BITS is Microsoft's background intelligent transfer service. It's used to transfer files without it bothering you (roughly). The goal is to use idle bandwidth, so it doesn't affect that streaming radio station that you like, your video chat, etc. The...

Sabarinath had this to say about Guided Help: Guided Help While this feature is still under beta, I believe this would be an interesting feature to have. In addition to having descriptive help files, Guided Help teaches you visually how to do...

This tool allows you to send in junk email so that others won't have to read it and hopefully others similar too it won't make it into your inbox. It's carefully done so that your privacy is respected (it's not automatic so you won't accidentally be sending...

Well, there's a lot of story to the last couple days so I'm going to bite it off in pieces. Here's the story of our uninvited Christmas trees. Backstory to follow. Here's tree #1 - but it's not our house. This is our neighbor's house - their cars were...

I know this is stupid - but I still can't resist sharing. What blender manufacturers do when they get bored...

The Wii is just cool - I have a lot of friends asking me if I can get them a discount on it and I have to explain to them that it's not a Microsoft product. But it clearly appeals to a whole new group of people - these are generally folks that have never...

Okay, I changed my mind, I wrote a book after all Back in 1993, I wrote that I'm doing this instead of writing a book . That was true then, but last year I decided to give this book thing another go, only to find that publishers generally aren't interested...

From the site ... North America Halo Gamers! Register now for future Halo 3 updates and for an opportunity to participate in the Halo 3 multiplayer public beta program, scheduled to kick off in spring 2007. Participating in this beta is an unprecedented...

XBox Marketplace has a new trailer up - starry night. Enjoy!

[via on10 ] Interesting idea - but when's the last time you looked at a well-used recipe book? Covered in various ingredients. Voice recognition perhaps? Even though I think there is a place for this kind of thing, and that a touch screen is really important...

This is a great article in which Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of the C++ programming language, defends his legacy and examines what's wrong with most software code. (via Jason Pontin ). Very interesting (bit long - but well worth reading)

Not much to this - but I notice searches for this coming to my blog, so I might as well provide the answer. Use SHGetPathFromIDList - as long as the pidl is part of the file system, this will succeed. If you don't need a file system path, you can pass...