Mike-Ward.Net

Friday Links #40

Microsoft anticipating April 10 for Windows 7 release candidate - Download Squad - Apparently a date has been chosen for the deployment of Windows 7 RC1. As long as development continues to progress the way it has, we’ll see its release on April 10, 2009.

Near-final Vista SP2 reaches testers, on track for mid-May release - The one public version of Vista SP2 issued so far was the beta posted in early December 2008.

System.Linq.Enumerable.All - All is a very simple extension method that can used very quickly to test an entire Enumeration. I forget about some of these handy extension methods. Another favorite is Single.

Caliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and Silverlight – I’ve been working with a number of patterns for doing unit testing in Silverlight. Caliburn implements a number of these patterns including MVC, MVP, Presentation Model (MVVM), Commands and Application Controller. Update: The Caliburn Beta is Live.

Silverlight Patterns: Model-View-ViewModel In Silverlight 2 Apps – Not up to speed yet on MVVM? This article is a good launch point into this exciting new pattern.

ZumoDrive - Hybrid Cloud storage for all your documents and media – Looks like a competitor to Microsoft’s Mesh.

Surprise: America is No. 1 in Broadband - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com – Confirms something I’ve noticed in my overseas travels. Broadband in the US is pretty darn good. Not that it can’t stand improvement.

Comcast OnDemand Goes Online - PC World - “OnDemand Online,” as it is tentatively called, will function like the cable-based OnDemand service, bringing network and cable shows, movies, and various other entertainments to Comcast subscribers for no additional cost.

JavaScript SOAP Client – Clever little project. Point it at a Web service and call one of the methods the service exposes and this library will interrogate the WSDL, generate service proxies on the fly, call the method, and return the payload as an object. For lightweight applications (like in page JavaScript) this is a great way to talk to SOAP services.

Microsoft researchers devise new browser with stronger security – Microsoft is working on a new browser to hopefully replace it’s “Lame as the Detroit Lions” Internet Explorer.

Fluent DateTime – Extension methods that allow you program time in a fluent fashion. Example: DateTime.Now + 1.Week() + 3.Days + 14.Minutes();

Tim Sneath : Announcing Family.Show v3 – Microsoft’s reference WPF application implementing what they consider “Best Practices” for WPF development. It’s not a bad little app either.

Beta Release of Smooth Streaming Now Available – If you stream media from IIS, this should be like a real big deal to you. The successor to the earlier MBR technology.

Downloads: Safari 4 Beta Adds Cover Flow, Runs “3x Faster” than Firefox – Pretty and sleek. Google Chrome still “feels” faster to me. Definitely buggy. Sure wish they would fix the “External link in new window” bug.

Chris’n’Soft » StandaloneStack – Some people really like these Mac stack thingys. I’m not a big fan myself. This one is free.

Notable Changes in SP2 RC for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 - This document describes the notable changes in the Beta release of SP2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

Engineering Windows 7 : Some Changes Since Beta for the RC – Nicely detailed blog entry from Microsoft about some of the cool stuff coming post Beta.

LINQExtender - LinqExtender is a toolkit for creating custom LINQ providers without knowing anything of how expression is parsed or processed and focusing on only the business logic.

Free content for your Kindle via Whispernet - MobileRead Forums - Lots of free books available for the Kindle.

WinBubble 1.76, “Customization and Tweaks, Not Just for Geek’s But For ALL” – UnlockForUs – A kinder, gentler tweak program for Vista.

Pick of the Week

Volumouse – Adjust the volume with your mouse wheel.

Volumouse is a unique and handy utility, that allows you to adjust your speaker volume by using your mouse wheel. In order to preserve other functionalities of your mouse wheel, the program offers several combinations, so that volume adjusting will only be used when for example an additional keyboard key is pressed. We liked the option best, which would automatically use the mouse wheel for volume adjustment when you move your pointer over the taskbar - anywhere else on the screen, the mousewheel has the standard functionality. There are various combinations available, including an option that will only use the mouse wheel for volume if Media Player is in the foreground. – From SnapFiles.