Newsletter for November 6th, 2009 - Codename "Bird Meets Frog"

1. Newsletter Editorial

Greetings everyone and welcome to yet another edition of the DC newsletter.  It's been 40 days since the last newsletter -- well off of our goal of getting a newsletter out at least once a month (preferably twice a month).  So go make yourself a hot cup of tea and prepare to spend some time going through this edition, because it's big and full of some real gems.

Because of the large number of items in the newsletter this time, I'll try to keep the editorial short.  I did want to mention a few things, though.  First, long time members of the forum know about the big event on the site that gets the most attention each year: NANY (New Apps for the New Year).  NANY is really a celebration of software and programming -- we ask all coders who hang out at the forum (new coders are welcome!) to release a brand new freeware/donationware program on January 1st.  Actually, most of the activity happens in December as coders pledge to release something and we try to coordinate all of the participants.  Keeping with the spirit of the site, there are no winners or prizes, but we do try to make sure every coder gets some exposure and a commemorative mug celebrating the event.  It's great fun for new and old coders alike.  We've just started the NANY 2010 section on the forum and I encourage you to stop by and get a good seat for the show.

Second, I wanted to mention a new and very cool website created by longtime DC member Chris Hanscom.  It's called Plarker, a site where people can create maps of their favorite places and share them.  The main thing I want to say is that we want to hear from more of you about projects that you are working on, computer-related or not.  In a world in which corporations buy their way into people's consciousness with marketing dollars, we need to support the small and lesser known projects in which DC members and friends are engaged.  Don't be shy to post about stuff that you are working on and to ask for feedback.

Third, in that spirit, I want to tell you about a new website that I just finished and am opening to the public. It's called "The Tree Form Machine" and is based on a desktop application that I wrote quite a while ago called "The Form letter Machine."  The basic idea of the website is to make it possible for users to create interactive forms that people can use to prepare documents by simply marking checkboxes and mixing and matching paragraphs.  I'm hoping that it will be useful for people who want to create easily-customizable legal documents, form letters, support replies, etc.  The desktop program was pretty much a niche product and judging from the near unanimous yawns of disinterest in the website I expect nothing different from the website.  But if it sounds like something you might be interested in, please please do drop by and see if you can create something interesting with it.  Nothing would make me happier than to see someone create a cool form or two that actually has some value to someone.

Fourth, I just want to highlight a nice blog entry I stumbled across, written by someone who discovered the Coding Snacks section of our forum and wrote about his experience of requesting a custom program and having DC member Skwire code it for him.  It brought a smile to my face.