Archives
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SideBar
A recent issue of The Daily Grid pointed me at a new tool called Desktop Sidebar (unfortunately, the link seems to be dead at the moment - hopefully it will be fixed soon). This is a very cool tool. It gives you a highly configurable side tray that makes all kinds of information available - news, weather, stocks, etc. It provides a POP3 email checker, integrates with Outlook to display your corporate emails, schedule, and to do list, and provides a Media Player controller. It can display system performance information, including your most active applications (nice). You can also put shortcuts on it and use it as an app launcher. All of this info is displayed in a set of panels. You customize which panels you want displayed and in what arrangement. The panels can be sized, overlayed, and stacked. The whole tray can be docked to either side of the screen or float, and supports auto-hiding.
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Info on Whidbey and Beyond
Microsoft posted some great info about upcoming releases of the .NET Framework and VS.NET. Some of the questions that the article raises for me:
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HttpHandlers in ASP.NET
I just started playing around with HTTP Handlers in ASP.NET for the first time. A couple of observations:
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Cell phone purgatory
My cell phone is toast. Not completely - it works if the battery is disconnected and AC cord is attached. But that kind of defeats the whole notion of a "mobile" phone. So I need a new one.
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Blogvertising
Goodness. Rory has posted the first commercial that I've seen for a web log (though apparently it's his second - I missed the first). I had no idea the web log market was getting so competitive.
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Personalization in RSS feeds
The very cool kbalertz site now has RSS feeds. Theoretically this is cool, and yet I don't think I'll be switching from the e-mail based version. Why? Because you either subscribe to one giant feed of all KB items, or you subscribe to one feed per KB category. I certainly don't want all items, but I don't relish the idea of adding 50 new RSS feeds to my blogroll either. OK, that's an exaggeration, I think I monitor about 10 categories currently. But even that's a lot of new feeds to poll, and I could easily see that number going up over time.
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HTML Editor synchronicity
Recently, a friend of mine needed to write a simple "readme" type HTML document, and asked me if I knew of any good free, basic HTML editors. I poked around on the web and found several, but they mostly just seemed like overkill for a simple job. Then it hit me - we all have 80% of a basic HTML editor already installed on our machines. IE has had HTML editing support for a while. All you need is a basic host that wraps up the web browser control in editing mode.
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ViewState / IStateManager
System.Web.UI.IStateManager has methods called TrackViewState, IsTrackingViewState, LoadViewState, SaveViewState
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Desirous?
The illustrious Mr. Sells shows that he has talent for creating more than just software as he recounts the tale of his first airplane piloting experience.
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McWireless
Am I the only one that thinks McDonald's wireless internet access plans make no sense? Two comments: