Red Gate SSMS Ecosystem - The free SQL Server Management Studio Add-In Framework and Store (with both paid and free items)

simple talk - David Pond - Introducing the Red Gate SSMS Ecosystem The Red Gate SSMS Ecosystem is a framework that makes it easy to develop, share and manage SSMS add-ins. We aim to help add-in developers build everything from homegrown solutions and community-driven projects to commercial solutions provided by partner companies. We hope that DBAs and database developers will benefit from better integrated tools. Red Gate has lots of experience...

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Two SQL Server Resources that you might want to take another look at...

Brent Ozar - Two SQL Server Resources That Improved When You Weren’t Looking SQL Server learning materials seem to live at two extremes. Blog posts are short and to the point, but they don’t cover material in depth. Books are long and detailed, but to quote a famous philosopher, ain’t nobody got time for that. Enter two resources that have been out for quite a while. They aim to cover subjects from start to finish, but in a way that you can...

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[Kickstarter of the Day]Making your paper airplane smart (and powered) - "PowerUp 3.0 - Smartphone Controlled Paper Airplane"

Kickstarter - PowerUp 3.0 - Smartphone Controlled Paper Airplane PowerUp 3.0 turns your self-made paper airplane into a smartphone-controlled flying machine Fold It: Simply fold a piece of copier paper into a paper airplane Attach It: Attach the Smart Module to your paper plane with the patented clips underneath the Smart Module. Connect It: Start the app to connect to the Smart Module with your iPhone. Fly...

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Infographic for the English Grammar Challenged...

Daily Infographic - Basic English Grammar [infographic] While English is my first language–and only fluent language–I sometimes have a hard time with its grammar, and I know I’m not the only one. I was an English major, and have only been out of school a few months now, but at times I can feel my basic grammar skills slipping away from me. Adjectives and tenses of words I have down pat, but some of the other English concepts mentioned in today’s...

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Taking File Explorer to 11! (Okay 10... ) - 10 Tips about Windows 8.1. File Explorer you might not know

next of windows - 10 File Explorer Tips You May Not Know You Can Do in Windows 8.1 Because I deal with folders and files almost on daily basis, Windows Explorer, now called File Explorer in Windows 8, is still my best friend and the program I use the most on my day to day work. Guess what? I actually quite like what the new File Explorer offers. It’s powerful, smooth, efficient, and user friendly, even the Ribbon bar looks quite nice to me. You...

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Creating Per-Monitor DPI-Aware Applications Code Sample

Microsoft Developer Network - Samples - Per-Monitor Aware WPF Sample This sample demonstrates updating a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application to be per-monitor DPI-aware. The sample consists of two projects: NativeHelpers.vcxproj The native helper project that implements the core functionality to make a WPF application per-monitor DPI-aware WPFApplication.csproj A sample WPF application that inherits from...

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Windows 8.1 Store App Paper Prototyping Templates

Jason Roberts Don't Code Tired - Paper Prototyping Templates for Windows 8.1 Store Apps These are updated paper prototyping templates for Windows 8.1 Store apps. The changes from the previous 8.0 versions are mostly to do with the removal of snapped and filled modes in Windows 8.1 Store apps; there are new versions for the new default minimum width of 500px and also for the optional minimum width of 320px. ... Perfect Meeting-ware....

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Having your Amiga and Pi to... Using Raspberry Pi to Emulate an Amiga 500 Floppy Drive

Hack A Day - Raspberry Pi Emulates an Amiga 500 Floppy Drive [Maurizio] loves using his Amiga 500. His classic piece of hardware has been serving him well for years, except for the floppy drive, which recently gave out on him. No problem for [Maurizio], he just cracked his case open and added a Raspberry Pi as a real-time floppy emulator. [Maurizio] didn’t want to make any permanent changes to his A500 case, and more importantly he wanted...

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[Humor] Death by Cube...

Agile Scout - The Slow Cubicle Death – Welcome to Corporate America [Funny] This guy does say: “Pushing me to the brink of homicide… maybe lose my mind… maybe kill him.” Since people at work might (maybe, could be, okay they never do, but just in case...) I'm going to keep my comments to myself. But I did have a sympathetic laugh at this this morning......

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Happy VM Day! The Visual Studio 2013 RTM ALM Virtual Machine is now available

Brian Keller just shot me this email and I thought it important to blog about is ASAP (so you have a chance to download the VM's while on a faster work network... ;) Just in time for Thanksgiving, I’m pleased to announce that the Visual Studio 2013 RTM ALM Virtual Machine is now available! This virtual machine replaces the previous Visual Studio 2013 ALM virtual machine which was based on Preview bits. This is a publicly downloadable set of...

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Being smart when opening SkyDrive Smart Files in Desktop app's/ .Net

.NET Framework Blog - Opening Files from SkyDrive using .NET Summary First; Summary SkyDrive for Windows 8.1 introduced a new technology, called smart files. These files can be consumed just like regular files by using Windows Runtime APIs. However, applications that uses System.IO APIs will have problems when opening a smart file unless its content is fully downloaded on the device. With this blog post, we provided you a sample code that...

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If you're not cheating, you're not... using these new Windows Runtime Network API cheat sheets

Windows App Builder Blog - Network API cheat sheets available now in the download center The network APIs have tremendous depth and enable your app to work in many ways.  But it can be hard to figure out how and when to use the different APIs.  To help you out, the Windows Networking Team has created poster-sized cheat sheets with overviews and code samples of the most popular network APIs.  And, we’re working on more! The...

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No If's here.. Jason Haley Web Appifys his Interesting Finds blog as SPA at ifreader.com

Jason Haley - The New IFReader (ifreader.com) Last month, some of my project work slowed down – so I took the time to redesign and rewrite a useful single page application for reading the Interesting Finds blog entries. The new site design is now out at http://ifreader.com (I have also started moving my other sites to the same style … the blog site is next). IFReader.com has been around for awhile, but only provided the ability to see...

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Viasfora - Your new favorite Visual Studio Text/*ML Editing Extension?

Winterdom - Introducing Viasfora A couple of days ago, I unveiled Viasfora, my latest attempt at building a decently packaged extension for Visual Studio 2010, 2012, and 2013. I had already published a few VS Extensions before (Keyword Classifier, BetterXml, Line Adornments, and Xaml Classifier Fix), but it was not overly successful. The reasons for this were several: What is Viasfora? Viasfora is a combination of my 3 most significant...

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Battling the Console Wars, one mini-3d print job at a time. Add this Mini Xbox One to your arsenal

Dave Nunez's Blog v2.0 - Mini Xbox One To fight a console war, you need a console army. But at $500 a pop, it’s going to be expensive to draft your Xbox One battalions. Never mind, you can just print a bunch! The latest in my mini gaming machines series – grab the files to print your own at Thingiverse. Okay Santa, forget what I said before, a 3D Printer is what I really want... I've been, well, um, not bad this year... mostly. :)...

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[Book Review] 'LÖVE for Lua Game Programming'

LÖVE for Lua Game Programming Preface Chapter 1: Getting Started with LÖVE Chapter 2: LÖving Up! Chapter 3: Before You Build a Game Chapter 4: Making Your First Game Chapter 5: More About Making the Game Chapter 6: Pickups and Head-Up Display and Sounds Chapter 7: Meeting the Bad Guy! Chapter 8: Packaging and Distributing Your Game What you will learn from this book Create different environments...

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The TMI Infographic of the day... aka the world's saddest view of today's work environment?

Global Nerdy - The saddest infographic in the land Let's see... Me, me, me, me, me, me and me... sigh......

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Windows Azure Learning Resource Link Round-up

Windows Azure Technical Support (WATS) Team Blog - Windows Azure Learning Resources Microsoft has loads of resources to help you learn, understand and leverage Windows Azure cloud platform. This is our effort of listing the resources that are available to help you learn about the Windows Azure architecture, security, features and implementation. Architecture Features and Offerings Implementation Guide Understanding IaaS...

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Opening EntLib - The Microsoft Enterprise Library moves to the Open Development Model

Grigori Melnik: Thoughts on Agile Software Engineering and Beyond - Microsoft Enterprise Library - Open Development Model Microsoft Enterprise Library has a long and prominent history. Over the years, it has evolved into a mature collection of application blocks, each focused on addressing specific cross-cutting concern. New blocks have been introduced, while others become deprecated with the evolution of the .NET Framework and other Microsoft...

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Office/Exchange File Format,Specification and Protocol Documentation refreshed

Microsoft Office File Formats Documentation The Microsoft Office file formats documentation provides detailed technical specifications for Microsoft proprietary file formats. The documentation includes a set of companion overview and reference documents that supplement the technical specifications with conceptual background, overviews of file format relationships and interactions, and technical reference information. Version: Date Published: ...

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