Andrew MacNeill - AKSEL Solutions

I don't want to say much more to take away from Craig's great perspective here. So some caveats: 1. I don't regularly run Vista - I want the right hardware to do so. 2. I don't like certain things about Vista - but then I don't like certain things about XP , or 98, or 95, or OS 10, or System 7 or ....you get the point. 3. Craig - this is what they should be doing instead of Mojave...yes, it's techy - but it explains it right. Kind of like the way Hybrid cars explain MPG better than Al Gore... or ... I guess it's not quite so true tho...one ring to rule them all.... DevBlog: Why Vista is more stable than XP

Scott Hanselman just posted some interesting details on the size of the .Net framework and I was surprised to see that it's really not as big as it always seems, based on typical installers. Everytime you go to a typical DotNet download site, you see this "approximately 200 MB" download. Scary stuff if you're aiming to create a nice small download. But as he notes, this is because instead of creating a "pick the download that matches your configuration", Microsoft has an installer that covers every possible scenario, which unfortunately, DOES require 200MB. So he's created SmallestDotNet: On the Size of the .NET Framework   - it didn't work so well on mine (as shown here): <a href="http://content.screencast.com/users/Akselsoft/folders/Jing/media/fe8e9221-d9cf-4bf8-ad36-271a3051f694/2008-08-24_0425.png"><img src="http://content.screencast.com/users/Akselsoft/folders/Jing/media/fe8e9221-d9cf-4bf8-ad36-271a3051f694/2008-08-24_04...

After my post about screencasting ( How to make Screencasting Made Easy AND Purposeful ), it was nice to see that Jason Calacanis also likes one key idea (based on his " how to demo your startup " email note. His guideline: "the best products take less than five minutes to demo" That post has lots of other great ideas for demos and they aren't just for startups - many established companies could benefit from this.

After what I would have to say was a great showcase of VFP Conference -tweeting , Olaf's started blogging...on one of his first posts, he shows how to do a Matrix-style screen in Cryllic, in FoxPro of course! Welcome, Olaf! Olaf's VFP Blog

Everyone loves a good screencast, right? You want to highlight your product or showcase a feature, so you start up your favorite screen recorder and record away. Then comes the fun part...the editing. Before you know it, a 15 minute screencast has turned into 2 hours of editing hell. My personal torture tool of choice is Camtasia - which does a lot of cool features such as automatic zooming and panning and noise removal. But recently , I've talked about Jing - yes, it's by the same company (Techsmith) - but primarily as a screen image capture utility. But this post isn't so much about talking about a product as it is about how to make these things easier. Whenever a great session is given at a conference, it's often because the presenter has done one of three things: a) practiced b) practising regularly  (if they were English) c) rubbed their lucky rabbit's foot on a horseshoe after seeing a rainbow In Screencasting, the same is true (well, except the part about t...

I love refactoring code. Moreover, I think refactoring can also be used when looking at software demos. I love looking at a piece of code that works (for the most part) but just doesn't feel right and taking it apart and putting it back together so that it makes more sense, not just for me but for the next person who comes along. I find it funny that refactoring and unit testing come from the same core concepts (Agile) because if done correctly, code that was properly unit tested SHOULD result in code that is pretty well-written and refactor-proof. (I'm no expert on the philosophies behind this so please comment and rip this post to shreds) So refactoring really comes into places where you've got unwieldy code (or worse, legacy code) that no one really can wrap their head around. By the time you've finished refactoring, you possibly COULD have some ways of unit testing it (if you were able to separate each logical piece out). So how does this apply to demos? Depending o...