• Terminals
  Terminals is a secure, multi tab terminal services/remote desktop client. The project started from the need of controlling multiple connections simultaneously. It is a complete replacement for the mstsc.exe (Terminal Services) client.

• InfoQ: The Agile Enterprise: Real World Experience in Creating Agile Companies

• GOM Media Player
  Plays virtually any media without installing codecs

• WatiN Home
  WatiN has grown into an easy to use, feature rich and stable framework. WatiN is developed in C# and aims to bring you an easy way to automate tests with Internet Explorer.

• Will Hall Music » TWiT.tv Audible Book Picks
  Audible picks from the TWIT network
• Digsby = IM + Email + Social Networks
  digsby is a multiprotocol IM client.digsby is an email notification tool. digsby is a social networking tool that alerts you of events-

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2008 Extensions, Version 1.2
  Tools for developing custom SharePoint applications: Visual Studio project templates for Web Parts, site definitions, and list definitions; and a stand-alone utility program, the SharePoint Solution Generator.
• PrtScr about
  There are loads of free screen capture tools, but this is not another cheesy, spreadsheet-looking one. This one offers directness, ease of use, and does it with style.

Need I say more? Be one of the first to grab it from FTP.

• ShellRunas
  ShellRunas provides functionality similar to that of Runas to launch programs as a different user via a convenient shell context-menu entry.

In Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 I used the "Run As" command religiously for testing various stuff. Today I needed the same thing in Windows Vista, right clicked a program in the start menu and ... nothing. No Run As command. Confused I held down the shift key in the hopes that it would appear. Again nothing.

Turns out the only thing you get in Windows Vista is the "Run as Administrator". Oh you can have Vista prompt you for credentials every time you select Run as Admin by changing the local group policy but I really don't want to spend the time changing the configuration or the hassle of having to enter credentials every time I want to run something as admin. I'm lazy like that.

Sysinternals to the rescue with ShellRunAs. It adds a new menu item to the right click menu which allows you to enter a different set of credentials to run the application under. Nice! No hacking of group policy required.

Download ShellRunas

My favorite Visual Studio add-in just got revved to version 4.0. Full LINQ support included along with a number of other goodies. I may have to update my ReSharper review now :)

Although I got to say that an install screen looking like this would scare me just a little if I didn't know the product all ready. Busy, Busy, Busy!

Download ReSharper 4.0

In my first post I covered the Why? of community and ended up with this mission statement, "The Danish .NET community is an open platform through which developers meet as equals to share experiences and inspire each other through enthusiasm".

With the Why? in place I followed up with What? and came up with my personal idea for the Danish .NET community, "The Danish .NET community is about face to face meetings where people participate on equal terms and secondarily about online activities to make up for the intervening periods.".

How?

And now for my favorite part of the series: The practical aspect. The how!

How do we go about creating an open platform through which developers meet to share experiences? In many way I already feel we've made good inroads on that one. Naturally I'm a little bit colored here due to my involvement in ANUG but I honestly feel that the the user groups out there are the very best vehicle for getting developers together. Especially with user groups popping up in major cities across Denmark and the possibility of cooperation between them.

That's why I'm taking the initiative to bring the core groups of the Danish .NET User Groups together on a regular basis to knit the enclaves of .NET community better together.

The NUGs will create a nice platform from which to create the informal gatherings which are the geek dinners. I like the idea of geek dinners and I feel that the informal nature of such gatherings help people let their guard down a bit and talk more freely about whatever challenges they're facing day to day.

Microsoft of course is playing their part in this with the TechTalks which I feel are much better than the Meet Microsoft events of yesteryear due to their clearer focus. Although I feel that Jutland is left out in the cold a bit.

Microsoft is very keen to help out and I've wracked my brain to come up with ideas for places where they can help out because basically the .NET community seen with my eyes is better than ever.

One way to help out the NUGs is by helping us put together large scale shared events, maybe full day events with specific themes and who knows, maybe in the long term we can go even bigger and create a yearly .NET conference? Microsoft has experience with this kind of stuff with the Meet Microsoft events and I feel it could work even better with the special sauce that the NUGs bring to the table.

Also I'd like to see large scale events based on the open space principle. Simply bring together a bunch of enthusiastic and opinionated people and have them go at it. We've discussed doing this within ANUG but we feel that the scale is too small to do it without any sort of structure. But imagine gathering people from across the country for a day of open space discussion; I see some magic happening there.

We need to take a long hard look at what's already out there and not try and create new initiatives. Basically what will happen is that we'll water down the community until relevant information is scattered across the ruins of the community useless to all. In that vain I propose that we start using some of the prominent .NET sites out there to share information like DotNetForum.dk. More specifically I'd like Microsoft to not try and invent the wheel by creating their own platform for sharing content. Use what's out there, use DotNetForum.dk, ActiveDeveloper.dk, or whatever else. Please don't try and do something completely new. Just get the content out there and back the existing efforts by doing so.

I was surprised to find that people place an enormous value on web casts and specifically on web casts created here in Denmark. I partially agree that they are a good vehicle for information but only for some information. I've given Daniel a though time in the past but he has proven that web casts are the way to go for personal interviews with people in the community. His unique position with Microsoft along with his outgoing personality makes him perfect to go out there and do just that.

These are some of my opinions and ideas on how we can make the .NET community even better. In short we need to create more opportunities for us to meet face to face and use the existing platforms to promote new content.

I'd like Morten Jokumsen's opinion on where he sees DotNetForum.dk, I'd like to hear from Daniel Mellgaard Frost and Bo Drejer whether we can establish a strategy based on some of this stuff, I'd like to hear from the powers that be at ONUG Jesper Blad Jensen, Joachim Lykke Nielsen, and Kasper Bo Larsen what their opinions on this are, and the same thing goes the KNUG guys Jakob T. Andersen and Mads Kristensen.

This is my second post in the series Do! Community! Why? What? How?. In this post I'll try to address the What based on the mission statement from the previous post, "the Danish .NET community is an open platform through which developers meet as equals to share experiences and inspire each other through enthusiasm".

What?

What makes a community? I guess that's it different for each individual. For me it's all about meeting people and doing so continually. I first started feeling part of a community with my involvement in Århus .NET User Group and Danish Forum for .NET Architects.

Meeting the same people again and again, getting a sense of what they're about, and why they care about the things that they do, that's what community is for me.

Blogs, web casts, online articles, never really did it for me. To me it's very impersonal although once I've met a person I usually follow their blog religiously.

Everything should have the chance to participate in this on the level he or she desires be it as an attendee at a meeting, as a speaker, posting to a blog, whatever, and everybody should have even opportunity to do so.

The Danish .NET community is about face to face meetings where people participate on equal terms and secondarily about online activities to make up for the intervening periods.

Read part 3 Do! Community! How?

In my last post I was pretty harsh in my statements about Microsoft and Daniel in particular but I felt it necessary to get out there in order to spark a debate or at least get the right people thinking about what's going on.

Now that said I also feel that whenever someone puts forth criticism it's vital to back it up with something substantial to address the situation. That's what I intend to do with my next couple of posts.

First I'd like to address why we should care about the community at all. The why of it. Second what can we do about it. The what. And finally I'll talk about ways to get where I'd like to see the community go. The how.

Background

I never felt as part of any community in my years working with Microsoft technology, not when I spent a lot of time answering questions on news groups, not when I spent time on Eksperten.dk, and not even when I attended the Meet Microsoft events regularly when they were still running.

During the last year though that started to change. Along with the other members of the core group I've busied myself with getting Aarhus .NET  User Group off the group. Right around the launch of ANUG I was invited to be part of the Danish Forum for Danish .NET Architects. Both initiatives have brought change to the way I think about the Danish community. With that in mind I'll try to explain why we should care or at least why I care.

Why?

To me community is inspiration, participation, enthusiasm. At the core of each of these words are people. Interaction with people, knowing people, sharing experiences with others.

I care about the community because I care about people. I care about creating something which benefits others, not just myself. That's why I blog, that's why I spend my spare time helping out with ANUG, that's why I take the time to answer every comment and e-mail I receive.

Simply put you should care about the community because it provides developers a great way of inspiring each other, of sharing the enthusiasm that most of us feel every day when we go to work, and finally because community knits together competency centers across the country which otherwise wouldn't benefit from each other.

In short I feel that we should care about the community because the Danish .NET community is an open platform through which developers meet as equals to share experiences and inspire each other through enthusiasm.

Read part 2 Do! Community! What?

I seldom take the time to respond to a blog post directly but in this case though I feel that I must.

Before I get to the actual commentary a little background on what's going on in the Danish Microsoft developer community: Microsoft Denmark is very eager to reboot their community effort. In that vain they're trying to engage the people who are active in the community. Central to this initiative is Daniel Mellgaard Frost, the new developer evangelist with Microsoft. Since he came on board two months ago he's been very visible and has shown lots of energy and enthusiasm for which I have nothing but praise to sing. All is well and good up to this point.

As part of this effort a number of people was named Microsoft Designated Information Providers of which I am one. This Wednesday all the MDIPs where pulled together for the first time in a community event set up by Daniel Mellgaard Frost.

I honestly didn't know what to expect and so I was rather shocked when Daniel stood up first thing and started rattling of all sorts of demands for content delivered by the MDIPs. Now don't get me wrong I'm happy to help out but I do so on my own time and because I enjoy the work I do with ANUG a great deal. Not because I seek to please Microsoft thank you very much. I'm sure that Daniel meant it well when he stood up and tried to take control of the meeting but he came off very matter of fact and became defensive when challenged on his point.

Bad start aside we did get a good discussion going and it seems that Microsoft is very keen to help us out. Now my only problem is that when we get right down to it all we got from the meeting was a whole bunch of fluff. I understand that we're in the early phase of this thing but honestly if the MS evangelists are so eager to make stuff happen in the community it would have been so much better come to the meeting with concrete initiatives instead of a lot of "we'd like to do this...", "we could do that...", "We don't want to step on anybody's toes...". In short I'm missing purpose and direction on this one. I simply didn't take away any sense of an overall strategy for the initiative which is a crying shame given all the energy put into it.

Case in point we wanted to create a place where the MDIPs could communicate about ideas which everybody felt would be a good thing. Now the MS guys seemed at a loss as how to make this happen. While the we were discussing various avenues of making this happen Morten Jokumsen simply whipped out his iPhone and created a new group on DotNetForum. See here's an example of "Do! Community!". Don't talk about it. Do it!

Another example is the community event scheduled for the next day open to anybody and everybody. A meeting set up by Daniel although he apparently didn't deem it necessary to come prepared or even well rested. He spent five minutes there before leaving the scene to the attendees. What happened after he left? Odense .NET User Group was formed by the attendees, web sites went up, and a core group of people committed themselves to getting the group off the ground. That's "Do! Community!". Don't set up a meeting like that, sit back, and wait to see if something might happen. Set something up and make it happen!

There is a lot, a lot! of good intentions within Microsoft to do good in the community but I feel that they're paralyzed from taking action. Everything seems to be a committee and they don't want to cause a stir by favoring one initiative other another. That's not doing. That's not even trying.