"Upgrade Your Life" by Gina Trapani

Now here is a book I really do like. Generally I avoid "self help" books, seeing myself as mostly beyond help - especially from myself. However, having spent a while last week in the Tech-Ed bookstore reading this one and trying to make mental notes of all the good tricks presented in this book, I eventually cracked and bought a copy. And it is jolly good too.

It is broken down into chapters that deliver tips to improve your life. It starts with email and then move into data organisation, using the web effectively and even how to motivate yourself to get work done. None of it is really rocket science I suppose, but you have to know these things to be able to use them. For example, I didn't know that Outlook has an option that lets you display all email sent only to you (as apposed to a list with you on it) as blue. (Tools->Organise->Using Colors). You can also flag messages from different people in different colours.

You can read the book from cover to cover and try to remember everything, or you can dip into it at random in the sure knowledge that you will learn something useful. The content is based on material presented over the years at lifehacker.com and covers Windows and Mac platforms, along with good old common sense.

Great stuff.

"Microsoft 2.0" by Mary Jo Foley

Whilst I was at TechEd last week someone gave me a free copy of "Microsoft 2.0" by Mary Jo Foley". It is supposed to tell me "How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era". I'm not sure it does.  I summarised it as follows:

• Bill Gates is leaving Microsoft and other people will be doing his job
• The Future for Microsoft is complicated, and almost certainly not the same as The Present

There is a lot of background on the people at Microsoft, which stops just shy of being libelous in some cases. There is some detail on products and where they might be going in the future which you can pick up more easily (and in an up to date form) on the web. There is a a fair bit of repetition. And more than a few errors. The Xbox 360 has never suffered from the "Three Rings of Death" - that just sounds like a very dangerous circus. And Microsoft didn't actually manage to buy Yahoo that I recall...

Each page has big callouts on it, presumably designed for high flying types who don't want to read all the text (and it also reduce the number of words required to fill the 283 pages). My favourite is on page 191 "Microsoft must avoid several obstacles as it moves from the old way of doing business to the new." Yeah. Right.

I did not like this book much, and I got it for free. If I'd paid 29 dollars for it I would be rather cross. Perhaps the detail was lost on me, or perhaps I already know a fair bit of what was being said. Either way, take a look at the text before you part with any cash.

.NET Micro Framework Hardware

If you want to target real hardware with your .NET Micro Framework programs you will need to obtain a device. I pulled this information from the .NET Micro Framework pages on MSDN.

Developer Kits

Crossbow Technology WSN Developer Kit

The Imote2.Builder Kit includes everything you need to create wireless sensor networking applications, including three development boards with embedded radios and two sensor boards.

Digi Connect ME JumpStart Kit for Microsoft .NET Micro Framework

The industry’s first Ethernet networking solution for .NET Micro Framework. Digi JumpStart Kits are a new breed of development kits that make it easy, fast, and economical for engineers to develop network-connected devices.

Device Solutions Tahoe Development Kit

The Tahoe Development kit, featuring the Meridan CPU, allows for experimentation, evaluation and just plain fun, while slashing the time it takes to transition from prototype into production.

Freescale i.MXS Development Kit for SideShow

Freescale's high performance i.MXS Development Kit supports .NET Micro Framework applications.

GHI Embedded Master Development System

The Embedded Master includes FAT file system and USB host support, in addition to Ethernet, CAN, and other connectivity options, to provide everything you need to get started developing small devices.

SJJ Embedded Micro Solutions EDK

Includes a multipurpose development board with the .NET Micro Framework installed and ready to run C# applications. Suitable for a wide variety of embedded applications, the EDK is ideal for engineering students, hobbyists, and OEMs of small devices.

Nasty Tricks for Neighbours

I had this idea for when you go on holiday. You give the neighbours an empty cage with the line "Please look after our hamster, he's asleep at the moment and he's  great fun. But he does tend to escape if you're not careful....."

Home, with Added Jetlag

We thought we were coming home to chill out in "Cool Britannia". How wrong we were. England is very hot and, allowing for the fact that nobody here has aircon, less comfortable than Florida. Special thanks must go to Manchester Airport for taking over an hour to serve up our luggage, and Airparks Gold, for only having one working bus ("Really funny story" said the man, "The gearbox broke on one, and the other burst a water pipe...") and taking an extra hour to get us to our car.