How this site came to be
About this site
December 2000 -- As my University exams ended I found that I have more time then a sane person can bare, so I have decided to extend functionality of my web site to new level, before I waste my brain away. Not that it wasn't already being wasted by something that University calls "computer science", which has nothing to do with real software development. But that is another story. So I began adding search, personalization, send-to-friend, e-mail, feedback pages, plus awesome outlook style forum among other usual suspects. But soon I realize that the site was missing the most important aspect. And that it had no mission. It was just a site that I used for school stuff, assignments, notes, projects, and presentations. And even then no teacher showed up to see any of it, fools. Nevertheless I had a vision. As most of you, I spend much of my free time browsing around looking for any IT info that I can read, mostly about Microsoft. Having somewhat of a know how in ASP, databases, XML, DHTML, and whole bunch of other random letters; and interest for Microsoft I put these things together, and boom, News Whistler here it comes.
You may ask, why about Microsoft? Well beside the fact that I see this company, as one that made technology/software what is it today; always innovating. There is so much garbage about lunix, unix, sun, java, aol, oracle, and the rest of the gang, that another site about garbage like that would not make any difference. Joining with the ranks of ActiveWin, WinInfo, NeoWin, and others I hope to combat the IT idiotic, that it seems to be spared over the IT world.
So why the name, News Whistler? For me, it means someone who spread the news. Also it was somewhat brought to my attention by the code-name of Windows XP. I learned that most people find site name "News Whistler" confusing (makes not scene) as they think that has something to do with WinXP code name. But likely I am getting a feeling that this name will be temporary. My creativeness is mostly limited to software development; I couldn't come up with better name. As the site continues to grow, I might need to change Web Hosting Provider to something more responsive. I been looking for one that has plans to support ASP.NET on IIS 6.0 (Windows .NET Server), but as far, I have not found one; as there are only few that support .NET. With the change of hosting provider I might also change the site name. So if you have any ideas for new name let me know.
News Whistler is relatively new site, but I hope with my unique knowledge of internet/software development and my interest in Microsoft I will be able to jam-pack this site with many features hard to come by anywhere else. Soon users of PDA's with wireless Internet connection will be able to read news on their mobile devices. Also you will find between 5-15 news postings per day, to keep you full of current IT news. In future I hope to implement .NET features into this site to allow for greater personalization and access to news when it happens.
This article had been much overdue. Recently I been working on program that will notify you of any news postings on News Whistler, I hope to have it done by the time I post this article. When I am finish writing it I post it here. From now on I will keep the "article" section mostly for product/services reviews.
Another manner is that there has been little (almost none) activity on the forum and not many news comments have been written. Now I know what some of you might be thinking, by not witting any comments we are saving all those bites of hard drive space, that written messages would take-up in the database. As I appreciate the thought, I know that still this site is growing and perhaps there is not that much critical mass to start discussions. But if you have any comments, please make a use of the "New Comment" feature. (Unless it is been broken, and no one let me know).
Lastly I would appreciate your feedback about this new IT site, so I could improve upon and I would tell me how is this site doing.
cheers
Mike