The Daily Grind 557

We had to give the 8-month-old his own computer yesterday. The 2-year-old was complaining that he was spending too much time banging on her keyboard.

Software

• TraceTool 4 - Free tool that you should look at if your application includes tracing: "A C#, Delphi and Java trace framework and a complete trace viewer (Tail ,outputDebugString, event log) with support for Log4J, Log4Net and Microsoft Enterprise Instrumentation Framework (EIF)."
• Tree Surgeon - Tool to take some of the grunt work out of setting up a .NET development tree, following Mike Roberts` advice in How to setup a .NET development tree.
• You Subscribe: RSS - New RSS reader for Outlook, now in public preview (via Lockergnome)
• XML Marker - Free color-coded XML editor with treeview and tabular display. (via Sean Gephardt)
• Aqua Data Studio 4.0 - Major new release of this cross-platform, cross-database query and administration tool.

Information

• Now that Joel Spolsky has mentioned it, I can tell you about a book which I`ve been cagy about even though I wrote it: Painless Project Management with FogBugz. I still can`t tell you what`s in the book, because the program won`t be out until February 23. But you can go pre-order a copy if you want. Or read Joel`s foreword to whet your appetite.
• Windows Server 2003 as a client, MSN Toolbar Suite and Orca - John Howard shows how to edit MSI files that prevent applications from installing on Windows Server 2003.
• Introduction to SQL Profiler - an article I put together for Developer.com.
• AOP@Work: AOP tools comparison, Part 1 - An exploration of some of the work going on in aspect-oriented programming.
• Display Outlook Web Access as Windows Messenger tabs - I`m not sure whether this is inspired or scary, but it`s a nice hack. Speaking of which, why the heck does Microsoft continue to ship two different incompatible Messenger clients Right hand, left hand, hello
• NewsGator platform roadmap - where are we going - Looks like the NewsGator folks read Eric Sink`s article on small ISV transparency. Whatever the cause, it looks like they`ve got some interesting plans ahead for the RSS world.

Communityy

• Keyboarding - Jeff Atwood discusses what he sees as the perfect computer keyboard for developers, and invites input. You won`t part me from my combination of Unicomp keyboard and five-button trackball, but mileage varies widely.