DevBlog

Andrew MacNeill comments on my Top 10 list and mentions that I missed Southwest Fox and SednaX. He's right. Southwest Fox is a great conference and I'm excited to see it return next year, but don't think it ranks up there as it is a continuing conference.

So, why did I not include SednaX? It's a great site and I commend everyone involved. It has great momentum. However, this is supposed to be a community supported site. So far, only one person has posted any code. If SednaX grows in the coming year and becomes what it's organizers hope it to be, then I'll include it next year.

Every year at this time, news organizations list their top ten news stories of the year. I thought it appropriate to list the top news stories in the Fox world from the previous year. The rankings are purely my own.

1. Drew Speedie dies tragically.
We all knew Drew and his son Brent. They were fixtures at Fox conferences around the world. They both tragically died in September while hiking and taking pictures in Yellowstone.

2. Randy Brown leaves Microsoft.
As another Fox MVP said to Randy, "I thought you'd be the one to turn out the lights".

3. Microsoft announces Sedna and the VFP Roadmap.
Yes, VFP will live on in the Windows Vista world, thanks to Sedna, the next update to VFP. Microsoft also

4. Microsoft ships VFP 9.0.
With huge improvements in the report designer and better stability, this quickly became the "must have" update to Microsoft's best kept secret.

5. Whilfest returns!
Earlier this month, Whil Hentzen announced the return of the Great Lakes Great Database Workshop. It'll happen in April. I have no doubt that it will live up to past Whilfests.

6. Microsoft announces LINQ
Wait! Isn't that a .Net technology? Yup, but "team Zorro", made up of members of the Fox Team made it happen. LINQ takes great data handling ideas from Fox and brings them into .Net.

7. FoxPro not an endangered species.
That's the headline in Mary Jo Foley's December column on Redmondmag.com. She prognosticates a bright future for Fox with Sedna scheduled for 2007.

8. VFP Moves up 31 spots in the TIOBE rankings.
As if Mary Jo Foley's predictions aren't enough to spur some interest in VFP, perhaps Fox's ranking in the TIOBE Programming Community Index will get some interest, as it moves from 51 to 30 in one year.

9. John Koziol leaves Microsoft.
My good friend left the fold in June with a very public departure that left many wondering just what was going on behind the scenes of the Fox Team.

10. New in Nine.
After apparently stopping publication of new Fox titles, in February, Hentzenwerke releases New in Nine: Visual FoxPro's Latest Hits. It didn't stop there. In October, the ebook Taming Visual FoxPro's SQL was released. I can't help but think there will be a new Hentzenwerke title for Sedna.

11. Mike Stewart leaves the Fox Team.
OK. You get a bonus item. Some may think there is a pattern with three well known members leaving the Fox team. Mike left just after VFP 9.0 shipped. It's common for a Microsoft team to have some changes after a release. Last I heard, Mike was back at Microsoft, but not on the Fox Team.

Damn comment spammers. I spent an a couple of hours today cleaning out comment spam only to have some a** spam them again afterwards. Because of this, I've turned off comments.

It's true! The Great Lakes Great Database Workshop (GLGDW), also known as Whilfest because it's put on by Whil Hentzen, returns in 2006. The conference theme is "Fox is Mature". The conference will be April 21-24, and as always, will be held in Milwaukee. There will be one continuous track covering lots of great things. Details on the Hentzenwerke website. As always, I expect GLGDW 2006 will be a fantastic conference. Thanks, Whil!

Update: Fixed incorrect dates

Congratulations to Rod and Jessica Paddock on the arrival of the new baby, Isaiah. See the pics here.

According to the US Census Bureau, Utah has the highest PC penetration rate in the US at 74.1% of all homes. Alaska is second at 73.4%. Utah also ranks fourth for the number of homes connected to the Internet at 62.6%. Mississippi ranked lowest with 48.3% of households with a computer and 39.5% with Internet access. Overall, 68.1% of homes have a PC and 54.7% are connected to the Internet.

News is out today that HP has partnered with the studio that created "Shrek" to do video conferencing. What I really think this means is that now your boss can really be an ogre.

I got a popup notification this morning that a new version of Flash was available and would I like to install it? The first thing I did was go into Flash settings to turn off automatic notification. I don't need some updater utility sitting around in memory and taking up CPU cycles. However, that is not what got my attention. One of the settings is Global Storage Settings. It's purpose is, "Specify the amount of diskspace that websites you haven't yet visited can use to store information on your computer". Excuse me???? Web sites that I haven't visited??? It's bad enough that sites I have visited store things on my driver, but this is just plain wrong. The default is 100K. I set the value to 0K and then checked "Never ask again".

Service Pack 1 for Visual FoxPro 9.0 is now available. This SP fix lots of things and is pretty stable. Whenever a new SP ships, the question always comes up, "Do I need to send new runtimes to my customers"? Yes, you do. SP1 ships with updated merge modules. Just include them in a new setup program and ship them with your recompiled EXE. You also need to recompile your EXEs.

... at least, according to Mary Jo Foley. In a column posted last week on Redmondmag.com, Mary Jo says that we haven't seen the last of VFP.

"Here's why I believe FoxPro is going to matter for more than just the next few years: There are still hundreds of thousands of FoxPro users, by Microsoft's own estimates. They don't sound like they're planning on going anywhere any time soon. Many of these folks are happy that Microsoft never attempted to .Net-ify FoxPro, and think FoxPro is better for the decision.
Microsoft is certainly not going to pull the rug out from under these folks (the way it did with the Visual Basic 6.0 diehards—but that's for another column). That's mainly because the Microsoft dev team has figured out it has a lot to gain from FoxPro."

Despite what Mary Jo Foley says, I stand by my statements last summer (here, here, and here) that Sedna will be the last VFP update.

Southwest Fox has become THE premier North American Fox conference...and now it's even better. I knew this was in the works, but kept it quiet until Bob announced it today...there will be Spanish sessions at next year's event.

The conference will also be moved to a new location, the Fiesta Inn Resort in Tempe. Make plans now to be there October 19-22. I'll be there.