The Daily Grind 759

Some news from Microsoft and elsewhere to start your day off.

Software

• DocMoto - Internet-ready or intranet document management system. Trial download, pricing from $295 for 5 users. (via Programmers Heaven)
• SQL2005 Service Manager - Free tool for starting and stopping SQL Server 2005 services. (via Eric Bowen)
• CodeVeil - Encryption technology for .NET executables. Your application gets decrypted on the fly just before it gets executed, to protect it from reverse engineering. Pricing from $899.99. (via Paschal L)
• Iconomaker - Free icon editor with support for transparency and various other spiffy features.
• NJDX - A "powerful and practical" OR mapper for .NET. Free through December 25, $799 after that.

Information

• Microsoft Takes it on the Chin Over Test-Driven Development - Scott Bellware offers a good summary of community reaction to Microsoft's idiotic attempt to redefine test-driven development to mean something that fits the capabilities of their own tools. Microsoft really needs to do a couple of things here. First, they need to yank the offending content from MSDN before any more people notice how stupid they look. Second, some of the more prominent Microsoft agile bloggers need to step up to the plate to explain what they're doing to evangelize within the company so that this sort of thing is less likely to happen again in the future.
• Microsoft Offers Office Document Formats to Ecma International for Open Standardization - Well, it sounds good, but I don't see a timetable or a completely open license commitment. There's an awful lot of politics and FUD going on in the "my document is more open than yours" space right now.

Community

• Simple Sharing Extensions for RSS and OPML and Frequently Asked Questions for Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE) - And to complete the trifecta of Microsoft news, Microsoft has hatched another set of extensions to RSS. As Sam Ruby points out, the last time Microsoft put forth a community-based set of RSS extensions they apparently lost interest in the whole process within a couple of weeks. Until I see some evidence of continuing give-and-take with the existing community of RSS developers on this I'm not going to invest any effort in understanding what they're proposing.

Sponsor

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

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