As of this month, I (Garry) decided to start publishing some of the Access Unlimited news using the popular RSS XML news format. Well I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to integrate this format into my normal publishing so I decided to adopt XML as the primary method to distribute news content at vb123.com. Then I thought what if YOU, the audience, still wanted to receive the Access Unlimited news in emails like you do now.

After consideration, I have setup a voluntary business subscription for the Access Unlimited newsletter. The charge for this service will be US$9.95 per email account. Based on the response to this initiative, I will review how much effort I should continue to put into providing the more costly email service. If the response is low, my current thinking is to reduce the emails to 6 times a year and put more effort into the XML/RSS news. Garry


Become a business supporter of Access Unlimited here - Cost US$9.95 per annum


What Is This VB123 XML RSS Feed Thing ?

If you have been surfing the web lately, you may have noticed that most popular sites now have an orange or red XML button(s) scattered around some of the pages on the web site. In case you don’t already know, these buttons indicate that you can retrieve information and news into your own RSS (Really Simple Syndication) news reader.

In technical terms, this indicates that a text file has been setup with specific XML tags to describe (new) material at the web site. The XML tags inside the file have a title, a hyperlink, a description and a date of publishing for a particular page at the website as a minimum. Generally you can click on the XML button and this will take you to the XML text file in question. Whilst you probably wouldn’t want to read the XML more than once, the internet address of the XML file is important because you will add that address to your RSS Reader.

You can find our RSS news (XML text file) at the following location
http://www.vb123.com/news/rss1.xml

And you can find plenty of RSS readers by going to our news page
http://www.vb123.com/news/

The thing that I like about this type of service is that you can combine a number of news feeds together to produce your own personal magazine. We hope that you will add our feed to your collection.

If anyone has a great RSS newsletter reader, let me know and I will add to it to list.

Please let us know what you think of our RSS news.

NEW THE VB123.COM LIBRARIAN SERVICE


If you have trouble locating MS Access related programming content on the web or just think you waste too much time looking and posting to newsgroups, why not use Garry and his team as personal librarians. Finding things is our business and passion and we are generally successful because we have plenty of books on the shelves, lots of magazines, access to knowledge bases and over 200 Access database projects to draw on. This service will cover up to 3 hours of librarian support and more can be purchased if necessary. In most instances, a query to the librarian should probably only take a few minutes of our time so you should be able to ask quite a few questions over a year. Please note that we will not be doing the programming for you but we hope to inspire you with the best information so that you can solve your problems. We believe that this service will complement our professional newsletter and hope that you will be interested.

Sign Up For The Librarian Service Here - Cost US$99.00 per annum


ACCESS 12 – PRIVATE BETA GLIMPSES

Over the last few days, I have been trialling the new version of Microsoft Access and whilst my hands are tied about any detail that I can release on the product, I can put forward the following conclusions.

The next version of Access is aiming for a bigger mainstream audience and looks and acts a lot more like the rest of the Microsoft Office suite. This is great news because it should mean a lot more databases to support. The other big news includes >> Access is being promoted as an important cog in the Sharepoint bandwagon that Microsoft is pushing hard in Office 12; in the name of simplification, some of the unpopular parts of Access may not be with us in the future; there are some subtle enhancements to a new version of Jet that are interesting, a simpler reporting mechanism plus PDF support built in.

Here are some other web sites who are saying more than us about Access/ Office 12 (because they have better legal support, I guess).

PC World  Microsoft Blogs  Office Newsletter 


I will follow up on Access 12 more in further editions of the Access Unlimited Professional Newsletter when we are legally allowed to do so.

WRAPPING THIS EDITION UP

This email newsletter has provided tips, help and information for skilled Microsoft Access® users and related software disciplines for free to thousands of readers for over six years now. So with our products selling well and XML coming along as a better way to deliver content, it was time to take a more commercial approach to the email newsletter. I hope you agree that the content is worth paying for because I would like Access Unlimited to continue to be an independent source of Access and related product news delivered to your Inbox every month.

Subscribe Here


Garry Robinson - Software Consultant and Hopefully Publisher
GR-FX Pty Limited
Sydney, Australia.
Ph +61 2 9665 2871 Fax +61 2 9665 8448
Software Resources http://vb123.com/


--- The end of this edition of Access Unlimited ---


PS Don’t forget Garry’s Workbench 4… Compact your database, send messages to users, simple backups and now… Change those Startup properties

http://www.vb123.com/workbench/

Click on this button to read the previous edition of Access Unlimited 
Published  2005-11