DevBlog

When it comes to web searching, Google is king, Yahoo! is up there, and MSN is making changes to compete. But there is another search tool that I think beats them all. It's called Copernic and I've been using it for several years. It's another tool that you can add to your toolbox.

Copernic is an an application that you install locally on your computer. When you launch a search, it uses multiple search engines to find results, then saves the query and results locally. You can look at links, check off the ones that you've looked at or want to followup on later. You can even come back a day, week, or month later and the search and results are still there. It also supports categorizing your searches in different ways.

You can download Copernic and try it for free or buy one of several enhanced versions. There is even a desktop search tool. Go give it a try.

The Great Lakes Great Database Workshop is over. I've been back a couple of days, but had stuff to catch up on at work and LOTS of things from the conference to review. I can't wait to get my hands on the download materials. It was one of the best conferences I've ever attended! Kudos to Whil for putting this thing together and to Aleix for her great attitude and helping out. Also to all the other speakers for their work in preparing some fantastic presentations. Most of all, thanks to the attendees. Your input during the presentations, discussions afterwards, and kind words of encouragement made this a great event.

I spend yesterday downloading and installing lots of utilities and tools that others recommended during the conference. One idea that I hadn't thought of was running my own wiki for my personal knowledgebase. I now have installed OpenWiki on my local drive and started to dump information into it. I've also installed Clipmate, Foxit Reader, and Foldersync.

If you didn't get a chance to be in Milwaukee, register now for Southwest Fox. Many of the same speakers will be there, presenting some of the same topics.

Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2005. One of the biggest features of this SP is the new SQL Server Management Studio Express, which is designed for use with SQL Server Express. Download here. I'm waiting until next week to install the update. Remember the general rule, "Don't install anything on your system just before speaking at a conference."

I'm heading off to Milwaukee early tomorrow morning for GLGDW, aka Whilfest. Doug Hennig comments about being nervous about his session. I think I can say the same thing about mine. I can't remember ever having a more difficult session to prepare. It's easy to show someone how to do middle-tier components and host them in COM+. It's also easy to build middle-tier components and run them in COM+. What's really, really hard is to compile several years of knowledge and experience, research what others say, and distill it all into a coherent, 90 minute session. One thing I figured out too late was that if I were to start preparing this session again today, it would be very different from what I've prepared. Not that the material is not good...but I would take a more design oriented approach. That would mean showing less code, but what I have should still be a great session. I'm scheduled for first thing Monday morning. See you in Milwaukee.

Years ago, when I was first nominated as an MVP, the nomination came from Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz, a VFP developer and then MVP in Israel. Shortly after I was awarded, Arnon moved on to Java and J2EE and we lost touch. Recently, I stumbled across some postings he made in the Microsoft Architecture Forums and found that he's blogging great stuff on software architecture. We've had a couple of email exchanges the past day or so. It was great to touch base again. I'm sure as I continue researching software architecture, that we'll have more contact.

I don't know what took so long. Seems you could have done this long ago.

Kinda. Microsoft has launched a new web site, Port25, that is geared to IT shops and developers that have to deal with Unix, Windows, Linux, etc. The description for the site says, "The people, insights, and analysis from the Microsoft Open Source Software Lab." It will be interesting to follow the postings and see how much of a Microsoft slant the site takes.

This blog post prompted me to point to my post from over a year ago. The Customer is not Always Right.