In this sample chapter from his recently released book (co-Authored with Paul Glavich) Chris Farrell gives us a fast overview of performance profiling, memory profiling, profiling tools, and in fact everything we need to know when it comes to profiling our applications. This is a great first step, and The Complete Guide to .NET Performance Testing and Optimization is crammed with even more indispensable knowledge.

The focus of Microsoft’s latest ASP.NET 4has mainly been on improving the performance and Search-engine Optimization (SEO). In this article, I'll be taking a look at what I think are the most important new features in ASP.NET 4.
- Output cache extensibility
- Session state compression
- View state mode for individual control
- Page.MetaKeyword and Page.MetaDescription properties
- Response.RedirectPermanent method
- Routing in ASP.NET
- Increase the URL character length
- New syntax for Html Encode
- Predictable Client IDs
- Web.config file refactoring
- Auto-Start ASP.NET applications
- Improvements on Microsoft Ajax Library

When building a website it is common to expose an RSS/ATOM feed for your content. Feeds serve two main purposes. The first, is that it allows other sites to consume your content for syndication. For example if you write .NET articles, there may be other partner sites that subscribe to your feed and dynamically pull in your content.  Secondly, feeds allow users to subscribe to your site so they can get notifications when your content is updated. This is especially relevant for sites with irregular content updates such as a personal blog.
In the .NET 3.5 framework there is a namespace titled System.ServiceModel.Syndication which very few people seem to know about. The classes contained in this library allows you to create and consume RSS feeds with minimal effort. I recently created a feed for my WeBlog application. I was astonished about how little time it took to implement an RSS Feed. Instead of weighing you down with all the details…I'll let the code do the talking:

1. Pin variables when debugging
2. Box selection
3. Search on-the-fly
4. Zooming
5. View Call Hierarchy
6. Sequence Diagrams
7. Dependency Graphs
8. IntelliTrace and Dump Debugging
9. Multi-monitor support
10. Intellisense – lots of small improvements

The ultimate list of Twitter tools and Twitter applications.
This is the biggest list of Twitter related apps on the internet. Over 760 Twitter tools!

We’ve got a service. We’ve got a host. But that’s all pointless without someone to use it.

In my last post I described the hassles to get a simple WCF service with username password authentication to work in the real world. Which was not as easy as it looked at first sight. Having weeded out all the unnecessary outgrows of the WCF framework I had it working though the solution was somewhat misty. After that the many useful comments have taught how to nurture my crop and which seeds to plant to turn it into a nice flower bed. Time for a round up.

The Parallel class found in the System.Threading.Tasks namespace “provides library-based data parallel replacements for common operations such as for loops, for each loops, and execution of a set of statements”. In this article, we will use the  Invoke method of the Parallel class to call multiple methods, possibly in parallel. Follow these steps:

In one of the previous articles Parallel Tasks in .NET 4.0, we explored a set of new API’s called the "Task Parallel Library (TPL)" which simplifies the process of adding parallelism and concurrency to applications. We used the System.Threading.Tasks.Parallel.Invoke() to call methods that did not return a value. However for methods that return a value, you would need to use the Task(TResult) class which represents an asynchronous operation that can return a value. We will explore how to use this class in this article.

Every system evolves over times. There’s no way around this and there is no reasonable/certain/real way to think ahead 100% of the time. It’s simply not possible to predict every possible outcome or issue or situation. This change affects every part of software development, from requirements and feature definition, down to the code, and out to source control and configuration management. Good architecture, coding practices and source control management can make change easier, but even when all of the rules for when to use which branching strategy in source control are followed, there are still going to be situations that make it difficult to keep branches clean and decoupled. At some point in a project’s lifecycle, branch dependencies – where one or more branches directly depend on the features, functionality, code, and/or other changes in another branch that is currently in development – will occur. When this happens, there are some techniques that can be used to mitigate the problems

This article walks through an example of creating a javascript object and passing it to a .NET web service via JSON. It also shows how to use JQuery to make the web service call asynchronously.

Most people still use traditional applications like Powerpoint or Visio for creating diagrams or charting software, which isn’t always a simple task (especially if the designs are complicated or need to look pretty). There’s no shortage of easy-to-use online diagramming and design applications addressing the need, but a tool called Cacoo tries to stand out from the pack with some unique features.

We live out so much of our modern lives on personal computers and web servers—yet so much of it is messy and over-stuffed. Clean up your email, fix your files, and tidy up your digital life with these 10 tips.

People have always had problems picking out gifts to give each other (or friends and relatives) for wedding anniversaries. At least, it would seem so considering the rather detailed lists that have existing for centuries all over the world to help puzzled gift-givers in their annual purchases. And while there have been attempts to create “modern” lists, they still always seem to be a little out of touch.

That is, until now.