Denis..

Comments are interspersed....


>I don't have a blog. Perhaps I'll have one eventually.
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>Not sure if I really get what's the deal with those. Is it only hype? Will they fade away faster than we think?

I started mine as a way to express opinions, talk about things I'm working on, and as a place holder for things I want to remember.

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>I understand that a blog could be a good way to stay in close contact with customers or potential customers or whatever the justification for the existence of a blog.

Customer-facing blogs are a very good way to stay in contact. In fact, one of the most well known bloggers, Microsoft's Robert Scoble is finishing up co-authoring a book on that topic.

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>Anyway there are some things to me that look wrong with some of those blogs.
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>As long as a blog is related to one's business everything is allright.
>My problem is with the following. In regard to VFP and trying to help promote it.

IMO, a VFP blog will only help promote VFP to those who already use it.

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>How many blogs exist where VFP is mentioned and those writing about it want to help on the marketing of it. So how many of those blogs are there in the wild?
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>Will I have to google each day to find the newest ones?

I've never googled to find a blog. I have blogs that I subscribe to, then if they mention a blog that looks interesting, I'll hop over there, read a few postings, then subscribe if it's interesting.

>Maybe not because I dit it once and saw that there's a place on the Fox wiki keeping VFP blogs urls. Ok not so bad but are they really all there?
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>So... I can live with that. I'll just try to guess which ones are the best ones.
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>Imagine that I kept only 15 urls. Now I have to look at those each day to see what's new. There's a high probability that the news about VFP will look alike from blogs to blogs. Perhaps updated on different days. So if I want to be sure to have all the informations I'll read them all. Who knows there could be different bits and pieces of informations from one place to the other.

Nope.. you don't do that. You "subscribe" to the blog through an RSS reader. I use Gator, an Outlook add-in. There are many others. A blog should produce an RSS file, which is an XML file of the content. When an update is made to the blog, the RSS file is updated. Your RSS reader goes out to the subscribed blogs and looks for an updated RSS file. If there is one, it downloads it and notifies you of new content. You only have to look in your RSS reader to read what's new.

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>I don't necessarily have the time to do that. And keep in mind that I'm passionate about VFP. So if I don't have the time to do it I guess that the probabilities are low that someone just looking for information (Hmm what the heck is VFP, Does that thing still exists?, Why is it still there....) on VFP will read them all?
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>Another problem I have. Verbosity. For example "The other day as I went fishing with my Buddy Sam he told me he was worried that VFP 9 would be the last version so I talked to him about the Sedna orientation. Sam is a good fisherman. The last time we went fishing... and on and on..."

Then don't read that blog.

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>Concise is the keyword here. Blogs should'nt be like newspapers or magazines. Sometimes those guys have to fill the blanks because if they did'nt they would end up with a 5 pages newspaper <g>.

What a blogger wants to say and how he says it is up to the author. If you don't like a particular blog, then unsubscribe.

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>So...
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>Problem 1 : Too many blogs saying practically the same things avout VFP
>Possible solution: Create an official VFP blog. Would'nt this be better for the marketing of VFP to have everything in one place?

There is one... Ken's blog ... in additional to his monthly newsletter.

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>Problem 2: Verbosity.
>Possible solution:
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>Instead of the fishing story something like
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>After VFP 9 comes Sedna. And then give links for more information if the reader wants to know more.