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Dropbox is a file sync app that installs a lightweight client on your PC, monitors a "My Dropbox" folder on your drive, and automatically syncs files in that folder online and to any other computer you have Dropbox installed on.  It also makes sharing files with family, friends, co-workers, projects, etc super easy. There are plenty of other similar file sync apps, ones I’ve tried are Microsoft Live Mesh, ZumoDrive, and some of these others.  I’ve found all these either feel ‘heavy weight’, are tricky to use, or have some other annoyance.  Dropbox just beats them all hands down for … Continue reading Dropbox, Easy File Sharing and More

There are many launchers out there, but my favorite by far is SlickRun.  Here’s how to post a twitter status update straight from SlickRun.  This way even without a web browser open or a dashboard app, you can always do a quick little tweet. Get SlickRun & cURL (a little cmd app to send HTTP requests) "setup" from SlickRun Add an entry called "tweet"… Where Filename or URL = path to curl.exe (I put mine in a directory referenced by the tools environment variable) Parameters = -u <username>:<password> -d "status=$W$" http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.xml Of course there are some real drawbacks to doing … Continue reading Tweet from SlickRun

Update: 4NT is now called Take Command Update (11/6/2012): My latest review is posted here: Ultimate Windows Command Prompt: Take Command Take Command by JPSoft is, in my humble opinion, one of the best apps ever created. It is a tool for the ‘power user’ who appreciates the power of the prompt (C:\>). 🙂 It a console command prompt for Windows on steroids. I’ve used this app for over 14 years and it is still the one non-MS app I use more than any other. The History This page in history starts with MS-DOS. Though the history of the command … Continue reading 4NT – Powerful Command Prompt + My All-Time Favorite Utility (now Take Command)

Update on 5/2/07:  This post has nothing to do with Unit Testing (it was written before I was aware of unit testing) but has to do with write little bits of code to try new stuff out.  It is also only for VS03.  For the current version (VS05), see this post: CoadNet VS Project Templates, Quick Code + Console App for C# in VS05 CoadTools Quick Test C# Project Template (setup .msi) for Visual Studio .NET 2003 IntroductionVery often I need to test a tidbit of code, do some research on a class, etc. In fact, I was creating several … Continue reading Creating Quick Tests in C#

Just announced to the world here at TechEd is the new Visual Studio 2005 Team System for lifecycle management! Team ProductivityIn the past, Microsoft has focused on making the individual developer more productive with better focussed tools like improving Visual Studio, languages, etc. Team System expands that productivity to the entire development team including managers, developers, testers, and architects. FeaturesSome of the features included unit testing, profiling, overview management, source control, automatic class diagrams, web load testing, bug tracking, task managing, data mining, infrastructure validation, and much more. All integrated into VS 2005 and using common office applications like Excel … Continue reading Visual Studio Team System is a Go!

My protege, Radoslav (Radi) Ivanov (age 16), has published his first code utilitity!  It is an “Advanced File Properties“ reader that retrieves the NTFS extended properties of a file.  It provides a DataTable wrapped method for an included COM DLL. I created an “Ordered String Dictionary“ that implements an ArrayList to create a string key/value pair dictionary that keeps the ordering of its elements.  The System.Collections.Specialized StringDictionary uses a HashTable that looses the order of its pairs and NameValueCollection does not support insertion at a specific location.  This class is in the “SpecializedCollections“ CoadTool. Free CoadToolshttp://www.coad.net/products/

ARG!  After spending so much time making sure my RSS feeds are valid XML, I have run into a limitation of the seemingly most preeminent RSS feed validator online.   It bombs out right at about 200K.  If the feed is longer, it is invalid.  There is no warning that this limitation is reached.   FEED Validator by Mark Pilgrim and Sam Ruby http://feedvalidator.org/   You can attempt to validate my feed, but if it is over 200K (which it currently is), it will fail.  Validate RSS Feed   However, you can attempt to parse the feed as XML, as … Continue reading RSS “FEED Validator” Bombs