For a project I did using VSTO, we need to have strong named assemblies when deploying our VSTO application.

Now we have one 3rd party assembly which is not strong named.

So how could you make a 3rd party assembly strong named for your project ?

It’s very easy and it only takes 2 command line commandos:

ILDASM /out:asm.il asm.dll
ILASM asm.il /KEY=key.snk /DLL /OUTPUT=asm.dll

With these parameters

• Asm.dll is your dll to sign
• Key.snk is your key

Some new resources about LINQ.

First Brian Finnerty told me about Innerworkings who has teamed up with Microsoft and offers some free LINQ training (C# 3.0 and VB.Net 9) to the developers.  It's practice based and fully integrated in VS2008.  More info can be found here http://www.innerworkings.com/promotions/75d4bd51-4bf1-4d8a-8c47-73135e44837a/visual-studio-2008-promotion.

Futhermore (Txs Kris) Microsoft has the classic 101 samples, now also on LINQ.

• C# : http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/aa336746.aspx
• VB.Net : http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic/bb688085.aspx

Also through my friend Kris van der Mast I found a LINQ Wiki page.  This Wiki page contains everything about LINQ related technology and has a great resource list also.  Here's the link : http://www.hookedonlinq.com/Default.aspx?Page=MainPage&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

Hereby I announce the 1st Silverlight Challenge organised by Ineta Europe.  In Belgium, Visug is organises the event.

All info can be found on following website :

• http://belgium.silverlightchallenge.eu
• Snowball.be

The overall website can be found here : www.silverlightchallenge.eu.

For the Belgium competitors, please upload your contribution to http://belgium.silverlightchallenge.eu and not to the general website.

If you have any questions or problems, you can contact Gill Cleeren through the contact form on the challenge website or leave comments on his blog article.

Hope to see a lot of Belgium contributions in this contest.

Since I'm busy on my current project with LINQ, I collect some interresting links for LINQ.

Some video material (for the moment 11 videos) about LINQ can be found on the asp.Net under the learn section.

The Microsoft LINQ discussion forum : http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/showforum.aspx?forumid=123.

Through my friend Kris van der Mast, I also found out about a nice tool, called LINQPad.  It's a great tool to learn LINQ without using (the heavy ) VS2008.  They even have a LINQ quiz, so you could test your knowledge .

This is it for the moment.  I will keep you up to date if I have some other interesting links about LINQ.

For those who want to start with LINQ, Scott Guthrie has a good starting 9 part course.  Find the first part here.

It seems that the security in Vista not always works correct.  I want to delete a directory and I got the message that I need to have the correct permissions.

Although I have given everyone full permissions on this directory.

After rebooting, I can delete the directory.

If you want to install the GAX/GAT July 2007 CTP, you have to uninstall the February 2007 CTP first. If you have troubles like me, these are the steps :

1. Uninstall all Guidance Packages
2. Uninstall Guidance Automation Toolkit
3. Uninstall Guidance Automation eXtensions. 

Uninstalling GAX gives me the trouble.  At the end I got a blank/empty dialog box with only a "OK" button on it.

To solve this follow the next steps

1. Check if all Guidance Packages are uninstalled
2. Run the CMD prompt in the directory where you're msi is located
3. Run "msiexec /x GuidanceAutomationExtensions.msi"
4. If that isn't working reinstall the GAX using "msiexec /fa GuidanceAutomationExtensions.msi"
5. Run again "msiexec /x GuidanceAutomationExtensions.msi"

This works for me.  (Txs to Greg Cool for these tips).

I just love this guy (who don't).  If you haven't attend TechEd 2007in Barcelona or you didn't attend his session,

well just see and listen to his song .

OK, I know.  The official RTM is released last monday (So 4 days late with blogging it), but I haven't had time to blog.  So here's a full list of all info I have about VS2008.

Since monday, you can download VS2008 RTM if you are an MSDN subscriber (almost 4GB).

But you aren't a MSDN subscriber and you still want to have it.  Well here are a few possibilities :

• Download the express editions
• Download the trial editions

You can also download the .Net 3.5 runtime.

Read a few Microsoft blogs who announced the shipment :

• Somasegar's weblog
• ScottGu's blog

When you're a Silverlight developer, be sure to read the last paragraph with some important info.

Also the VS2008 RTM Training kit is available for download.  This kit contains presentations, hands on labs, demo's,... about VS2008.  It's just a great bunch of sources. Go and download it here.

More and more info can be found on blogs.  Dan Fernandez has blogged a list with 15 nice and great new features which can be found in thss editions.  Here's his list. Great work Dan.

And if you're in game programming.  You can download the beta of XNA Game Studio 2.0 add-in here.

So fo those who doesn't still have anything of VS2008.  Go, grap it, download it and install it.  You just will love the new version.

Yesterday evening, the Belgium Visug group organized a “Best of TechEd” session.  In this session several speakers (I was one of them ) has given a 5 – 10 minute presentation about the best session they attended at TechEd 2007.

Following topics were given:

• Astoria (Yves Goeleven)
• BizTalk Services (Lieven Iliano)
• ASP.Net Futures (Gill Cleeren)
• Building Services with the Service Factory: Modeling Edition (Kurt Claeys)
• .Net Code Protection (Sven Cipido)

The evening started with a 25 minute part of the openings keynote video. And at the end Peter Himschoot also gives a little example of the combination between Ajax and Silverlight.

Afterwards there was a bit of time to talk with everyone.  The comments that I heard where very positive.  So I hope Visug will organise it next year again. For me it was also a great experience, as this was my first external presentation I gave (I already had given presentation within my company).

All presentations and demos will be available at the Visug site later this week.

You can download my presentation here Best Of TechEd - SLPS.ppt (560 KB).