‘this message has not been downloaded from the server’

Having tried numerous things to fix it, different connectivity like WiFi and 3G I could not get the email content to download.   I even deleted the account and re-added it, all the messages got loaded but again all I could see was the summary view.  Eventually after searching various forums I saw a recurring suggestion that turned out to be the solution.  If the Date and Time on the phone is wrong then you get this problems with email.  Most threads talked about POP3, however it was enough to get me to check – and sure enough the date on the phone had reset to the year 2000.

Correcting the date and time however did not immediately solve the problem,  I no longer had the ‘this message has not been downloaded from the server’ message the contents of the email was just blank. 

I had to delete and re-add the account after setting the time.

Not SharePoint related I know but something that I thought worth blogging as its one of those annoying issues that the solutions seems to be totally unrelated.

Also not had any problems yet with the Skype Beta which you can get here.  I’m not sure what to make of the new Skype UI, time will tell.

Running Windows 7 64bit  (Build 7000)
VMWare 6.5.0 build-118166
Guest Windows 2008  32bit (not R2)

Problem 1 – Networking

Using a wireless connection generally forces you to use the NAT service as  bridged connections don’t work.  Under Windows 7 the NAT service crashes almost as soon as the guest OS try’s to hit the network.  If you have a wired connection bridged networks seem to work ok.

Problem 2 – Reinstallation

This is the biggest problem.   I had messed with the networks settings so much and following another tweeters suggestion (and it worked for them @spietrek) I uninstalled VMWare.

VMWare workstation 6.5 installation launcher failed!

Reboot, clean out registry nothing would make the installation work again!

The only way to get it back was a System Restore and then a Repair from Add/Remove programs.    However this is going to be a big issue for VMWare as the only way to upgrade your system is to Uninstall/Reinstall – so VMWare / Microsoft are going to have to resolved this or you will be stuck with the version you installed!  Other people have reported similar problems

Solution?

I don’t have one,  what I would like to see if Microsoft sort out the Client Virtualisation story for Windows 7 – I need 64bit guests (observant will see I used 32bit above) s0 please bring Hyper-V to Windows 7

And VMWare please consider Windows 7 as something that needs support now,  not in 6 months time.

For those that question the value, say you get the info online afterwards anyway and it’s just big jolly,  how wrong could you be.   The social aspects of the conference is so much more of a value add than I could ever have anticpated.  Over the past 18 months my network of friends and associates has expanded beyond anything I could have anticpated,  I can now say I could meet up for a #SharePint (SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night) in any continent and have someone I could meet!     If you’re going to your first conference (congrats) you need to get involved in the evenings activities,  have a beer and just hang out with like minded people.   If your into SharePoint and going to PDC you have to be at SharePoint by Day SharePint by Night PDC2008 Edition.

Expect some random posts of whats happening during the week,  if the preconference leaks are anything to go by there will be some big big announcements.   Hey we even have a new .Net Logo (from Scott Hanselman)

We have been working hard over the past few weeks to bring our site up to date. It started life as a simple Blogger site and has seen a few minor tweaks and changes over the past 18 months but we had found our needs have moved beyond what a pure blog can offer.

I had the pleasure of working with Sam Dolan (www.pinkpetrol.com) on a recent project and he persuaded me to sort out the web site! Sam is a web designer who has worked with a number of technologies included SharePoint (yes he knows how to skin a SharePoint site) and as you can see from this site he also does a fantastic job of creating a WordPress theme. As I’m often heard to say ‘working software over comprehensive documentation’ – take a look at his site for examples of his work.

I hope to bring you the same posts, if not better and some great content on doing Agile SharePoint Development.

If Yes then you need the latest version of SnagIt by TechSmith.   In it’s version 9 release SnagIt has moved from being just a good screen capture applet to being a fantastic, indispensable application that every good developer, author, tester etc etc should have installed.

It’s only when you start to use the new features without noticing you realise what a great piece of software you are using.   Having installed the V9 release a few weeks ago  I initially liked the OneClick pop-up that made switching capture modes a breeze,  but what I have found most useful is how SnagIt now keeps all my captures for me – no more having to save/or losing that key image. 

The Library view showing this weeks captures.  Whats really cool is any annotations are all stored and can be edited.  No more saving as a PNG and then having to fudge the text using Paint.

Tags

I only found this today, the ability to Tag captures using simple icons and allowing you to get find them quickly.

Whilst we’re on the subject of tools

Writing this blog post it suddenly dawned on me how many tools (all by different creators) I was using to bring this post to you.

SnagIt 

To capture the screen shots.   I have tweaked this slightly and  added another Program to the SnagIt Send to that allows me to send captures directly to Flickr Uploadr.

Flickr Uploadr

Making uploading images to Flickr just that little bit easier.   Why upload to Flickr you may ask,  well I user Windows Live Writer to author my blog posts

Windows Live Writer

This is one of the best bits of software anyone could install if they are serious about blogging.   The ability to link to multiple blogs, be able to recall existing blog posts for editing and correcting (yes it does happen). 

Here you can see me authoring this very blog post. 

But wait wasn’t I telling you why I used Flickr?   Yes,  and if you look closely at the right hand menu you will see some nice Insert options, one of which is Insert Flickr Image.

Flickr for Writer

This neat plug in allows you to insert Flickr images directly from Flickr,  normally this is defaulted to my account but you can also insert others.

There are many more tools that I use day to day,  some more aimed at development some at just getting things done.   Hopefully this Top Tool Tips post will help you become a better blogger

Quote:

Partitioning Your Silverlight Application for Deployment
This lab will demonstrate a technique within Silverlight 2 to enable you to partition your application into different deployment packages. This will enable your application to only use what it needs, when it needs it and provide an experience to the user and improve overall download times for your application. This lab walks through a simple example of separating details view information from the main portion of the Silverlight application.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/0/c/70cb966a-1b68-4123-9b48-b0eaa1086104/SL2B2-HOL-AppPartitioning.pdf

This all works really well until you add in some Service References to WCF end points.  You will end up with an error like

Fish Eye for the Blend Guy

Using this as a basis we have been working on migration to Silverlight,  and finally got the time to get this working.

The code is still a bit rough so I can’t publish it,  but it does demonstrate that it can be done.   The main changes we needed to make were due to the lack of a Mouse position meaning we needed to pass this into the methods from our MouseOver event.   We also needed to create StoryBoards on the fly for the animation,  I have some concerns here about memory usage as we’re currently not cleaning everything up – more work needed

Screen shot below,  actual examples to follow soon.

Click the image to see an animated version (400KB).

https://www.microsoft.com/learning/tools/lcds/default.mspx

This is great news as one of the real pain points of the SLK/MLG platform, since the move from Class Server, has been the lack of any decent content editors that can deliver content that conforms to the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) 1.2, which can be hosted in SharePoint document libraries and used by the SharePoint Learning Kit. 

During the installation you will note that this is the Community Edition, I don’t have any information on if there is a plan to release any commercial at this time.

LCDS Author

LCDS works with Courses, modules, lessons and topics with each course being a separate project.  Clicking on New prompts you to enter details for the Course.

Note:  If you are running on Vista you need to Run ad Administrator or you will get a script error after clicking OK.

My First Course

Your course will be created with a module, lesson and four topics providing you with a basic structure, you can add new items and reorder the exiting ones using the Course Structure toolbar.

Selecting the Introduction topic allows you to select the template associated with this topic, we will choose the Read and Introduction.

Each template has a predefined Page designer with areas to enter relevant information.  I plan to cover some of the other Template types in future posts.

We will enter some basic information for My First Course.

Adding a picture seems a little awkward as I click on the browse button and look at my Pictures directory for the picture to upload, on clicking OK I get an error saying ‘You must select a file from the ‘media’ folder. It would be nice if the program would copy this in for me – i’ll do this by clicking Media Folder in the top tool bar and manually copying the file, this raises another design issue – why are my courses not stored in My Documents?  In Vista I need administrator rights to copy files to the Program Files directory…

Adding the picture (don’t worry about it looking squashed it will be ok) a heading, some introductory text and objectives.

At this point I recommend you preview the course using the button on the top toolbar.

(If you get a warning about ActiveX controls right click and allow).

Already things look pretty good   

However, more work needed

What I did find whilst working with the templates like the Sort Game was difficulty in previewing the contents.  The tools look very user friendly but I found in my Vista environment that I could not test all of them.

So Microsoft have made significant progress to providing us with a SCORM editor,  although if you are using Vista you may experience some of the difficulties I have noted above.

I recommend you download the tools and have a play for yourself, the UI is very well laid out and appear easy to use.  I just need to resolve some of the preview issues before i can really test it out fully.

I am very interested in your experiences and would welcome posts to this thread on SUGUK web site so that we can share this knowledge and experiences, if you blog about it please add a link so it’s easy for others to find you post.