Jim Zimmerman - ASP.NET, MVC, Ajax and ORM

If you like to laugh at geeky stuff, you need to check out David Silverlight's new creation called Real Technology Heroes.  This site is pretty funny.  Listen to the two audio commercials he has recorded.  Great voice, sounds just like the guy in the budwesier commercials that we all find amusing while we are driving in the car.

Oh and if you think you are smart and want to win stupid stuff, check out his community site called Community Credit.  His slogan is perfect, "stupid prizes for smart people".

While I have not used ZoomIt yet in any presentations, I plan on it.  I just downloaded it and it is pretty cool stuff.  I just watched a Continuous Integration for Team System Demo from ISerializable - Roy Osherove's Blog and he was using it.  He gave a great talk on some very cool continuous integration tips for team foundation server that I plan on using.  He did warn about how people in the front row got a little dizzy from the zoom.

I have to admit, I was skeptical as to what good Live Writer might do.  Why would you just not log in to your blog and add drafts in there?  Well I found out it is very nice to have a free rich text editor that I can save my drafts locally and then preview them on my blog before publishing them.  I am using DasBlog1.9 and Windows Live Writer connects to it right out of the box.  It took literally 10 seconds to connect to my blog.  Pretty cool stuff and it also supports most of the top blog engine out there like:  

You can also write plug-ins to it and can see some examples at the Windows Live Gallery - Writer .  And you can find more info on Windows Live Writer SDK at the live.com blog. 

Here is a picture of Live Writer using Live Writer to add it.  Nice.

Here is a map of where I live, well close to where I live.  Wow, that was easy.  Very cool!

 

This is the first time I have used those features, and I must admit that would have taken much longer in the admin for any blog. 

And now I just downloaded an Event plug-in.  I don't have an event to add right now, but I will soon.  There aren't too many plug-ins available yet, but you know there will be a lot soon.

If you have a blog, try this out.  It has saved me some time and made blogging much more enjoyable.

This is a great find.

Scott Hanselman's 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List

I have already downloaded 12 programs in the last few hours. Take some time and look at all of the tools. It will make you much more productive. I am excited to start using these tools now.

For those of you who like to learn more about .NET and like to participate in the community, then you need to go to community-credit.com. Their motto is that they gie "Stupid Prizes to Smart People". Its pretty cool. You basically get points for participating in the .NET community. Blog entries, speaking, going to user group meetings, posting to forums, etc.

Have fun!

Here is a link to a nice podcast on some design patterns for ajax and some good architecting practices. It is done by Polymorphic Podcast.

http://www.polymorphicpodcast.com/shows/architectajax/


Podcast are a great way to get up to speed. Listen in your car or while you are working. I find it better in the car because I can really listen. Kind of distracting while working if you ask me. I just tried it and I think I will wait until i have a half hour drive accross town.