Developer OneNote

Windows Live Writer is the most popular blog client tool. Microsoft recently released Windows Live Writer 4 as part of new Windows Live Essentials Beta launch. I tried it and it looks great. Here is what’s new.

New Ribbon UI

Live Writer 4 has same Ribbon style menu as Office 2010. Actually this applies to other Windows Live wave 4 products, Live Mail, Photo Gallery etc.

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WordPress team has announced WordPress 3.0 beta 2 is shipped. It seems that release candidate will be coming very soon.

Things to test in 3.0 beta 2

• Revised menu user interface
• Changes to the WordPress exporter and importer to make it more flexible

WordPress 3.0 changes

Check out my previous post WordPress 3.0 Features. I will keep updating there.

Note: it’s recommended not try beta version WordPress on production site.

CopySourceAsHtml is an add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 that allows you be able to quickly get your code as HTML from Visual Studio, just like being able to save it as a HTML file from the Save As dialog. It’s very helpful if you frequently post code to blog or send code in email.

I recently switched to Visual Studio 2010 and noticed this plug in is not ready for Visual Studio 2010 yet. Here is how you can get it work for Visual Studio before CopySourceAsHtml owner releases an official update to support Visual Studio 2010.

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Visual Studio 2010, the best version of Visual Studio ever, is now available for download in Microsoft download center. The build number for RTM VS2010 and CLR4 is 4.0.30319.1.

Here is link for free trial

Visual Studio 2010 Professional

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

Training Resources

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Course

Moving to Visual Studio 2010 e-Book

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People might get confused what is the difference between Chrome channels. According to http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel

• Stable channel. Everyone is on the Stable channel when they first install Google Chrome. The Stable channel is updated with features and fixes once they have been thoroughly tested in the Beta channel. If you want a rock solid browser but don’t need the latest features, the Stable channel is for you.
• Beta channel. People who like to use and help refine the latest features subscribe to the Beta channel. Every month or so, we promote stable and complete features from the Dev channel to the Beta channel. The Beta channel is more stable than Dev, but may lack the polish one expects from a finished product. If you’re writing extensions, you need to use this channel or the Dev channel.
• Dev channel. This developer preview channel is where ideas get tested (and sometimes fail). The Dev channel can be very unstable at times, and new features usually require some manual configuration to be enabled. Still, simply using Dev channel releases is an easy (practically zero-effort) way for anyone to help improve Google Chrome.

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Microsoft’s free SEO Toolkit. The SEO Toolkit provides detailed analysis and search engine friendly suggestions to help improve the relevance of your website in search results.

http://www.microsoft.com/web/seo

Note: this toolkit can only run on Vista and Windows 7 Read more »

WordPress 3.0 has a few great new features and improvement.

Ability to Choose Username When Installing WordPress

In previous version WordPress, default username for Admin is hard coded as admin. In WordPress 3.0, this secure hole is fixed, default user name can be customized when you install WordPress.

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I previously used Alt+PrintScreen key for screenshots and then pasted into MSPaint and then edited the picture, and then capture just part of a screenshot. Now a better way is install Microsoft OneNote and take screenshot via the WinKey + S and then select the portion of the screenshot you want and paste anywhere.

Note: this option also available under menu “Insert”  -> “Screen Clipping”

And yes, it’s better than Vista/Win7’s snipping tool in my option.

To burn .iso files on CD disks use cdburn utility

Usage:

<DVDDriveLetter>: ISOFileName

Example:

cdburn e: d:\os\Win7_amd64.iso to burn the image on CD disk, where e: is CDROM

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Two tools that I use frequently when troubleshot issues on servers are Process Explorer and Process Monitor. Since these are not windows built in tools (though they owned by Microsoft), I always have to go to Sysinternals site and download them one by one.

I just notice that SysInternals tools are accessible over a public UNC, all I need to do now to get latest system internals tools is just access \\live.sysinternals.com\tools. Great time saver! Read more »