Ahaa! geeks

Windows Workflow Foundation, WF, and WCF

Thot followings might be good resources for .NET 3.5 Workflow, and Workflow as a Service.

MSDN, David Chappell, Introducing Windows Workflow Foundation, Chappell and Associates
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee210343.aspx

OdeToCode.com, K. Scott Allen: Answers to WF Interview Questions
http://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2007/10/31/answers-to-wf-interview-questions.aspx

Guy Burstein, Execute Windows Workflow Rules without Workflow
http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/bursteg/archive/2006/10/11/RuleExecutionWithoutWorkflow.aspx

Guy Burstein, Build workflow rules using Code Dom and Rules API
http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/bursteg/archive/2006/12/04/RulesWithCodeDom.aspx

MSDN, Learning Workflow Foundation
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee373755.aspx

MSDN, Selecting Workflow Type
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd756424.aspx

MSDN, How to Choose Your Workflow Model in WF
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768563.aspx

MSDN, Windows Workflow Foundation: Creating a Custom Composite Activity
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd177566.aspx

MSDN, WF Scenarios Guidance: SharePoint and Workflow
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc748597.aspx

MSDN, WF Scenarios Guidance: Presentation Flow
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd557867.aspx

MSDN, WF Scenarios Guidance: Human Workflow
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc709416.aspx

MSDN, WF Scenarios Guidance: Workflow Services
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc825354.aspx

Parallel Programming with .NET 3.5

How do you speed up the iterative activities in your program? May be routines that queries a chunk of data and processes 1 by 1. Sometimes there are scenarios where you have optimized your code to the maximum, indexed your tables, moved dynamic queries to stored procs etc. and yet you need to make it more faster.

Parallel Extensions for .NET 3.5 SP1 on DevLabs
This is officially shipped with .NET Framework 4. If you're using .NET 3.5 SP1, however, you can still obtain an unsupported release of Parallel Extensions. It's available as part of the Reactive Extensions (Rx) DevLabs release, in the System.Threading.dll.

In order to use the features with .NET 3.5 applications, you will need to add a reference to the back ported standalone DLL named System.Threading.dll. This additional step is not present with .NET 4, since the parallel technology is baked into core CLR components.

You can download the libraries via Parallel Extensions for .NET 3.5 SP1 on DevLabs.

MSDN Magazine, Parallel Performance: Optimize managed code for Multi-Core machines
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163340.aspx

MSDN Forums, Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/parallelextensions/threads

Parallel Computing > Learn > Parallel Computing Videos
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/concurrency/bb896010.aspx

MSDN Reactive Extensions and Parallel Extensions
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pfxteam/archive/2009/11/19/9925951.aspx

MSDN Parallel Computing, Essential Downloads
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/concurrency/bb896007.aspx

Channel 9, Parallel Extensions
http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/Parallel+Extensions/

Why not google apps?

Everybody talks about financial crisis these days while very few been performing well. I was wondering how that is possible instead of blaming marketers, sales, managers, engineers and so on. So what I wanted to find out was something that can reduce the overheads, costs, or that can increase the productivity, profit without going for layoffs.

Even if its a small-scale non-profit organization, still we need to have an office suite, email client environment, contacts and calendar sharing etc with colleagues, and sometimes even with important clients, just to keep the ball going.

For all this, the only thing that comes into our mind is Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook and Exchange Server. And the best part is we look for something cheap options as well. I'm not an “anti-microsoft” guy, but if I say that Microsoft doesn't come in “Cheap”, you all would agree with me.

Why not Google Apps as an alternative? Almost everybody who uses Yahoo, Hotmail have a Gmail account as well. Even when IE has a small textbox as the search box, still people compelled to type Google.com in the address bar to search things. So you can see how much you are addicted to Google products.

Try Google Apps, Its simple, its easy, and its surprising!

You can find more information about Google Apps in Business Page. Going forward, you can use all this with your Microsoft Outlook.

Some big big companies think about Microsoft and Google Apps. May be this will encourage you switching to either Microsoft or Google Apps or perhaps both ;)