Codeguru Update eNewsletter – December 9th, 2008





CodeGuru.com

Earthweb.com Network
Tuesday December 9, 2008


This Week’s Topics






Comments from the Editor


In the United States, “Black Friday” is the big shopping day after
Thanksgiving. This year, the gaming console battles among Sony, Nintendo,
and Microsoft are once again in full swing. Nintendo Wiis continue to be
in limited supply (and the Wii Fit is in even more limited supply). Of
note, however, is that Microsoft’s Xbox is surging. Microsoft had dropped
the entry point for Xbox 360s to under $200 and the move seems to be
paying off in sales. Sales are estimated to be up by 25 percent over 2007
for Black Friday. More importantly, sales seem to be 3-to-1 higher than
PlayStation 3 consoles.


One of the interesting things about Xbox 360s is Microsoft’s Content Creators club that allows anyone to
create games for the Xbox by using Microsoft’s XNA and the XNA Game Studio
Express edition. In fact, you can download the game studio along with an
Express version of Visual C# and be coding games for the Xbox 360 at no
real cost. You’ll need to pay a small fee to upload games to Microsoft and
Xbox Live, but on the flip side, if your game is accepted, you might also
make money from it.


Even more interesting about developing with XNA is that the games you
create can also target the Zune player or the standard desktop. XNA is
even supported on Microsoft’s surface devices. With the wider platform
support for XNA, you might find it worth looking at for multi-media
projects that don’t include games.


Until next week…

Brad!
—————————
Bradley L. Jones
www.CodeGuru.com
webmaster@codeguru.com
—————————



Recently Published Books

For those of you keeping up by reading
books. The following are just a few of the new books that have been
recently released. If you’ve read any of these, feel free to write a
review to be posted on CodeGuru. See the submission
guidelines
.


Pro
Sync Framework

By
Singh and Kanjilal for Apress
340 pages for $49.99


Microsoft
SQL Server 2008 Step by Step

By Mike Hotek for Microsoft Press
520
pages for $49.99 w/ CD


Programming
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

By Steger, Snyder, et. al. for Microsoft Press
608 pages for
$59.99


New & Updated Articles on CodeGuru

Following are short descriptions of new
articles on CodeGuru. If you are interested in submitting your own article
for inclusion on the site, then you will find guidelines here.


Exploring
the Oslo Repository

By Jeffrey Juday
Walk through examples and see how existing
Repository models are constructed using the M language, how the models are
stored in a SQL database, and how to query the SQL database for model
information.


SQLiteTbl,
a C++ Class that Provides a CRecordSet-Like Interface to
SQLite

By Brad
Kremer
Explore a CRecordSet-like interface to a SQLite database table.


Using
a Pair Class as Effecient Key Objects

By hankdane
Learn about a comparison
that uses a class capturing individual primitive data types as against
rendering the data in a String.


ASP.NET
MVC 101

By Jani
Jdrvinen
ASP.NET has its drawbacks, and to counter these, Microsoft is
preparing a new technology called ASP.NET MVC.


Online
Updates with VB.NET

By Richard Newcombe
With custom applications getting bigger and
more involved, there is very often a need to supply updates for them.
There is also a need to provide them as quickly as possible. Learn how to
do this.


Discussion Groups

Check
out the CodeGuru discussion forums

Forums include Visual C++, General C++,
Visual Basic, Java, General Technology, C#, ASP.NET, XML, Help Wanted, and
much, much, more!

… HOT THREADS …


VC++
10 impact on existing code? (VC++)


MSFlexgrid
– Highlight a line (VB 6)


Existing
standard and msvc10 (VC++)


New Articles on Developer.com

How
Portal Standards Enable Reuse

By Jeffrey Ryan
As an IT professional,
it is likely that you have heard portal buzz words including JSR 168 and
WSRP. But if you are like many, you may not understand the differences or
the benefits of these complementary portal standards.


Recovering
from Disaster Through Project Management

By Michelle LaBrosse
When disaster
strikes, don’t leave home without Project Management. Explore seven
Project Management rules to help you when you find yourself looking for a
magic wand to turn disaster into recovery.


Cleaner
Code with the PMD Eclipse Plug-In

By Scott Nelson
The Eclipse PMD plug-in
finds code that isn’t up to the standards you define, improving the code’s
consistency and preventing the avoidable production bugs

More by Author

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