2008 February 05 » Chinh Do

5th February 2008

Finds of the Week – February 3, 2007

MSMQ and WCF – hands-on lab now available at MSDN Code Gallery. Via John Breakwell.
Scott Densmore shared more good stuff on the upcoming Enterprise Library 4.
Microsoft rolled out a new code sharing site: MSDN Code Gallery. Code Gallery is kind of like CodePlex, but for the everyday developer. Via Jim Glass.
A new version of the Source Code Outliner Power Toy is available. Via Quan To.
Get Your Database Under Version Control. Jeff Atwood. My guess is that 75% or more of databases out there are not under version control.
Jeff Moser wrote a detailed analysis of the various looping constructs in .NET: For Loops: Using i++, ++i, Enumerators, or None of the Above? I totally forgot about ++i.
A timely article for my current project: Unit Testing WCF Services. By Mark Seemann.
James Newtonking explained why he changed his mind about extension methods.
Buddy Lindsey, Jr’s TDD for Beginners Series is a good introduction to Test Driven Development.
Vadym Stetsiak explained why string.ToLower() is Evil. Use string.Compare instead.
10 ASP.NET Performance and Scalability Secrets is an excellent article from Omar AlZabir. Many of the tips are for larger/high-trafficked sites but good to know nonetheless.
If you are into design patterns, Jason McDonald put together a very nice quick reference poster/PDF on the most common patterns.
Visual Studio Magazine had a very good article on WCF best practices (Connect Apps with WCF) by Brian Noyes.

Fiddler is a VERY useful HTTP debugger.
Use BitTorrent to send files. That and more at Top 10 BitTorrent Tools and Tricks – Lifehacker.
You can SHIFT+CLICK to multi-select in Gmail. Via Roy Osherove.

Looks like Google has fixed the problems that were plaguing Gmail IMAP on Windows Mobile devices. Read the blog entry from the official Gmail Blog here. And here’s a related article from PC World: Google fixes Gmail IMAP problem on Windows Mobile.
Viigo is a free RSS reader for Windows Mobile. I have not really used it that much but it seems to work ok.
Skyfire is another promising Windows Mobile browser currently in private beta. Via Engadget.
If you have a Samsung Windows Mobile device, try the included PicSel browser. Here’s a review of Picsel browser, with a lot of useful how-to information included. By Tam Hanna.