UrlReWrting makes your web site searchable by search engines

UrlRewritingNet.UrlRewrite is a great open source library that can be used in ASP .NET for rewriting URLs.

The documentation says that the library is compatible with ASP .NET 2.0, but I have tested it with ASP .NET 3.5 sp1 and it worked great.

The library documentation provides a simple and efficient explanation for describing the great benefit from rewriting URLs:
A little example. You’re developing blog software which stores its entries in a database. To get the entry for displaying it in a details page you need the identity (ID) of the record to display. To get the ID you usually transport this value by Query String: http://myblog.com/details.aspx?id=234.

If your blog is ready and online you want to be found by potential readers on search engines like Google or Yahoo. These search engines send bots out to the World Wide Web to find interesting content. So what do you mean what the bot does with a Url like shown above? Not much, right.

So, wouldn’t it be cooler if the bot could find the topic of the blog entry in the Url for example? A rewritten Url could look like this: http://myblog.com/detail/good-news-for-a-better-world-234.aspx.

The machine (search engine bot) has something to analyze and the user can imagine what the topic is about on this page, too.

Application Architecture Guide 2.0 Released

p&p guys just released Application Architecture Guide 2.0.

This is a very beneficial guide for designing applications using MS .NET technology, it can be considered as a first step going forward to the .Net software architecture.

Increase Your Monitor Size = Increase Your Productivity

Researchers found that if you increase the size of your monitor or added on another monitor, your productivity would increase by 40% to 52%.

(Researchers at the University of Utah tested how quickly people performed tasks like editing a document and copying numbers between spreadsheets while using different computer configurations: one with an 18-inch monitor, one with a 24-inch monitor and with two 20-inch monitors. Their finding: People using the 24-inch screen completed the tasks 52% faster than people who used the 18-inch monitor; people who used the two 20-inch monitors were 44% faster than those with the 18-inch ones. There is an upper limit, however: Productivity dropped off again when people used a 26-inch screen.)

This of course will increases the whole organization productivity as well with the same percentage.

This is totally logical. Large monitor will keeps you away from doing too many scrolls, and gives a whole picture of the work you are working on. This of course will increase the productivity.

It's not required to proof this, I can feel it myself.

LINQ to SQL Obsolete

According to Oct. 2008 blog posts by Lead Program Manager Tim Mallalieu, Microsoft is making significant investments in the Entity Framework such that as of .NET 4.0 the Entity Framework will be the recommended data access solution for LINQ to relational scenarios.
Applications built on LINQ to SQL will continue to work but might not benefit from future Microsoft technologies. However, migration from LINQ to SQL is manual, and developers might want to wait for the next version of the Entity Framework before migrating.

Technologies overview:
LINQ:
The Language Integrated Query (LINQ) is a set of APIs and programming language features that enable data access queries to be written in programming languages such as C# and Visual Basic, rather than treated as text data. LINQ simplifies data access code and enables the developer to use the Visual Studio tools, such as the compiler and IntelliSense command completion, to help write queries. At its launch, LINQ supported a variety of data sources, including in-memory data objects and XML documents, and the Microsoft C# team had built a stopgap LINQ connector to SQL Server—LINQ to SQL

LINQ to SQL:
LINQ to SQL enables application access to SQL Server via LINQ, a feature of languages such as C# that simplifies data access coding

Entity Framework:
More general data access technology that provides LINQ connectivity to SQL Server and other database management systems, including Oracle and IBM DB2.

LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework Story:
LINQ to SQL debuted with LINQ in the .NET Framework 3.5 in 2007. However, when LINQ to SQL shipped, the Microsoft data access team had already begun work on the ADO.NET Entity Framework. When the Entity Framework was introduced with the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 in July 2008, LINQ to SQL became largely redundant.