March has been an incredibly busy month for me with the last week being the craziest. Since Friday I have been at an airport every day except 1. In other words 5 out of the last 6 days I have spent time at an airport in some city. But finally the travel is over…for the time being.
A common question I get since moving to Salem is “Do you miss New York?” I was thinking about that question this morning as I was standing on the 4-5-6 platform at Grand Central Station. For those who don’t know, that’s in New York, and the answer is “No”. I haven’t spent enough time in Salem or enough time away from New York to miss it yet. It will probably hit me some time this summer but for now I haven’t missed the Big Apple. Heck, Melanie is still based out of JFK and sees the city more than I do. I wonder if she misses it yet.
Wow! Has it really been over a month since my last blog posting? I guess so. I didn’t realize so much time had passed. Guess that’s what happens when you are busy.
I’ve been traveling back and forward between Salem and St. Louis this month to teach a series of classes on XML, XSD, XSLT, and Web services. As expected the first class was a bit rough but the other classes have been a lot of fun.
I never realized how much work goes into preparing for a class. I have been putting in countless hours preparing course materials, demos, hand-ons exercises, and labs. And let’s not forget the prep time for speaking. I’m heading out tomorrow morning to teach the last two days of the class. It will seem weird not having to think about the classes next week.
For those wondering about the status of SMTP Diagnostics 1.6, it’s coming. The beta release is available from the download page and the final release will be available within 2 weeks.
I’m also working through the marketing research for another product idea. I should have more to report in 6 to 7 weeks if I decide to go forward with the new idea. Meanwhile, Vertigo is still in the works but it’s turning into a much larger project then I originally expected. A release for this summer is unlikely.
That’s a quick update of what’s happening. Hopefully it won’t be another 4 to 5 weeks before my next posting.
Borland has released a trial version of the Borland Developer Studio 2006. It’s a 30-day trial of the Architect Edition and it can be downloaded from the Borland web site.
The blogosphere is buzzing with the latest Borland news, and one common theme is “Who keeps the Borland name and branding?” It looks like the Borland name will stay with the ALM company while the development tools will be branded under the new company.
My first reaction to this was that the development tools should keep the Borland name. After all, most people in the development community associate the Borland name with the development tools such as Delphi and JBuilder. But after thinking about this a bit longer I’m starting to favor a new name. Brand X Delphi might spark new interest in people who have given up on the Borland name.
eWeek.com reports Borland to Divest Dev Tools with Segue Buyout. This is definitely not a move I expected from Borland’s new CEO Tod Nielsen. Borland made the announcement yesterday saying it plans to seek a buyer for the Borland IDE product lines, which include Delphi, C++ Builder, C# Builder, JBuilder, InterBase, Kylix, and more.
Although I didn’t expect it, I think it is a good move. Borland’s focus the last couple of years has been on its ALM business, which is no interest to me. The idea that a new spin-off company will be created that will focus on development tools such as Delphi sounds like the right move to me. And I was happy to read that David Intersimone, aka David I, will be joining the new dev tool company.
Although this blog posting is on the art of bootstrapping, I think it is also a good set of commandments for small software companies.
This blog site has been up since March 2002 and since that time it has never once received a spam comment posting. That was until Tuesday of this week.
The site gets lots of traffic. Not as much as this person or that person, but enough to make me happy. I knew the day would come when a spammer would finally make a posting but I didn’t think it would take this long. Now I’m not asking for spam comments to be posted on this site but I find it interesting it has taken almost 4 years before a spammer successfully posted comment.
What makes this more interesting is that a number of attempts by spammers to post spam comments have been made over the last 4 years. This is especially true for another site I have, the Melanie and Kirby wedding site where attempts by spammers to post comments in the guest book are made daily.
So what’s my secret to warding off spammers? I’m not 100% sure. All my sites including this blog site are custom written using ASP.NET. Maybe that has something to do with it. What I do know is that I will probably start seeing an increase in successful spam comment posting to this site unless I make some changes.
Last week I posted a few remarks on the lack of a free Personal or Trial Edition of Borland Developer Studio. A friend of mine wanted to give Delphi a try but unfortunately he cannot because Borland does not provide a way for him to do this.
As it turns out on the same day Marco Cantu made a newsgroup and blog posting on the exact same topic. And there were a number of replies from both sides regarding the issue, which I have included below.
Still I think it is a mistake for Borland to not have a Personal or Trial version available for download available today.
More of the topic from Marco Cantu.
And a differ point of view.
My wife and I have actually moved from New York City to Salem, Massachusetts. It’s still a bit surreal for us. As we were driving out of the city yesterday, it didn’t feel like we were really leaving. It felt more like we were making a quick trip and will be returning in a few days. I think it will hit me in a few days that we’re not returning to the city to live. Then again it might take longer for that to happen since I will be returning to New York next week for a meeting.