keeping the community informed...

July has come and gone, and taken a handful of DaniWeb moderators with it. The following people have had to step down from their moderator role due to the real world intervening and preventing them from being able to devote the kind of time it takes to do this demanding, and totally voluntary, job:

big_k105
Comatose
crunchie
FC Jamison
Paladine
tayspen

I am sure that everyone within the DaniWeb community would like to join me in thanking each and every one of them for their hard work, dedication and valuable contributions over the past few months and years. I would also like to welcome them as the newest members of that most exclusive of DaniWeb clubs, the Team Colleague badge wearers. Membership is only open to founding members of DaniWeb and close personal friends or colleagues of the Queen of DaniWeb, Dani herself. Oh, and those members who used to help us all as moderators of course. Your badge is well deserved guys, wear it with pride…

Let us also take this opportunity to think about the great work that the remaining team of volunteer moderators do in order to ensure that DaniWeb is the spam free, friendly and without doubt most knowledgeable IT support community on the Web. Take a bow, and accept the virtual applause for your efforts:

The Super Mod
stymiee

The Mods
Ancient Dragon
blud
digital-ether
jwenting
Narue
vegaseat
WaltP
wolfpack
~s.o.s~

faster, pussycat, faster…

Sincere apologies to those members who have been experiencing some delays when posting to DaniWeb recently. The Queen of DaniWeb has been spending sleepless nights tweaking the system behind the scenes, and the end result can now be experienced by everyone. Hopefully you will discover a noticeable speed improvement when posting from now on.

blog, pussycat, blog...

If you have not yet started blogging at DaniWeb, now is the perfect time to make the move and become a part of the great wave of citizen journalism that is spreading across the globe. DaniWeb blogs are different to most in that we focus purely on IT and technology. Which means that postings about the things that are wrong with your dog, or how your latest vacation went, are not allowed and will be deleted. However, it also means that if you post something that is timely, opinionated, well written and news worthy then it stands every chance of becoming a featured blog post.

These can potentially get picked up by news services and publications all over the world, meaning thousands of people tuning in to what you have to say. This year alone, DaniWeb bloggers have been responsible for breaking major stories such as the first virus infection to be discovered on a portable GPS satellite navigation device, and even a security breach involving the UK visa application database which ended up being the lead story on a national TV news network and sparked an official investigation by the UK Foreign Secretary.

Behind the scenes, the Queen of DaniWeb has been busy tweaking the system to make sure it provides you with the best vehicle for your writing talents. The latest additions being a new look to the blog homepage and the inclusion of a related links feature taking readers to both blog and forum posts of similar interest.

Go on, give it a try. You might just get addicted to this blogging thing. You can start blogging, for free, by simply heading here.

every month one member makes the DaniWeb hall of fame

Our hall of famer for August 2007 is christina>you who gets her coveted 'Featured Poster' badge and our thanks for embracing the burgeoning social side of the DaniWeb community. With nearly 7000 posts under her belt in just six months of membership, Christina pretty much lives and breathes DaniWeb, well lives in the DaniWeb lounges to be precise. Just look at the figures: 4816 posts in the Posting Games forum and 1674 in the Geeks' Lounge. It is unusual to find someone who is not obviously a tech support guru being quite so active within a tech support community, so we asked a few probing questions to reveal just what makes christina>you tick?

How old are you and where are you from?

"Seventeen, eighteen in December, hailing from West Virginia, USA."

What is your occupation?

"I am currently a student, but will be a CNA by the end of this year."

So what brought you to the DaniWeb site in the first place?

"Well, my boyfriend was a member and had been talking about the site a lot, so I decided to join on his recommendation."

And what were your first impressions of us all?

"My very first impression was "wow, this site is really organized and there is a lot of help here." That impression has not really changed at all. Daniweb is still really organized and truly very helpful."

What are your interests within IT?

"I'm interested in basic computer applications. In fact, I recently won first place in my state for a three hour test I took on this very subject."

What are your interests outside of IT and outside of DaniWeb?

"That would be singing, playing the piano and going to church. Oh, and learning I guess."

Can you name the best thing about DaniWeb?

"Well, for me I think the best thing about Daniweb is the Administration and the help that everyone gets when coming here."

How long do you spend, on average, on DaniWeb every day?

"On an hourly basis, probably 4-5 hours a day."

You spend a lot of time in the Geeks' Lounge, why is that?

"I like the Geeks' Lounge because of the friendly debates and a lot of the topics are relaxing and fun to chat about. Movies, music, TV shows, games, etc."

Ah yes, games. You play a lot of the word games on DaniWeb, what attracts you to them?

"Well to me, they seem fun and a couple of them actually require you to think, believe it or not. For example, the Prime Number, Word Scramble and How High Can We Count? games."

Thank you Christina, your Featured Poster badge can be worn with pride…

by happygeek

Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker has admitted that Thunderbird is to be booted out of the Mozilla camp in order to allow “the Thunderbird community to determine its own destiny” apparently. Put through my patented BS translator this produced “Thunderbird brings us no revenue, gets a bad press whether compared to Outlook or Gmail, and anyway Firefox is our future.”

Although Mozilla has stated it is looking for a new and separate organizational setting for Thunderbird, the writing really does look to be on the wall for the client. As much as I want to like it, and have in the past praised it for daring to be different, the truth is that while Firefox has generated the revenue required to allow the Mozilla Foundation to create something that truly has the ability to shake up the browser client market (and has already done so to a limited extent), Thunderbird has stagnated into just another desktop email client at a time when people are moving away from the same.

Indeed, despite the reported 5 million users of the software, Thunderbird is increasingly looking like the Billy No Mates of the email world. And Firefox is at least to blame as it makes finding and using free web based email services that much easier and rewarding. Gmail has pretty much got the spam situation sorted, unlike Thunderbird which requires plenty of out of the box training to achieve a barely adequate level of Bayesian filter protection. The bigger email hitters, work at home professionals and the business world, look to Microsoft Outlook with its calendaring and organizational capabilities. Again, Thunderbird just cannot compete even with the promise of Mozilla Sunbird.

Baker talks of perhaps releasing Thunderbird in the wild, letting the community continue to develop the project in a similar way as the SeaMonkey suite. The what, do I hear you ask? Exactly. SeaMonkey is what is left of what was Mozilla before Firefox eclipsed all before it. An integrated suite of online applications that, frankly, nobody wants. Maybe, then, this is the right way to go with Thunderbird after all…