The Daily Grind 509

I trust those of you who took a holiday yesterday had a good one. This issue of the Daily Grind is a bit unusual: all of these links were submitted by readers in response to my 500th issue contest. I hope you'll find something interesting in the mix.

Software

• MZ-Tools 4.0 for Visual Studio .NET - I used MZ-Tools for VB6; it's a great set of add-ins. I hadn't realized that there was a version for VB .NET with such features as fast control name editing, some refactoring, private clipboards, autosave, an extensibility API, and much more. Licensing from $39.95 (via John Barone)
• VSS Remoting v2.1 - Remote access solution for Visual Sourcesafe. Uses HTTPS and integrates with Visual Studio. Free for single user. (via Onur Biyik)
• Free Images - Pointers to some free stock images on the Web. (via Shannon J. Hager)
• Open Source C# Programmable Calculator - I mentioned this one back when it was closed-source, but now you can see how it's done too. (via Eric Bergman-Terrell)
• Password Minder - Manage, generate, and retrieve passwords securely from a central repository. (via Chris Burgess)
• Gmail Notifier - System tray icon to let you know when you have new Gmal messages. (via Chris Burgess)
• Now "Paste As.." in VS.NET with Smart Paster Add-In - Paste as string, comment, or region. (via Chris Burgess)
• Lavarnd - Random number generation via Lava Lamp. (via Chris Burgess)
• SqlBuddy - Free IDE for MSDE/SQL Server written in C#. (via Chris Burgess)
• ORM.NET : Object-Relational Mapping and Code Generation Tool for .NET  - Open-source tool in the ORM sweepstakes. (via Adwait Ullal)

Hardware

• Practical Applications of the Philosopher’s stone. For drunks. - Using a Britta water filter to purify cheap vodka. (via Shannon J. Hager)

Information

• Google Watch - News, conspiracy, and tin-foil-hat theories about the leading search engine. (via Onur Biyik)
• Microsoft Interview Questions - The big list from Chris Sells. Microsoft is reportedly moving away from this sort of crap, which I think is a Good Thing. Certainly knowing that these things were a big part of interviewing there was one of the things that kept me from ever following up on a Microsoft job offer. (via Onur Biyik)
• How to retrieve an icon based on the file type - Interop code to be used for this purpose from inside .NET applications. (via Shannon J. Hager)
• E-voting News and Analysis, From the Experts - Non-partisan information site. Be interesting to see whether they remain active now that the US Presidential election is over. (via Shannon J. Hager)
• SiliconBeat - Weblog of innovation and money in Silicon Valley. (via Adwait Ullal)
• AdwaitsDotNetJobs - Yahoo! mailing list of job openings for .NETters. (via Adwait Ullal)
• Ads to pop up when TiVo users scan past commercials - Choice quote about pending legislation: "The bill has a provision to prohibit technology that skips commercials during a DVD or televised movie; opponents, including advocacy group Public Knowledge, say the provision would make it a crime to fast-forward through a commercial." Sure is nice to live in the land of the free sometimes. (via Darrell Norton)
• Initialization phase of a Setup program may take longer than expected to complete in Windows XP - Classic KB article with hotfix. As the submitter points out, the article raises as many questions as it answers: "Are my setup times longer than expected (whose isn't) or maybe I should just lower my expectations out of XP? Am I experiencing this specific problem? Am I not severely affected by this problem?" (via Itai Shaham)
   

Community

• Orcas: Code Builders - Mitch Denny suggests how the next Visual Studio could make life even more productive (scroll down, there's much more after the first three paragraphs). (via Onur Biyik)
• House of Blues: RSS Feeds - Yes, RSS is everywhere, even tracking concerts and events. (via Shannon J. Hager)

Winners

• Well, I'm pretty happy with the way that turned out. Plenty there for me to chew on, and hopefully for you too. But, you know, a contest has to have winners. I took a batch of stuff into account when deciding: whether I'd seen the link before, how much it fit in with the Daily Grind zeitgeist, and the state of my pineal gland. Anyhow, in my purely subjective opinion, the winners are: John Barone, Chris Burgess, and Onur Biyik. Congratulations, and you'll each be receiving a free book! Stay tuned for the next Daily Grind contest in a few hundred more issues.

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

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