New, Delicious Species Discovered | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

New, Delicious Species Discovered | The Onion - America's Finest News Source: "MANAUS, BRAZIL—An international team of scientists conducting research in the Amazon River Basin announced the discovery of a formerly unknown primate species inhabiting a remote jungle area roughly 300 miles from Manaus Monday. According to scientists in Manaus, the new species, Ateles saporis, is 'an amazing biological find' and 'incredibly delectable.'"

Techie Diva's Guide to Gadgets ღ: USB Cufflinks

Techie Diva's Guide to Gadgets ღ: USB Cufflinks: "USB Fashion continues to amaze me. Maybe I was completely wrong when I dismissed USB fashion as a fading trend. German gizmonista Tonia Welter has committed the ultimate usb fashion statement with the USB cuff links concept. Very ala James Bond, these cuff links are made of sterling silver and can hold more information than your trusty memory. Next time you want to sneak some compromising information out of a black-tie party, make sure you inconspicuously transport it inside your functional usb cuff links."

15 Seconds : Reusable Components in ASP.NET 2.0, Object Binding and Precompilation

15 Seconds : Reusable Components in ASP.NET 2.0, Object Binding and Precompilation

Introduction
One of the excellent features of ASP.NET 2.0 is the ability to create reusable components without having to compile them even once. This is possible with the addition of the new pre-defined directory named Code. The Code directory is a special directory that is used as a placeholder for storing all the reusable components. Any reusable component placed in this directory will be automatically referenced and made available to all the pages in the Web site. ASP.NET 2.0 not only makes creating reusable components easier, but also allows us to easily consume them by providing a new data source control named ObjectDataSource. With this new control, it is possible to bind to an output of an object's method directly to data-bound controls such as dropdownlist, gridview and so on.

Creating Reusable Components in ASP.NET 2.0
A cool and useful new feature in ASP.NET Whidbey is the addition of the \Code directory. The \Code directory, like the \bin directory, is a special directory used by ASP.NET, but with a twist. While the \bin directory is designed for storing pre-compiled assemblies used by your application, the \Code directory is designed for storing class files to be compiled dynamically at runtime. This allows you to store classes for business logic components, data access components, and so on in a single location in your application and use them from any page. Because the classes are compiled dynamically at runtime and are automatically referenced by the application containing the \Code directory, you don't need to build the project before deploying it, nor do you need to explicitly add a reference to the class, and you can easily make changes to a component and deploy it with a simple XCOPY or with a drag-and-drop operation. In addition to simplifying the deployment and the referencing of components, the \Code directory also greatly simplifies the creation and accessing of resource files (.resx) used in localization, as well as automatically generating and compiling proxy classes for WSDL files (.wsdl).

ASP.NET.4GuysFromRolla.com: Using Strongly-Typed Data Access in Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0

ASP.NET.4GuysFromRolla.com: Using Strongly-Typed Data Access in Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0: "Introduction When we as developers are learning new techniques, examples can be our own worst enemies. Tutorials are designed to be easy to understand, but at the same time they often reinforce lazy, inefficient, and even dangerous coding practices. Nowhere is this more common than in ADO.NET samples. In this article we're going to take a look at what it means to strongly-type objects from your database, and why despite the lack of examples, you will almost always want to do so in your applications. Specifically, we will see how to create and use strongly-typed DataSets in Visual Studio 2005. As this article explores, strongly-typed DataSets offer a number of advantages over alternative, loosely-typed data access techniques and, with Visual Studio 2005, creating and using strongly-typed DataSets has never been easier. Read on to learn more!"

MSDN .NET Framework Developer Center: The LINQ Project

MSDN .NET Framework Developer Center: The LINQ Project: "The LINQ Project is a codename for a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that encompass language-integrated query, set, and transform operations. It extends C# and Visual Basic with native language syntax for queries and provides class libraries to take advantage of these capabilities."

real Carbon Fibre iPod Case

Carbon Fibre iPod Case

For iPod junkies, the C6 Manufacturing Carbon Fibre 5G iPod would be a nice addition to the stacks of covers already out on the market. Constructed of carbon fibre, aluminium, and stainless steel screws, the case comes with a clear screen protector, stainless steel belt clip and assembly tools. Available for the 30GB, 60GB and Nano models for $50. Via Gadget Review

Boing Boing: Songbird, the "open source iTunes killer," flies today

Boing Boing: Songbird, the "open source iTunes killer," flies today

looks very iTunes-ish, may be very cool if you can build your own custom media player with store integration

The Songbird site is overloaded right now, but here's a download mirror, and another. Some discussion on this digg thread.

A team led by ex-Winamp-er Rob Lord today released a preview edition of Songbird, a desktop media player that offers an open source alternative to services like Apple's iTunes and the Windows Media Player. Instead of connecting to one locked store full of DRMmed goods, it can connect to any and all available music (and video) on the internet.

BB: So why did you guys build this?
RL: People should have more choice about music and video formats, and where they get their music. Imagine what your experience of the web wold be like if IE connected only to microsoft.com. That's what digital networked media players are like today. Fairplay [Ed. Note: Apple's proprietary DRM] is the 8-track of our generation, and those formats may become obsolete a lot sooner than people using those services realize. Songbird can connect to any a la carte media store -- downloadable music, radio, video, P2P networks, and classes of services that haven't been created yet. Services like iTunes -- where everybody has to shop from the same store -- are like walled garden online services back in the early days. AOL, Prodigy. That's how we connected to the 'net then. Songbird is to iTunes what the Firefox browser is to those old, limiting online services. It opens up the whole internet to you as a music browsing experience.

BB: Apart from the ability to connect to lots of different sources, what will Songbird do differently?
RL: The opportunity to innovate is stymied by architecture. All of the popular media players out there have pretty much the same feature set on the desktop -- when you leave aside what's possible when you connect to the internet, they all do pretty much the same thing these days. Rip, mix, burn, play, organize playlists. But plug them in to the internet, and there's so much more they could be doing. The possibilities for networked services are totally untapped. For instance, [Winamp co-creator] Justin Frankel created a collaborative jamming service, and you can't do that inside any commercial media player now. You'll be able to do those kinds of things inside Songbird.

BB: What's in it for those providers?
RL: It's an open format, so they can do deep integration into our player, and reach new audiences. We built Songbird on the Mozilla Foundation's XULRunner platform, which is also used by Firefox and the Thunderbird email client. Firefox is very widely used now, there are 400 extensions, everybody knows it's as much of a movement as a piece of software. The difference between the Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers is substantial, but it's nothing like the difference between iTunes or Windows Music and Songbird.

BB: Songbird's logo is a cute, rotund, whistling birdie -- but what's up with that puff of gas coming out of his posterior? Is your mascot farting?
RL: Sorry, bad reception (SSSHHCSRRGRRR CRACKLE)

what were they thinking music group costumes

what were they thinking music group costumes

There's more goodness uhh...stuff where that came from. This is another link courtesy of mr. button.

Fix Backlink tags in Blogger (e.g. <\$BlogItemBacklinkCreate\$> )

Blogger Help : Backlink tags:

If you are having a problem with your blogger backlinks tags showing this <\$BlogItemBacklinkCreate\$> instead of "Create a Link" the problem is in your template code. If the code couldn't be added to your template automatically it displayed the code for you to add. The problem was the code showed the delimiters and that is messing things up. You need to delete the slashes before the dollar signs in the tags.

<\$BlogItemBacklinkCreate\$> ==> <$BlogItemBacklinkCreate$>

There are a eight of these to replace, so make sure you get them all.

There are two sections of template code that relate to backlinks. One section simply creates the links that readers see next to your posts. The other section displays the backlinks themselves. We'll look at these two parts separately.

Project Raptor - free replacement for TOAD

Project Raptor

Yay! Finally a decent interface for Oracle

Project Raptor is a new, free graphical tool that enhances productivity and simplifies database development tasks. With Project Raptor, you can browse database objects, run SQL statements and SQL scripts, and edit and debug PL/SQL statements. You can also run any number of provided reports, as well as create and save your own.