Take for example all of the keyboard shortcuts that you could be using today in Gmail while reading your mail.

I’ve known about a few of these and have tinkered with them in the past.  Seeing just how much you can do with it and having spent a little more time on it recently, I am definitely going to make an effort to use the keyboard as much as possible from now on in Gmail.

Here’s how:

Dim root As String
root = Right(Request.Url.Host, (Request.Url.Host.Length) - InStrRev(Request.Url.Host, "."))

Ajax-based data loading using jQuery.load() function in ASP.NET – Hajan Selmani takes a back to basics look at using jQuery to load partial chunks of HTML from a page using Ajax and insert them into the current page, providing a nice way of lighting up a web application with an ‘Ajax’ feel whilst easily maintaining non-ajax support.

The official Microsoft Kinect SDK beta is now out and available for download! Covered by Channel Nine Live Media, Microsoft Scientist Anoop Gupta made the announcement himself that after the long wait, users may now go to the official SDK website to download the latest software development kit for the Kinect camera.

Here are the features that will come with the Kinect SDK (taken from Microsoft SDK website):

“The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a programming toolkit for application developers. It enables the academic and enthusiast communities easy access to the capabilities offered by the Microsoft Kinect device connected to computers running the Windows 7 operating system.

The Kinect for Windows SDK beta includes drivers, rich APIs for raw sensor streams and human motion tracking, installation documents, and resource materials. It provides Kinect capabilities to developers who build applications with C++, C#, or Visual Basic by using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

Raw sensor streams

Access to raw data streams from the depth sensor, color camera sensor, and four-element microphone array enables developers to build upon the low-level streams that are generated by the Kinect sensor.

Skeletal tracking

The capability to track the skeleton image of one or two people moving within the Kinect field of view make it easy to create gesture-driven applications.

Advanced audio capabilities

Audio processing capabilities include sophisticated acoustic noise suppression and echo cancellation, beam formation to identify the current sound source, and integration with the Windows speech recognition API.

Sample code and documentation

The SDK includes more than 100 pages of technical documentation. In addition to built-in help files, the documentation includes detailed walkthroughs for most samples provided with the SDK.

Easy installation

The SDK installs quickly, requires no complex configuration, and the complete installer size is less than 100 MB. Developers can get up and running in just a few minutes with a standard standalone Kinect sensor unit (widely available at retail outlets).

This SDK is designed for non-commercial purposes only; a commercial version is expected to be available at a later date.”

Additional details about the SDK is that it is currently in beta, meaning it is not yet the actual finished product. Rather, Microsoft wants the opinion of the Kinect hackers/developers in finalizing the product. By keeping it in beta, Microsoft will then ask users to give their feedback concerning the SDK with the eventual hope of releaseing a Kinect SDK built for and with Kinect hackers.

There is also a commercial version coming out. Details are not yet final as to what the difference would be between the two versions of the Kinect.

Source: kinecthacks.com

By the way, if you still aren’t familiar with all of the cool things that HTML5 brings to the table you should definitely check out this free online book, Dive Into HTML5, by Mark Pilgrim.

When starting out with my recent project I had to pull from various resources to learn what these tools were capable of and how I could fit them all together. And while it doesn’t get into the HTML5 aspects of my project this article on creating a simple task list with ASP.NET, WCF and jQuery would have been very helpful to me in the beginning.

While the article is only Part 1 in a series, I think it will get you going in the right direction and will show you some of the power that you have on the client with the new jQuery data templates.  I must say that with the introduction of these templates you can truly offload a large amount of your logic down to the client which will provide for a much better (and faster) user experience.

Anyway, check out the article.  It’s short, to the point and offers the source code as a download too!

First you need to setup a simple PHP file that will serve as a template for your new page. Let’s say for example you have a club that you want to add as part of your navigation. Create a file called Club.php and put the following code in it:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Club
*/
?>
<?php header('Location: http://www.myclubsite.com');
      die();
?>

Then upload the file you created (Club.php) into /wp-content/themes/yourthemename/ where yourthemename is the name of the active theme for your site.

The final step is to create a new Page with the name that you want to show up in your navigation “My Club” based on the template that you just uploaded. You will see this template under the Template drop down menu in the page administration interface along with “Default Template”, etc.

Publish and you have a page that automatically redirects to whatever the URL you specified in your PHP template file. I create a separate one of these for any of these “redirect pages” that I want to setup.

It’s easy and it works!

I was happy to find that you can simply change the attachment’s file name after you create it based on the file on disk. So my original file, 2073B129-6DFF-4088-A785-C9CD8B1AADBF.pdf, could appear as Agreement.pdf to the recipient of the email. Much better, don’t you think?

And here’s how I did it:

Attachment attachment;
attachment = new Attachment("2073B129-6DFF-4088-A785-C9CD8B1AADBF.pdf");
attachment.ContentDisposition.FileName = "Agreement.pdf";
MailMessage.Attachments.Add(attachment);

There’s obviously more to the code related to creating the message, etc. But this is what you need if you want to give the attachment a different file name.

Enjoy!