Nosce te ipsum

Seek and ye shall find! Ever since switching to the Mac full time in 2002, I've continually looked for a solid piece of software that I could use to connect up to our MS SQL and MySQL Servers to do all flavors of database related development activities to. I've found several but all seemed to be priced out of what I wanted to spend - until today.

While working on a project where the host was Windows based but they offered PHP & MySQL, but without any form of MySQL Admin tools like MyPHPAdmin but instead, they told us to go ahead an install that tool for them (yes, I'm serious, they actually said that). Not wanting to do their work for them, I set out to find an alternative that ran client side and boy did I locate a good one: dbSuite Administion Tool for MySQL. Not only is it solid, well designed and feature rich, it's also cross platform and get this - it's donation ware! You can belive that I'll be sending them in a big thank you in the form of some greenbacks. Thanks guys - your tool rocks!

Coming in seventh place under the heading "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" is the April 2004 report that RealNetworks' CEO Rob Glaser was seeking a partnership with Apple that would enable RealNetworks' music tracks to be compatible with the iPod. After Apple CEO Steve Jobs ignored the offer, Mr. Glaser fired back: "Steve is showing a high level of fear."

Capturing the eighth spot on the list with "If you can't beat 'em, and you can't join 'em, encourage people to whine about 'em," is RealNetworks' "Freedom of Music Choice" campaign, which arrived in August with a petition calling for music fans to voice their support in favor of Apple opening up the iPod platform. Instead of garnering support for RealNetworks, however, the vast majority of those who signed RealNetworks' petition commented in support of Apple and criticized RealNetworks, forcing the company to pull the petition idea later that day.

Lastly, in the ninth place, under the title "If you can't beat 'em, and you can't join 'em, and you can't get people to whine about 'em...put out some half-baked software that forever alienates potential customers" is RealNetworks' decision to go ahead and release iPod-compatible music anyway, in a move that Apple likened to employing hacker tactics. Apple also warned customers that future iPod updates may break compatibility with RealNetworks' platform-agnostic music files. In November, an iPod firmware update did just that