All developers creating timerjobs must have missed to option to execute a timer job or to reschedule it.
I guess everyone has developed a little console application, stsadm extension or even a powershell script they used to kick off a timerjob immediatly. Well, maybe the lazy (=smart) ones amongst us just downloaded something from codeplex to solve the lack of this functionality in SharePoint.

The good news is that SharePoint 2010 now has these options in the Central Adminstration by default.
 

The new 2010 version of SharePoint has a so called Client Object Model which you can use in your Silverlight applications. It also comes with a simple webpart that allows you to show a .xap file stored in one of your document libraries.

Someone recently asked me if i still programmed for Silverlight, which i haven't done for a while since combining Silverlight and SharePoint was far from perfect. So i decided to create a simple Silverlight application to see how this Client Object Model works, the applications goal was to enumerate all lists of a specific type on my SharePoint installation.

In Visual Studio 2010 Beta i started a new Silverlight application and dropped a few controls on the drawing canvas. The last time i've been working with Silverlight it only had a few controls and everything had to be done in the xaml code, the designer in Visual Studio couldn't be used for xaml at that time.

To use the client object model you need to reference two files: Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Silverlight.dll and Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Silverlight.Runtime.dll . Both files can be found under %SHAREPOINTROOT%\TEMPLATES\LAYOUTS\ClientBin\ .
Directly after adding these files i stumbled upon the first problem. VS2010 showed an exclamationmark next to the references and complained that it couldn't find the files. It turns out that VS2010 Beta has a problem with long file paths, so moving the project closer to the root and reopening it solved the problem.

After the references are added the client object model is available for use. You can create a new ClientContext passing the url of your SharePoint site and start accessing webs,lists etc.
When your application is complete just upload the .xap file to a document library and add a Silverlight webpart to your page, mine looked like this:  

Now i just need some design skills :)

SharePoint 2010 has a new developer dashboard that, if enabled, renders a lot off usefull information below the normal site contents.
There are a few ways to enable the developer dashboard:

• Stsadm –o setproperty –pn developer-dashboard –pv ondemand (or “on” or “off”)
• using PowerShell
• using the object model.

Since the webpart from my previous post "needed" to do something "usefull" i went for the last option.

Only a few lines off code are needed to enable/disable the dashboard. The OnDemand setting set below adds a small button to the top right side of your sharepoint side to toggle the dashboard on/off.

Seems simple enough, but after pressing the Update button on my webpart i received a Security Exception, even if wrapped inside SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges .

I started doubting myself and turned to Google who led me to a Technet post explaning that this is by design:

"NOTE:  This code will not work in a web part if the web part is hosted in any site except the central admin site.  We specifically check for and block that scenario because the developer dashboard is a farm-wide setting.  If you code it up in a web part and try to execute it in a non-central admin site, it will throw a security exception"

So i changed the target site on the webpart project and deployed it to the Central Administration, added the webpart and it worked right away.

I just fired up Visual Studio 2010 Beta and started the wizard to create a new Visual Webpart project for SharePoint 2010.
SharePoint 2010 has the new concept of Sandboxed Solutions, but this options is greyed out.

The call to this.Page.LoadControl() can only function if the code is fully trusted, so this would never work if it was a sandboxed solution.

Looking at the code you'll also see there's no need to add ajax fixes anymore, you can just add updatepanels etc since webparts are now ajax enabled out of the box.

Since my SharePoint 2010 technical preview installation under VMware isn't exactly the fastest thing i decided to go on and install the beta directly onto the Windows 7 64bit running on my Thinkpad T61.
Not needing to run a virtual pc saves a lot of overhead, and since my laptop only has 4GB of ram this helps a lot.

Installing SharePoint 2010 is easy, but compared to a normal, supported, installation a few extra steps are required:

• Extract the Sharepoint image
• Download and install the prerequisites manually
• Add a setting to config.xml in order to allow installation on a client os
• Manually activate the required windows features
• Install the FIX FOR: WCF: Sharepoint Shared Services Roll-up update

If you skip installing the WCF fix the SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard will throw an "Unrecognized attribute 'allowInsecureTransport' error

You can now install SharePoint 2010 on your Windows 7 (or Vista SP1) based workstation. According to Microsoft a standalone installation is the only option, but a quick search on Google will reveil that this is not entirely true, and since installing on a client os isn't supported anyway...

References:

• MSDN Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint Server
• MSDN Blog Installation notice for the SharePoint Server Public Beta on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Windows 7

I just uninstalled the Office 2010 Technical Preview from my laptop and installed the Beta version.
After the installation it needed a product key change in order to activate Office, no problem i thought.

However when trying to change the product key i received the error "The setup controller has encountered a problem during install." 

A quick search reveiled that the solution is to run "C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\OFFICE14\Office Setup Controller\setup.exe" as an administrator.

Microsoft just released the second beta of IE8, which is described on the download site as "Faster, Easier, More Private, and More Secure."

The new features are Compatibility View, InPrivate Browsing, Accelerators, Web Slices, SmartScreen Filter and Search Suggestions.
The compatibility view enables you to switch between the available render modes (Quircks mode, IE7 mode and IE8 Standards compliance mode).
With the press of a button you can enter InPrivate Browsing mode, in this mode IE doesn't save things like url history, cookies, forms autocomplete information etc.

The standard IE8 beta 2 download replaces IE7 on your pc so i installed a version from The Internet Explorer Collection. This download contains standalone installations for all IE versions, including the new IE8 Beta2.
I've already experienced the first crash, but thats might be a good thing since automatic crash recovery is one of the other improved area's of IE8

Update: after installing the béta the popup-blocker is screwed in both IE7 & IE8. De-installing the béta from the Internet Explorer Collection and installing the "normal" IE8 beta fixed this. The disadvantage is that i've now lost IE7, but so far IE8 seems to be working ok.

Microsoft Live Labs released a first version of PhotoSynth last week, a new tool that uses multiple photos to create a 3D model. After signing in on the PhotoSynth website with a live account, choosing a username and downloading an ActiveX control you're ready to go. Off cource i didn't watch the introductionary video and just started taking pictures of the Logica office in Rotterdam. The PhotoSynth tool is extremely easy: all you have to do is select some pictures on your disk, these pictures can come from any source and don't have to be made using the same camera, resolution or even on the same day. There are no configuration options, just give a name and description for your project, select a licence type, and PhotoSynth starts figuring out which foto's belong together and how everything is related. After completion you (and the whole world) can watch the result on the PhotoSynth site.

Like I said i just started to make picture of my office which didn't give the best results possible. To create a good PhotoSynth you'll need to take quite a lot of pictures from different angles and make sure they overlap, watch the video for some tips. I'm currently uploading a second attempt from outside the building. For this synth a college joined and we made 144 pictures. Unfortunatly the tool still says "Publishing Synth" after almost an hour, so i might have to start it again. If it's finished the results wil be visible on my PhotoSynth Profile Page