The Daily Grind 896

It's the end of the week and all the kids are sick. This is a recipe for no sleep at all.

• telerik r.a.d. menu v4 beta - Optimized HTML, better VS.NET design time support, ASP.NET 2.0 databinding.
• telerik r.a.d. ajax v1 beta - An AJAX panel for universal ajaxification of controls and an AJAX manager for codeless interconnection of page elements.
• HelpSpot - Help desk software including self-help portal and support staff functionality, with the latest Web UI goodness and RSS support. 45-day trial here, pricing from $179.
• Guidance Explorer - Tool from the Microsoft Patterns & Practices group to help find the relevant stuff in all the documentation they've pumped out. (via Tom Hollander)
• Altova XML Suite 2006 release 3 - New features include CSS and JavaScript support in StyleVision, XSLT and XQuery profilers in XMLSpy, and IDE integration for MapForce.
• Google AJAX Search API (Beta) - Embeddable Google for your Web site.
• Windows Server Update Services with Service Pack 1 (WSUS SP1) - An update to Microsoft's updater for networks. Now works with Vista clients, among other changes. The Readme is here.

• iCapture - Preview any URL using the Safari browser. Or use ieCapture to do the same with IE7. (via Jon Galloway).
• Sync With Access - The SQL Server Mobile team is planning to implement synchronization with Access databases. It's about time.
• Reducing Elevation Prompts in RC1 - Lots of people have complained about all of the User Access Control prompts in Vista. Here's the official word on the plan to make that feature less of a pain in the butt. But boy, doesn't RC1 seem like a mighty late time to be getting this under control?
• Visual Tour: 20 Things You Won't Like About Windows Vista - ComputerWorld joins much of the rest of the press in savaging Vista beta 2.

• Bloglines Search - Yet another way to hunt for information on blogs. Ask.com has also launched a blogs and feeds search, which looks like it's leveraging the same backend although it's not giving me identical results. Color me perplexed.
• Doesn't anyone proofread / edit computer books anymore? - Troy Brumley notices the race to the bottom of the quality barrel in the computer book world. I believe there's a version of Gresham's Law operating here. (via James Robertson)

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