Andrew MacNeill - AKSEL Solutions

Change is never easy. I've been using Newsgator for several years now (even bought it when it was a commercial user tool) and have loved seeing it move from an upstart newsreader (congrats Greg!) to a great enterprise tool. When Google Reader came along, I still continued to use Newsgator mostly for the great Newsgator Go (or mobile) version. I loved being able to read feeds on my phone without having to go online every time. Sadly today, in my inbox, I received word that they are no longer going to support these tools for consumer use after August 31st. Now I have to move all of the great clips (another great feature of Newsgator) to another reader. I don't mind Google Reader but I will really miss not having it on my Windows mobile device. That said, it may convince me to look at other phones now that one of my main reasons for staying away from the iPhone and others was NewsGator Go. To their credit, Newsgator is providing some great transition tips encouraging users to move...

dev{shaped} » Book has compiled a list of various developer-oriented posts (and comics) and put them into a creative commons book called Developers, developers, developers. It covers specific development topics (like continuous integration and language wars) to career advice (remaining valuable) and up and coming concepts. Plus it has a handful of very funny comics. Sure, you can read a lot of these posts online - but now you can either a)buy it or b) download it in PDF.

If you haven't tried out the VFPX PEM Editor, you may want to check out Jordan's video series here . The PEM Editor replaces the Properties Window, Edit Property/Method, New Property, and New Method, and Document View tools in Visual FoxPro. Sound like a lot? There are 8 videos in all, totaling less than an hour of your viewing time. It's this type of tool, along with the Control Renamer , FoxTabs, Tabbing Navigation, among others, that shows the need for an installer for VFP that includes these great tools that improve the VFP IDE experience. It's something that has been brought up numerous times before, in VFPX discussions as well as at last year's Southwest Fox . Consider a single installer that runs automatically after a VFP installation (or on its own) that installs and sets up: - PEM Editor - Control Renamer - FoxTabs - Tabbing Navigation - Automated Build - the updated Sedna and FFC controls - Alternate SCCText (if desired) - Code Analyst (the above a...

Southwest Fox , the fantastic US FoxPro developers conference, has a special deal for registration with $125 off the regular $745 price. Note: The deadline has been extended to July 7th, 2009 so sign up today. The conference line-up looks amazing this year, just as in past years. One of the tracks that really seems to be fleshing out is the Technology Track, with sessions on Virtual PC, SourceGear Vault, Subversion and more. Southwest Fox definitely has it all: great speakers, great sessions, great networking - a great experience for developers. FoxPro VFP

While I don't usually use this site for personal thoughts, I do want to take a moment to recognize the death of Michael Jackson, a true legend in pop culture and someone who affected the entire world with his music in a positive way. While his lifestyle was crushing and troubling, his legacy lives on through his music and his impact on the video generation. Like his music or not, he invented pop culture as it exists today (through video, music and celebrity). I think most of the world today has some memory of him, as I know I do. Just a thought - his planned comeback tour should continue on - with other musicians (Justin, Usher, Smokey, Paul, his brothers to name a few) taking part in those 50 concert shows, paying tribute to him. The money could go towards the obvious litigation that will be coming. As the Righteous Brothers sang, "if there's a rock'n'roll heaven," then Michael has just joined one hell of a band. He will be missed but his music lives on. Rest...

SQL Server Central just posted part 2 of an interesting article on applying the techniques of test-driven development to a SQL project. The author, Andy Leonard , goes from describing basic tests for setting up your databases to writing tests for inserting and updating data. It's good stuff for a variety of reasons. He noted in the first article that some of the techniques are simply good coding practices (drop and recreate) but by writing them up as test scripts as well as within the SQL itself makes the entire piece part of a regression test and can resolve lots of further problems. He also points out that unit tests mean different things to different people so ensure your definition is the same as others on your team. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not following the full pattern of writing individual tests out for each of my tables (the firing squad can resume shortly) - but the overall approach that Andy describes is solid and depending on how you code, you might f...

ZDNet has an article titled Linux Ready for the Desktop. While I do enjoy Ubuntu quite a bit (at least on one desktop) and I would never doubt the usefulness of Linux on a wide variety of machines, my concerns over open source systems have become more widespread with issues about forks . Linux is certainly a different scenario than MySQL but consider this - mySQL has been considered a viable alternative for commercial RDBMS' for how long? It's been around since 1994 but has only really become a force to reckon with in the past 10 years. Certain incarnations of Linux are certainly ready for the desktop (OpenOffice is arguably a good alternative to MS Office - bloat and all) - but then so are an entirely cloud or web-based OSes. My #1 concern with any OS that I'm going to place on my desktop is "does it make me more productive?" (an offshoot of that would be "does it make any of my clients more productive?") I'm a firm believer that people will pay fo...