Scott Guthrie announced the release of the .Net framework code today (comments and all!). Now you can debug right into Microsoft's code and see what is really going on.

For the original announcement, check out .NET Framework Library Source Code now available.

If you want to learn how to enable this feature, check out Configuring Visual Studio to Debug .NET Framework Source Code.

I can't wait to try this out tomorrow!

Scott Hanselman put out an interesting post today about measuring blog traffic. This has been a topic that has interested me for awhile. FeedBurner provides a lot of great information that I couldn't have gotten otherwise, but there are some critical pieces of information missing (or perhaps I just haven't completely figured out how to read the stats yet).

It is a well known fact in retail that it costs more to get new customers than keeping the ones you have. However, it is also known that no matter what you do, you will lose customers. People move, die, find something else, etc. A key indicator about the health of the business is the rate at which you are losing customers. A dramatic change in that can be a major indication that something is going either right or wrong in your business.

I am not in retail, but it seems the same holds true for blogs as well. Although I may not pay for marketing, it does take work to try to attract subscribers. I read blogs about blogging, I try to write interesting articles, I try to participate in community forums, etc. I haven't been hugely successful with my blog, and likely never will be, but it does take a lot of effort to try to increase my subscriber count anyway. It would be great if FeedBurner was able to provide me with information about how many new subscribers I have vs how many subscribers I lose.

So, here is my proposal for what kind of information I would like to see for my subscriber stats:

1. A subscriber is a person who has subscribed to a blog feed and continues to get updates. The updates could be every 5 minutes or every other week.
2. A new subscriber is (obviously) one that has never requested the feed before.
3. A lost subscriber is one that has not requested an update in over 2 weeks (or some configurable amount).
4. A regained subscriber is one that requests your feed after not having received updates in over 2 weeks (or some configurable amount).
5. Each of these stats should be displayed prominently with drill-downs to help see what is going on.

Of course, I suspect I'm being a bit naive in what kind of information can be provided. Scott mentions a couple things that would prevent FeedBurner from being able to record this information, such as NewsGator retrieving the feed once and then delivering it to all subscribers (I don't think FeedBurner can know who the subscribers are in this situation).

I ordered a new custom built Dell XPS on Monday and it arrived Thursday! I was a bit worried because their website ate my first two orders (one of those times it gave me an error on the confirmation page!) and I ended up having to contact Dell by phone to get the computer ordered (and make sure I wasn't ordering two).

I did a little bit of investigation before I bought my new computer including pricing out the components for The CodingHorror Ultimate Developer Rig. The interesting thing is that article was posted in June, just 6 months ago, and when I priced everything it was almost half the price. However, the price on the Dell XPS was comparable, the specs were pretty decent, and I didn't really feel like going through all the hassle of putting together my own machine.

The highlights of my Dell XPS include:

• Intel Core2 processor Q6600 (2.40Ghz,1066FSB) w/QuadCore Technology and 8MB cache
• 3GB DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz (don't really know much about RAM specs other than 3GB is good)
• 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS
• Dell 19 in 1 Media Card Reader with Bluetooth
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit Edition English
• 4 Year Limited Warranty

I don't typically purchase the extended warranty, but it was a condition of the coupon that I used. Basically I got $500 off of the computer but I had to purchase the warranty (plus 3 year Trend security, whatever that is) for $338. It was still a better deal than any other coupon I was able to find and now I've got a 4 year warranty to boot!

I would have written this last night, but I was a bit busy installing software (Firefox 2, Visual Studio 2008 - Trial :(, Slick Run, GoodSync, RoboForm, Live Writer, Office 2007, etc).

If you use Developer Express components and need to see what has changed between versions, I have built a tool that will display all the issues that they have included in their release notes between version 6.1.0 to 7.3.5 (you can add additional release notes if you want to) in a grid. This allows you to filter, sort, group, etc them so you can see exactly what has changed.

The following link provides additional information about this tool...

UPDATE: The viewer is no longer available. It is no longer relevant since DevEx updated the format for their release notes.

If you tried to read my Favorite Tools article after I published my last blog post that talked about it (also titled Favorite Tools), you were probably not able to get to the actual article. I've fixed that now.

Apparently Community server doesn't differentiate blog posts from articles and if a blog post has the same name as an article, one takes the place of the other.

If you are interested in seeing a list of the tools that I like to use regularly, I have added an article called Favorite Tools on my website.

I plan on keeping this list up-to-date on some sort of regular basis (probably annually). But don't worry, I will post to my blog when I make updates.

[EDIT 3/8/2009] Never mind. Their service now sucks and considering the cost, definitely not worth the effort.

I've been using Ultima Hosts as my web host since April, 2007. The main reason I got a web host was so I could mess around a bunch of stuff that I couldn't of done otherwise (even though I spent many years as a web developer, I never really got into the admin stuff). I spent weeks searching for a good host, unfortunately I had no idea how to determine if a host was good or not so I ended up asking the ch 9 community for a recommendation and they led me to Ultima.

Now it should be noted that my requirements for a web host are pretty minimal. I was looking for one that supported ASP.Net 2 and included SQL Server. I didn't have any serious plans at the time for a website and certainly wasn't concerned at the time about bandwidth or large amounts of storage. I just wanted something that was developer friendly, and Ultima certainly delivers on that.

If you are interested, here are some of the specs for the Standard .Net hosting package (this information is likely to go stale, check their website for current information)...

(the Professional.Net package is in parens)

Cost: $199 ($299)
Space: 2GB (5GB)
Domains hosted: 1 (5)
Sub domains: Unlimited
Bandwidth: 30GB/month (100GB/month)
Mailboxes: Unlimited
SQL Server databases: Unlimited (with remote access)
ASP.Net 2.0 (with full trust)
.Net 3.5
Total DNS control (I used this today to switch to Google Apps for Your Domain)
Lots of applications (such as Community Server)
Lots more, check out the website if this isn't enough for you :)

All this plus great customer service. I have sent them numerous emails and they have always responded very quickly and accurately, even in the middle of the night (usually within 30 minutes or so). In fact, it's their customer service that has prompted me to write this review (perhaps I feel a bit guilty about wasting their time with all the dumb questions I've asked :).

If you are looking for a company to host your web site, I would enthusiastically endorse Ultima Hosts.