This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Sam Gentile. Original Post: New and Notable 39 Feed Title: Sam Gentile's Blog Feed URL: http://samgentile.com/blog/Rss.aspx Feed Description: .NET and Software Development from an experienced perspective - .NET/CLR, Rotor, Interop, MC+/C++, COM+, ES, Mac OS X, Extreme Programming and More! Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Sam Gentile Latest Posts From Sam Gentile's Blog

Two days before Spring, and with very little snow this winter, we got clobbered during the evening commute and night with a big snow storm that put about 10 inches on the ground. I'm so ready for Spring.

• Brian Johnson points to the uodated Visual C++ Frequently Asked Questions
• My friend Mike Sax talks highly of the hosted Vault service offered through Orscweb. This seems to be a big win as I personally here have had hard disk failures which then of course toasted the SQL Server databases that Vault was using. Of course, I should be employing better backup but why not leave it to the Pros?This would keep my source safer.
• Groove 3.0 Beta is out and in my initial quick look, I am very impressed. Groove has finally listened to customers and gotten rid of the clunky (and heavyweight) UI in favor of a lighter and more Messenger-like UI. It finally looks like other Windows apps and yes, finally obeys the same menu conventions. Performance seems quite  a bit better. A real cool new feature is the close integration with Windows shared files file sharing with your other (possibly disconnected) computers and other members of a shared space. Paresh points to a number of press releases.
• Those who read these New and Notables know already of my respect (and emulation) for Mike as well as feeling he is the best writer/blogger out there. That is some of the many reasons I am excited about his new book Coder to Developer (which you can pre-order from Mike's site). This book looks outstanding, covering all the essential topics. I'm particuarly pleased with a complete chapter on Unit Testing, TDD and using NUnit.   Everything is in here from Patterns, to tools like Reflector, to choosing your source code provider to  code generation and much more. Highly recomended!