Jeffrey Vanneste

I came across an alternative to WhoLockMe tonight called Unlocker.  Both programs tell you who applications have a lock on a file but Unlocker lets you unlock the file (saves restarting your computer in some cases).

Recently I've had the need to test some web methods on a web service on a different machine on the network. Unless you change the web.config or machine.config file you will get this error: "The test form is only available for requests from the local machine." So I searched on google and found this wonderful program, .NET WebService Studio.

.NET Webservice Studio is a tool to invoke webmethods interactively. The user can provide a WSDL endpoint. On clicking button Get the tool fetches the WSDL, generates .NET proxy from the WSDL and displays the list of methods available. The user can choose any method and provide the required input parameters. On clicking Invoke the SOAP request is sent to the server and the response is parsed to display the return value.

So now I can just load up the .NET WebService Studio, paste in the locacation of the .asmx file and then enter the data in to test the method.

DPack is a FREE collection of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 and 2005 tools. DPack is designed to greatly increase developer's productivity, automate repetitive processes and expand upon some of the Visual Studio features.

DPack includes various browser tools that allow the developer to quickly narrow the search down to a particular class, method or assembly type. DPack includes greatly enhanced numbered bookmarks feature, various code navigation tools as well streamlined surround with feature, and much more.

Home page and direct download link

Resharper does a lot of what DPack does but a couple of the nifty features from DPack that I like:

• Creating bookmarks with CTRL+SHIFT+number and then CTRL+number to jump back to that line.
  
• ALT+up or ALT+down will jump to the next or previous method defined.  If you press ALT+Home it will jump to the parent class or namespace at which point you can press ALT+up or down to jump to the next class or namespace in the file.
  
• Surround blocks of code with if, switch, property, region, etc blocks.  I like the surround with region one.  As far as I can see there isn't a keyboard command for this but you can still add a button to your toolbar.

It also provides a search tool for finding a method or class like Resharper does but DPack doesn't have the initial load time that Resharper does.

Sounds like Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, and BizTalk 2006 are all slated for the week of November 7, 2005.

http://codebetter.com/blogs/john.papa/archive/2005/06/07/64193.aspx

For work I had to create a lot of test email accounts. I had used bloglines to create temporary email accounts but I had to create the account before I used it. My main goal was to find a service that I didn't have to create the email accounts in advance and had no ads. I ended up using spamgourmet but here are the rest of my findings.

• http://pookmail.com/mailbox.php
  
  
  
  • RSS to monitor an account
    
  • no ads
    
  • doesn't like graphics in emails
  
  
• http://www.spamhole.com/
  
  
  
  • creates a temporary forwarding email account
    
  • you have to create the account before using it
    
  • you can provide a password to the account so you don't need to verify each time
  
  
• http://www.mytrashmail.com/
  
  
  
  • graphical emails work properly
    
  • lots of annoying ads
    
  • you have the option to forward emails or not to another account
    
  • RSS to monitor account
  
  
• http://www.mailinator.com/
  
  
  
  • no ads
    
  • graphics, scripts are striped from the emails
  
  
• http://www.spamgourmet.com/
  
  
  
  • forwards to an existing email address
    
  • you can pick new throw-away email addresses at will after your account has been verified
    
  • a lot of different filter options available
    
  • you can specify how many emails to receive to a specific email address (most of the other ones offer a feature of a time expiry)
  
  
• http://www.dodgeit.com/
  
  • RSS
  • No ads
  • no setup

If I didn't need graphics to work in the email I think pookmail or mailinator are the best services.  If you don't mind the ads then mytrashmail is great since it lets you see the graphical emails.

WinRoll is a really nifty program with a tiny footprint. It lets you minimize any window to the system tray, set the window as transparent, or roll the window into just the title bar.

Make a window roll into its title bar, send it to the back or make it stay on top. Minimize, maximize or close all visible windows, including minimizing to the tray area. Make a window translucent on Windows 2000 or above. WinRoll is lovingly hand-crafted in 100% pure assembly language to give the fastest response and the smallest memory footprint. WinRoll is proudly a FREEWARE and OPEN SOURCE application.

• middle click or shift+right click on title bar to make it transparent
• alt+middle click on title bar to make all windows transparent
• right click on the title bar to roll the window up
• alt+right click to roll up all the windows
• middle click on the close button to set the window always on top
• shift+left click sends the window to the back
• middle click or shift+right click on the minimize button to hide the window to the tray