Brenton House

NewsGator has competition

I downloaded and tried out the new IntraVnews Outlook RSS Reader.  It looks pretty cool and it's free too!
It has a few things that NewsGator does not, including: Auto Cleanup and saving blogs to different folders.
(Really helps if you have multiple .PST files).  Of course, it is missing things that NewsGator has as well, including:
NNTP support, Posting,  and better custom field support for views.

I had a chance to talk with Greg at PDC and he mentioned that he might get rid of the base folder in a future
version in order to allow support for multiple .PSTs.

[The Scobleizer Weblog]

Greg Reinacker's NewsGator (the RSS aggregator I use) has competition! IntraVnews is free for home users. Lockergnome has an early review on its RSS Resource blog.

Computer Associates gives away free AntiVirus Suite to Microsoft users

Protect Your PC

Software security vendor Computer Associates International Inc. said on Tuesday that it will offer anti-virus software for free to Windows software users for one year, in a bid to expand its consumer market.

Computer Associates said in a statement that it will supply a subscription to its eTrust EZ Armor software, a consumer version of its business-class anti-virus and computer firewall software, at no charge to Windows users for one year.

Microsoft "Flash-Killer" Tool ??

Interesting.  But I don't remember hearing anything about that at PDC...

[atnewyork.com]

Top developers at Microsoft are working on a new graphics and animation toolset for Longhorn (the next generation of Windows) that could spell trouble for Macromedia's popular Flash MX and Director MX animation tools, sources familiar with the situation told internetnews.com.

Code-named "Sparkle," the tools under development would be integrated with Microsoft's .NET runtime environment. That would ultimately mean developers could have Flash- and Director-like animation and graphics tools ready-built for them soon after Longhorn hits the marketplace.

One source familiar with the project, who saw examples of the "Sparkle" toolset integrated with Microsoft's C#, said early prototypes have given rise to talk of its potential as a "Flashkiller" or even a "Director-killer," referring to Macromedia's popular Flash animation software and Director tool, which is best known for building small animations for CDs.

A spokesperson for Macromedia said the company does not comment on speculation or rumors about products not yet in release.

Did anyone else have a lot of problems getting into PDC sessions?

I noticed that a lot of the PDC sessions that I went to were not only filled up but the hallways outsides the room with the TV were filled and overflowing.  Maybe I just picked the popular sessions!   I noticed it a lot with the Indigo sessions.

Converting Whidbey MSBuild files to VS.NET 2003 project files?

Has anyone figured out a way convert MSBuild project files back to VS.NET 2003 project files?

I know there are a few utilities that convert between 2002 & 2003 and back again, but I haven't seen anything for Whidbey. 

Anything in the works?

PDC Community Application - Away from PDC?

I started up the PDC Community Application as soon as I got home because I had used it to download all the powerpoint presentations and code samples from the sessions that I attended or wanted to attend.  It worked real nice while I was at PDC.  When I was viewing a session, there was a link to view the powerpoint or code samples (which are saved locally on my computer).

However, now that I am home, the links for the powerpoint slides and code samples don't show up.  I still have all the files saved locally, but they are saved under session numbers which isn't very user friendly.

Has anyone else figured out a way to change a setting or two to let it know that the files are still saved locally and get the links to show up?  This is a fantastic and very helpful app if I can get it to work!