St. Louis .NET User Group - Sept.

Last night was the St. Louis .NET User Group meeting. There where 50+ people in attendance. Brian Noyes gave an interesting presentation on 'Smart Client Deployment and Update with ClickOnce'. ClickOnce is a method of simplifying the process of deploying and updating a Smart Client or Windows Application. There is a wizard to help guide you through the process of deploying your custom app with ClickOnce. Once the application is built you have several options to deploy most of which involve sending the location of the update to the client. There are a few more options but Brian did not cover them because 80% of time people are deploying through the web or email.

Brain is an INETA speaker, Microsoft MVP and writer. If you get a chance to hear Brain speak take it.

Writely

Writely is a web based word processor. The program is currently in beta and being offered for free. Once the program moves out of beta there will be serveral pricing tiers. Writely has the power deal with Word documents. The process converts the Word document to HTML for editing and display. One of the interesting features is the collaboration tools. The document author has the power to add editors to the document.

Firefox 1.0.7

Firefox 1.0.7 has been released.

Changes include:

• Fix for a potential buffer overflow vulnerability when loading a hostname with all soft-hyphens
• Fix to prevent URLs passed from external programs from being parsed by the shell (Linux only)
• Fix to prevent a crash when loading a Proxy Auto-Config (PAC) script that uses an "eval" statement
• Fix to restore InstallTrigger.getVersion() for Extension authors

Building A Refactoring Plug-In For VS.NET

I found an interesting article over on The Code Project website that talks about 'Building a Refactoring Plug-in for VS.NET' Stephan has done great job putting the article together. The plug-in framework that was put together is simple and straight forward. It looks like I am going to be spending some time with the code.

Changes Between .NET Framework Versions

Over at Got Dot Net there is a posting that describes changes between the different version of the .NET Framework. There are a lot of details here that .NET developer should check before they make the jump to Version 2.

Web Based Chat Program

Meebo.com is a web based chat program that can connect to AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, Jabber, GTalk or MSN. The tool is in alpha developement so it is not a full featured as one would like but it is still cool.

Talk Like A Pirate Day

Arrr! It is that time of year again. It is Talk Like A Pirate Day.

FreeTechBooks

FreeTechBooks.com lists online computer science books and lecture notes. The books are free and legally available over the Internet.

There is a lot of great links here. I am going to be spending a lot time following the links on this site.

Stupid Registry Tricks

Coding Horror has posted 'Stupid Registry Tricks'. Several of these tricks should be helpful to most people.

Changing the registry has a level risk. Please make sure you understand the change and double check your work.

Make Your Own Notepaper

Harvard instructor Simson Garfinkel has a web service which creates semi-custom lined notepaper in PDF format.

Notepaper Generator

Wiki Services

Today I found three sites which are offering free wiki hosting servies. If you sign up with one of these services please read Terms of service and the F.A.Q.s carefully.

• pbwiki
• wikispaces
• schtuff

Create Your Own First Person Shooter

If you are into First Person Shooters you may be interested in creating your own game. FPS Creator is a tool that can help make your dream come true. This site claims you don't need any programming skills. You will have to work with scripts to control the game action.

10 Things You Shouldn't Do with SQL Server

dotnetjunkies has posted the article '10 Things You Shouldn't Do with SQL Server.' There is nothing surprising about the item on the list an experienced DBA and/or developer should already know these things. If you are a novice programmer or DBA read the article now. For the more experienced DBA's and developers please do a quick review to refresh your memory.

CSS 101

Over at the site Web Page Design For Designers as nice series for web pages on Cascading Style Sheets called 'CSS from the Ground Up.' These pages cover what you need to know to get create a CSS page and how to link it into your HTML page.

PocketMod

PocketMod the free disposable personal organizer.

The PocketMod is a small book with guides on each page. These guides or templates, combined with a unique folding style, enable a normal piece of paper to become the ultimate note card. It is hard to describe just how incredibility useful the PocketMod is. It's best that your just dive in and creating one.

- http://www.pocketmod.com/

This looks like a great tool for those times when you can't or don't want to carry your pda.

T-Shirts For Scuba Divers

Over at Fish Pie T-shirts you can get your hands on several great T-shirts for Scuba divers.