Enhancing Skype

If you're a Skype fan, you know it can be used to make internet phonecalls. But did you know about all the cool tools you can use to enhance it? Checkout my latest article on WindowsDevCenter.com.

What is ASP.NET?

If you are new to ASP.NET, you might want to take a look at a recent article I wrote for O'Reilly Network. Here is the scoop:

What Is ASP.NET by Wei-Meng Lee -- Part of the .NET Framework, ASP.NET allows developers to build dynamic web apps and web services using compiled languages like VB.NET and C#. Wei-Meng Lee provides a look under the ASP.NET hood, describing how it works, its improved support in areas like state management and tracing and debugging, and important new features in version 2.0.

MVP Summit 2005

I will be attending the Microsoft Global MVP Summit at Redmond from 28th Sep to 1st Oct 2005. If you are also attending, I would be happy to meet up with you and perhaps we can have a chat over coffee. See you!

Writing A Custom Membership Provider for your ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site

If you have an ASP.NET Web site that stores any registration or log in information for your users, you probably know that the Membership provider in ASP.NET 2.0 uses a SQL Server Express 2005 database. But what if you want to use something else? This article will show you to use your own data source for storing membership information.

Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart Published!

I just received my advance copy of the Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart today; looks very good and feels great!. This is a book that I spent a good five-month working on, rewriting a couple of times to ensure that it is not only useful to beginning VB programmers, but more importantly it should be a effective jumpstart for VB6 programmers. I had the honor of working with Jay Roxe (Product Manager of Visual Basic at Microsoft), who provided a lot of feedbacks and advice for the book. If you are new to Visual Basic and want to work on the .NET platform, give it a look and let me know what you think of it.

Thanks to the various technical reviewers and advisors - Robert Green (formerly Visual Basic team at Microsoft), Jeff Barr (Amazon.com), Paul Yuknewicz (Microsoft), and Joseph Binder (Microsoft).

The new iPod nano

Apple has just released the incredibly small and pencil-thin iPod nano. With a 1.5-inch (diagonal) color LCD with LED backlight and weighing a mere 1.5 ounces, the new iPod nano comes in two versions - 2GB (US$199) and 4GB(US$249). There are also two colors to choose from - White and Black. Enough said, check it out yourself!

WinFS StoreSpy

If you recently downloaded the Beta 1 bits of WinFS, then you really need to try out the included WinFS StoreSpy application. Using StoreSpy, you could easily search for files stored in your WinFS stores by executing queries against it.

The StoreSpy application is located in the C:\winfsbeta1\Unsupported\StoreSpy folder. Have fun!

Using Your Webcam for Surveillance

Webcams are useful for videoconferencing, but videoconferencing has not really caught on. So if you own a webcam, you know that most of the time it is lying around gathering dust. But if you have a webcam, you can put it to better use than videoconferencing. In this article, I will show you how you can set up your webcam as a surveillance system using the appropriate hardware and software.

Create Data-Aware Applications in "Avalon"—the Windows Presentation Foundation

My third article in the Avalon series has recently published - check it out here. Here is the synopsis:

"In WPF you can bind UI elements to a wide variety of data sources, including XML data, Web services, as well as databases. Learn how data-binding works in the Windows Presentation Foundation with this sample project using an XML data source. "