Slammed with Work, Or The sun was in my eyes

I've been ignoring this blog (which is too bad because it's one my gifts to myself) because I've been slammed with work. I'm now "Products Editor" at Visual Studio Magazine which means that I'm doing two reviews a month and maintaining a blog on .NET/Visual Studio tools there. Getting that ramped up required more effort than I had realized. I also did a couple of interviews in there that either made their way into my Practical ASP.NET column or will make their way into the products blog

I was also putting together a proposal to Learning Tree to author a course on User Interface Design (a subject near and dear to my heart). I tend to over compensate for my deficiencies as a course author by doing BIIIIIIIG proposals (this one ran to 20 pages: feel sorry for the poor product manager who feels morally obligated to read it).

And I taught my technical writing course for Learning Tree last week. I think it went well. I certainly had fun.

Mixed in there I'm reviewing the galley proofs for my Code Generation book (one more chapter to go!) and acting as technical editor on a Microsoft Access book. And, I was working with various authors to put together five articles for the Learning Tree newsletter (I dropped the ball on that one: I contacted Learning Tree about starting that process about a month ago, didn't follow up, and then they got back to me to get the process started a month later than I would have chosen). I also edited two history papers for my son (I learn lots).

And, of course, the ongoing marketing and client support efforts that are part of being an independent consultant.

My mother-in-law has been staying with us (that's a good thing) so we also celebrated her birthday on Sunday with lots and lots of people dropping around (well, lots for me: 25 or 26 people). Jan, of course, did all the work but I had to pay attention--always a strain. And, of course, we're getting ready to go to Spain for three works (though, again, Jan does all of that and I just tag along looking beautiful).


So that's my excuse.


Reading or read

• Planetary Vol. 4: Spacetime Archaeology by Warren Ellis and John Casssaday
• The Iron Man by Ted Hughes
• The Iron Woman: A Sequel to the Iron Man by Ted Hughes
• The Uses and Abuses of History by Margaret MacMillan

Identifying the Product, Or The most important part of any plan stands the greatest chance of being overlooked completely

If you had a great product that did something wonderful, wouldn't you tell people? Wouldn't the wonderful thing your product did be, like, the first thing you'd tell people? If you were advertising a sales wouldn't one of the things you'd want to tell people is what your (cheaper) products did? Apparently not.

I review software for Visual Studio Magazine and, as a result, I'm constantly scanning new product announcements to see what's coming out. A lot of the time, I can't figure out what the package does: I often get a list of the new features added to the product but no mention of the package's purpose in life. Sometimes I can't even figure out what the new features do.

I can see that, in the product's accompanying documentation, it might not make sense to spell this stuff out: By the time people buy the product, they probably know what the product does. But in a press release sent out to the general public or on the first page of the website, you can assume that a sizable percentage of your audience doesn't know what your product does (at least, not yet). I've found either that there's no mention of what the product does or the mention is buried in the text a surprising amount of the time.

Well, it's surprising to me.

So here are two rounds of "What does this software actually do?" based on samples of material that I've received or found (names have been changed to product the guilty):

1) Fred v2.0 Is Available Now!

In data centres around the world. We even let you test and choose the fastest data center for your particular location! See for yourself why dev teams around the world choose Fred v2.0 every day.

Fred v2.0 Now! Videos

Take a tour of the Fred v2.0 hosted solution with our resident IT director. Learn why Fred v2.0 can deliver premium hosted performance all across the globe. After watching the overview (left), check out the Quickstart (below). If you like what you see, take advantage of the free Fred v2.0 trial. Experience for yourself why so many teams are choosing Fred v2.0!

2) Impressive Development - Limited Time 50% Discount

Programmers worldwide have supported Impressive Development and our products for 20 years. We wish to return that support by making our tools more obtainable. Therefore, for a limited time, the price of all Impressive products and upgrades have been reduced by 50%.

Reading or read

• A Texas Cowboy by Charlie Siringo
• A Hero of Our Time by Mikhaild Lermontov
• Angle of Reposeby Wallace Stegner
• Too Close to the Falls by Catherine Gildiner