21 July 2004

The very very worse kind of spam I hate Spam. I have no shame in posting to newsgroups with my real name and email address and as a result I get about 100 spam messages a day that an ornate set of rules in Outlook catch 99% of the time so it really doesn't affect me too much. Occassionally though one slips through. The latest one is a company that makes and is marketing a .NET component. Now, maybe I have a closeted view of the development community out there but it's my understanding that there is not a single developer out there that enjoys or appreciates spam, me included. So, when I got a nice ornate spam message from info@springsys.com marketing their apparently quite useless component for importing delimited text from text files (ADO.NET can do that out of the box) it got me riled on a number of levels. First up, developers should appreciate netiquette, and thus should not spam other developers. We have enough on our plates without your annoying cheapo marketing clogging up our inboxes. Secondly, research your market better. I don't need a component that can read text files - I can do that with about 10 lines of code. I also most definately won't ever pay for such a thing.  If you don't want to spend any money on marketing but attract fantastic attention for your product here's what you do 1. Write a killer, essential, best of breed component or tool that solves a very real need in the development world. 2. Give it to reviewers after politely asking them if they would like it. Give out free time locked demos to developers by advertising your new product in the appropriate places (there are plenty of .announce newsgroups out there) 3. Be active, very active, in the community so that we all get to know who you are and respect you  and what you can do. These things cost nothing other than time. THese things result in wonderfully successful products (take CodeRush for example), and best of all they dont annoy anyone or lose you sales by following practices that just make your company appear completely naff, annoying and cheap. If anyone want's to learn more about the product, feel free to return the spam to info@springsys.com.     10:31:25 PM    comment [] RegExinator now online RegExinator now has it's own home over on GotDotNet. On there you'll find a very rough first cut at the code, as well as instructions for how to actually get the projects working with Visual Studio. At the moment it only supports VS2003 but there is support for Whidbey and Express coming soon. As I said, it's early days but I think the project has some really good potential. Even if it doesn't, if you're at least curious to see what's involved in writing a Visual Studio add-in, the code can be a good learning tool.   PLease note: I have also uploaded the Source to VSUserControlHost since it's needed by the project. This code was not developed by me, is not owned by me, but does have a free redistribution license. VSUserControlHost was originally picked up from the Samples section of msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio.   3:37:38 PM    comment [] Microsoft shareholders to get big dividend I know I'm a nerd but it's normal, isn't it, to daydream sometimes about having a time machine and going back in time to give Bill Gates a couple of thousand in the 70s to start Microsoft. Ok, maybe that's just me. If you could do that though you'd have probably have quite a lot of shares right now, which would be handy according to this piece from the BBC. Now that the legal future of Microsoft has calmed down considerably, the big MS is getting ready to pay 3 dollars a share to shareholders in December, with the plan being to redistribute 75 billion dollars back to shareholders over the next 4 years. Damn I wish I'd studied better in school now and built that time machine after all. Aside from the obvious, drool-worthy prospect of lots of cash, there's a few other notable points of interest in the article. First up, the payout is likely to net Bill about 4 billion dollars, and he doesn't plan to keep one cent. All of it is going into the charitable trust he and Melinda set up (do you sometimes wish you were Melinda Gates so that you could divorce Bill and get a massive divorce settlement? ok..moving on) which effectively means the whole lot is going to charity. That's cool. The best bit though is a comment from some analyst somewhere saying that Microsoft's cash holdings could mean that the company has matured and is running out of investment ideas. With 56 Billion Dollars in the bank, WHO CARES! I know I wouldn't. It's hardly like Microsoft would feel a pinch if they did run out of ideas for th next year, or decade, or two. I wonder what it would be like to pile up 56 billion dollars in my garden in 1 dollar bills, strip of naked and dive in. OK, ignore that.   12:18:02 PM    comment []

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