The Daily Grind 505

By Mike Gunderloy
Monday, November 22, 2004

Off to the airport Monday morning, so the Monday edition is actually being uploaded Sunday night. Deal with it.

And a reminder: you only have the rest of this week to submit your entry for the Daily Grind Contest.

Software

Google Deskbar Plug-In Development Kit - If you've bought into the Google deskbar and have .NET coding skills, you can extend it yourself. (via Stefano Demiliani)
SoapMail - If you want to support Web Services over e-mail here's the proof of concept code. It's hedged with warnings about not being production code.
The Netron Project - Custom graphing (in the sense of nodes and edges) library for .NET with a bunch of nifty design paradigm demos.
Miriam - Project to remote control your PC via infrared. Possibly of interest to presenters.
And So It Starts Again... Avalon Community Technical Preview Released - If you're an MSDN subscriber, you can now get Avalon for Windows XP. I still counsel caution; this is mighty early in the game and doesn't belong in the same room with a production PC.

LidRock - Miniature CDs baked into the lids of soft drink cups. Um, no. (via Gadgetopia)

The Message of the Tablet Medium - Larry O'Brien talks some sense about Tablet PCs, steering a course between mindless cheerleaders and curmudgeonly detractors.
VB Refactoring - Somasegar hands out the official spin on the definite lack of refactoring in VB 2005 - it would cause other features to slip.
Again About VB.NET Refactoring - Stefano Demiliani responds with what I suspect will be the feelings of most professional VB .NET developers: "We don't need toys like MY, we need working tool like Refactoring!!"

Internet Archive’s Web Page Snapshots Held Admissible as Evidence - Not sure where this happened, but a judge let pages from the Internet Archive in as evidence. Bloggers might want to think twice before posting libelous material if it can't be undone by a simple erasure. (via Boing Boing)

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