When applications like KeyHole will become defacto cartographic applications, someone, somewhere will have the bright idea of putting huge ads on their building' roof.

How about ads on highways? They will have a T form, displaying their contents in front and above!

I can't wait to see the first guy to ask his girlfriend in marriage via KeyHole, spelling "Martha, will you marry me?" on some park's ground...

I've been playing with KeyHole for a few days, and though such tools or web sites have been out there for years, I must admit KeyHole is simply amasing. Its smooth transitions, road map display abilities, sharp and precise images and placeholder sharing possibilities are incredible.

For example, once you have KeyHole installed, I can give you a link to my home, like this one:

Home.kml (.72 KB)

As you can see, both my neighbours have a pool (grin). And then, you could travel up to Xceed's headquarters by clicking on this:

Xceed.kml (.75 KB)

A very neet residential area, surrounded by two golf courses and a huge park, right in the middle of Longueuil. I often compare Longueuil to a mini-Redmond. And finally, how about a higher view of the greater Montreal's south shore:

HighView.kml (2.26 KB)

The next step is building KML files for your clients or invitees that smoothly shows them step by step instructions on how to get from the airport or their house, to your business headquarters or your open house party!

For those playing with the newly released Avalon CTP and Chris Anderson's XamlPad application, and are using other Visual Styles than Windows XP (TGTSoft's StyleXP or patched UXTheme.dll), you can follow these instructions:

• Go in folder "C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes\Luna"
• Copy file "PresentationFramework.Luna.NormalColor.FxStyles"
• Go back one folder, then into your current theme's folder
• Paste the copied file
• Rename the file as follows:
• Replace "Luna" with the name of the "msstyles" file
• Replace "NormalColor" with the name of the folder under "Shell" which matches the active color scheme.

For example, I'm running with the CodeOpus theme with the Dusk color scheme:

Within "C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes", I copied "Luna\PresentationFramework.Luna.NormalColor.FxStyles" to "CodeOpus\PresentationFramework.CodeOpus.Dusk22.FxStyles". Notice that the color scheme part matches the subfolder name, not the color scheme name ("CodeOpus\Shell\Dusk22" in my case).

BTW, XamlPad's ClickOnce does not work within FireFox. Simply launch it from IE.

So the WinAmp adventure is over? Pfffe! That won't stop me from using WinAmp for listening to di.fm while working! Though I feel WMP10 and the WMA format does a better job at ripping my CDs (quality/size ratio), I've always had a better experience with WinAmp for listening to streamed audio.

Lluis Sanchez Gual, of the Mono project, created a class library for generating IL in a higher level form than System.Reflexion.Emit. It's kinda CodeDom for IL!

As you may expect it, I installed Konfabulator today. Though the installation process it smooth, the look is great, and the working experience is very interesting, I must admit seeing this in my Task Manager is somewhat of a turn down:

One process per widget, and an extra one for the tray icon and menu... is it worst it? Though CPU usage seems reasonable (compared with Desktop Sidebar for example), and the sum of memory usage averages what Outlook is using by itself, I'm left with the impression that this Windows version was made out of a hack, and no real "Windows integration" effort was made. On a developer's machine, I'm doomed to miss that memory one day.

Seeing that UnixUtils folder under Konfabulator also gives me similar impressions:

Oh well, I'll give it a real try... but I'm afraid it will end up just like Desktop Sidebar... uninstalled!

Pixoria is about to launch a Windows version of Konfabulator (desktop customization app). Their web site displays notes from a Paleontologist observing two species (Apple vs Windows computers) for ten days (today is day 7), with a probable outcome of seeing both species running Konfabulator.

I've always been very geek on desktop customization... Can't wait to see this Windows version!

Nat Friedman writes a nice post about two development approaches: Getting nothing wrong versus getting it right. Though I know nothing about Muine, I can see the analogy with the software I developped (or at least what I try to achieve). While some competing products don't attack the ease of use and simply stick with a "most common features" list, I've always felt it was important to improve interface too. And that applies to class libraries as well. The Xceed Zip for .NET object-oriented design may require some getting used to, but you end up with obvious and short code. In fact, it's more "forgetting about the old interface" than "learning the new one".

Another good example is Money and Quicken: While they both fight to have all the features the other one has, the resulting applications are not addressing my needs. My wife and I split general expenses based on our salaries, and house expenses half and half. I'm stuck with Excel for managing all this. The personal finance software world needs a Muine of its own... I'm ready to live with its "wrongs"! Suggestions?