This page is painfully outdated. I’ll update it, someday.

Here are a few tools I’ve stumbled upon on my trips across the net, these should serve to make your life easier. If there are any tools you just can’t live without, let me know and I’ll add them to the list.

Fiddler
So far, this little gadget has proved itself quite valuable. Being able to see just what’s going on behind the scene is a must for web developers. It the short time I’ve used it, it’s quickly climbed my list of favorites.

CentralOps
This is one of the fairly few web sites you’ll see here. This site includes a number of tools, such as whois, DNS lookups, e-mail validation & information, you name it. This has been one of my favorites for some time, it’s really a very useful resource.

Pandora
I may just be weird, but I need music to code. While I have several gigs of music handy, I’ve completely switched to Pandora as it’s such a great experience. Highly recommended.

InstaCalc
This is a great concept, very simple online calculator with some really interesting features. My favorite is that fact it’s sharable, you can create permalinks to your results, I really like this idea.

ReSharper
This is the definitive Visual Studio add-in. If you write code in C# and don’t have this installed, stop what you are doing and go install it. I’ll wait.

LINQPad
This is a great little tool, if you’re willing to pay the extra $39 for the Intellisence option.

SysInternals Suite
This full Microsoft SysInternals utility collection rolled into a single download. This is a must, no other way to put it.

evalTray
I’ve written a small utility that may be of some use to VB developers (or anyone familiar with VB or VBScript). This is basically a wrapper for the Microsoft Script Control’s Eval() method, the idea being to test simple lines of code or quick math tasks. Also included are a few wrappers to functions included in the .NET Framework.

DisplayFusion
If you have multiple monitors (my current setup has 4), you need this. While it does have some bells and whistles such as wallpaper management, where it really gets useful is the taskbar games it plays. Have a taskbar on each monitor makes more of a difference than you would imagine if you haven’t tried it. I love it.

Skype
When working from home or on the road, Skype has proven itself invaluable to me for keeping up with my team.

Jing
Powerful, simple, free. Does what I need and otherwise stays out of my way. If you need great screen capture software, Jing certainly works well.  I use it on a daily basis, normally several times a day.

NirCmd
This is a handy little command-line tool that can adjust certain settings just by calling a simple command. Very useful for simple tasks such as muting the system sound via a desktop icon. Simple, but has proved itself useful.

Taskbar Shuffle
I tend to be a bit picky about the layout of the Taskbar; I like certain windows in certain places, like Outlook is always the first window, Opera is always the third. Keeping things in the same place makes it a lot easier to find the window you are after on a crowded desktop. The problem with this is that there is no way to move items, you have to close everything and start over. Enter Taskbar Shuffle, this is a simple, no non-sense program to enable drag & drop on the taskbar. Best of all, it’s free. Highly recommended. (No longer needed with Windows 7; but still a must for Windows XP or Vista)

Like most geeks, I keep plenty of gadgets handy, here are a few of my favorites:

Motorola DROID
I know many people swear by their iPhone, but not me – I wouldn’t trade my DROID for any other phone on the market. It’s a great handled device, in size and features; it’s a great development platform, and has an active modding community (if you don’t mind voiding your warranty ;)).

ASUS G73
My current laptop is a true beast, and the best development laptop I’ve ever used. While most of my work is on my desktop, I still write a lot of code from my laptop. So far I’ve been extremely pleased, it’s a great laptop and well worth the money.

Nikon D80
I love being behind a camera, and the D80 has proven itself time and time again. While it’s no longer the newest,it’s still more than capable.

Flip Ultra HD
When you have a little one crawling about the house, you always want a camera handy. With HD video and a simple as it gets interface, this certainly qualifies as handy.