"This network connection does not exist."

It doesn’t?  Where’d did it go? Did it ever exist?

Hello?

(I’m getting this error when trying to establish a remote desktop connection to another Vista PC)

It’s written using .NET 3.5 — all WPF (except for a file dialog … :) ).

You can find out more here:

I’ve used some elements of old posts to make it efficient to show thumbnails and some other tricks of WPF. Now that I’m done, I’ll see if there’s anything new and interesting that I’ve discovered.

Source code is available as well. For more info, go here.

I look forward to a new generation of web applications. What about you?

I have a number of new subscription options that you can use if you’re having the problem I’ve noticed:

I believe that switching to any of these should resolve the problem. Note that I have also added a comments feed.

It’s not that the old posts have changed (it’s easy to confirm that the pubDate element hasn’t changed), and it’s not that the actual RSS feed is incorrect … it’s something odd that’s up with Google reader.

Sorry about any inconvenience it may have caused. If you notice the behavior using other feed readers, leave a comment and I’ll look into it more.

(I hadn’t ever noticed that Notepad is able to directly open Internet files if the file path is preceded with http. Cool.).

Here’s the warning dialog that was displayed when I clicked "Sync Movies":

All existing songs, movies and TV shows will be removed and replaced with movies from my iTunes library? What happens to the songs and TV shows? Huh?

I use Media Monkey to manage my iPod’s music collection as iTunes is TERRIBLE on Windows for managing music, playing music, searching music … pretty much everything it does is sub-par and odd. But, this?!

Does Apple secretly have a guidebook internally, "Apple Inhumane Interface Guideline for Developing Mediocre Windows Applications: A Simple Guide to Getting People to Hating Microsoft Windows More."

Unfortunately, Media Monkey isn’t able to manage movie/video files.

I’m not willing to click "Sync Movies" if it should wipe out all of the songs I have. It takes hours to copy them all back.

In this example, the “Z” drive is mapped to a “Personal” folder on a server named “Home”.

If you want to store for example a UNC path to a file rather than a drive letter, you’ll need to convert the “Z” drive to the corresponding UNC root path. Here’s the C# code I wrote to do this:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.IO;

namespace WiredPrairie.Samples
{
    public static class Pathing
    {
        [DllImport("mpr.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode, SetLastError = true)]
        public static extern int WNetGetConnection(
            [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPTStr)] string localName, 
            [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPTStr)] StringBuilder remoteName, 
            ref int length);
        /// <summary>
        /// Given a path, returns the UNC path or the original. (No exceptions
        /// are raised by this function directly). For example, "P:\2008-02-29"
        /// might return: "\\networkserver\Shares\Photos\2008-02-09"
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="originalPath">The path to convert to a UNC Path</param>
        /// <returns>A UNC path. If a network drive letter is specified, the
        /// drive letter is converted to a UNC or network path. If the 
        /// originalPath cannot be converted, it is returned unchanged.</returns>
        public static string GetUNCPath(string originalPath)
        {
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(512);
            int size = sb.Capacity;

            // look for the {LETTER}: combination ...
            if (originalPath.Length > 2 && originalPath[1] == ':')
            {
                // don't use char.IsLetter here - as that can be misleading
                // the only valid drive letters are a-z && A-Z.
                char c = originalPath[0];
                if ((c >= 'a' && c <= 'z') || (c >= 'A' && c <= 'Z'))
                {
                    int error = WNetGetConnection(originalPath.Substring(0, 2), 
                        sb, ref size);
                    if (error == 0)
                    {                        
                        DirectoryInfo dir = new DirectoryInfo(originalPath);

                        string path = Path.GetFullPath(originalPath)
                            .Substring(Path.GetPathRoot(originalPath).Length);
                        return Path.Combine(sb.ToString().TrimEnd(), path);
                    }
                }
            }
            
            return originalPath;
        }
    }
}

All of the magic takes place in a Windows API function call, WNetGetConnection.

I’m using this function so that I can verify that given two file names, I can be assured that they are pointing to the same physical location. (Is “Z:\Backups\Backup1.zip” the same as “\\home\Personal\Backups\Backup1.zip”).

Something simple?

What happens after the results is presented? Can the user filter and refine the results to find exactly what they want? Are they forced to use an "advanced" mode? Or, scroll through pages upon pages of results hoping to find the right match?

If you’re interested in making a better search, read Pattern: Refining Search from Looks Good Works Well.

One of the most recent filtering searches I’ve used is from NewEgg. I was trying to find a new quiet graphics card to replace the hair drier model I’ve currently got installed. It’s clear that NewEgg is attempting to cater to many types of users. They have three different types of searches! The one with the most potential, but doesn’t necessarily follow all of the suggestions in the blog post linked above is the Guided Search. What I like about this search is that it provides feedback before I make a selection. For example, in the screen shot, I can see that there are 6 graphics cards that are priced between $10 – $25. If I click on that link, the list is updated with a new set of choices.

The Advanced Search takes the old school approach, one where you can almost imagine the SQL query that is constructed when the user hits the "Search" button. My simple complaint with this one is that my searches usually end up with no results as I have "over-specified" my requirements. I won’t know this until I hit the search button though. Worse, I don’t often know what to remove or simply in the search. It’s too hit and miss.

Finally, they offer a "Power Search." This search expands the drop-down list idea and allows the user to multiple select from each category. Again, until the search is completed, there’s no sense of whether a search will generate any results. Hardly a spectacular user experience.

Although not perfect, the Guided Search is the most discoverable and friendly search that NewEgg offers to the general consumer. It uses Ajax nicely to update the results. One major challenge with the Guided Search from a user perspective is that the list is constantly changing, which means that the user must reorient themselves after each click.

Do you have any favorite search and filtering experiences you’d care to share? Leave a comment.

• A new Open Source portal
• Flex 3 is ready and final. Flex Builder 3, which you’ll want if you are serious about building Flex applications, is US$249.
• Adobe AIR is released

The Flex team’s blog announcement has more details and a lot of links to get you started.

Is it just me, or are none of the demo applications very compelling?

The biggest change from "yesterday" is that it might be easier today to write a cross-platform application — as long as AIR/Flex supports what you want to do outside of the browser. I’d like Adobe to offer the "Express" edition of Flex Builder so I can build things for free, just like Microsoft does with Visual Studio.

Are you excited about this "AIR"? (Or Flex?)

By the end of the first episode, after laughing and enjoying it thoroughly, she gave this show the "approved" nod and now looks for new episodes to show up on the DVR. Since we’re just catching up and watching some re-runs, we’ve been able to watch quite a few episodes recently.

Starting February 25th, 8pm et/pt, Top Gear’s new season begins to air on BBC America. Sure, they talk of cars that aren’t available in the states, but real car talk is only a small part of the show. The hosts make "car talk" fun.

The key features for me that I needed:

• Runs as a Windows Service — even if no one is logged onto the computer, the application is still monitoring
• Runs on Windows 2003 Server (or Windows Home Server).
• Can send e-mail alerts when motion is controlled with a configurable options (like the maximum frequency of e-mails sent within a period).
• Support of my IP based cameras.
• Reasonable CPU usage (about 30-40% constant on my home server to monitor 4 cameras).
• Continually updated — not a dead product
• Remote access via a web page (the product does this well, but it’s not an attractive web page — just functional).
• Priced competitively — this product is priced almost too low — at $49.95 for the unlimited package.
• Stable — I haven’t had a single problem with the stability of the product in months.

It has tons of options for configuration:

Tons of settings for each individual camera:

Here’s the built in web application (it’s ActiveX or Java based):

It even works with my Airlink 250W wireless IP camera (with a few tricks):

Even though the main application user interface is not very "professional" — it’s a killer program and if you need something like this, I’d strongly recommend you consider it.

Windows only.