Alexander’s Blog

I was watching a news channel this morning and saw a discussion of this service. CatalogChoice.org offers a free service that lets you decline paper catalogs that you do not want to receive. Catalog Choice is a sponsored project of the Ecology Center and is endorsed by the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council. You might want to give this free service a try, whether you want to do it for reducing mailbox clutter or to save the natural resources (the production and disposal of direct mail alone consumes more energy than three million cars).

Remember to check out their FAQ page for more information. Click here to access their Web site.

There are some additional Web sites that you may want to check out. For example the site stopthejunkmail.com has been in business since 2001 and they even offer 100% guarantee. Check out this demo of how their site works. Other online sites include proquo.com which is free and paid sites greendimes.com and 41pounds.org.

Whether you are a developer or just a techie, here’s a blog that you might want to check out. The blog is written by Sharee English, Director of Information Services at SeattlePro Enterprises. Sharee is a Web developer, trainer, consultant, author and a public speaker who holds several certifications, such as MCT, MCSD, MCAD, CTT+, etc. Her detailed bio is available here.

Her blog (VisualStudioBlog.com) is a great resource not only for Visual Studio information but also SharePoint technologies and some other fun stuff and gadgets that she finds.

Since 1992, over 2 million people (2,149,006 to be exact) have achieved the Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) status. The top 5 most popular certifications since inception have been:

MCSE NT 4.0 = 395,746
MCSE 2000 = 288,111
MCDBA (SQL 2000) = 147,435
MCSA 2000 = 145,582
MCSA 2003 = 132,509

There are 97 people that have the credentials “MCTS for Windows Mobile 5.0: Application Development.” The only certification with less than 100 individuals.

Interestingly, Microsoft no longer publishes the number of MCTs around the world. At one time there were perhaps as many as 25,000 MCTs. According to Microsoft’s Web site, by August 2002 the number fell to 13,604. By January 2003 the number was further down to 9,797. After that Microsoft decided to quit publishing MCT numbers and now they only publish the numbers for other MCPs.

A detail listing of the number of MCPs is available on Microsoft’s Web site at Number of Microsoft Certified Professionals Worldwide. For numbers from 2002, 2003 and 2005, click here.

Saw these 15 Apple commercials on youtube. You’ve probably seen most of them on TV but in case you missed them :).

Dreamweaver 8 was released more than a year before Windows Vista became publicly available and does not officially support this new operating system. However, Dreamweaver 8 runs fine for the majority of users running Windows Vista. The next version of Dreamweaver, expected to be released in Spring 2007, will be certified to run on Vista.

Check out the following TechNotes from Adobe for your particular situation.

- Dreamweaver 8 crashes on some Vista systems while browsing for files (TechNote kb400788)
- Vista help system stops working when Dreamweaver is the default XML editor (TechNote kb400789). Microsoft has also published a KB article on this topic called The Help and Support feature stops working when Dreamweaver is configured as the default XML editor on a Windows Vista-based computer. Click here to read Microsoft’s KB article 937491.
- Control-Alt-Tab keyboard shortcut change in Windows Vista (TechNote 8718ad77)

For more details, check out the TechNote Dreamweaver 8 issues on Windows Vista. For more information on Adobe product support in general for Vista, see the PDF document How Adobe Products Support Vista.