The Daily Grind 1000 by Mike Gunderloy Thursday, October 26, 2006

We made it. Thanks to everyone who has read and contributed to the Daily Grind over the years. Contest winners will be announced tomorrow.

• Net Meter - Fancy graphical display to track bytes moving in and out of your machine. Looks fun if you're easily distracted by shiny things. Download trial here, $19.95 to register. (via Programmers Heaven)
• MyLife Organized - Outliner and to-do manager with PocketPC, OutLook, and MindManager synchronization capabilities. Download here, pricing from $45.95. (via Dennis Gurock)
• ScrewTurn Wiki 1.0 - Free C#/ASP.NET 2.0 wiki. (via James Avery)
• Sweetie - Free icon set for Web applications including the original Photoshop source files so you can modify them. (via dzone)
• Retro Flying Toasters lives! - Here's a screen saver blast from the past. Not the full suite, but one freebie clone. I can remember this as being one of the first pieces of pirated software I ever saw. (via digg)
• Website PR Overlay - Tool to see the Google pagerank of every link on a page. Useful if you're obsessive about such things. (via dzone)
• WinZip 11.0 beta - Finally with RAR support, among other features.
• Adding the content of a whole directory in your Visual Studio 2005 project as linked source files? It's now possible with the "AddDirectoryContent" AddIn - The title pretty much says it all. (via Greg Duncan)
• SharePoint Explorer Client 2.0 - Community Edition - IE addin to navigate through multiple SharePoint 2003/2007 sites. (via Bill Simser)
• NetFxLive - Javascript based Windows Workflow designer. (via Ghenadie)
• A .NET State Machine Toolkit Part I, II, III - Build your own state machines for fun and profit.
• Gemini4Smartphone - This RSS reader and podcast client for Windows Mobile 5 SmartPhones has been released. 30-day trial is here, �19.95 to register.
• Network Diagnostic Tool (KB914440) - Connectivity diagnostic tool from Microsoft.
• Listen on a Specific Port - A little tool from Lyle S. Dodge to listen for connections on a TCP/IP port. Useful when you want to check on things like firewall rules and routing.
• RSS 2.0 Class Library and Syndication Provider - Another take on RSS for .NET 2.0.
• slimKEYS 0.9.8 - New release of this universal hotkey manager with a batch of new plugins. Download is here, developer info is here.
• Subtext 1.9.2 "Shields Up" Edition Released! - New version of this blogging engine has new features for stopping comment spam.

• Pumpkin Computer: Just Like Mom Used to Make - You still have a few days left if you have a motherboard that you want to permanently smell like rotten pumpkin.
• Life|Ware - Home automation product that integrates with Windows Media Center Edition and uses the Web Services for Devices stack to communicate with lighting, audio, video, security, HVAC, you name it.

• Seapine Labs - Betas, previews, technology notes and other goodies from the makers of Surround SCM.
• DowntimeAlert - What is it? - So far it's apparently a promising product idea that might some day be a promising product.
• MomPC - Creating a parent safe PC - Roy Osherove offers some advice on making life easier for yourself if you do tech support for parents.
• XML Paper Specification - The final spec is online, if you've been waiting for this one. (via Andy Simonds)
• DuckTyping: Runtime Dynamic Interface Implementation - If you're using .NET and want dynamic typing, here's a solution. Of course, the SmallTalk guys will point out that you could just move to SmallTalk instead.
• Scaling SOA with Distributed Computing - A white paper from some of the Digipede folks, published by DDJ.
• The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing (version 3.0) - The latest iteration of Joel Spolsky's advice on hiring people. You may not agree with all of it but it will get you thinking.
• Visual Basic 2005 and XNA Game Development - Maybe not how you're supposed to do it, but apparently it still works, as this set of tutorials proves. (via Greg Duncan)
• Recommended Reading - A list from Greg Wilson.

• Signs You Have Too Much Process - If you find this amusing, you've been consulting for too long. (via dzone)
• Guide to Custom Search Engines - Google's announcement of roll-your-own filters got a bit of buzz the other day. Here you can search through some of the things people have done with it. And as you might expect multiple people have done .NET search engines now:
  • Gavin Joyce has a general .NET search engine. There's also an OpenSearch provider for this one.
  • Portman Wills put together an ASP.NET search engine
  • Dan Appleman ran out and registered SearchDotNet.com
• Big Agile Up Front - A bit of humor courtesy of Sam Gentile.
• Building Add-Ons for IE Could Net You A Trip to Mix07 and $2500 - If you didn't win my contest maybe you can win the IE team's contest.

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Mike Gunderloy is the editor of Larkware, the daily .NET newspaper of record.