Smart Client Bug Reporting Challenge " Calling all smart client developers! Want to win a cool Visual Studio .NET branded backpack or T-shirt? Want to help the Windows Forms team ship an amazing product? If so, come enter the Bug Reporting Challenge Contest...

Background : The VBCommenter is an addin for VS 2003 that gives you the ability to automatically generate XML comment headers in the VB .NET editor similar to what the C# editor automatically generates. It will also generate the XML comment file to go...

This one is really for the Xbox Live team to implement. I'd love to have a cool looking image on the side of my blog with my Xbox Live gamertag and possibly some recent stats ala Feedberner. Sure, I could go into Photoshop like everyone else does, but...

I can't take total credit for this one. Our team was brainstorming on how to get people internally to care more about providing great responses to help customers. One technique, that some teams have had success with, is actually bringing customers on...

I know this isn’t a developer blog post, but I just can’t have this conversation with my wife. She wants to hear about Halo 2 about as much as I want to hear about the latest “Real World” marathon on MTV. What I love about the Bungie team is the...

You can't help but wonder what is actually accomplished during that 20% of time spent by each individual at google on a non-core job related activity. Are these projects ever reviewed? Have they ever led to anything you see? Or is it just a "coolness...

Robert Mclaws started the MastersOfDotNet Halo clan. I wonder if there is one for the Java camp. I smell some fun competitions on the horizon. I know Scoble would prefer the industry not always be " Us Versus Them ", but a little rivalry can be fun every...

Scott Hanselman created his list of " Ultimate Visual Studio .Net AddIns ". I was flattered to see the VSCmdShell project make the list even in its current unfinished state. " VSCmdShell - Open a Command Prompt within a Visual Studio.NET 2003 Docked Toolbox...

I apparently don't have any machines fit to access the source control for my gotdotnet workspaces. Not even pure virtual machines I've tried work. This means I can't grab the latest code, make some change for a 1.2 release, and fix some of the bugs you...

My local EB Games store in Sammamish WA called Sunday to inform me that they would be allowing people to show up at midnight tonight to pick up their pre-order of Halo 2. Maybe I'll see you there. I doubt the party will be a wild in Sammamish as some...

Today's Idea is simple: I want the ability to give Outlook an RSS feed. When I create a new mail I'd like the signature to include the title and link of the most recent posting from the RSS feed. If I'm lucky someone will tell me that this already exists...

If you are going to use a tree view for something please consider reducing the horizontal white space that creates the indentation in the tree. Instant messenger buddy lists, for one, use too much indentation thereby meaning I can't shrink the window...

Earlier I posted about the Developer Division organizational leads blog page. One of the complaints we received was that the page did not have an RSS feed that combined the posts from all the leaders. Kent changed the aggregation code to support that...

One problem I have with most modern software media players and OS sound output is that they don't understand how someone works with music in the background. For example: Yesterday I had created a manual playlist for myself in Windows Media Player (though...

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20041103.html

It should be easier to submit feedback on downloads. In Whidbey you'll be able to download a control from the community. Before you download the control you'll be able to sort by ratings given to that control by the community. Presumably, given the choice...

I remember being super excited a few years ago getting a 32mb USB drive as SWAG. I don't think I ever used it other than to watch the promotional video clip it contained. Just another thing to carry around. In the age of zero-config wireless, bluetooth...

Last Thursday and Friday my team* went to a class on "Leading Change". We took the class because our team is responsible for continuing the culture change toward a more customer connected future for the improvement of developer satisfaction within the...

Podcasting seems to have everyone hyped up on the possibility of RSS delivered media downloads. In Whidbey we'll have a Visual Studio community download search, but what if Visual Studio subscribed to feeds that automatically gave you some of the latest...