Well, this is definitely what I'm talking about when I talk about programming losing some of its mystique and non-techies being able to whip up their own applications.  In this case, it's for web apps.  We have so many sites making widgets to embed that someone with zero coding experience and minimal, if any, HTML experience can make a very cool web site.  One thing that gets in my way at times, though, is the overhead for crafting a simple form for a site.  I don't want to create a database table, forms, validation, and data access code for a...

How on earth did I miss this?!  Charting is always a difficult thing to pull off, but here I see that Google has an API do it with almost no effort whatsoever!  It looks like it's been around since at least last December so I'm really late to the party!  Just craft a URL and you embed it like an image.  Use JavaScript or server-side code to craft the URL for chart type, colors, labels, and values.  It really couldn't be easier! More info: http://code.google.com/apis/chart/

So what's the deal with the file format used by Windows Movie Maker?  I had this vague memory that it's an XML file format and I opened up a file last night to take a look at it.  It's a binary file containing a chunk of XML toward the end.  I also use Camtasia, and this is a completely XML-based format.  Not using straight XML is a liability here since 3rd parties can't interact with Movie Maker as well. After digging into it for just a bit, there's the Unicode XML blob at the end, but there's a lot...

I've had a very strong interest in Microsoft SharePoint Server for some time.  The idea of building a site on a content management system (CMS) is very appealing as there is so much grunt work otherwise.  That's the motivation for using a blog engine of course.  I could create simple web pages each time I had an update (not often lately...) or append to a single page, but the advantages of quick-and-easy publishing, syndication, search, keywords, and the rest make it more than worthwhile.  Working with a CMS takes things so much further by making the entire web site modular. ...

If you haven't seen this yet, it's very cool.  We all know that Office has way more in there than most people ever see.  The 2007 ribbon made a big difference in making the commands more visible, but it still doesn't reveal everything in the default views.  If you are ever unsure where to find a command, or better yet, if it exists, the Search Commands toolbar is for you! I've only had it installed for a few days, but I just love it.  It can be faster than trying to remember where something is, and I've found features...