If you’re not familiar with WinDirStat, you should be.  It’s a fabulous little utility that makes it a cinch to visualize the amount of drive space your files are taking up.  It’s currently listed on Scott Hanselman’s 2011 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows (and has been on his list of top tools for several years).  Here’s a screeny to get you excited.

At the top you see your folders, sorted by size, largest to smallest.  At the bottom is the really cool part.  Is shows you all of your files represented by rectangles.  The larger the rectangle, the larger the file.  When you click on a rectangle, it finds the file in the top section so you can see what it is and how much space it’s using.  This makes it ridiculously easy to find and delete those huge files that you may have forgotten you have (like old MIX videos for instance).

In the screenshot, the users appears to be running WinDirStat to scan the whole drive, but you can specify a folder name to only search that folder.

This is the part that I felt the need to tweak.  As it is, every time you want to scan a folder, you have to open WinDirStat and fill in the information on that dialog.  What I wanted was a way I could just right-click a folder in Explorer and select a WinDirStat Here command and have it run on that folder.

Here’s how I did it.

1. Go to Start –> Run (or window-R) and run RegEdit (of course, you should already be aware that editing your registry can be dangerous so if something breaks, you were warned).  Drill down to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell. 
2. Right-click on shell and select the option New –> Key and give it a name.  I named mine windirstat.
3. Look to the right-hand side of the window and double click the (Default) string and set it’s name to WinDirStat Here (or whatever you want it to show up as in the context menu).
4. Now right-click the windirstat key and add a New –> Key.  Name this one command.
5. Select the new command key and look at the right-hand side of the window.  Double-click the (Default) value and set it’s Value data to
6. “C:\Program Files (x86)\WinDirStat\WinDirStat.exe” “%1″
7. and include the double-quotes (you may, of course, have to adjust the path to windirstat.exe based on your particular setup).

That’s it.  Now just open an Explorer window and right-click on a folder.

For reference, here’s my exported .reg file containing all of the above.  You can save this in a new text file and right-click it to merge it into your registry (again, you’ve been warned that bad things can happen if you muck with the registry).

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\windirstat]
@=”WinDirStat Here”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\windirstat\command]
@=”\”C:\\Program Files (x86)\\WinDirStat\\windirstat.exe\” \”%1\”"

I happened across a simple fix to an annoying problem today and I thought I’d share.  Have you ever been coding away in Visual Studio and reached for the Escape key and accidentally fat-fingered the F1 key?  Your mileage may vary, but for me, that’s a good time to go get a coke or a sandwich or catch up on blog reading as Visual Studio screeches to a halt while the Help system cranks and grinds and finally loads up – only to get an instant close since I don’t actually need it.  Never do, in fact.  Don’t get me wrong, the help system for .Net is stellar if you’re looking for a class reference, but I usually don’t care what the foo parameter in Bar class does so much as “Is it better to use foo or bar in my situation?”.  My help system is google.  That’s what hooks me up to pertinent answers to my burning questions at StackOverflow and various pro blog posts.  And when I do to know about that foo in the Bar, I can just get it directly (via google) from the MSDN website.

Now, I’ve known for several version of Visual Studio that I can re-bind pretty much any key I want, but I never put the 2 and the 2 together and realized that I can actually unbind keys as well.  Yep, that’s right.  You can just remove the binding on the F1 key and kiss that annoying Help goodbye.  It’s under Tools / Options –> Environment –> Keyboard.  It’s the Help.F1Help option.

Here’s a handy graphic.

This is part 1 of a 2 part series in exploring the advantages and disadvantages associated with local outsourcing, offshoring, nearshoring and onshoring of software development. I will explain what all these terms mean as well as when it’s the right time to use a local company or go offshore/nearshore for building your software application/website.

*Disclaimer – This post is based on my own experiences and observations while working in the business of software development.

The Problem

You have a new software application/website you want to build or an existing application you need to enhance and you’ve chosen to have it built by a third party. Whether your are an established company, small business or an individual, you probably fall into 1 of these 3 categories:

1) You’re operating within a company and your existing development team/IT business unit is already tasked (sometimes overwhelmed) with keeping the production systems running and maintained. Translation – You have a team but no ability to scale it without worrying about production systems.

2) You’re operating within a company with limited (or no) development/IT resources but have been tasked with bringing a new technology product to market. Translation – Build something with limited/no technical employees.

3) You are an individual or small startup, you don’t know how software is developed, you have a bootstrap budget, but you have a great idea that people want. Translation – You think you can be the next Mark Zuckerburg if you only had a team to build it.

All 3 of these categories have different challenges, but they are all faced with one common problem: Do I try to find someone locally to help me or do I look offshore, nearshore or onshore?

So what’s the difference between outsourcing, offshoring, nearshoring and onshoring?

Outsourcing is the generalized term for contracting with a company external to your own to help complete a task for your company. It is most commonly used to described IT operations, software development, data entry and customer support but could also be used to describe the company who cleans your office building. Local outsourcing, offshore, nearshore and onshore companies are all forms of outsourcing, but they all have their own advantages and disadvantages. We’ll talk about those in part 2.

Local outsourcing is finding a team of software developers/consultants (or an individual developer) who is perfoming work in the same geographic city as your company. An example: your company is in Louisville, KY and you are working with a team of developers that are all present and working in Louisville, KY. *Just as a sidenote here; sometimes you will find local companies who appear to have a team of developers who are also local, but when you start working with them, you realize that their team consists of sub-contractors or even offshore teams that support their deal-flow. This situation is virtually the same as going offshore UNLESS the local person (front man) is a seasond software professional with references and credentials on working with remote teams and shipping quatlity software on time and on budget. This can work sometimes, but generally something to ask about up front and get specific examples of their past work.

Offshoring is contracting with a team of software developers in another non-adjacent country than your own. The most common offshoring countries for US companies are India and Eastern European countries.

Nearshoring is the concept of contracting with a team of software developers in an adjacent country. Example: your company is in the US and you are working with a team in Central or South America.

There is another type of outsourcing referred to as onshoring which is contracting with a software development team that is in your country, but works in a different city/state than your company is in. Example: your company is in Louisville, KY but you are working with a team in Chicago or you are working with a team that is scattered in multiple cities throughout the US.

All of these are a type of outsourcing, so sometimes you will hear people say “we outsourced that application“; but really that could mean that they used someone locally, someone in another city in their country, or someone outside of their country (nearshore or offshore).

Complicated I know, but also very important to understand these options when you are getting ready to spend money building a product.

In part 2 of this series I’ll describe the key factors for choosing how to get your application or project built. I’ll have some questions you can ask yourself to determine which path is best for you and the advantages and disadvantages of those choices. Look for part 2 to drop next week.

We are a proud sponsor of CodepaLOUsa again this year and are looking forward to hosting 58 guest speakers covering almost 70 breakout sessions. Tickets are going fast, so head on over and get yours while you can. If you are interested in sponsoring, let me know.

Also, a big shout to Jay Garmon at Louisville Digital Association for helping us get the word out to his audience.