Friday evening Microsoft links, Daemon Tools edition (via Mowser)

Friday evening Microsoft links, Daemon Tools edition

By Emil Protalinski | Published: July 18, 2008 - 07:07PM CT

Links for the third Friday of July:

The WinVistaClub has released its own Royale Blue Theme for Windows Vista, created by Ramesh Kumar. The link has instructions for installing and applying the theme. The August 2008 issue of TechNet Magazine has been posted. My personal recommendation is the "Windows Deployment Services 101" article. An interesting site that I stumbled on this week is the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Video Gallery. The gallery contains how-to videos for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, including topics such as end-to-end scenarios for Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service. Hansel minutes has a great episode about Porting a Flash Game to Silverlight 2. It's worth the listen if you're into that sort of thing. In case you're wondering, the game in question is the popular LineRider! Channel 9 has a quick entry on its site about getting free chapters from the ASP.NET 3.5 for Dummies book. Too bad there are only four: user input, LINQ, LINQ for data, and using the AJAX Control Toolkit. This one is a bit useless, but it's fun to do if you're someone who likes messing around with Virtual Earth. You can go ahead and enable inertia! Guides from Microsoft this week include Getting Started with Microsoft Easy Assist, Use Powershell to secure and exchange your Open XML documents, Virtual Earth to your ASP .Net JAX applications, and A simple step to shrink the download size of Silverlight 2 applications. Zune Insider noted this week that the first clock radio & audio system for the Zune has been released by iHome. It'll set you back $100, though. Interested to see what developers have managed to put together with the Silverlight 2 Beta 2? There are 23 new ones posted on Silverlight.net just this month. Maybe you'll enjoy playing Cube Zone, a 3D puzzle game, or you'll find a use for Sylvester, a Twitter client. Speaking of Silverlight, Channel 9 has posted 44 Silverlight 2.0 screencasts, put together by Mike Taulty. Honestly, I think it covers everything you need and want to know about Silverlight, and then some. Another Silverlight-related link could be your chance for getting a job. Microsoft is looking for three people to fill these positions: Developer Lead, Senior Developer – Graphics, and Developer – Controls. Details on the Microsoft Strategic Architect Forum this year have begun to trickle out. More information is available courtesy of Mike Walker.

Per the title of this post, this week's free, third-party application recommendation is Daemon Tools, which has been recently updated to version 4.30.0301. This virtual CD/DVD-ROM emulator is one of a kind. I have been using it for as long as I can remember, and I have never encountered another free alternative that even attempts to do the same. It's fast, supports all the major types of image files, and is still constantly updated. Enjoy!