Wavyx

I’m currently examining ticketing systems. You know this thing who replies to you “You request #330248 has been submitted into our system,…. we’ll get back to you”. This may sound impersonal but Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll guess you already know Twitter (if not you can refer to Twitter for dummies). Initially, it is a social communication tool to answer the fundamental question: “What are you doing?”.  So you are not really convinced? I understand but there is actually a growing buzz about Twitter, its community and all the ecosystem or related tools. But let’s analyse the specifities of this new media.

A new media

When you read the homepage of Twitter.com, you may still wonder what so different about this communication tool. You can read more about “How Twitter was born“, but I’ll give here my vision of what is this media.

Let’s put it like that:  blog + instant messaging/sms + tribe = Twitter ! It sounds simple but Read the rest of this entry »

So I was trying to send a proper multi-recipient email from my Google Apps Gmail. All is configured to allow google to handle the mail (all the MX entries). I can succesfully send in and out mail “to:” my other addresses.  And yes it’s really easy for people who want to have their own emails.

But here comes the BUG: on a google apps domain (not gmail), if you try to send an email with  to: me@mydomain.com and bcc: allmyfriends@domains.com, the bcc adresses do not receive the mail !

I tried many times.  From and to my usual gmail account, all is working perfectly. But using google apps  gmail version (tried with 2 differente domains), I still cannot send email using the to/bcc mails to protect privacy (see gmail help).

I just filled the gmail support form, we’ll see how quickly google fixes that. (let’s hope I didn’t miss a small config step;)

UPDATE: still no answer from google, but it is not a bug, it’s a feature The mail only arrived 18 hours later ! (of course I was not so patient and I sent it through my own mail server)

Last week I tried to share a couple of posts with you… maybe too much ? For the first time, I even crossed the line of 1 post by day :s  But is it noise or signals, useless or interesting posts to you ?

I believe a blog is a two-way communication tool, so I would like to know your opinion about the content, shape, subjects, … I talk about.

What are you interested in? Which post do you skip reading? Are there specific topics you want to discuss here ?

Feel free to engage in this “white card” post, either in english or in french   and I will definitely get back to you.

SQLite is a well known alternative for developers wishing to provide a light database embedded with the application. Moreover SQLite is in the public domain and thus allows many developpers to rely on this SQL database engine.

For .Net developpers who needs a local databse, you can use SQLite in application developped in C# or VB.net by using one of the following wrappers:

1. System.Data.SQLite is the original SQLite database engine. It is a complete ADO.NET 2.0 provider and can be used as full replacement for the original sqlite3.dll. It has no linker dependency on the .NET runtime so it can be distributed independently of .NET.
2. Finisar.SQLite was the original ADO.NET Data Provider for accessing SQLite-Databases using the .NET-Framework. It is no longer under active development and has been replaced by System.Data.SQLite.
3. SQLite.NET wrapper  is a simple wrapper composed by a couple of classes in C# to allow access to SQLite databases. This is not an ADO.NET provider, but instead it provides a simple set of methods to access and retrieve data in a result set class.

I recommend this 2 quick tutorials to get started with SQLite in a .Net environment: SQLite on .NET – Get up and running in 3 minutes and Using sqlite with .NET.

Last but not least, if you need some visual database manager (GUI), you can try SQLite2008 Manager, SQLite Administrator or SQLiteTool. See also SQLite Trac for a more comprehensive list or this link.

When you use .Net, you sometimes need some old win32 api’s. Even if a managed environment is really appreciable and confortable, there are some part of windows you can’t access from C# or VB .net code. Then you often have no other choice than rely on old windows system calls.

This generally implies a lot of marshalling and interop to wrap unmanaged windows functions into nice managed .Net namespaces. And this is also true for mobile developpers interacting with Windows CE dll, see Interop for .Net Compact Framework.

I just discovered that  a couple of Win32 functionnalities are already bundled in the Microsoft.Win32 namespace of the .Net framework.

Another great resource for COM interop is the P/Invoke wiki !

And for those who are (still) more familiar with the old school windows functions, you can refer to this map to find your way in the .Net environment.