IT Expert Voice

More than a dozen organizations are working to bring consistency to cloud computing. Some are creating standards, while some are promoting best practices. This list can help you understand what these organizations are doing and the impact they’ll have on the industry.

Even though cloud computing has seen setbacks, generating distrust and concern over security and stability, corporations and governments are actively moving data into the cloud. Just last month, InformationWeek reported that recent surveys show two of the most conservative industries—financial and healthcare—are adopting cloud solutions. READ MORE

Want your new Windows 7 applications to take advantage of the new operating system? Here’s how to add functionality to the Windows 7 Task Bar, using the Windows 7 API Code Pack, .NET, and very little effort.

When I first started with .NET programming back in its version 1.0 days, I noticed how shielded we Windows programmers were from the good old Win32 API. On the one hand, that was a great thing; no longer did developers have to fuss with enormous calls to CreateWindowEx and the related RegisterClass function. While functions like these and the message handler functions were the lifeblood of our applications, with .NET our programming became substantially easier.

But on the other hand, at times our hands were tied. Despite the size of the .NET framework, there were some API features that the .NET creators seemed to skip. As .NET moved forward and included WPF features, Windows Vista come along, and now Windows 7, both of which had lots of features that were absent in .NET.

The way around this was to call directly into the Win32 API. That’s certainly possible in both C# and VB.NET. But it’s not fun, not by any means. A better way, however, is a .NET library that encapsulates the missing features. And that’s exactly what Microsoft did with the Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework. READ MORE