Rhonda Tipton's WebLog

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week.

Application Development/Design

• Extension Methods on Types You Own? – Good post and discussion on extension methods.
• Some good articles on the ASP.NET GridView object: GridView and Business Objects | Selecting a Row in a GridView
• Learning the Ruby Programming Language – Looks like great resources for teaching yourself Ruby.
• Highly Recommended Book: Debug It! – …there is just a lot of tremendously valuable information in this book. And it’s only about 190 pages so it definitely won’t take you a long time to read it.
• More Resources for Developers – A new stable channel update of Google Chrome has been announced. For developers, this update represents some significant advances in terms of extensibility and new HTML and JavaScript APIs.
• Software Development Do’s and Don’ts – Never write code with the intention that you will fix it later – Chances are you will never have the time or opportunity to fix it later.
• Nice “Quick Hit” Videos about ASP.NET 4 and VS 2010 – Someone pointed me at some nice “quick hit” videos that have been published that also provide quick first looks at some of the new features coming with ASP.NET 4 and VS 2010.
• Do You Live to Program or Program To Live? – Over the years I have noticed that there are two different kinds of developers. Developers that live to program and developers who program to live.
• Building a Url Shortener with the bit.ly API – It seems like url shorteners have become very popular these days. Especially with applications like twitter who limit your messages to only 140 characters. The cool thing is that most of the URL shorteners have API’s that you can use if you want to integrate them into your application.
• Favorite Extension Methods – Cool list of Extension Methods!
• The Weekly Source Code 48 – DynamicQueryable makes custom LINQ expressions easier
• Android Development Tutorial: Part II: A Simple UI With Events | Part III: Dynamic Layouts | Part IV: Databases And Menus | Part V: Signing And Publishing
• Visual Studio Tips: Searching Breakpoints | Adding labels to Breakpoints
• Articles from Code project: When To Use Interfaces

SQL Server, Compliance and PowerShell

• SQL Azure Frequently Asked Questions – I talk to a lot of enterprise DBAs, project managers, and developers about SQL Server in the cloud. Here’s some of the questions I get asked most often.
• Use SSIS to import one cell of an Excel file into SQL Server – Recently I needed to find a method to import one cell of an Excel sheet into SQL Server 2005 using a scheduled job on a 64 bit clustered environment.

 Community/Technology Events & Training

• Houston Area User Group Meetings – This is my monthly listing of Houston area user group meetings. 

Internet, Software and General Technology

• The Complete Guide to Google Wave: How to Use Google Wave – Looks like a great resource for Google Wave.
• Google Voice, now available on iPhone, sort of – Cool to be able to access Google Voice on my phone now.
• Extensions, bookmark sync and more for Google Chrome – Chrome goodness
• Share How You Wave and Help Write the Book! – Tell us about how you use Wave on a day-to-day basis, and your use case just might get included in The Complete Guide to Google Wave, the first book about Wave.
• Tips and Tricks: Making the Most of Google Docs – Some pretty good ideas on using Google Docs.
• 10 More Must-have Google Chrome Extensions – Another great list of extensions.

Blogging and Social Networking

• 5 Things I Learned About Blogging from Being an Author and Journalist – Pretty good information for blogging.

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

• How to Find Meaning In Your Work – Here’s how to find meaning in your work, and to get your motivation back.
• LiveMeeting Presentation Tutorial – Want to give a presentation over the web with Microsoft LiveMeeting? It’s quick and easy, and with my tips in this six-minute video, you can give a high-quality presentation that attendees will enjoy.
• How Not to Hurry – Great advice for slowing down and enjoying life.

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else

• Wallpaper: Aurora Borealis | Sunset In Tuscany
• Use Windows 3.1 again by going to a Web site – Ahhh memories…
• Full Moon Names for 2010 – Sweet! Total Lunar Eclipse in December visible from North America.
• Cassini Takes New Images of Saturn’s Moons – New images from the Cassini spacecraft of two of Saturn’s moons.
• Dilbert comics I Found Funny: 01-25 | 01-27 | 01-29 | 01-31
• Movie Trailers:  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows–

Great Link Blog Sources

• The Simple Dollar – Weekly Roundup
• Rick Minerich – F# Discoveries This Week
• John Clayton – Weekly Web Nuggets
• Jason Haley – Interesting Finds
• Alvin Ashcraft – Morning Dew
• Steve Pietrek – Links
• Arjan Zuidhof – LinkBlog
• Mike Gunderloy – Double-Shot
• David Vidmar – Links of the week
• Sam Gentile – New and Notable
• Craig Bailey – On Microsoft
• Chris Alcock – Morning Brew
• Jonathan Gardner – Links
• Greg Duncan – A Feed You Should Read
• Johnathan Giles – Java Desktop Links of the Week

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Happy Surfing.

^..^