here here (or is that hear hear?). I really don’t know why Peter Blum is not more well known.
crawlers and messageboards
Rick Strahl is trying to figure out why google et alia are not digging things out of his West Wind message boards. Here are the details. Any ideas?
No, you *don’t* need wings on your tablet
Rory Blyth thinks his tablet pc needs wings.
Not true – it just needs Lonestar.
I can now write in www.thedatafarm.com and get just that not www . thedatafarm . com like before. Same with email addresses – no problem with blah@blahblah.com
Sorry dude, but when I hear “it’s got wings!” I can’t help but think of this.
ASPNetPro…..and Paul Litwin before him
I was re-reading the email from the new aspnetPro editor and noticed that in his praise of Elden Nelson’s work with ASPNetPro, Jerry says that Elden
“has done such a fine job of launching and guiding the publications until now.”
With all due respect to Elden, who has done wonderful things for the magazine(s), I would like to point out that Paul Litwin was the original editor of ASPNetPro.
Steven Smith in Vermont and a GREAT Cacheing presentation
Ahhh peace and quiet, now I have some time to write another overdue post.
I was able to lure Steve Smith to speak to Vermont .NET with the invitation of a free weekend getaway in Vermont which was extended to his wife Michelle and daughter Ilyana. Unfortunately, Michelle and Ilyana weren’t able to come, but Steve did come for the weekend. We tried to get him away from the computer a little. Food worked, including some Ben & Jerry’s in downtown Burlington and dinner at two different local restaurants that brew their own beer.
I think it was really good for my husband to see that I am not the only lunatic with the type of work habits that I have and that a lot of time spent on email etc is just part of how things work around here. Steve and I stayed up late working. Steve got to sleep in late – I still had to get up and walk the dog! hee hee
We had a lot of fun, bundled Steve up in the appropriate gear and took him snowshoeing in the Green Mountains (we access the Long Trail from our back yard). I took a look at all of his cotton clothing and scared him into accepting loans of a lot of our technical stuff. Cotton is dangerous to wear winter hiking – read “hypothermia” – just like in programming, it’s all about “what if…“. Anyway, Steven, totally inexperienced with this stuff was great. I also was disappointed to see that I have really lost a lot of strength from sitting in front of the computer all of the time. So I have to try to get out more. It’s why we live here. It’s what I love.
Monday of course was the user group meeting. We just had the ASP.NET Roadshow a few days before (via Live Meeting from Boston!!) so unfortunately a bunch of people had used up their “night out” and there were only 20 people there. Too bad for the others. We also had free pizza that night thanks to DataDirect! (Thanks guys yumm yumm)
Steve drilled into cacheing and focused solely on that. This is a phenomenal presentation if you have an opportunity. Steve has the luxury of focusing on ASP.NET in a way that gives him true expertise. I have been programming with ASP.NET for 2 years and I learned SO much on Monday. Some stuff I may have seen and glazed over before. But this time there is no problem with the lessons sticking. Also he spent some time on Whidbey which is always good for the group. They think I’m some kind of koolaid addict and I’m trying to make sure they understand that it is important to start paying attention to Whidbey now so that they can jump in and leverage the goodness when it arrives.
The other thing that I was really impressed by was Steve’s presenting style. I paid attention because I have a lot of talks coming up. Steve is such a natural. It is a huge thing to be talking about something you know so very well. Becasue of that, he is really able to communicate the information. And I think I told him something he never heard before, he has a great “radio” voice.
Amy Sorokas from SAMS/QUE shipped some books for the meeting including of course Steve’s co-authored ASP.NET Cookbook. Thanks Amy. They arrived 15 minutes before we left for the meeting. And Steve dragged along an extra HUGE suitcase filled with books and swag to give away.
All of this was possible because Steven was doing an INETA event in Montreal the next night. So we worked things out so that he could come to Vermont also. So I get to say thanks once again to INETA and thanks to Guy Barrette (one of the new Regional Directors) who runs GUVSM in Montreal for helping to coordinate all of this.
Blueberry pancakes on the house for all!
Here’s some proof (oh and steve just posted as well with these pics! )
Lots of news from SourceGear
geesh – just when I’ve got my new server stable and had long talks with Steve Smith about how phenomenal SourceGear Vault is and was about to install my personal edition of Vault and was prepared to be very impressed and then blog about it and then thanks to my millions of readers, SourceGear would get a sudden huge burst of sales…
Eric Sink goes and makes SourceGear Single User a FREE PRODUCT, drops the price of the flagship product and releases a list of all the cool new things in 2.0.
Well!
Now here is just what’s so cool, what’s so Eric, about all of this.
(my read on this) Their sales are so good, so much more than expected, that they can afford, with volume discounts, to sell the main products for 1/4 of what they were previously. How unAmerican! (kidding)
His post on this is a must read.
I have a sister who is a phenomenal sales person and learned a similar lesson from her. It’s in the volume. Then if the price is right, your sales will be so high, that the volume makes up for the “loss“. And there is huge value to having mass quantities of your product out there. Which is probably what will happen now with Vault.
And Eric and his company will be loved and cherished by all of those lone-coders.
Go get em!!!
Liz Lawley on social software- “Step away from the laptop…”
HAPPY BIRTHDAY INETA
I’m a day late and a dollar short.
HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY to INETA!!!
Bill Evjen says it all in his blog post which will be also in the next newsletter.
What Bill doesn’t say is this.
This was Bill’s dream. He came up with the idea from his experiences as a user group leader and he pursued making it a reality.
Many people think Microsoft started INETA. Not true. They are merely a sponsor. A wonderful, generous sponsor – but that is all. They do give INETA resources besides financial ones and Eric Ewing definitely needs to be pointed out for the time and energy he puts into INETA which goes above and beyond his job.
Many many people have come together to make this happen. Hundreds of volunteers, user group leaders that have joined INETA (478 and counting) from all over the world. And the speakers who are so generous with their time. Though they get a small honorarium for their speaking engagements, it does not come close to paying for their valuable time. Perhaps one or two hours of it. But certainly not for what is generally a few days of travel. Making INETA happen is not a small thing. Because of many people’s passions, it has become practically a part-time job (volunteer) for many of us and we wouldn’t have it any other way. (Though some of our spouses probably feel differently…)
Thanks to everyone who makes INETA happen and thanks to INETA for giving me a place to fulfill my obsessions! And thanks to all of our spouses/partners who put up with us.
The Vermont .NET User Group also celebrates it’s 2nd year anniversary this month. That’s a whole ‘nother story!
Google Love
Most of us think of google love as a link to our blog. Today (day before Valentine’s Day) I noticed a new type of google love.
Definitely brightened my day.
BTW – you’re also getting a peek at I prioritize my favorite links in I.E. I really ought to push the ski related links to the front!