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Microsoft is offering a FREE Windows Azure Platform One Month Pass, so you can put Windows Azure and SQL Azure through their paces.  No Credit Card Required.

Learn about the Windows Azure platform with no steep learning curve.  With the Windows Azure platform you pay only for what you use, scale up when you need capacity, and pull back when you don’t.

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AjaxminGui for Microsoft Ajax Minifier

A new version is available for AjaxminGui, a free user interface for the Microsoft Ajax Minifier.  AjaxminGui is a Windows application that allows you to run the Microsoft Ajax Minifier without using the command line or Visual Studio.  Features include:

• Minify all JavaScript files in a folder and nested folders
• Minify individual JavaScript files
• Run the minifier in the background
• Enable/disable the minifier’s hypercrunch and analysis options
• Open the output folder once the minifier finishes
• View the minifier’s output

Download AjaxminGui
Blog article about AjaxminGui

ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview

ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1 provides a new Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework on top of the existing ASP.NET 4 runtime.  ASP.NET MVC 3 can be installed side-by-side with ASP.NET MVC 2 and won’t affect existing projects.

ASP.NET MVC 3 is a framework for developing highly testable and maintainable Web applications by leveraging the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.  The framework encourages developers to maintain a clear separation of concerns among the responsibilities of the application – the UI logic using the view, user-input handling using the controller, and the domain logic using the model.  ASP.NET MVC applications are easily testable using techniques such as test-driven development (TDD).

Download ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview

Html Agility Pack

Html Agility Pack (HAP) is an open-source, agile, HTML parser that builds a read/write DOM and supports plain XPATH or XSLT.  This .NET code library enables you to parse “out of the web” HTML files.  The parser is very tolerant with “real world” malformed HTML.  The object model is very similar to the model found in System.Xml, but for HTML documents (or streams).

Html Agility Pack now supports Linq-to-Objects (via a LINQ-to-Xml interface).  Sample applications include:

• Page fixing or generation.  You can fix a page the way you want, modify the DOM, add nodes, copy nodes, etc.
• Web scanners.  You can easily get to img/src or a/hrefs with XPATH queries.
• Web scrapers.  You can easily scrape any existing web page into an RSS feed for example, with just an XSLT file serving as the binding.

Html Agility Pack on CodePlex

SSMS Tools Pack

SSMS Tools Pack is a free add-in for Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 2005, 2008, 2008 R2 and their respective Express versions.  It contains a few upgrades to the SSMS IDE that were thought to be missing.  Current features include:

• SQL Snippets
• Window Connection Coloring
• Query Execution History and Current Window History
• Format SQL
• Search Table, View or Database Data
• Run one script on multiple databases
• Copy execution plan bitmaps to clipboard or file
• Search Results in Grid Mode
• Generate Insert statements from resultsets, tables or database
• Regions and Debug sections
• Running custom scripts from Object Explorer
• CRUD stored procedure generation
• New query template

SSMS Tools Pack Homepage

Web-Based Management Tools for SQL Azure

Microsoft has released web-based management tools (code-named “Houston”) for SQL Azure databases.  Houston provides basic database management tasks like authoring and executing queries, designing and editing a database schema, and editing table data.  Houston is designed to be lightweight and easy to use.

SQL Azure is a cloud-based database for websites running on the .NET platform.  SQL Azure allows developers to implement a scalable and secure custom web application without worrying about installing and updating software or managing physical hardware.

Project Houston Homepage
MSDN Blog Article

LightSwitch Public Beta 1

Visual Studio LightSwitch is a simplified way to build business applications for the cloud and the desktop.  LightSwitch provides a variety of pre-built templates and tools to quickly build business applications that target Windows Client or Windows Azure.  LightSwitch creates Silverlight applications that can run in the browser, out-of-the-browser, or in the cloud.  You can also use Visual Studio 2010 Professional, Premium or Ultimate to extend and customize your application even further.

Download Public Beta 1
LightSwitch Homepage

IRC.NET Chat

IRC.NET is an open-source, fully-featured IRC (Internet Relay Chat) client library for the .NET Framework 4.0.  It aims to provide a complete and accurate implementation of the protocol as described in RFC 2812 (Internet Relay Chat: Client Protocol) as well as supporting de-facto modern features of the protocol, such as ISUPPORT commands and CTCP (Client To Client Protocol).

IRC.NET on LaunchPad

MS-SQL Code Generation Tool

The open-source MS-SQL Code Generation Tool generates C# classes from an MS-SQL database.  Each class is generated with the appropriate constructors, CRUD methods, and methods that fetch data according foreign keys.  The tool includes profiling support and database preferences.  DBLayer and type converter classes are included in the source code.  .NET Framework 3.5 with SQL Server Management Objects (SMO) is required.

MS-SQL Code Generation Tool at CodePlex

Jquery Chat v1.0b

Jquery Chat is an open-source, one-to-one chatting application.  It’s designed to easily integrate with other ASP.NET web applications.  The chat window appears on the bottom-right corner of web pages and can be minimized or closed.  The UI supports Jquery UI Themeroller, so the design is completely theme-able.

Jquery Chat on CodePlex
Jquery Chat Demo