ronpih's weblog

Vidas Matelis has been twittering like crazy about PowerPivot.  At this point, he's the one to follow for info about what's happening in PowerPivot land.  He is also starting up a new PowerPivot website similar to his SSAS-info site.

I just found out about this today: http://testing.stackexchange.com.  I'm there...

Wow, Rob is really on fire as a blogger.  I'd say if you want to stay abreast of the PowerPivot world, his blog is a must.

(via Esther Derby on Twitter)

http://jerryweinberg.amplify.com/2009/10/28/maturity-models-have-it-backwards/

Our PMs are starting to author Gemini blog posts that describe various aspects of Gemini.  There are two new ones:

• Importing Data
• Using Data Feeds

Filling out a web form this morning I came upon this field:

"In lieu of a signature, we require a unique identifier.  What is the first letter of the city in which you were born?"

(Yet another short Gemini video): http://www.microsoft.com/officebusiness/office2010/Default.aspx?vid=Geminiv

I like buying books from Amazon.  They have really done a great job of making book buying friction-free.  But I love buying book from the Pragmatic Programmers even more.  Why?

1. All their books are available in both paper and ebook formats.  Recently I've been trying to cut down on actual physical books and have taken to only buying ebooks.  It's great that all their books are available in ebook formats.
2. Note that in #1 I said formats (plural).  Their ebooks are available as pdf, epub, and mobi which means I can read them on my computers, iPhone, or Kindle.  This is huge for me.
3. Book availability in beta.
4. I like the subjects of many of their books.  They have books not only on various technologies but also on management, self-development, testing, etc.

Donald Farmer is doing a series of "Gemini in one minute or less" screencasts at http://www.youtube.com/geminute

Update: I guess it should be 2 minutes or less.  All 4 (current) videos are a bit longer than a minute.