Free Test Data

If you find yourself in need of test data (and if you write software for a living, you’ve got that need pretty often), pay a visit to generatedata.com.  You have your choice of five different result formats: HTML, Excel, CSV, XML, and SQL.  If you’re using it for free, you’re limited to 200 rows of test data.  Donate $20 or more and the limit increases to 5000 rows.  If you don’t mind fiddling with PHP and MySQL, you can download the generator for free and set it up on your own server.

Another use for RSS feeds

Caphyon, the vendor of Advanced Installer, has a feed for updates of the software.  A brief look at the feed shows a pretty regular schedule of updates.  Each entry in the feed contains the release notes, with new features, enhancements, and bug fixes.

Quick thanks to my friend Dave, who sent me a tweet about this product.  Now we’ll see how it stacks up against InstallShield.

Finally joined Twitter

Being part of The Borg Facebook wasn’t enough–I joined Twitter a couple of weeks ago.  At least so far, it has succeeded in connecting me with the few friends of mine I haven’t found on Facebook yet.  I don’t use it from my iPhone that much yet, but fring seems to be a good enough client.