Dan Mackey On ColdFusion Development

I was checking my RSS feeds (using a paid version of FeedDemon) and noticed on Nick Bradbury's blog that FeedDemon (and all newsGators non-enterprise RSS products) are being released free.

While I appreciate why they are doing it, something inside me felt disappointed. Why? Cause I paid for quality software and feel like our exclusive little club is letting in free members ha ha Its hard to explain, maybe I am just paranoid. Along with HomeSite (originally from Nick also), FeedDemon is one of my top apps to keep me productive. If I lose it, it will impact my productivity.

This leads onto why I might lose it.  What if their enterprise plan does not work out? Will they start putting ads in the software? Will they discontinue the product and concentrate on the online readers? I hope not. At least with FeedDemon on Windows I know that I get all my feeds right away and not whenever the main server decides it has new feeds. Also, I have authenticated feeds that dont get synchronised online. I dont want to use an online reader.

If their plan does not work out, I will gladly pay for FeedDemon as a stand alone commercial product again. Its that good.

Now that my concerns are voiced, I must go into why it may be a good thing.

Finding valuable feeds is hard. The logic of giving out FeedDemon for free will give a bigger user base, which will give a bigger field of data to NewsGator, which in turn will suggest better feeds for me. I dont buy into the whole "I am afraid of my privacy" argument most people seem to be offering. The data they are accumulating and analysing does not in any way identify you as a person. It identifys a feed you subscribed to and other aggragated data.

I trust Nick and while he is still on board at NewsGator, I am confident that my privacy is respected.

I have always recommended FeedDemon as the best Windows RSS reader and will continue to do so as a free product. Coupled with the online tools, RSS has never been easier to consume. The iphone version of NewsGator online is my most used app and the fact it synchronises with my 2 desktop copies of FeedDemon (Work and home) means I am always up to date!

Anybody know how this will affect TopStyle? Will we see a free version of that tool aswell?

PS: Nick, if your reading this, can you blog more about your actual development of the product? My favourite posts from you are the ones where you give an insight into the programming, the algorithms and issues you face and your thinking when it comes to user interfaces.

I found a very interesting article today on a subject that is of particular interest to me at the moment. I am in the need of a good gantt chart component (for integration with www.teamworkpm.net) and after searching high and low, have come to the conclusion that it may be worth building one myself. The nature of the component means that AJAX is out (I want it to be extremely functional and fast)

My problem is that I am not very good at flash. I tried Flex Builder 3 but I have a whole load of experience with C# so I was considering silverlight. I find the IDE of Visual Studio amazing so Silverlight in C# would be a very attractive option. The Flex Builder app (Eclipse plugin/mod) just didnt do it for me....

This article though has put me in 2 minds. They make the very good point that Flex has been along for so long that there are so many resources available to developers. And of course there is the added bonus of being able to deploy as an AIR application.

After reading the article, I have decided to put the effort into Flex development. Can anybody point me in the direction of the best Flex for beginners articles, samples etc?

As I have posted before, Live Support is something that interests me greatly and I have been constantly on the look out for a good solution.

A new addition to the Windows Live Messenger family of products is the Windows Live Messenger Control for blogs and websites. It allows anybody to contact you directly from your blog and you receive the message in your standard Windows Live Messenger client.

You can dictate if only registered WLM users or annonymous visitors can contact you and there are currently 2 modes of displaying the control. You can opt for a simple 16x16 icon that shows your status or a mini web based messenger client.

I chose the little icon on the right of my blog.

I also allow annonymous people to contact me so click it and say hello ;-)

Chat With Me Live

The good thing about the annonymous chat is that it is protected with a captcha so hinder abuse.

I am planning on using this on Teamwork Project Manager both on the website and inside the actual application to help people get their questions answered if they have any.

To get started, visit the Windows Live Messenger Control website, log in using your Passport account, choose the widget type you want, grab the one line snippet of code that is generated for you and place it on your website or blog. If you would like annonymous people to contact you, you have to click the settings tab and allow this.

Once again I have been impressed by AIR - Adobe Integrated Runtime. I can see massive advantages of an app environment like this even if I have some requirements that are not available.

Anyway, we use Google Analytics for client projects and our own websites and I always found the interface a little bit confusing. The left hand menu was structured Marketing, Developer etc and I had no idea where anything was.

The AIR Application Google Analytics Suite solves this problem by structuring the left menu under the categories:

• Visitors
• Traffic Sources
• Content

The interface is beautiful and importantly its snappy! I love the fact you can have multiple tabs open! One gripe would be to have some persistance in the application to remember open tabs, date range picked etc.

I really really wish AIR supported the following:

• Right Click Menus
• System Notification Area Support (Minimise to Tray) - I really want this!!!

If the above was available I will ditch C# .NET as my language of choice for writing the Teamwork Project Manager Desktop Application. I could have a truely cross platorm desktop app.

There is one thing I am unclear about and hoping somebody can answer.....what browser is used on Mac and Linux inside AIR?? I am guessing the Windows AIR uses IE.

We got there!

After a gruelling few days hard work and an extremely long day yesterday, Topper and myself finally hit our launch milestone and Teamwork Project Manager went live

Already the feedback has been excellent and a roadmap of features will be defined and uploaded today sometime. People really really like the UI and the Teamwork PM approach to Project Management

Some of the features I cant wait for myself, such as:

• Project Notebooks - Like a mini version comparing word processor without the crap
• Windows App (My Baby) - A tabbed multiple project installation host for TeamworkPM running in the tasktray - PS:Its cool! C# .NET if your interested
• Dedicated File Section - Upload, catagorise and store all your files. Have it working but not live yet. Use the very cool CF_ProFlashupload for multiple file uploads
• Data Export - Various options to export data
• Developer API - Kinda there but no documentation
• Many more....

Well, enough of the talk, try it out yourself : Signup FREE to Teamwork Project Manager

Check out more photos from the office : Teamwork Project Manager Photos