Newsletter for July 9, 2012
"100 Days of Summer Slumber"
1. Newsletter EditorialHello dear readers and greetings from Illinois, where I've been hiding out in my air conditioned bunker while the temperature outside breaks the triple digits. It's been nearly 100 days since the last DonationCoder newsletter, so this is going to be a big one. I apologize that it's taken so long to get this one out, and I promise it won't take so long to get out the next one. The last time we talked we were just kicking off our March fundraiser, which turned out to be a wonderful success. A huge thank you goes out to everyone who donated and cheered us on. The fundraisers have such an invigorating effect on the site -- I can't overstate the morale boost they provide. Thank you all.
On other news, we've been very steadily working on the transition to a new content management system for the website, which will make it a little easier for us to update and maintain content. DC member Mitzevo is leading the project and the new site layout looks great. Unfortunately, it's proving a not insignificant challenge that we have so many different esoteric areas of the website, so we still have quite a ways to go -- but that's the nature of the site so what can you do? Ok enough rambling, onto the newsletter sections!
2. User-to-User: Your Input RequestedWe love nothing more than having interesting discussions on our forum -- and we love when new people participate in the discussions. In each newsletter we try to highlight a few topics that we think might interest casual readers and that are good candidates for making your first post.
3. Mouser's Software Updates and DiscussionsSince the last newsletter there have been a bunch of updates to my software, some minor, some major.
4. Skwire Empire Updates and New ReleasesDC member Skwire has been unstoppable on the Coding Snacks area of our forum -- writing new freeware utilities on request, and constantly releasing updates for his existing tools. Lots of new updates this month, plus one big new one for comic book archive readers:
5. Other Coding Snacks and Member ProjectsThe Coding Snacks section is one of the things that people love the most about DonationCoder -- it's where anyone can post a request for a custom piece of software -- and often find the requests granted overnight by one of the coders who inhabit the forum (like DC members Ath, MilesAhead, c.gingerich, 4wd, and others).
6. Mini-ReviewsIn the past few years we've drifted from larger reviews to user-written mini-reviews, and we've had quite a few posted since the last newsletter.
7. Fun, Humor, and Amusements on the WebYou've made it half way through the newsletter, so let's have a break. Go make yourself a lemonade, and check out these fun websites and videos!
8. General Software DiscussionAlmost half the posts on the DC forum take the form of general software discussions, questions, recommendations, etc. These posts wind up in the General Software Discussion section and make it one of the most active sections of the DC forum. This is a great resource if you're trying to solve a software or hardware-related problem. We get so much traffic on this board that we split the recent content into two sections in the newsletter - general software and specific software discussions.
9. Specific Software Discussion and Software ServicesThis section of the newsletter draws attention to some of the standout discussions about specific programs that have been started since the last newsletter.
10. Website Discoveries, Debates, and DiscussionsWhat's new in cyberspace? What exciting new sites have been discovered by forum members? What's the current hot topic and debate? Read on to find out...
11. Developer's CornerThe title of this section shouldn't scare you off - there is definitely something of interest for everyone here! It's more than just a section for the discussion of software development, it's also where we discuss web design, entrepreneurial ideas, and general productivity issues. It's great to see that the section has been pretty active recently.
12. Hardware HideoutAlthough most of our forum discussions are about software, there are always some interesting hardware and gadget threads popping up.
