Rob Gonda's Blog

Outlook team / calendar sharing tool

so today I got inspired to ask questions ... What would be a good tool to share outlook calendars within an office, or for co-workers. I will not use exchange, so don't even go that route. It can be peer or peer or require a server (other than exchange!) ... does anyone have a nice working environment that would achieve this?

RSS Readers

Had I had decent stats in my blog, I wouldn't have to ask these questions, hehe ... what RSS readers are you using? Web based, software based? I tried a few.. I was using Sage RSS for Firefox for a while, but it wasn't portable enough ... then I tried like 10 different software based, and the one I like the most is SharpReader ... it's simple and non-intrusive... I don't like the web based one as much. SharpReader allows to export and import OPML files, and it allows for unlimited levels to categorize your feeds, feature that although I assumed basic, 9/10 programs I tried did not offer.
You can comment on aggregators for Mac too, though I don't use one, other users may find it informative.
What rss reader do you use? why?

p.s. not about stats ... I use google analytics, but that will cover rss feeds. I have available nettracker, but I haven't had time to set it up.

Best spyware detector / cleaner?

Which is the best spyware detector or cleaner? I use a few, but to be honest each finds stuff that others don't ... it's almost hard to have just one.

First, not a cleaner, but to prevent spyware, spyware blaster is a must. I won't access arguments here :)
Next, I like Adaware... just adaware pro, not the plugins... it usually do a good job.
I used to use SpyBot ... but it stopped being effective for me.
Last but not least, my latest discovery ... XoftSpy ... it removed to spywares from a friend's PC that not all of the above together could.

what do you use?

The Fourth Meal: Flash Masterpiece

Check out iChameleon Group's latest project: the Fourth Meal, for Taco Bell. Version 1 just got released today and there is still much more to come. This release includes a chat of customizable Avatars that can move around and talk to each other in various rooms, and a few games...

Ok, so the title is a little skewed, I wouldn't take it as far as a masterpiece, but it's a really nice Flash Site with awesome graphics and creative work.

BTW, it is using Adobe's FlashCom and CFMX7. I just can't wait to blog about v2 and the power of ColdFusion gateways.

Comments?

SQL: better than select count(*)

If you need to count all rows from a table without any conditional, there's a much better and faster way than select count(*). This code works with Microsoft SQL 2000 and 2005.

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[FASTCOUNT] (@Table sysname)

RETURNS INT

AS
BEGIN

  DECLARE @Rows int

  SELECT  @Rows = rows
  FROM sysindexes
  WHERE id = OBJECT_ID(@Table)
  AND indid < 2

  RETURN @Rows

END

p.s. I've been using this code for so long, I don't even remember who to give credit to :) thanks!

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