Just downloaded the official release of Visual Studio 2010 and nearly fell of my chair, when I saw that the new download manager is a Java Applet. Is Microsoft going soft? Or are we starting to see vendors use the best technology for the job, rather than what company developed the technology. I would of loved to be a fly on the wall in the meeting when it was suggested! Good on Microsoft.

MSDN Downloads Java Applet - landing page

MSDN Downloads Java - Applet download

MSDN Downloads Java - Applet UI

Just used MySQL Workbench Beta 5.2 for the first-time. Why? Extra backups for the server upgrade, better safe than sorry.

MySQL Workbench is now much more than just data modeling – modeling, Querying and server admin are now done in one place. MySQL Workbench replaces MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser.

Other improvements I liked: easy to use with a better UI, you can use SSH and your passwords are now stored in a secured vault.

Please note there will be some downtime today, due to a server upgrade this should improve the overall performance of the website.

If your a gamer don’t buy a BT Home Hub it doesn’t do open NAT. Just spent an hour sorting out a friends Home Hub. Rather than use stateful translation tables you have to set-up port forwarding for each game And because you have to set-up static NAT for games it won’t work if you have two PS3′s. This is rubbish, now I know why they call it a home hub not a router. Save yourself £80, get broadband only and buy a Netgear router from PC world.

MVC 2 is officially released, there are so many excellent features,  but the best feature for me is the strongly typed Html helpers. I’ve been playing around with this feature and will share some of my experiences with you.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/03/11/asp-net-mvc-2-released.aspx