OpenUp - WCF Visualizers, WPF Recursion Controls and CAB WorkItem Visualization

Eyal Vardi has submitted three new open source projects to OpenUp:

CAB WorkItem Visualizations is upgrade to Sample Visualizations. this Visualizations show the WorkItem hierarchy, Worksapce, SmartPart, Command, Events, State and Items.
CAB WorkItem Visualizations contains 3 main windows:
1. CAB WorkItem Visualizations hierarchy tree.
2. Properties Windows.
3. Control Visualizer, show the Workspace and SmartPart.

WPF Recursion Controls presents a simple language for drawing pictures that illustrates
the power of data abstraction and closure, and also exploits higher-order procedures
in an essential way. The language is designed to make it easy to experiment with
patterns such as the ones in figure , which are composed of repeated elements that
are shifted and scaled. In this language, the data objects being combined are represented
as procedures rather than as list structure.

WCF Visualizers - Visual Studio 2005 shipped with a very nice feature called debugger visualizers. In accordance with their names, debugger visualizers allow you to visually view useful information about objects during debug.
WCF Visualizers contain 5 visualizers:
1. Message Visualizer
2. ChannelDispatcher Visualizer
3. ServiceDescription Visualizer
4. ServiceHost Visualizer
5. ServiceEndpoint for the client side.

Thanks Eyal!

Shidonni - an Israeli, Silverlight based, Kids game.

Shidonni, an Israeli startup has released a preview of their new, Silverlight based, game for kids. The basic idea is that you draw a creature and then feed it and take care of it and its offspring. They really show the potential of Silverlight and what can be done with this technology on the web.

The guys there have done a great job and my kid played with it for a very long time :)

New projects in OpenUp -XSchedule, Timer and PhoneBook2008

Here are 3 more projects recently added to OpenUp, feel free to visit the projects site download them or even check out their code :)

Itamar Mula has submitted a project called XSchedule - a program which automatically build the schedule of a given school\university. The program will allow the user to define rules to guide the schedule building.Also, offering a dynamic and extensive UI abilities to view & manipulate the different objects in the schedule (staff, students, rooms, events etc). The program is build on .net framework 3.5, using WPF in the client. 

Yosef Arbiv has release a project called Timer - This is a timer that beeps after a given time (MM:SS). This program can run in the background (with a notify icon), or in a normal mode. 

Salim Marana has released PhoneBook2008, A Phone Book 2008 system that enables users to add/edit/search/delete records And make a call to specific phone number

Thanks to all the submitters!

WebCam control for WPF, Silverlight controls library and Duplicate images finder

Tamir Khason has contributed a great set of projects to OpenUp, Microsoft open source competition.

WebCam control for WPF:

Reusable WPF control to display high frame rate video such as WebCam or framegrabber DirectShow output. This control uses InteropBitmap introduced in .NET framework 3.5 and managed DirectShow P/Invoke. This control does not uses DirectShow.net library, so it's completely independent.

Silverlight controls library:

This is the library of WPF (and not only WPF) controls, Tamir is missing in Silverlight 2.0.

Duplicate images finder:

This application can search through your images collection and find duplicates not only by file name or size, but also by visual similarity. Its done by implementation of some public domain algorithm to do its work.

Cheers Tamir :)

TFSUndoUtility, an open source utility that finds locked pending changes in VSTS.

We have received submission of several projects to the OpenUp open source competition and we are updating the competition site as I write this post.

Here is the first project submitted to the competition:

Project Name: TFSUndoUtility
Project Description: Neat little utility that scans a teamsystem source-control tree and finds all locked pending changes. With a simple double-click, you can undo the change, thus unlocking the file (given you have the sufficient permissions,of course). Very useful if running a single-checkout project, and someone "forgets" to check-in his file before going abroad for two weeks...
Project URL: http://www.codeplex.com/TFSUndoUtility
Developer: Natan Gamoran

Thank you Natan!

OpenUp – Share your code and win a trip to PDC

We have just lunched a new developer competition called OpenUp.

The basic idea is to create a cool open source project and to enter it into the competition.

The projects should be release to the open source through CodePlex and under the MSPL license. We have a web site that hosts the competition and references the projects in CodePlex.

As for the prizes-

· Every one that submits a project gets a cool T-shirt.

· Every month we will pick the most popular project submitted that month from CodePlex, and the owner of the project will get a Mobile Memory Mouse 8000.

· At the end of the competition we will pick the all-time popular, submitted project and the owner gets to go to PDC on our expense.

As an open source developer for a very long time now, I can tell you it feels great to share your code and ideas with the open source community. (and it is good for the CV as well :)

So think of a great idea, release the code as open source, and send the details to openup@microsoft.com.