This morning I was installing the Conferencing Add-in for Microsoft Outlook so I can set up VBUG Online Meetings and send out invitations direct from Outlook when I mentioned on Twitter that I'd been having problems with the Outlook process constantly running despite my having closed/shutdown Outlook.  This has been a really big annoyance for me for a while and I hadn't found the solution.  Thanks to the power of Twitter I've been able to sort this problem now and identify what was causing it.

Usually behaviour like this is attributed to a bad add-in running in Outlook.  Well I checked my list and found I had a couple of add-ins which I didn't recognize.  First was an iTunes Outlook add-in.  What was iTunes wanting with outlook, well I believe it is linked to the ability to sync calendar and contact information with my nano - something I've never wanted to do as I have a Windows Mobile 6 phone for that, so I removed that add-in.  Next was Xobni an outlook plugin which I was trying out but have decided to remove as I don't really need what it offers.  So now I tried running Outlook and exiting but found it was still leaving the process behind. 

One of the tweets I'd received mentioned Skype as a potential problem so I shut that down, fired up Outlook and then closed Outlook, checked in task manager and the process had successfully closed.  I then started Skype, then Outlook and then closed Outlook and checked and the process was still running.  After a little searching in the Skype forums I found the fix for my problem - http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=97020 - and it seems that the problem is known and it appears that it's just the way Skype works - what !! if I closed a program I don't expect another one to keep it running!

It appears that the View Outlook Contacts "feature" in Skype causes Outlook to remain running in the background.  The fix is to go into Skype, goto the View Menu and uncheck View Outlook Contacts.  If this option is greyed out you need to run Outlook, return to Skype while Outlook is running and the option should no longer be greyed out, allowing you to uncheck it.  Now Outlook shuts down and the process ends properly!

This "feature" is a problem in my mind - why can't Outlook Contacts get store in some form of cache in Skype so therefore not needing a permanent connection to Outlook?

The power of Twitter and social networking has helped me to fix this problem and I hope I can repay that in future through my interactions with Twitter, Facebook etc.  Special thanks go to @mehfuzh, @blowdart, @garyshort, @markjbrown, @recumbent and @james_a_hart who helped me out with some very useful time and tweets!

At the recent VBUG conference I had an issue with my video adapter in my laptop.  I arrived after sitting in traffic getting from one side of Reading to the other to get to TVP, and got through registration and went into Chicago 1 to prepare for the opening and keynote of the VBUG Conference.  I plugged my laptop into the equipment so I could present the opening section of the conference.  But found that although the display via the projection equipment was fine, the display on my laptop had resized my screen down to just a small 1024x768 resolution screen in the middle of my laptop screen :-(.  I was more than a little concerned by this as I was presenting again in Chicago 1 over the course of the two day conference, and back in June I had presented in Chicago 2 with no problems.  I spent a little while trying to get it to expand the display to the full width and height of my screen to no avail, and so decided to look at it later.

Later on during the day I found out what the problem was to do with an update to the nVidia driver (which I installed in July) settings changing a default setting relating to the way in which the display extended.  I managed to fix this minor issue and thought I'd post details for anyone else who has a similar setup to avoid the ensuing panic and frustration which built up as I tried to figure out what was wrong.

I have a Dell Latitude D820 and the graphics device in this setup is the nVidia Quadro NVS 120M 256MB. To get your display to expand to the full available screen no matter which resolution you are running under do the following:

Go to the nVidia Control Panel (This can be accessed via the context menu on the desktop or via Control Panel)

Select the Display option and then on the following screen:

Next Select Change the panel scaling

Next select "Use NVIDIA Scaling" to force the display to scale out to use the full screen available.

I hope this is useful to owners of this laptop graphics card, let me know if you've suffered this pain too.

Mike Volodarsky, a Program Manager on Microsoft's IIS Team, has published a great Blog Post on developing modules and handlers for IIS7 using .Net.  The post goes through how to decide which to develop, which tools you need and how to develop modules and handlers and deploy them to an IIS7 server.  This posting is well worth looking at if you are interested in IIS7 Development, http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/08/15/Developing-IIS7-web-server-features-with-the-.NET-framework.aspx.

This is the start of an IIS7 .Net Developer series, so keep an eye on Mike's blog for more content coming soon.

Recently Richard Costall and Dave McMahon gave a presentation at Community Leaders Day - an event for Community Leaders at Microsoft TVP, UK - on the subject of Podcasting. Indeed they even recorded a Podcast, showed us how to publish it and edit it Live in the session. They have made the podcast available to all and if it's something you are interested in I recommend a listen - http://www.nxtgenug.net/Podcasts.aspx?PodcastID=35.

While at DDD5 Dave McMahon caught up with me for an interview on IIS7 and my experiences of starting to speak on the circuit at national and local events. This podcast also contains interviews with attendees, speakers and organisers of DDD5, excellent work once again - to listen to the DDD5 podcast use this link - http://www.nxtgenug.net/Podcasts.aspx?PodcastID=36 also why you're there why not check out their other podcasts

DDD5

I got into work this morning and checked my feeds and noticed this post - Solution/Hotfix: Developing web applications using Visual Studio 2005 and IIS7 from the Web Development Tools Team.

A hotfix has been released for Visual Studio 2005 to aid F5 debugging with Visual Studio 2005 and it also enables debugging with Vista Home Versions! Check it out now!

A query I had at the VBUG Leeds meeting last Wednesday was on the subject of FrontPage Server Extensions(FPSE) for IIS7. There is a beta of these available currently and they will work with Windows Vista and Longhorn Server Beta 3 (or should that now be Windows Server 2008 Beta 3?). To download them use this link: http://www.iis.net/downloads/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1460

For further information on the reason why FPSE were not included with Windows Vista and Longhorn Server Beta 3 see Robert McMurray's Blog where he has two detailed posts about the FPSE for IIS7:

• FrontPage Server Extensions on Vista and Longhorn
• FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions Beta for Longhorn and Vista

I was talking to a colleague the other day and introduced him to Code Snippets. This is one of many features which are in Visual Studio 2005 and I'm sure that there are many other I don't know about but would find useful. My colleague was amazed at the simplicity but also the potential of this feature. I have developed my own snippets and they are very easy to do. To use code snippets, from within VS2005, go to Edit -> Intellisense -> Insert Snippet and this displays the snippet manager for you to select a snippet from. Snippets are great for removing the repetitiveness of entering the same structures many times, i.e. property constructs, if statements and try catch loops. Take a look at them and let me know what you think.

Also let me know your favourite tip/treat for Visual Studio 2005.

I have recently enabled a feature on my Blog which activates Internet Explorer 7's RSS Icon. This line of HTML:

<link rel='alternate' type='application/rss+xml' title='' href=''/>

alerts IE7 to the fact that this site has a RSS feed. I currently have this in my Master Page and therefore it is included on all pages in my Blog. You can put this line of code in multiple times in the of your page for each feed that you publish, remembering to give each a different title and href, either on individual pages or across your site as a whole. Users of IE7 can then use the feature to add my Blog RSS Feed to their IE RSS Feeds Syndicator.