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If you’re looking for a pair of shoes that will exactly match the color of a favorite handbag, or love a designer’s style and want something similar but cheaper, check out Like.com’s Likethis visual search tool. It will help you find women’s handbags, shoes and dresses based on a photo you upload, and will match by style, color or pattern, with the results sent in a few minutes via email.

I ran a quick search on a beautiful pair of men’s dress shoes from Prada, and it found strikingly similar choices from Jos A. Bank, Cole Haan, and Sherman Brothers — all of which were priced $600 less than the designer Italian kicks. You can even upload photos from your iPhone, making it easy to see if you can’t find something similar for less money while window shopping. For other products, the “visual search” button did a pretty good job of turning up related results for other products like men’s suits already in the Like.com catalog.

Source: Life Hacker

The Simple Dollar personal finance blog delves into household budgeting—something more of us should do, but are kept away from by fear of spreadsheets, math, and undue time commitments. Blogger Trent’s solution is simple and reliable, however, and takes only a willingness to collect paper and toss it in a shoe box. Collect one to three months’ worth of receipts, checks, pay stubs, and other paper records of money in and out, drop them on a floor when you’re done, and then arrange them however you’d like:

You’ll probably find yourself shifting piles around and making new piles throughout this process, as you should. The goal is to find ways to group your spending that’s natural to you. Don’t try to force it to match someone else’s groupings - if a group of receipts or statements feel like a natural group to you, that’s how they should be sorted.

Divide each pile by the number of months you’ve been saving, and you’ll have some hard and fast numbers to work with. Sure beats trying to figure out where a hamburger and coke splurge fits into a ledger. Hit the link for a fuller explanation of a simple budget you can use to plan your spending.

We’re pleased to announce that 64-bit MSDASQL for Windows Server 2003 is now available for download at  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=000364db-5e8b-44a8-b9be-ca44d18b059b. This update will also be available through “Windows Update” soon.< ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

What is MSDASQL?

MSDASQL is an OLEDB/ODBC ‘bridge’ that allows applications built on OLEDB and ADO (which uses OLEDB internally) to access data sources through ODBC drivers. MSDASQL ships with the Windows Operating System, and Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 are the first Windows releases to include a 64-bit version of MSDASQL.

Isn’t MSDASQL Deprecated?

Previous messaging on MSDN indicated that a 64-bit version of MSDASQL would not be available. However, we have received numerous requests from customers for this technology and we are making it available on the following Windows operating systems:  Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008. Microsoft has no plan yet to deprecate this technology currently.

Mo Lin

Program Manager, Data Programmability