The Daily Grind 513

By Mike Gunderloy
Thursday, December 2, 2004

Just time to post a few links before I run the kids off to preschool this morning. I think.

Software

Service Monitoring Utility - Free utility to visually monitor the state of Windows services across multiple servers. I think this is the first piece of software that was actually inspired by one of my complaints here on the Daily Grind.
Download BLink! - Julie Lerman has made her blogging client available to the masses.
PDF Speedup - Freeware application to disable much of the cruft included with Adobe Acrobat. (via Scott Hanselman. I'd like to take this space to deny the rumors that Daily Grind is pursuing a buyout of ComputerZen.)

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-040 - Microsoft has admitted that the IFRAME vulnerability is important enough for an off-cycle patch. If you're running an older version of Windows than WinXPSP2 or Win2K#, you need this. Well, either that or you need to dump IE and use another browser. I also had to laugh at their use of the phrase "newly-discovered" for something that's been getting exploited in the wild for weeks.

MSN Introduces New Communication Service That Enables Blogging, Picture Sharing and More - Yes, it's MSN's take on blogging. Looking at the stuff here, as well as the concurrently "improved" MSN Messenger, all I can say is that I'd rather stick forks into my eyes than use either one. It's clear that my tastes in Internet applications have ossified, just as my tastes in in music did a decade ago. But the first person to wink or nudge my Messenger window is going to get kickbanned. (And if Trillian can ever get the protocol issues worked out, I'm dropping the official Messenger client like a sack full of dog turds).

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