Scott Hanselman

Before I forget, here's my upcoming Speaking Schedule, which currently consists of Users Groups:

• Bay.NET - chillin' in SFO with Web Services.  If you're in San Francisco or Oakland or Los Gatos or any points in between, come hang with us.  Spread the word and rush the stage. 
• When:  Thursday, 7/29/2004 at 6:30 PM
  Where:  Microsoft Office, Landmark Bldg, 1 Market St. San Francisco, CA
• South Sound Users Group - TOPIC TBD, but it will undoubtably be fun, as I will drive up to Olympia to talk to my fellow Northwesterners.
• When: Thursday, 8/12/2004 at 7:00 PM-ish
  Where: Probably Olympia Center in Olympia, WA
• South Colorado.NET Users Group - Probably a .NET Internals talk, where we'll start at LoadLibrary(), move past CoCreateInstance and end up at GetType() and Assembly.Load().  Very intense and upbeat talk that's mucho funno.
• When: Tuesday, 10/5/2004 at 5:30 PM-ish
  Where: Probably at NxTrend in Colorado Springs, CO

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

The irony of this is not lost on me, as I introduced a large number of my friends and colleagues to the Joy of using Firefox (then Firebird).

In the many comments that were in the Spam Thread were suggestions that I use SpamBayes with Outlook and/or Thunderbird.

(It's worth noting that that original screenshot was on my little TabletPC, and that I DO in fact run Outlook 2003 in my real life.)

However, as IT Manager for my Family, I have to maintain the boxes of various cousins, great-uncles, wife, brother, etc.  So, God help me, they've been running Outlook Express.

Why is the Fam so behind?  Well, I can't give them all my MSDN Office Licenses, that wouldn't be "Right."  But, largely I have been moving them to free software so I can sleep at night (and they can eat ;) ).  Dad and Mom run http://www.OpenOffice.org and FireFox today.

I've been avoiding Thunderbird just because I'm REALLY not a fan of the whole "Mozilla" Suite.  Mind you, it's the SUITE, not the Apps.  But back in the day I tried the Mozilla Mail, and it just smacked too much of Netscape early on and I guess I got turned off.

But, I installed Thunderbird and I feel so strongly about it that I must reuse a metaphor - forgive me.

Comparing Thunderbird to Outlook Express is the difference between shooting a bullet...and throwing one.

I'm VERY impressed.  As I looked around for features within the menus, I found everything I was looking for.  Here's what I was most impressed with:

• A Junk Email Filter that LEARNS.
• VERY Advanved Rules/Filtering Engine
• The ability to run in "Vertical" Preview Mode
• Turning off of both JavaScript and inline external Images
• Create Rule/Filter from Example Email
• VERY Flexible Font Sizing choices, including a "Minimum Font Size" option (Very nice for Accessibility.  Even with Bionic Eyes, I still like a big font.)
• Skinnable with Themes
• Totally different way of thinking about addressing (a grid, rather than To:, CC:, BCC: boxes)
• Popup "Toast" New-Email indicator

I suggest that if you have any relatives running Outlook Express, that you move them to Thunderbird tomorrow.  Thanks Readers, for forcing me to take a second look at this piece of software!

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

Chris Brooks, our CTO and my boss, pointed us to a very kind gentleman who has seen fit to give the world UML Symbols for Microsoft Visio from the OMG Final Specification.

If you're not familiar with UML (Unified Modelling Language) or you're interested in learning, there are a number of UML primers and books out there.

• UML Primer from Ralph Vinciguerra
• Scott Ambler's The Object Primer - Agile Model Driven Development with UML 2.0
• A quickie primer by Simon Lucas at Essex University
• Last but not least, the UML Resource Page at http://www.uml.org

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

This fellow, Cliff Atkinson, runs a company called SociableMedia that specializes in marketing and communication around effective use of PowerPoint (no doubt the most maligned communication tool since the stick-in-the-eye.)  Clif has a blog with some VERY useful content.  Subscribed. Here's some of his articles on PowerPoint and effective communication.

Additionally, here are the ToastMaster's Top 10 Tips for Effective Public Speaking and a pointer to my "Scott Hanselman's Tips for a Successful [Technology] Presentation".

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

In trying to fix a broken link in that i18n post, I went to the Web Archive at http://www.archive.org.  It's amazing to me how FEW people know about and use this.  Sure, you can use the Google Cache to "Tivo" pages that may be temporarily down, but with the Wayback Machine (archive.org) you can see pages that are LONG GONE, or even from domains that are no longer in existance. 

Here's some interesting tidbits.  Zen moment here folks?  This was only 8 years ago.  Oy.  Show these to your kids, and remind them that there wasn't always a web. :)

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By