Scot’s Newsletter List Comes Together
January 7th, 2008Just a quick note to let longtime subscribers of Scot’s Newsletter know that the planned merger of the HTML and text lists has taken place. The subscription tools have also been upgraded (and greatly simplified) to support the change.
It’s important to note that Scot’s Newsletter has become the Scot’s Newsletter Blog Notification List. It is now a text-only, blurb-and-link newsletter that links to the blog. I merge/purged the HTML and Text lists into one. There’s no need for those previously subscribed to the HTML list to unsubscribe and resubscribe. This change is automatic for all subscribers and completely invisible.
So, beyond that … where’s your Scot’s Newsletter Blog content? It’s coming. As I do every year around this time, I took a vacation the last 10 days of December — which pushed me back quite a bit.
Expect a software firewall update in the near future. I’m also testing NOD32 3.0 (so far so good for me, but I’m hearing about issues).
Ciao,
– Scot
January 14th, 2008 at 9:14 PM
You might want to “watch” your NOD32 replies for issues with the iPhone. (I had an iPod that worked fine with NOD32, version 2.7x) But when I got the iPhone serious sync issues developed. I finally tracked it down to the IMON (Internet Monitoring) module. NOD told me that module would be replaced in version 3.x — since 2.7 is working and not broke, I have been waiting and watching.
Gordon (G41Potter@gmail.com)
Atlanta
January 15th, 2008 at 10:22 PM
I haven’t seen an email since 12/6/2007. Is this for your newsletter, er sorry, blog?
Thanks,
Bob Martell
aka RabidWolf
January 15th, 2008 at 10:24 PM
Is this OK , that is. Stupid keyboard…
January 16th, 2008 at 7:53 AM
That’s true. The combination of my recuperation from surgery, promotion to editor-in-chief of Computerworld, and the advent of the holidays has left me with less time than usual to write over the last four or five weeks.
I’ve also put quite a few of my meager free hours into improvements to the blog and the newsletter:
• Merged newsletter lists and completely re-crafted, re-coded newsletter subscription tools. Benefits: Much easier to use subscription tools, reduced costs for me, reduced time to send newsletter.
• Research into, experimentation, and implementing both expanded bandwidth for database calls on the server and caching the blog site to hopefully eliminate problems with the blog server bogging down during the first few hours after the newsletter mails. That has been a problem each time we’ve mailed the newsletter since the blog site launched. Benefits: Faster blog-site performance during peak demand times.
• It may not be obvious, but I’ve added about 50 tweaks to the design of the blog site to improve visibility and usability. I haven’t tackled the all-important navigation issue (yet), but several aspects work better than they did before. Benefit: Overall better experience and easier to read and understand blog pages.
Finally, I’m working in the background on trying to wrap up the software firewalls series, so I can give my recommendation and push onto the next series (whatever it may be). That has involved a lot of research. But I am getting closer.
I’m only going to send the newsletter when I’ve written enough new articles to make it worth everyone’s while. I only have one substantive article since the last newsletter, so it’s not time yet.
My best estimate for the next newsletter is the end of Jan. / early Feb. As a result, I will have skipped an “issue” — something I do most years around the holidays.
– Scot