As an less complete alternative to dnsstuff try- http://www.yougetsignal.com.

One of the biggestthings here is a tool which will identify which sites are hosted on the same server as a particular domain.  This is particularly good for sites on shared hosting.

For example, did you know that Rufflets (rufflets.co.uk, asp.net version 1.1) is hosted on teh same box as Crerar hotels (www.crerarhotels.com, asp.net version 2.0)?

http://www.caffeinatedcoder.com/which-productivity-tricks-have-you-adopted-lately/

Are there tools you use everyday that increase your productivity? I have a list I am kind of compiling so I will share with you. Most of these are in the form of Firefox extensions, but developing web applications means a lot of time is spent in the Web browser.

1. The first one in the list above is SlickRun and I agree with its position. I reckon it takes at least 2-3 seconds off every program / keyworded file opening.  Which probably saves me more than a couple of minutes a day. The only downside is remembering the keywords!
2. All-In-One Gestures for Firefox - similar for IE7 is available. Web browsing is very mouse centric so my hand is on the mouse anyway!! Holding the right mouse button and making fixed movements with my mouse shaves seconds off the tasks such as back and forward, new tab, new window, view source, refresh etc, plus a few more complicated things I have going on.
3. Notepad2 - simple, clean code highlighting notepad - there are a couple of regedit scripts out there that make using it much easier.
4. URL Link - ff extension - don't you just hate it when urls in text aren't linked - this circumnavigates this failing.
5. del.icio.us - I now manage my entire bookmark selection (work and personal) with del.icio.us. - By installing the official del.icio.us extension for firefox I get the add to bookmark capability I need from Firefox and a nice tag based listing making my bookmarks easier to locate.
6. IETab - switch between FF and IE rendering engines within Firefox for quick HTML/CSS testing.

Other extensions I use include:
1. MeasureIt - Pixel measuring tape for ff.
2. Colorzilla - color picker
3. Fireshot - web page screenshots with markers!

This is by no means an exhaustive list and there are many more I could come up with - I haven't even included the ones we all know in Firebug and the web developer tool bars.

What tools assist in your productivity?

http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_selectiontime/index.html

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/01/22.html

One of these actions following yesterdays meeting [reviewing wmssamples.com] was to (in the medium rather than short term) review the site structure for Ezone and the WMS.  This has been soemthing we have talked about many times before.  I think a great example of how this works are the new Fogcreek, fogbugz sites (allthough they are on the same domain).  Joel (joels on software, owner of Fogcreek) speaks about the redesign here.

I believe that this multiple site structure was what we had been discussing previously but have never quite got implemented.

http://senduit.com/

http://www.digital-web.com/articles/web_design_contracts/

Another interesting article:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/customerservice.html

 

Barry

Seems to be a load of hype on the internet identity stuff at the moment.  Heres two interesting links:

A blog post about "OpenID standards":
http://netsquared.org/kaliya

Microsofts InfoCard:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/04/SecurityBriefs/

There are also links there to the main sites.

Barry

Very interesting chat from Alan Cooper

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/c/2/7c2a8d5f-2dcf-4aee-9f75-97026f2aa04b/alan_cooper_2005.wmv


Who's Alan Cooper? He's the guy who invented the user interface for Visual Basic (which later became Visual Studio). So he knows a thing or two about software development. He also runs a software design firm, http://www.cooper.com "

And a cool quote from teh comments:
"The best project I ever worked on in terms of low stress, productive process, and satisfactory result, was a project where we wrote the user manual first and the code second.  We defined at the level of the user manual exactly what the software was to do.  Then coding the software to do that was much easier, and there was no indecision on what any features should look like."