Craig Bailey on Microsoft

There's a lot of noise about OpenID (it's great, we can't live without it, it's safer, it's the future, etc, etc) but very little actually happening (in terms of real adoption). TechCrunch has had a few thought provoking posts on the matter - decide for yourself whether OpenID has become little more than a marketing tool.

But if you're interested in playing with OpenID in your .NET code base then have a peek at this project. (I'm not quite sure how long this has been going, but I think it might a bit over a year ago that it started.)

(via Andrew Arnott)

Angus gives an excellent overview of how to get up and running with Watir, a open source testing utility. Watir is basically about automating web browsers in order to help test web sites.

This is something we've been struggling with at Elcom. Like most web companies we end up having to do a lot of manual testing of sites, because it is so difficult to automate.

There's a few offerings out there (some are ridiculously priced - hello Mercury!) but nothing that really gives you confidence and coverage (in the way that say unit tests do for non UI code).

I'm very keen to hear suggestions from other companies about how you automate your UI testing.

It's always interesting to see what you spend time on the most... but tracking it can be hard. There's various programs available of course, but you never really know how accurate they are. Does it count the idle time you spend reading an email on screen, and how does it tell that you weren't actually on the phone at said time, etc, etc.

Anyway, regardless of all the inaccuracies that will no doubt abound, it is still fun to check what you've been doing...

I installed Wakoopa a few months ago and left it tracking away in the back ground. Here's the summary of what I've been doing lately:

You'll notice a few things right away:

It says I used Outlook for 4.5 hours last week. I know I've had Outlook open pretty much continuously for the last week, so it is reasonable to assume that Wakoopa uses some kind of behavioural algorithm to work out usage. This is likely to be a combination of mouse movement and keyboard usage (the FAQ mentions a 30 second timeout for inactivity). So, this tells us that the actual times it reports are as good as useless... but the relative times are where it gets interesting.

For example, it seems that I spend most if my time in IE, followed by Outlook, then FeedDemon (my blog reader) and SharePoint Designer.

This seems reasonable to me - I spend a lot of time on different web sites, including our own, and especially our intranet. You'll notice that other browsers (Safari and Firefox) are also in my top 10.

My usage of FeedDemon seems strange - since I use it every morning and afternoon on the train (30 mins each way), as well as during the day. I actively read (ie 30 sec timeouts would be rare) and I'm on it a fair bit at night as well. So, as a guess I reckon I'm reading blogs for 5-6 hours solid each week. But, as I noted earlier, the times Wakoopa records are best understood in relative terms.

Finally, it is interesting to note that Visual FoxPro, Visual Studio and PowerPoint aren't mentioned in my top 10s, although I tend to use these a fair bit as well. In fact, if the full list is to be believed, I use the Volume Control more than VFP :-)

Summary: Interesting to note, but take it with a grain of salt.

Here's my full list:

I've been using ClearContext for the last two months and I love it. But it costs over $100 (Australian). That's a lot to pay. But I paid it and haven't regretted it.

However, what if you could get a license for free? Well you can. Check out the ClearContext blog for details - you just have to write a review of the product and let them know.

For those not familiar with ClearContext, it's an Outlook add in that helps you control your Inbox better. It prioritises emails for you, allows you to defer some, schedule others, and easily file away emails you are finished with. I couldn't live with out it now.

Unlike many Outlook add ins, ClearContext is fast, stable and hasn't resulted in any adverse side-effects. I've tried stacks of add-ins but have whittled them down to only three that I stick with: ClearContext, Xobni and OutTwit.

I wish I'd known about their free license program before I shelled my cashola, but hey, it's great software, and I've easily gained back the money I spent in saved time alone.