You may or may not know that the live team last week released their ASP.NET VE Map control, and about time too.

In the past year, if you’d wanted to use Virtual Earth while not dealing with JS, you had to opt for something like Chris Pietschmann’s Web.Maps.VE control (at about $99 for version 1 and $139 for version 2).

While Chris’s control was a good alternative to learning JS, it lacked many features (in my opinion), there was no way to tap into the Find functionality, no way to set the map view and no way to give a pushpin offset which made custom pushpins just look silly at times, to name a few I encountered (or at least, in version 1 anyway).

So, now the CTP of Microsoft’s ASP.NET VE Map Control has been released, I decided to have a play, and see if it filled in the gaps – oh and of course, the price difference (it’s free as in beer).

First off I watched the little intro video on Channel9. This quick video runs you through some of the basics of setting up the control and adding some basic functionality. Mark demonstrates using the extenders, as well as code behind to manipulate the map.

A much more extensive set of videos has been provided by John at SoulSolutions. This excellent set of videos guides you through the basics of setting up your map control, learning how to set properties (client and server side) and also shows you how to add shapes and import data collections from maps.live.com. Well worth a look, and with the current lack of references, this should help you on your way!

I personally think this is a better, more rounded control than the Simplovation control, however, as Chris points out, if you want to use this in production, you’re better off going for his control at the moment, until MS releases the control properly (i.e. not as a CTP!)

I wanted to post some of the PowerShell scripts I've been creating recently for add-hock tasks.

If you've used Windows 2008 Clusters then you'll know how handy it is to use the Volume GUID rather than a drive letter. This very simple script shows you the volumes on a machine and the path you should use.

[Updated 21/7/2008]

Ok, there was some pretty big problems with the previous script I put here, the main one being, it wasn’t pulling back volumes from the cluster, but the windows volumes instead. As it happens, these can change depending on the machine your VM is running on (i.e. in a 2 node cluster, on A the Guid could be different to B).

Here is an updated version, which pulls back the GUID path, along with the Volume Label (it’s very handy to give Volumes distinct, understandable volume names). I use the same Volume name as LUN name (in Starwind).

   1: Get-WmiObject -namespace root\MSCluster -class MSCluster_DiskPartition -computerName bbcluster1 | Select-Object VolumeLabel, Path

This will give you an output, something like this:

VolumeLabel                                                 Path
-----------                                                       ----

LUNa1                                                           \\?\Volume{82be705f-4d94-11dd-8cb6-001e0b5a24a9}

   1: Get-WmiObject -namespace root\cimv2 -computername machinename -class Win32_Volume | Select-Object Name, DeviceID 

This will give an output something like this:

Name                                                        DeviceID
----                                                        --------
C:\                                                         \\?\Volume{08868f71-2bee-11dd-b880-806e6f6e6963}

A topic which I've been following is that of WHS to MSDN subscribers. For months now, the MSDN Subscription team have left subscribers hanging, with speculation that it was going to be available for download. However, it seems this will no longer be the case.

In a post on the msdnsubscriptions blog, SubscriptionsBlogger2 has removed all hope, and announced that the WHS business team have decided not to release WHS to developers through MSDN.

The full post can be found here, with some unhappy user comments.

However, once again, it's been left a little bit open ended, as they've not ruled out a future release on MSDN Subscriptions, however, I feel this may be a little too late for most subscribers.

After reading a recent post on ScottGu's blog, I came across the following blog, Matt Berseth.

This is a great blog, full of really interesting articles on styling the AJAC control toolkit, but also some great examples of how to extend existing controls, with the AJAX Extenders.

Here are some of the highlights: -

• Grouped results in a listview control
• Google style AutoComplete filter control
• Client-Side Dynamic Image Reflections
• JQuery style Tab Theme plus animations
• And a great GlowButtonExtender Control

Have fun!

My WHS expired the other week, well about 2 weeks ago in fact. Yet for some reason, it's still running.

I remember reading somewhere, when the evaluation runs out, windows shuts down after an hour... you don't get to do much in an hour! But that seems not to be the case; 2 weeks on, and it's going strong.

Of course, I get messages almost every day saying there's 0 Days left, and I should get my ass in gear and sort it; but everything else runs fine! I still get backups every night, I still have all the nice services running (VPN etc), SQL Server is still running on it... in fact, nothing seems to have changed at all.

Of course, I imagine the second i load the WHS Console, the whole thing will die, or as soon as I try and restore from a backup! Either way, if you are panicking because your WHS is about to die, and MSDN still don't have it listed, then fear not. It might not break as quickly as you thought it would!

Off topic a bit, but I spotted this on crymod.com and thought I would mention it here.

These guys are working on a C&C mod for crysis. It's in it's very early stages, but they're looking for help, if you think you can help, head on over and give them a shout in the forum.

I'll be watching this one close! Oh, and if you got crysis over the weekend, happy gaming ;)

I've just spotted over on the ihatelinux blog, that Brendan Grant has released his own set of templates for both VB.NET and C# WHS Add-in's.

The templates allow you to create your WHS tab UI using a user control, which gives the benefit of the Windows Forms Designer!

You can see the full post here.

My nice spanking new server arrives today, a dual quad core XEON, with 8GB RAM and 2TB of SATA2 love!

I will be using it to test a rig for Windows 2008 hardware assisted vitalization, as I am in the process to developing a hosting solution that uses 2008's VM functionality.

I'll try and post something more about this over the next week or so, along with my first impressions of Windows 2008!

Chris Gray (see C9 WHS video post) has uploaded his samples for a WHS Add-in project.

Get them here from the C9 Sandbox.

Have fun Coding!

I've been looking to purchase a full copy of Windows Home Server now, as RC1 is about to expire (16 days left!)

I took a quick look on eBuyer.co.uk, £91.60 inc vat. I wondered if it could be got cheaper elsewhere, so here is a quick link to froogle.

The cheapest I've found so far is Kikatek (I've never purchased from them myself so couldn't comment on their business).

If you find it cheaper, let me know!