Smorgasbord 5

Gates to end daily MS role, to spend more time running his charitable foundation. Say what you want about the man, but he's a great philanthropist. Wonder how well MS will cope without his regular influence?

Joel Spolsky - My First BillG Review. A good read - I always wondered about that "1904 Date System" checkbox in Excel...

Google Browser Sync - a Firefox extension that continuously synchronises your browser settings across multiple computers. Very handy if, like me, you use FF both at home and work.

Disappointing to learn that the RTM version of Office 2007 probably won't have the "Save as PDF" feature, due to Adobe's legal wranglings. Seems they want the standard to be open, just not that open?  Whatever. Oddly, the feature can be made available as a free download - go figure.

Good article by Rick Strahl in Code Magazine on the release of Web Application Projects, and how these differ from the stock Web Projects in ASP.NET 2.0. I wish these had been available from day one, it would have made our migration of ASP.NET 1.1 applications much easier.

If you're a software developer using MS technologies, you really should subscribe to Somasegar's blog. Recent announcements thereon have included details of the MSDN Wiki, Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals, and the rebranding of WinFX to .NET Framework 3.0 - more juicy detail about that can be found on Jason Zander's blog.

My favourite funny animal story of the week - Tabby Cat Terror for Black Bear.

Coding Horror - Desktopitis. Yuk, I hate the way people use their desktop as a dumping ground. Personally, my desktop is used as a kind of inbox for the files I'm currently working with, but my goal (as with my inbox) is certainly to get the number of items down to zero. Oh, and I use TweakUI to get rid of silly things like "My Computer" and the Recycle Bin...

Ooh, a new version of Google Earth is available, with a "streamlined UI" and masses more detail. Looking good...