This was just too good of a deal to pass up. A 32GB USB Flash drive for $60.

YOU COULD EVEN INSTALL AN OPERATING SYSTEM ON THIS PUPPY!

If you still need convincing whether this is a great deal or not, consider this:

• All 5 reviewers gave this product a 5/5 review
• Kingston is a great name for memory/flash drives
• Consider the competition underneath the product description. The cheapest price from a competitor was $96.
  

Another reason I bought one was my 8GB SD card is on its last leg.

And yes, I bought one.

Collected for your convenience...all in one location over the past two months.

First, the primary link for the ASP.NET MVC Beta.

• ASP.NET MVC - http://www.asp.net/mvc/

Then, the additional articles and tutorials:

• ASP.NET MVC Routing and Parameters
• Model Binders in ASP.NET MVC
• Creating a reusable GridTreeView with ASP.NET MVC and jQuery
• ASP.NET Podcast: Routing with ASP.NET
• New ASP.NET MVC Tutorials
• Dependency Injection with StructureMap
• A Guide to Learning ASP.NET MVC Beta 1
• ASP.NET MVC and JSON
• Partial Output Caching in ASP.NET MVC
• Partial Requests in ASP.NET MVC
• ASP.NET MVC Pros and Cons
• ASP.NET MVC: Simplified Localization using ViewEngines
• Deploy ASP.NET MVC on IIS 6, solve 404, compression and performance problems
• ASP.NET MVC DropDownList and HTML Attributes
• Rendering a treeview using the MVC Framework
• Leveraging Existing ASP.NET features in ASP.NET MVC
• Display AJAX Progress in ASP.NET MVC
• CarTrackr - A Sample ASP.NET MVC Application

Wow, what a week for Google!

T-Mobile G1/GPhone

Of course, the G1 was released this week. I was waiting for the dust to settle down to find out if this was an iPhone killer or not. From what I've seen on CrunchGear with their roundup, it's pretty close, but not quite an iPhone. There are some features missing that may sway a consumer one way or another.

I'm still wrestling with paying $179 for the phone with a $25/$35 a month bill.

Google Contact Manager

The Contact Manager has been screaming to be built and released to the public since GMail was created. As you would expect, this manages your contacts throughout every Google service that deals with users.

It has a nice clean interface, allows you to set up groups, and add pictures to your contacts as well.

Google Moderator (apps engine)

Ok, it really isn't an existing service to the public, but according to Matt Cutts, Google Moderator existed internally at Google and was used for teams asking questions.

Google Moderator lets anyone ask a question and letting the users vote the questions either up or down as to which are the most important they want answered.

This moderator would also be an excellent way for companies to conduct feature matrixes for future products (i.e. Submit a feature for this future product.)

Google 10 to the 100

10 to the 100 is a call for ideas that help as many people as possible on this planet. Your one idea may even be worth $1 million dollars. Maybe even more.

Google has committed $10 million to implement your ideas and projects submitted through Google.

If you wanted to make a difference in the world, this would be the place to start.

Google InQuotes

Ok, let's cut through the poltical horse hockey! Since the Election 2008 is upon us, the media is feeding us so much information on candidates, we don't know what is right or wrong.

So, Google has created Google InQuotes. This takes all of the people running for office and collects all of their quotes regarding political issues. So if you want to see what Obama said about Iraq as opposed to what McCain said, check out this site.

It may sway your vote.

GridView Tips and Tricks using ASP.NET 2.0
A great collection of tips for GridViews including adding and editing of rows, popup confirmation, and paging and sorting techniques.

Generic Collections and Filtering
Here's a technique if you've been using Collections before generics.

250+ ASP.NET Interview Questions
If you want to gauge how much a candidate knows, here is a great list of questions that range from beginner to advanced.

12 Performance Tips for ASP.NET
Some of these are a given, but it's always good to get back to the basics once in a while.

Build an Enhanced ASP.NET GridView Control
...and speaking of GridViews, 15 Seconds has a great post on encapsulating all of the functionality of the GridView in a...well, new GridView.

Easy Background Tasks in ASP.NET
As Jeff Attwood was working on StackOverflow, he talked about how he was making the badge implementation. There were a lot of comments based on this technique and was questioned whether it was the right way to do it or not. Personally, I think it works just fine.

Tuning Throttle Parameters of WCF
I consider WCF as Web Services on Steroids. If you want to tune your WCF, check out this post to speed up your performance in ASP.NET.

.NET Developers Reference Card Roundup
Definitely a great list of reference material for .NET Developers.

My parents came back into town because of a recent death in the family and brought, of course, both laptops. For a recap of what happened before, check my past laptop experience with my parents.

The laptop my father was using was the Acer Aspire 5315. He didn't want all of the software on the computer. I found the OS disk, backed up his data, reformatted his hard drive, and voila! He had a clean machine.

The one piece of software I didn't install was the most critical piece of software he needed: The Acer ePower Management Utility.

Here's what the problem was: The Acer required the ePower Management Utility to control the fan. When the machine was used for an extended period of time, it would overheat. When the laptop overheated, the laptop would shut down to save the computer from melting down or damaging the processor. With the ePower Management Utility installed, the software would identify that the laptop was overheating and activate the fan.

Since then, we (*I*) have been benchmarking it by leaving it on, putting it into suspend/hibernate mode and everything seems to be working fine.

Now, it seems my parents are grateful because they each have a laptop.

How did I figure this out? Research. :-)

There was a whole post on this at the Ubuntu forums. It seems some other techno-geeks like me reformatted the hard drive and wanted to install Linux on the machine.

For those who own other Acer machine models, I imagine this would pertain to you as well if your laptop continues to shut down after 10-13 minutes of heating up.

Hope this helps anyone who had similar problems.

I recently had a visit from my parents. They were having problems with their laptop because it kept shutting down right in the middle of doing something important: email.

After they were here for a couple of days, I noticed first hand when the Acer laptop would shut down. I couldn't explain why it was happening. Possibly the battery pack or the power cord.

Eventually, I couldn't take anymore and started looking for a replacement for my parents while they were here. Because they sure weren't getting mine. :-)

I was starting to look over the Sunday ads and noticed that Best Buy had the Acer for $349. This was not the one that had a Solid-State Drive (SSD). This one actually had a 120GB hard drive inside. This was fantastic that at least one model had an internal hard drive.

MicroCenter also had the same Acer Aspire One on sale for the same price, but we went with Best Buy because of location, location, location.

We purchased it from Best Buy and got it home. Heck, I was more excited about it than my parents.

After cracking it open, I started installing (and removing) all the software from the hard drive. It came installed with Windows XP Home, which was what my mother and father were already used to and my mother kept asking me, "Can I use it now? How about now? Can I use it?" Ahhh...parents.

There were two drawbacks with this Acer: One, Bluetooth was not included, and two, I needed to install something from CD. Since the NetBook was so tiny, Acer couldn't install a CD/DVD drive would work with the NetBook.

The solution? First problem was easy: since the Acer Aspire One had three USB ports, I gave my parents a USB Bluetooth adapter just in case they had a need for it. 

The second problem? I copied to CD to my server and added it from the wireless network. If I had a USB CD/DVD Drive, you could easily hook that up as well.

Overall, I liked it. I think they will be happy with it as well.

However, my father doesn't like the size of the screen, so it becomes the property of my mother. :-\

If you want some additional information and reviews on the Acer Aspire One, check out the following links:

• LinuxHaxor.Net Review - Acer Aspire One
• OSNews.com - Discussion / Review
• Bit-Tech.Net Review
• Laptop Magazine: An In-depth look
• Engadget: Hands-On Review

For those who own a Sony VAIO, I would definitely make a call to Sony for replacing your laptop. Sony is recalling 73,000 VAIO laptops due to burn hazard. The recall involves faulty wiring where the computer hinge is located, resulting in short-circuiting or burning the user.

The laptops involved include the VGN-TZ100, VGN-TZ200, VGN-TZ300, and VGN-TZ2000.

The interesting thing about the recall is that it only affects certain laptop models. Even if you have a model listed above, you still need to call Sony and find out if you laptop needs serviced or not.

In case you've missed the news about the faulty Sony Battery Packs a while ago, check over at InfoWorld for all the latest at their Special Report Laptop section.

anewmorning.com posted a quick tutorial on how to create the Ultimate Windows XP installation CD/DVD and it looks pretty thorough.

However, even though the tutorial is thorough, I didn't see any links to the supporting software to create the ultimate installation CD/DVD.

I haven't ran through the tutorial, but it's bookmarked when I get some time to dedicate to it.

When you start building a web application, you definitely need a database. But where do you start?

Try DatabaseAnswers.org. This site also has a community area for asking database questions.

It's back! The 2008 Web Survey from A List Apart is back and is ready for data.

After a huge response last year of over 30,000 people taking the survey, it resulted in knowing what kinds of job titles, salaries, and work situations are common in our field.

This survey is geared towards designers, developers, data architects, project managers, writers, editors, marketers, and everyone else who makes websites.

The results will be published on an upcoming issue at A List Apart, so you won't feel out of the loop.

So take the survey...it definitely helps everyone in the long run.

• The Dark Side of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi - BTCloud
  With everyone using Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and RFID wireless technology, be aware that hackers know it exists as well.

• Outlook Alternatives: Moving from Outlook to Thunderbird
  MS Outlook has been around for a long time, but maybe it's time for a little change.

• Free Utilities for Burners and Your Network
  Tired of your Roxio burning software? Need to document your network? Check out these free utilities.

• Why John Rambo is the Ultimate Freelancer
  Here's some advice for freelancers on what to do and what not to do: John Rambo style.

• Firefox Optimization Add-Ons
  Here is a list of Firefox extensions that answers a reader's email about optimizing web page load times.
• Small Business Backup Lesson: DO IT NOW!
  What disaster recovery steps did I take to make sure this disaster doesn't happen again?

• Fireday Review: ReminderFox
  This weeks review pertains to an excellent extension for keeping track of date-related appointments and to-do's including birthdays and anniversaries.

• Top 10 Firefox Business Extensions
  The techies of the world aren't the only people who use Firefox. It can even be adapted to the executives.