Given I've been living in IE7 for months - and more recently with IE7 on Windows Vista - I've never given performance a thought, which tells me either that performance has been fine or I'm simply ignorant. Likely a little of both. But I wonder, does it really matter?

Even so, I tried Robert's test (and that meant actually downloading Firefox) by setting the home pages for both browsers to http://www.techmeme.com and sure enough, there's a noticeable