Here. From David Briggs: My friend and author of only4gurus.com has enhanced the site with more that one thousand and five hundred whitepapers, presentations and webcasts for IT professionals. This site is extremely usefully for consultants and field support professionals. Ramon says that contributions are welcome. David

From Jeff Richard: Hello: I am in the process of constructing an application using Microsoft's smart client architecture (no-touch deployment), leveraging dynamic assembly loading to prevent installation on the client PC. I have run into a situation where I need a browser control to display content from an existing web site (help, reports). The problem is that the IE COM control cannot be consumed from a smart client application due to a security violation. I found a workaround, not he best solution since the path to IEXPLORE.EXE must be known, using the Win32 CreateProcess() API call to launch an instance of IE in a separate process. Security is handled by granting the application the ability to execute unmanaged assemblies. Has anyone found a "pure" .NET browser control that supports similar rendering capabilities as the IE COM control? Jeff. jtrichard@sotasw.com

Here. I take a look back at 2002 and a look forward into 2003 for me and the site.

Here. Due to popular demand, I've provided a subscription-based Q&A forum. Enjoy!

I just flew in from 2002:

• Wrote or co-wrote 4 books: Mastering VS.NET, Windows Forms for C# Programmers, Windows Forms for VB.NET Programmers and ATL Internals, 2/e (you should see them all in 1H03)
• Helped Don & Shawn with their books (no writing, just heavy-duty feedback)
• Wrote 6 articles for the Wonders of Windows Forms column (some are excerpts from my WinForms book)
• Wrote 9 articles for the “Chris Sells on .NET” newsletter (some are excerpts from my WinForms book)
• Started the “Adding Ref-Counting to Rotor” research project (we’ve got a alpha running!)
• Wrote a 5-day WinForms short course
• Spoke at bunches of conferences and seminars, including the 2 Web Services DevCons I hosted
• Started a newsletter and published 8 issues
• Started the Windows Developer News forum
• Wrote or co-wrote 13 magazine articles (3 are still pending publication)
• Wrote 29 Spout pieces, including the ever popular VS.NET Fun Facts
• Shipped 3 releases of Genghis
• Shipped several other new tools and samples, including Wahoo!, CollectionGen, XsdClassesGen, imcli and RegexDesigner.NET
• Created the Intel Rich Client series where I served as the editor for 6 articles (1 is still pending)
• Consulted for several companies
• Mentored several proteges
• Conducted a very painful, but very fruitful, marketing survey
• Lost 55 pounds (which I hope never to find again!)
• Answered countless mailing list and direct questions via email

and boy are my arms tired! Even I look at that list and think “holy workaholic, Batman!” Of course, I couldn’t have done all these things alone. I worked with fabulous co-authors and co-contributors. Thanks to you all and I look forward to working with you again in 2003!

In the new year, I have the following goals:

• Make Ask The Wonk a fun experience for all involved (it just started on Monday, but it’s already great fun answering the level of questions I’ve received!)
• Move the DevCons to the phones via the PhoneCons to avoid the expense and hassle of travel for everyone, while still maintain the power and charm of the DevCon
• Get those .NET War Colleges humming! I *so* look forward to these
• Several more releases of Genghis (a new release is already cooking)
• A few more magazine articles (I’ve got a few already in the queue)
• Finishing up the Rotor ref-counting project, publishing the code and the results
• Re-org the web site a bit (again!)
• Continuing the Wonder of Windows Forms column
• Hanging on the Off Topic mailing list (still my favorite mailing list)
• A couple of other projects that I’m dying to share with folks, but am sworn to secrecy…
• Losing another 35 pounds (it’s a 2-year plan)
• Find a way to take a vacation

We’ll see how I do this time next year, especially on those last two.

From Sergey Kostrov ( SergeyKostrov@hotmail.com ): What is Disconnected Data Architecture? Can anybody explain it? I've taken this term from .NET SDK documentation. Unfortinately, explanation of this term is a little bit unclear.

Here. From Chris Sells' Marketing Guy: The Pioneers of WinForms PhoneCon is a new method for attending Chris Sells's popular DevCons. The whole unit can share a PC and speakerphone to attend a PhoneCon conference cheaper than 1 person can attend a regular conference. PhoneCons are spread over 8 weeks to give you time to absorb the conference information, instead of having your head crammed full of too much information in just 1-2 days. Best of all, you get to conduct conversations with leading .NET experts as well as your fellow attendees, offering a 'virtual hallway' before, during, and after each session!

Here. From Husein Choroomi: "DLL Help exists to assist developers, system administrators, and other IT professionals who face file version conflicts with Microsoft software. Use DLL Help to identify which software installed a specific version of a DLL." [JoelonSoftware] What's DLL Hell? ;)