Tod1d's Thought Process

Title

Mind the Gap!

Authors

Dave Thomas & Andy Hunt

Description

This is a great little article about the gap between programming skills and experience, and offers relevant suggestions on how to fill that gap.

Favorite Quote(s)

"Know what you don't know."

Suggestions?

Do you have a suggestion for the Article of the Week? I would love to hear about it. Please drop me a line and tell me about your favorite online articles/essays. If I like it enough, it may show up in next weeks AotW.

I have put the finishing touches on a tutorial that I will be submitting to The Code Project, titled MSBuild Task Tutorial: Label Project in Source Safe. I am posting it here first, before I hand it off to Code Project, to get opinions on ways I could improve it. So, please feel free to share.

I have been in the market for an online to-do list for awhile. I have toyed with the idea of rolling my own, but never got around to it. I was listening to an interview with Jason Fried of 37signals, and learned that they offer a free online to-do list called Ta-da Lists.

I had been using Ta-da Lists for about a month and was very happy with it. It is very elegant, and does what it says it will do. However, I felt there were a few things missing. For example, I wanted it to keep track of the date that I marked an item completed. Apparently this feature is available to paying customers, which left me out.

Having had great success using Gmail and Ta-da Lists, which are both AJAX style solutions, I decided to see if I could find a similar calendar solution. I do not like MS outlook. It is too bulky for what I need, and the built in search utility can't hold a candle to Gmail. I am looking for a place to store my alerts for items like birthdays, anniversaries, etc...

I posted a message on the AZ .NET User Group message board, asking if anyone had knowledge of such a solution. I eventually learned about Remember the Milk.

Remember the Milk is a combination of to-do list and calendar, without the built-in calendar interface. Instead, you may use any application that can access iCalendar. I have been using Remember the Milk for a little over a week, and I am very happy with it. I receive e-mail alerts when someone's birthday is coming up, and I can keep track of to-do list items in the same place. Like Ta-da Lists, I can make these lists public, or give other Remember the Milk users the ability to view/update specific lists. I am currently testing this last feature with my project manager. I will keep you posted on the success.

Back in May of 2005 I posted about how Luke Hutteman, of SharpReader fame, had gotten a free Mini Mac from FreePay. I normally shun these things like the plague, but I now see that Scott Hanselman has used the same service to get his own Mini Mac.

I was more interested in the free Sony PSP, so I signed up for that. Unfortunately, I became too busy to pursue it with much momentum.

I am ready to try again. I only need four more people to sign-up and complete one of the offers, so that I can get my free Sony PSP. After you sign-up using this link and complete an offer, you only need 5 people to do the same for you, and you get a free Sony PSP for yourself.

I signed up for the Blockbuster Online rental trial, and ended up using their service for nearly a year.

Hint: Make sure you have cookies fully enabled before completing the offer.