• Convert Google Reader Items to PDFs
• More Google Reader “Send To” Tricks

Evernote also published a “how to” of their own today, and I showed DZone readers how to push items to DZone’s queue yesterday.

Here’s how you can send stories to DotNetKicks or DotNetShoutout…

Open Google Reader and click on Settings (upper right), select the ‘Send To’ tab. Then just click the ‘Create a Custom Link’ button and enter this info:

Name: DotNetKicks
Url: http://www.dotnetkicks.com/submit/?url=${url}&title=${title}
Icon: http://www.dotnetkicks.com/favicon.ico

Name: DotNetShoutout
Url: http://dotnetshoutout.com/Submit?url=${url}&title=${title}
Icon: http://dotnetshoutout.com/Assets/Images/fav.ico

Enjoy!

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EDIT (2008-09-02 08:35) - I uninstalled and re-installed via an elevated command prompt. Still the same results. Fail Folder.

This is all I see for any web page I try to open in Google Chrome. It appeared to install without a hitch.

“Aw, Snap! Something went wrong while displaying this webpage. To continue, press Reload or go to another page.”

I dub thee “Google Fail Folder”:

Anyone else see this problem? I’m running Vista 32-bit. I’ve already tried running the app as admin with no luck.

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With a nod to John Lam and Shawn Wildermuth for the inspiration, here is a rundown of the things I use on a daily basis to develop software. This includes hardware, software and online resources.

Hardware

Personal Desktop

• Dell Dimension e521
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
• 4GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM
• Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 Video Card
• System HDD – 300GB Seagate Barracuda SATAII Drive
• Data/Media HDD – SATAII RAID1 Mirrored Set of 750GB WD Drives
• Creative Fatal1ty 1010 Mouse
• 20” Widescreen Dell LCD

Work Laptop

• IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T60 15”
• Intel Core Duo T2500 / 2GHz CPU
• 2GB RAM
• ATI Mobility Radeon X1400
• 100GB 7200rpm HDD
• Logitech Cordless TrackMan Optical
• 2nd Monitor: ViewSonic 19” Widescreen LCD

Operating System and Productivity Tools

I run Windows Vista Business (32-bit) on my machines. I don’t currently run Vista Sidebar or any launcher/toolbar applications. I have been getting along well by simply organizing the folders in my Start Menu and putting the items I use frequently in my Favorite Programs section.

Firefox 3 is my default browser, but I’m thinking of giving IE8 Beta 2 a shot at daily use. I have it installed, and it looks quite promising. My must-have Firefox extensions include Adblock Plus, Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures, Download Helper, FFClickOnce, Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer and Greasemonkey.

At the office, I use Outlook 2007 for email, contacts, calendar and tasks. I am beginning to use OneNote 2007 for meeting notes and other task organization & mind mapping activities. Outside of my day job, my email and contacts are in Gmail. I use both Presdo and Upcoming for calendar / scheduling.

I use Windows Live Writer to post to my WordPress blog. It’s simply the best blogging tool for Windows, with tons of great plug-ins available.

MediaMonkey is my media management tool of choice. It’s great for maintaining large MP3 libraries and podcast subscriptions.

I am giving Sysinternals Desktops 1.0 a try to manage multiple desktops on my laptop. I tried another tool a few months ago, but docking/undocking with the second monitor was freaking it out. So far so good with Desktops 1.0.

Developer Tools

I use both Visual Studio 2005 Team Developer SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 Team Developer SP1 using a custom vssettings file I created on Ryan Lanciaux’ Visual Studio Theme Generator online tool. My must-have Visual Studio plug-ins are ReSharper 4.0, GhostDoc and StyleCop. My company uses TFS for feature/bug tracking and source control, MSUnit for unit testing, and CruiseControl.NET for our continuous and daily builds.

My text editor of choice is Notepad++, and I use Paint.NET for all my image editing needs. BeyondCompare is fantastic for comparing files & folders. My group uses it for code reviews as well.

Here is a quick rundown of some other handy tools to keep around, most of which I use quite frequently:

• FileZilla
• visionapp Remote Desktop
• PureText 2.0
• Reflector
• Depender
• Resourcer
• LINQPad
• Sysinternals Process Monitor

The Cloud

• Twitter for random thoughts and blog notifications
• Google Reader for RSS feed reading
• Flickr for posting personal photos
• LinkedIn and Facebook for connecting/re-connecting
• Live Mesh for file sync between machines

How About You?

That’s enough about me. Let’s hear what you use on a daily basis to make yourself a more productive developer.

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• Some Finalizer Pitfalls and Not All Bytes Are Exactly 8 Bits (Oren Eini)
• Finalizer vs. Application: A Race Condition From Hell and Guaranteed, Finalization Order Is Not (Sasha Goldshtein)
• CBR/CBZ Comics in C# (thund3rstruck)
• ReSharper 4.0 Lambda Refactoring (David Starr)
• Countdown to F# CTP (Chris Smith)
• There’s Usually an Easier Way (Mike Hadlow)
• Extended DSL Model Explorer – Release v1.0 (MSDN Code Gallery)

Design / Methodology / Testing

• Migratory Compromises (Dave Laribee)
• The Poetry of Testing and Prevention v. Cure (Part 3) (James Whittaker)
• Three Qualities That Every Piece of Code Should Have (Jan Van Ryswyck)
• Going Full Circle with TDD (Kyle Baley)
• .NET Rocks! – Christian Weyer on the Internet Service Bus (MS Downloads)
• Five Questions with Kyle Larsen (Michael Hunter)
• Iterative and Incremental Development: A Brief History (David Starr)
• SOA Patterns Chapter 2 for Free Download (Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz)

Silverlight / WPF

• WPF Futures Is Out! (Vladimir Milev)
• Using CSLA Light, Part 1 and Part 2 (Rocky Lhotka)
• Expression Blend Training Resources (Frank La Vigne)
• WPF Photo Print (.NET 3.5 SP1) (Chris Cavanagh)
• Behold! Silverlight Streaming! (John Holliday)

Web Development

• Virtual Earth ASP.NET Control Released (John O’Brien)
• How to Encrypt Query String Parameters in ASP.NET (Keyvan Nayyeri) – Link of the Day
• ASP.NET MVC Tip #26 – Create a Lightweight Control View Engine (Stephen Walther)

Database

• Quick Tip: Generate Change Script for SQL Modifications (Ryan Lanciaux)
• SQL Server 2005 Driver for PHP Now Available (Marcelo Lopez Ruiz)
• SQL Server Data Services (Aghy)
• SQL Server – Simple Example of Recursive CTE – Part 2 – MAXRECURSION – Prevent CTE Infinite Loop (Pinal Dave)
• SSDS Demo Code Now on CodePlex (Jamie Thomson)

SharePoint

• SharePoint Magazine Articles for July (Arno Nel)
• Question to SharePoint Developers (Gunnar Peipman)

PowerShell

• DevHawk’s Slightly Useful PowerShell Configuration and Some PowerShell Scripts (Harry Pierson)

Events / Community

• Events This Week – July 28th, 2008 (G. Andrew Duthie)

Miscellaneous

• Announcing the Summer of Arcade and Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 Releases This Week (Larry Hryb)
• .NET Rocks! – Scott Guthrie on MIX and Matthew Manela on the MSDN Code Gallery (MS Downloads)
• Cuil Shows Us How Not to Launch a Search Engine (Rafe Needleman)
• Nerd Test Results (Frank La Vigne) – My results are on my About Me page.
• Academics to Get a Glimpse of Microsoft’s Sphere (Ina Fried)
• Windows Live Wave 3: New Photo Feed Service – Windows Live FrameIt (Chris)
• IE8 and Reliability (Andy Zeigler)
• Tigerpress – A Free WordPress Theme (Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz)
• Adobe Releases Photoshop Lightroom 2 (PhotoshopNews.com)
• The Mojave Experiment (Sunshine)
• Must-Have Software and Tools – July 2008 Edition (Tim Boland)

Link-O-Rama

• Weekly Links #11 (Grant Palin)
• Clearing a Blog Backlog (G. Andrew Duthie)
• Interesting Finds: 2008.07.29 (gOODiDEA)
• Silverlight News for July 29, 2008 (Denislav Savkov)
• Everyman Links for July 28, 2008 (Dave Burke)
• Silverlight Cream for July 28, 2008 — #337 (Dave Campbell)
• The Morning Brew #146 (Chris Alcock)
• Double Shot #258 (Mike Gunderloy)

Book of the Day

Lessons Learned in Software Testing: Cem Kaner, James Bach, Bret Pettichord: Books

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• Data Structures and Algorithms Book (Granville Barnett)
• CSLA .NET 3.5.1 RC0 Available (Rocky Lhotka)
• Relational-Object-XML-Object with LINQ to SQL & LINQ to XML (Dinesh Kulkarni)
• Learning Ruby via IronRuby and C# Part 5 (Justin Etheredge)
• More Fun with ‘yield return’ (Mike Hadlow)

Design / Methodology

• SCRUM — As Explained by Ken Schwaber (Manish Agrawal)
• The Data Disconnect (Justin Etheredge)

Web Development

• ASP.NET MVC: Avoiding Tag Soup (Rob Conery) – Link of the Day
• ASP.NET AJAX 4.0, More Databinding Help with the DataView (Phani Raj)

Database

• Different Foreign Keys for Different Tables (Kenneth Downs)
• Simple Example of Recursive CTE (Pinal Dave)

Miscellaneous

• A New Search Engine Appears: Will You Use It? (Robert Scoble) – No.
• Understanding the Hardware (Jeff Atwood)

Link-O-Rama

• New and Notable 259 (Sam Gentile)
• Interesting Finds: July 27, 2008 (Jason Haley)
• Silverlight Cream for July 27, 2008 — #336 (Dave Campbell)
• Silverlight News for July 28, 2008 (Ilia Iordanov)
• Weekly Link Post 52 (Rhonda Tipton)
• Links (7/27/2008) (Steve Pietrek)
• The Morning Brew #145 (Chris Alcock)
• Link Listing – July 27, 2008 (Christopher Steen)

Book of the Day

Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software (Pragmatic Programmers) (Pragmatic Programmers): Michael Nygard: Books

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• Some Observations on Saving to a File and Testing Interleaved Async File Writing and Mocking the File System (Oren Eini)
• Using Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (LDS) in Windows Server 2008 (Bart de Smet)
• Default Files in Visual Studio Test Projects (David Starr)
• Sneak Peeks Into the F# Project System, Part Two (Brian)

Silverlight

• Silverlight 2.0 – Concepts to Become a Silverlight Master (Series Part 3 – Blend) (Bart Czernicki) – Link of the Day
• Silverlight Problems That Affect Me (Rob Eisenberg)
• In-State Animation in a Nutshell (Jesse Liberty)

Design / Methodology

• The Difference Between Best Effort and Assurance (Oren Eini)
• The Request/Response Service Layer (Davy Brion)

Web Development

• The ASP.NET MVC Definition (Michael C. Neel)
• ASP.NET MVC Tip #25 – Unit Test Your Views Without a Web Server (Stephen Walther)

Link-O-Rama

• Interesting Finds: July 26, 2008 (Jason Haley)
• New and Notable 258 (Sam Gentile)
• Silverlight Cream for July 26, 2008 — #335 (Dave Campbell)
• Link Listing – July 26, 2008 (Christopher Steen)
• Bookmarking the Web – w30/2008 (Erwin)

Book of the Day

Programming WPF: Chris Sells, Ian Griffiths: Books

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• SilverlightFlyoutPanel (Ola Karlsson)
• Improved XAML “Loading” Animation (Chris Cavanagh)
• Silverlight Games and Today and More on the Way (Adam Kinney) – I spent way too much time playing HexMinesweeper last night.
• Hanselminutes Podcast 122 – BabySmash! (Scott Hanselman)
• Tip of the Day #21 – How to Work with Shapes, Brushes and Gradients (Mike Snow)
• .NET Rocks! – Brian Noyes: WPF Update and .NET Rocks! – Adam Nathan on Popfly and Silverlight (MS Downloads)
• Expression Encoder 2 VB.NET Update (James Clarke)
• Syncfusion Announces Essential Studio 2008 Volume 3 (Marissa Keller-Gusman)

.NET / Visual Studio

• Generating MD5 Hash Out of C# Objects (Hasler Thomas)
• Rosario – Create Custom Team Architect UML Diagram Menu Items (Clemens Reijnen) – Link of the Day
• Video: New Error Checking Feature in Visual Studio Service Pack 1 (Charlie Calvert)
• Karvonite – Agile Persistence Framework – Release: July 2008 CTP (MSDN Code Gallery)

Design / Methodology

• The Scope of an Application (Oren Eini)
• Prevention v. Cure (Part 2) (James Whittaker)
• Deep Fried Bytes Episode 7: Talking Domain-Driven Design with David Laribee – Part 2 (Keith Elder)
• Stack Overflow Beta Design (Jeff Atwood)

Web Development

• Graffiti Extras 1.2 Released (Keyvan Nayyeri)
• Make Your Website Mobile and iPhone Friendly – Add Home Screen iPhone Icons and Adjust the ViewPort (Scott Hanselman)
• ASP.NET AJAX 4.0, Master-Details View with the DataView, Part 2 (Phani Raj)

SQL Server

• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 RTM on July 31st? (Steven Bink)

Blogging / Social Networking

• How to Make Your Blog More Personal (Darren Rowse)
• Blogs to Take Note Of (Cameron Skinner)
• Hanselminutes Podcast 123 – Dare Obasanjo on Social Networking (Scott Hanselman)
• StackOverflow.com Podcast: Subscribe for Education, Stay for Entertainment (Jay Fields)

Miscellaneous

• Invoking PowerShell From VBScript (COM) (Jeffrey Snover)
• 5 Ways to Deal with Difficult Clients (Mike Gunderloy)
• Beta Release of Office Outlook Connector Adds Calendar Syncing (Ed Oswald)
• HD View for Firefox 1.21 (MS Research) - Aids in the display of and interaction with very large images.
• 21 Months Later, Vista Is Still More Secure Than XP (Ed Bott)
• July 2008 Technical Reading List (Scott Hanselman)
• Mojave Experiment Gets a Web Site (Ina Fried)

Link-O-Rama

• Links of the Week July 25th (Chris Love)
• Silverlight Cream for July 25, 2008 — #334 (Dave Campbell)
• Interesting Finds: July 25, 2008 (Jason Haley)
• New and Notable 257 (Sam Gentile)
• Visual Studio Link #57 (Darren Stokes)
• Morning Coffee 171 (Harry Pierson)
• Everyman Links for July 25, 2008 (Dave Burke)

Book of the Day

Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management (Pragmatic Programmers): Johanna Rothman, Esther Derby: Books

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• How to Review NHibernate Application (Oren Eini)
• IronRuby at OSCON (John Lam)
• LINQ Farm: More on the LINQ Aggregate Operators (Charlie Calvert)
• Learning Ruby via IronRuby and C# Part 4 (Justin Etheredge)
• .NET Rocks! – Miguel de Icaza and Geoff Norton on Mono (MS Downloads)

Design / Methodology

• Coding Without Comments (Jeff Atwood)
• Code Commenting? Try Business Commenting. (Avi Pilosof)
• Impedance Mismatch and System Evolution and Default Architecture: Layers (Oren Eini)

Web Development

• The MVC Minefield (Michael C. Neel)
• GridView or Repeater? (Gunnar Peipman)

Miscellaneous

• Easy Ways to Make Your Technical Blog More Visible and Programmable (Pete Brown) – Link of the Day
• Book Review: The Productive Programmer – Neal Ford (Shawn Wildermuth)
• HD View Control for Internet Explorer (MS Research)
• Converting Columns to Date From DateTime Does Not Result in a Scan in SQL Server 2008 (Denis Gobo)

Silverlight

• Silverlight a Flash Competitor, Not AIR Says Kevin Lynch (Schalk Neethling)
• An Adobe Evangelist Gives His Opinion on Silverlight (Dion Almaer)

Link-O-Rama

• Silverlight News for July 25, 2008 (Martin Mihaylov)
• Link (7/24/2008) (Steve Pietrek)
• The Morning Brew #144 (Chris Alcock)

Book of the Day

Working Effectively with Legacy Code (Robert C. Martin Series): Michael Feathers: Books

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.NET / Visual Studio

• MSTest, Why I Hate You… You Cause Me Too Much Friction and RhinoMocks New Arrange, Act, Assert Does Not Seem to Work Under MSTest… Odd (Derik Whittaker)
• ADO.NET Data Services Support for LINQ to NHibernate (David Hayden)
• Using Speech in Visual Studio (Phil Denoncourt)
• Learning Ruby via IronRuby and C# Part 3 (Justin Etheredge)
• Professional Visual Studio 2008 (Keyvan Nayyeri)

Silverlight

• Tall Skinny Data Columns Using Improved WrapPanel for Silverlight (Matt Perdeck)
• Silverlight at Gamefest (Tim Heuer)
• Drawing Fractal Trees – Part 3 (Avi Pilosof)
• Getting Information About the SubImages of the MultiscalImage Control (Martin Mihaylov)

Design / Methodology

• Some Points About Services Layer (Gunnar Peipman)
• Prevention v. Cure (Part 1) (James Whittaker) – Link of the Day

Web Development

• ASP.NET Cookies – Client Side State Management (Gil Fink)
• ASP.NET MVC Tip #24 – Retrieve Views From Different Folders (Stephen Walther)

SQL Server

• .NET Rocks! – Andy Leonard on Unit Testing Your Database (MS Downloads)
• Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services Online Resources (Joe Webb)
• SQL Server 2005 – Track Down Active Transactions Using T-SQL (Pinal Dave)

Miscellaneous

• stackoverflow Podcast #15 (Jeff Atwood)
• Microsoft Announces Reorganization – Platforms & Services Division Will Be Split Up (Gregor Herdmann)
• Getting Started With PowerShell 2 – Part 3 (Joel Bennett)
• More Information on Windows Live Wave 3 (damaster)
• Caligari trueSpace 7.6 for FREE?!? (Chris G. Williams)

Link-O-Rama

• Silverlight News for July 23, 2008 (Ilia Iordinov)
• Interesting Finds: July 23, 2008 and Interesting Finds: July 24, 2008 (Jason Haley)
• New and Notable 256 (Sam Gentile)
• Silverlight News for July 24, 2008 (Denislav Savkov)
• Interesting Finds: 2008.07.24 (gOODiDEA)
• Everyman Links for July 23, 2008 (Dave Burke)
• The Morning Brew #143 (Chris Alcock)
• Silverlight Cream for July 24, 2008 — #333 (Dave Campbell)

Book of the Day

Professional Visual Studio 2008: Nick Randolph, David Gardner: Books

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Web Development

• Web Development as Tag Soup (Jeff Atwood)
• DropThings: Open Source ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX Portal – New and Improved (Brad Abrams)
• The Weekly Source Code 30 – Spark and NHaml – Crazy ASP.NET MVC ViewEngines (Scott Hanselman)
• ASP.NET AJAX 4.0 CodePlex Preview 1 Available (Bertrand Le Roy)
• ASP.NET MVC Tip #22 – Return a View Without Creating a Controller Action (Stephen Walther)

.NET / Visual Studio

• The Known Type Provider (Davy Brion)
• What a C# Coder Should Know Before They Write VB (Kathleen Dollard)
• Running Your Build/Source Code From a RAM Disk (Eric Hexter)
• Update Model – A Question of Identity – Part 1 of 3 (Lawrence Jones)
• NHibernate.LINQ with ADO.NET Data Services (Shawn Wildermuth)
• Learning Ruby via IronRuby and C# Part 2 (Justin Etheredge)
• Evolution of C# Delegate Syntax From .NET 1.x to 3.5 (Bart Czernicki)

Design / Methodology / Testing

• Patch Management Approaches Using Centralized SCM and How a Blocking Remote Call Can Take Down an Application (Oren Eini)
• No Slow Unit Tests with xUnit.net (Ade Miller)
• Mocking Dilemma, Solved! (Davy Brion)
• The Code Reuse Myth (Brian Reindel)
• Leveraging Unit Tests as Functional Tests, Load Tests, and Service Monitors (Schalk Neethling)
• The Undercover Adventure (Part 2): I Want to Know What You Mean. What You Meant. What You Will Mean. Every Time. (Anne Botha)

Silverlight

• Check Out Our New Learn Page! (Jesse Liberty)
• Fun Silverlight Game: Crayon Cannon (Dan Fernandez)
• Silverlight 2.0 – Concepts to Become a Master Series (Part 1 – .NET/C#) and (Part 2 – WCF) (Bart Czernicki)

Events / Community / Blogging

• Pluralsight BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Fundamentals in Big Apple (Sam Gentile)
• Events This Week – July 21st, 2008 (G. Andrew Duthie)
• Has/How/Why Tech Blogging Has Failed You (Robert Scoble)
• PEST (James Whittaker)
• Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Declarative Data Validation Presentation – Charlotte Developers Guild (Karl Shifflett)
• Upcoming Conferences with Plenty of SharePoint Oriented Content (Lawrence)
• WordPress Tips + Things You Can Do After Installing WordPress (Amit Agarwal)

Miscellaneous

• Review: The Annoted Turing by Charles Petzold (Michael C. Neel)
• Live Mesh Updated (Sarah Perez)
• Live Mesh Tutorial: Synchronizing Messenger Plus! Skins, Scripts Etc. (Sunshine)
• Pre-Beta Mac Client for Live Mesh – Review Only (Chris)
• What I Look For in an Interview Candidate (Pete Brown)
• How to Become a Good Developer? (Gunnar Peipman) – Link of the Day

Link-O-Rama

• Link Listing – July 20, 2008 (Christopher Steen)
• New and Notable 255 (Sam Gentile)
• Visual Studio Links #55 (Darren Stokes)
• Weekly Links #10 (Grant Palin)
• Silverlight Cream for July 21, 2008 — #330 and Silverlight Cream for July 21, 2008 – 2 — #331 (Dave Campbell)
• Five Minutes Past Noon Coffee 170 (Harry Pierson)
• Bookmarking the Web – w29/2008 (Erwin)
• The Morning Brew #141 (Chris Alcock)

Book of the Day

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