The Daily Grind 398

No Daily Grind yesterday because we were at the hospital all day with my wife in labor. Unfortunately, the recalcitrant baby decided to stay in after all. So we're back home for the moment, though hopefully not for long.

Software

• VNC 4.0 - RealVNC, keepers of the original VNC codebase, have released a new major version. Highlights include better efficiency and multi-monitor support.
• Mono Beta 3 - Novell is releasing new Mono builds pretty darn quickly, though the release notes don't seem to be available yet so I can't tell you what's new. (via Mark Brown)

Information

• Introducing the Visual Basic .NET Power Pack - Article about the new free controls, including pictures. (via Duncan Mackenzie)

Community

• Add-In Contest Ends This Month - Just a reminder that Roy Osherove is sponsoring a contest for VS .NET add-ins. Some pretty nifty prizes await the winners.

Rants

• Microsoft Business Solutions Showcases ERP Strategy and Road Map - Press release from Microsoft laying out "five customer-centric technology themes" to be applied across the confusing array of Microsoft ERP applications (Solomon, Navision, Axapta, and Great Plains). Now, maybe it's just me (plus the people I read online), but how the heck can they even pretend there's a strategy here when there's no hint at all of how they propose to consolidate this mess into a single vision? Can you imagine Microsoft putting out four competing word processors or four C++ IDEs? How can this be a good thing in the ERP market? Sure, there are different segments for each app, but were I an investor I'd be wondering long and hard about whether Microsoft was just not managing to digest this raft of acquisitions very well.

Mike Gunderloy is the lead developer for Larkware and author of numerous books and articles on programming topics.

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