Monthly Archives: September 2004

Vermont Software Developers Association – getting closer

dotNET

I am on the steering committee for a new group being formed in Vermont, the Vermont Software Developers Association (working title maybe). The steering committee meetings are getting more frequent as we head to our goal of having our first official meeting at the end of September in downtown Burlington. There are statewide and regional software developer associations around the country. This is going to help Vermont businesses who are in teh business of software (consultants, contractors or vertical market software companies), regardless of the technology they use, share their business knowledge and hopefully help the rest of the world with this common problem of being shocked when they here there are software companies in Vermont. Vermont is so well known for its maple syrup, cheese, Ben & Jerry’s and of course our cows. There is a LOT of tech going on here. A lot of very good tech. Just looking at the Microsoft spectrum here, we have had a lot of developer’s and companies on board with .NET since the very beginning and now many are pretty advanced. Anyway, I’m very excited about this. I will be contacting people from different sda’s around the country to see if anyone would be willing to talk with us to give us ideas of what has and hasn’t worked for them. Unfortunately becuase part of most of the SDA’s goals is to promote their area’s business, there is a slight conflict of interest. But hopefully, I can find some folks who will see past that and just grok the good for the software developers as a whole.

Keeping perspective on the WS -* Specs

Just Rambling

Benjamin Mitchell points to a thoughtful article by Gregor Hohpe on keeping some perspective on the WS-Specs as well as leveraging all of the intelligence that has gone into creating them to at least consider as a design checklist. Benjamin also highlights Gregor’s point that web services are not always the answer to a problem that you think they will solve.

As I get deeper into trying to sort out WS Specs and WSE, all of this input is really helpful.

one by one – my boxes go to SP2

Just Rambling

The Acer got SP2’d when I cleaned it up to return to mhy client. I am going to install some of their custom software on it just to see how things go.

My Compaq EVO which I use solely for Whidbey work just got SP2’d and yes, Whidbey still opens up <g>

I have yet to do my Toshiba which is onthe last beta already although I’m a little more hesitant as I’m doingn some of my real development on this tablet.

Then of course is my real development box – my money maker. I’m just not emotionally ready to do it yet.

Last will be Rich’s computer, which is still on Win2000 because we have to go buy a new scanner first (that hpscanjet 5 won’t work on winxp)

that new imac

Just Rambling

I first spotted it via Ali’s blog. Looked at the picture – it’s pretty pretty pretty and my first question was – so is it a tablet? Sure looks like one. Especially considering there is no keyboard in the pretty picture. But alas. It’s just a pretty computer. Evan Feldman totally cracked me up in his post about it.

Though I have to say the dvd drive is pretty cool! I currently don’t have a dvd drive on my Toshiba tablet because it doesn’t come as part of the package that I got.

The funny thing is they market it like a big ipod. All the chatter on the page is about storing music and watching movies and surfing the web. Nothing about using applications.

Very odd. But very stylish, indeed.