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The Daily Grind 723

By Mike Gunderloy
Monday, October 3, 2005

What, another week already?

Software

Netvibes - Personalizable AJAx-y Web homepage with all sorts of new features planned for the future. Looks spiffy. They have a weblog over here.
AJAX Date Picker for ASP.NET - Free calendary control for your ASP.NET apps.
VMware Workstation 5.5 Release Candidate - Now available for download and playing with.
Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset - WiX has a spiffy new homepage.
Full Customizable XpProgressBar - Free ProgressBar control with full C# source code.

C# 3.0 and LINQ - Expression Trees - Ian Griffiths explains some of the advanced syntax of C# 3.0. I freely admit that my eyes glazed over. As far as I'm concerned, C# is now going the way of C++: it's got syntax that I will never, ever use and is well on its way to complexifying its way out of my life.
How IBM Conned My Execs Out Of Millions - Cautionary tale of overpriced consultants. Anyone who finds this surprising has probably not spent much time working with corporate IT. (via Randy Holloway)
What's new with TFS Beta 3? - Rather a lot, actually.
Native PDF support in Office "12" - I think I speak for the majority of Office users when I say "about flippin' time."
Build pattern: Fast build/full build - Jon Tirsen sketches out some advice on keeping your build process moving along.
What Is Web 2.0 - Tim O'Reilly is a smart guy and his company puts out fine books, but this much-linked essay strikes me as purest horse apples. A lot of the writing about Web 2.0 reminds me of the stuff we were getting on the political front back in the 1960s about how revolution was just around the corner, based on a few highly visible but ultimately unimportant trends that didn't change anything fundamental about society.
What's next in the LOB Program? - Tom Hollander talks about what Microsoft's patterns & practices people are up to these days.

Carnival Of The Agilists - 09/29/05 - A roundup of blog posts from the agile community. (via Wayne Allen)

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