Chinh Do

.NET, C#

• ReSharper 4.0 is released.
• Andre Loker shared a very cool trick available with C# 3.0: Getting rid of strings (2): use lambda expressions.
• Official Guidance: New Recommendations for Strings in .NET 2.0. By Dave Fetterman, BCL Team Blog.
• Scott Guthrie announced availability of Silverlight Beta 2. Looks like there are a ton more controls.
• Sending SMTP Email Asynchronously with SmtpClient.SendAsync().
• Igor Ostrovsky gave an easy-to-digest summary of concurrency in .NET Framework 3.5.
• Tools And Techniques to Identify Concurrency Issues. By Rahul V. Patil and Boby George, MSDN Magazine. Lots of good information on concurrency issues, how to analyze/detect problems, and pointers to tools.
• Did you know about AppDomain::UnhandledException Event? I didn’t, until my Windows Service started to die without even leaving a nice goodbye… stacktrace. Well there was this mysterious looking entry in the Events Log. MSDN.
• Add color to your Console apps with ConsoleColor. MSDN.
• Exceptional Performance : Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site. Yahoo! Developer Network.

General Development

• 15 Tools to Help You Develop Faster Web Pages by Jacob Gube (Six Revisions).
• Nick Beradi showed you how to Turn Google App Engine into your own Personal Content Delivery Network (CDN). App Engine costs nothing to get started. Sign up for a free account, and you can develop and publish your application for the world to see, at no charge and with no obligation. A free account can use up to 500MB of persistent storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month.
• An interesting look at Gmail client-side code: Gmail Client Side Architecture Part 1. By Sajith .M.R.

Software, Tools, etc.

• FireFox 3 is out. To get the most of of it, check out lifehacker’s Power User’s Guide to Firefox 3.

Gaming

• Jeff Atwood discussed Physics Based Games.
• If you are a PC gamer, don’t miss Is the Market for PC Gaming Finished? by Aaron Stannard (Aaronontheweb).

Something Different

• Battle at Kruger (video).

.NET/C#

• Microsoft project code named “Velocity” is a distributed in-memory caching platform that provides .NET applications with high-speed access, scaling, and high availability to application data. Download the Community Preview here.
• Danny Simmons enumerated various reasons for using Entity Framework.
• If your netMsmq WCF service shows signs of a handles leak, you may want to make sure you have .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1 installed.
• Bryan wrote a timely article on TDD Tips: Test Naming Conventions & Guidelines.
• Microsoft announced the release of Microsoft Source Analysis for C#.
  “Source Analysis is similar in many ways to Microsoft Code Analysis (specifically FxCop), but there are some important distinctions. FxCop performs its analysis on compiled binaries, while Source Analysis analyzes the source code directly. For this reason, Code Analysis focuses more on the design of the code, while Source Analysis focuses on layout, readability and documentation. Most of that information is stripped away during the compilation process, and thus cannot be analyzed by FxCop.”

General Programming

• Warn the User when Caps Lock is On in web apps. By Scott Mitchell.
• Denis Gobo put together a very good and extensive list of SQL Server Programming Hacks. Many of the tips are not really “hacks” but still good to know nonetheless.
• Not sure how useful this is with most networks blocking everything these days, but it’s cool anyway: you can now access the Sysinternals tools on a fileshare directly at \\live.sysinternals.com\tools.
• Damien Guard released a new version of his Envy Code R monospaced font designed for programmers.

    

Tools

• The Query command line utility displays active Terminal Service/Remote Desktop sessions, among other things. This replaces the qwinsta utility.

Something Different

• 10 Amazing Chemical Reactions.

Programming

• Borland Turbo Pascal was my favorite language in my early days of hobby programming. I feel a little sad to hear that Borland recently sold their CodeGear division to Embarcadero.
• Day-to-day with Subversion is a good and detailed write-up on procedures most developers need to perform daily. By Bil Simser.

.NET/C#

• The evil sou file - fighting and winning with Visual Studio. By Brian Noyes.
• Joshua Flanagan had an interesting idea on a Readable Regular Expressions framework.
• Derik Whittaker posted a tip on how to share config files between projects.
• Jon Galloway: //TODONT: Use a Windows Service just to run a scheduled process.
• You can throw away your own TitleCase method now. Because there’s one in the framework. Via ASP.NET FAQ.
• Operator~ and BinarySearch. By Shahar Y.
• Steven Harman detailed a hack to get Visual Studio to use more than 2GB of RAM.
• Frank-Leonardo Quednau: Lazy instantiation one-liner of instance fields with the coalesce operator.

Software and Tools

• Google Maps Street View is in Richmond.

  Goo

  It looks like the Street View images were taken around September 2007 because according to IMDB, the movie Game Plan was playing in the US starting 9/23/2007:

  

• Google Maps adds user-created photos, videos, maps. Via CNET.

  Goog

Something Different

• Top 50 soccer goals (video).

Programming

• Lighten up, you’re having fun. Says Kyle Baley.
• Sergio Pereira shares tips on how to get more work done: Automation FTW.
• Green tests != proven code. By Derik Whittaker.
• "k" explains deadlocking with The Parable of the Bathroom.

.NET/C#

• ASP.NET MVC Source Code Now Available. By Scott Guthrie.
• Patrick Smacchia: I want non-nullable types in C#4.
• Why Convert.ToInt32 Might be dangerous. DevMuse.
• FormatWith 2.0 - String formatting with named variables. By James Newton.
• How to: Optimize the memory usage with strings. Dot Net Facts.
• Dan Rigsby demonstrates a technique to grayout an image in .Net.
• Discover Mighty Instance Management Techniques For Developing WCF Apps. By Juval Lowy.
• Good introduction to ASP.NET MVC from Chris Tavares: Building Web Apps without Web Forms.

PowerShell

• PowerShell 2.0 has script debugging! Bart de Smet has more on his article: Windows PowerShell 2.0 Feature Focus - Script Debugging.

Just in case anyone else needs to do this out there…

I recently got myself a nice ThinkPad X60 Tablet PC. It doesn’t come with a DVD-Drive and although I have an external DVD drive, I just can’t seem to find its power adapter. Argg!

In order to do this, you must have the following:

• Windows XP installed on the PC you want to install Vista to.

Procedure

1. Log in into Windows XP on the PC you want to install Vista to.
2. Use Partition Magic or another partitioning tool and create a second partition for Vista. Make it a Primary Partition (don’t know if this is required but this is what I did). Format the second partition with NTFS. Your Windows XP installation will be left alone and you will be able to dual boot to it.
3. Create a folder (let’s called it "c:\VistaInstall") and copy all files from the Vista DVD / ISO there (either extract the files from an ISO image using a Virtual CD/DVD emulator like Daemon Tools, or copy the files from another PC with a DVD drive over the network).
4. Run Setup.exe from c:\VistaInstall.
5. Choose Custom Install and follow the prompts to select the second partition you created.
6. Follow the rest of the on-screen instructions.

As part of the installation, Vista Setup will copy the installation files to the new partition. After it reboots, it’ll have all the files there to continue.

After you are done with the install, you can delete the temporary folder c:\VistaInstall that you created.

Programming

• 6 Ways to Increase Your Confidence As You Code. By Ben Watson.
• Hugo Vidal Teiseira gives Ten UI Lessons from the Real World. With pictures.
• Koen Witters writes about something basic to all computer games: The Game Loop.
• Microsoft Excel: Revolutionary 3D Game Engine? by Peter Rakos.
• The Diminishing Return on Code Uniformity. by Max Pool ({codesqueeze}).
• 9 Practical Ways to Enhance your Web Development Using the Firefox Web Developer Extension. by Jacob Gube.
• Rick Strahl writes about improvements in IE8 script debugging features: Sensible Debugging in IE 8.

C#/.NET

• Turn any class into a Singleton with the Singleton Factory. Via cognitive Coding. Nice!
• Read it for the comments: Are .NET Developers the American Tourists of the Software Industry? Also check out the Reddit comments. Article by Russell Ball.

Software and Tools

• Daniel Spiewak talks about the "Wow" Factor in Firefox 3.0.
• Mini Review of Internet Explorer 8 by Joe Walker.

Something a Little Different

• Machines ‘to match man by 2029′

.NET

• 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.

Software/Tools

• 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.

Windows Mobile - Pocket PC

• 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.

And Now, For Something A Little Different

Nano

.NET Programming, C#

• HTTP Programming with WCF and the .NET Framework 3.5 is a good article covering HTTP endpoints in WCF 3.5. By Justin Smith, MSDN Magazine.
• WCF Load Test is an open source tool that can generate unit tests from WCF trace files.
• Source Code Outliner PowerToy for Visual Studio 2008 is now available. Via James Lau.
• Good tips on interview techniques from Dustin Andrews: Why doesn’t anybody ask me to code a unit test in an interview?
• Throw away that mouse and go mouseless with ASP.NET 2.0. Suprotim Agarwal.
• Quake 3 Arena Ported to .NET Managed C++ VS 2008! Greg Dolley.
• Add support for OpenID to your ASP.NET app. Mads Kristensen posted his OpenID implementation.
• How to Create a Database Object Programmatically in Enterprise Library, Painfully? Yang’s .NET Zone.
• Miked Esjardins shared his experience contributing to an open source project.
• Andy shared first hand tips on being a developer during a recession.
• Firefox is a developer’s best friend. According to Mohsin.

Powershell

• [Tip] Option Explicit in PowerShell. Sharar Gvirtz.

Software and Tools

• Yahoo Implements OpenID. Michael Arrington, via Techcrunch.
• Microsoft Expression Encoder is my new tool of choice to perform batch compression of digicam movies. Batch processing is handled very nicely, especially on my new Quad Core PC. I used to use MeGUI/x264 before, but it was just taking too much time to work through the various bugs and issues.

  

• If you use OneNote, check out the OneNote 2007 PowerToys. John Guin.
• Speakeasy’s Speed Test is my favorite bandwidth tester:

  

Windows Mobile / Pocket PC

• Scott Hanselman posted a nice list of mobile-friendly web sites.

Something Different

• The FT liveblogs the Societe Generale conference call, via Marc Andreessen.

One of the best tricks to speed up Gmail IMAP access is to use offline mode in your email application. Offline mode is supported by popular email clients such as Microsoft Outlook 2007, Outlook Express (Windows XP), Windows Mail (Windows Vista), and Thunderbird.

While you are in offline mode, your actions are carried out locally and the sequence is remembered by the email client. Later on, when you get back online, the same actions are then executed on the server. Offline mode is much faster (think instantaneous vs. several seconds for each action) than online mode because the email client does not have to connect/talk to the IMAP server each time you do something.

Outlook 2007’s Offline Support

Not all offline modes are created equally however. One would think that Microsoft top-of-the-line email client Outlook (2007) would have better support for working offline than its little brothers Outlook Express and Windows Mail, but that’s just not the case. According to my own testing, Outlook 2007 is the worst among the three when it comes to supporting offline access. Specifically, you cannot copy or move messages in Outlook 2007 when working offline.

If you have read my article Gmail IMAP Tips article, you know Gmail IMAP is all about moving and copying messages. Lacking the ability to move/copy messages in offline mode reduces the usefulness of Outlook as a Gmail IMAP client by about oh… 90% right there for me! I have not tested Thunderbird but it think I does support moving/copying images while working offline.

My Current IMAP Client

I still use Outlook for its calendar and to synchronize with my i730 Windows Mobile phone, but for Gmail IMAP, Windows Mail (Windows Vista) is now my email client of choice.

If anyone reading this is from the Microsoft Outlook team, please fix Outlook!

Related Articles

• 5 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Gmail IMAP

It’s 2008. Happy New Year!

Tips and Tricks

• I can’t believe I didn’t know about this Visual Studio command before: File.OpenContainingFolder. Asmita A Wankhede mentioned it, but he left a few important details out. By default, this command does not have a shortcut, so you would have to assign one to it (try CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+O). Also, the "item" that this command works on is the currently opened item in the editor, not the selected item in the Solution Explorer. See my Visual Studio tips article for instructions on how to create new shortcuts (section 3 - Make New Shortcuts).
   
• Aaron Lerch shared a tip on how to use Powershell to perform search-and-replace on an entire folder hierarchy.

.NET, C#, Programming

• Derik Whittaker’s article on Things to think about if you want to be a consultant lists some questions to ask and things to be aware of if you are thinking about becoming a consultant or contractor.
• I need to start using Log4Net soon at work and Emanuele Bartolesi’s walk-through on how to use Log4net in your ASP.net application will come in handy.
• Dare Obasanjo asked a thought-provoking question: Does C# 3.0 Beat Dynamic Languages at their Own Game?
• Aaronontheweb made 8 Bold Predictions for Web 2.0 in 2008. One of the predictions is that Google will have its first failure in 2008. I thought Google Answers was it.
• If you are learning WCF, check out Michele Bustamante’s That Indigo Girl. Via Is This Thing On.
• If you have done or are planning to do automated GUI testing, check out Automated GUI testing - Is it worth it? by Mladen Prajdić.
• Bruce Eckel wrote about the The Mythical 5% of top developers and shared tips on how you can be part of that exclusive club.
• For Oracle developers, ODAC 11g has been released. Via Mark A Williams.
• If like me, you have heard about SubSonic but don’t know much about it, Kent Sharkey’s Introduction to SubSonic (Dotnetslackers) provides a quick primer.

Software And Tools

• Did you know that something called Robocopy (short for Robust File Copy, not Robot Copy), is the new XCOPY? It’s a standard tool in Windows Vista and is also available as part of the Windows Resource Kit. Via Don Box’s Spoutlet on Pluralsight.

  

• I recently tried and liked GhostDoc very much. It’s a free Visual Studio add-in to help write XML documentation comments. Roland Weigelt wrote a nice intro article on GhostDoc on DotnetSlackers here.
• SyncBackSE is a great folder synchronization utility. It has tons of features… maybe even a little bit on the bloated side. It costs $30 for a single license. If you just want something simple, Microsoft’s free SyncToy may do the trick for you.

   

Gadgets

• From CES, it looks like Blu-ray will be the winner of the HD format war. No, the war is not completely over, but this was the landing at Normandy… so to speak. The loss is just too great for the HD-DVD camp to recover.

And Now, Something Different

• Richmond’s Lunar New Year Festival is on Jan 27.