DDriveWrite is a C#.Net project that facilitates direct reading and writing of a disk image to a disk drive in a manner not unlike a *nix 'dd' command to a drive device node.
Designed for use in bootable USB image applications.
Update: After about 2 years I've finally made a couple small updates, improving usability on more modern versions of windows.
RED searches and deletes empty directories recursively below a given start folder and shows the result in a well arranged tree. Further you can create some custom rules for keeping and deleting folders. Empty files in directories can also be ignored.