New Newsgator Products

Newsgator announced a new product called SuiteTwo we're developing in cooperation with some other well-known companies, including Intel. Naturally there is a press release, as well as some media coverage.

Not coincidentally we deployed another version of the Newsgator Hosted Solution software that I've been working on since I joined Newsgator last November. We actually pushed out the beta version of a related but different product that we've all been working really hard of for almost a month now. I had hoped to say something about it in this post because I'm psyched that we actually got the project done this quickly. Unfortunately I couldn't find a press release talking about it and I'm not allowed to break the news. Damn those nondisclosure agreements I signed!

And now a mildly amusing and slightly overlong anecdote. After we deployed the new software, I came home and sat down with my laptop to write this post. But I was thwarted by a nonfunctional wireless network. After a few minutes I figured out the router upstairs was not running, so I checked on it. Regrettably it was completely toasted -- it wouldn't even boot up.

A quick trip to CompUSA netted me a newer version of the same router. I specifically got the same router because I had backed up the configuration of my old router. But of course the new router wouldn't load the old configuration. So I spent the better part of two hours configuring the router, then reconfiguring the laptop to work with the router, trying to secure the network on to break things, figuring out what was broken, configuring the wireless bridge, breaking things again... ARGH! Oh, and somewhere in there my laptop battery decided it was tired of life -- it's maximum charge now lasts 8 minutes. And the outlet next to my comfy chair in the living room wasn't working for 9 minutes, for some unknown reason. Thankfully I'm a bit calmer about this stuff than my dad, so few obscenities were uttered.

The moral of the story is that I may be an experienced software professional who can write and deploy sophisticated websites, but it still takes me 2 hours to set up a wireless network.