The Jan/Feb 2012 issue of Real Studio Developer came out a few weeks ago.  I was incredibly busy and I forgot to post about it.

In this issue I did a report on the Real Studio Database Days event held in Frankfurt, Germany in early November.  It was my first visit to Germany and I enjoyed myself immensely.

My BKeeney Briefs column was about evaluating last years consulting business and mapping out strategies to make 2012 better than 2011.

Tam Hanna had an interesting article on Outsourcing.  Jens Bendig had an article on global variables and Marc Zeedar had an article about building your application based on assumptions.

So how did your 2011 go?

I also do an interview with Marc Zeedar about…wait for it…me!  Trust me, you’ll find out more information about me than you ever really wanted.  Imagine my surprise when I went the conference in Germany when people said, “Huh.  The picture in the magazine is a few years old, right?”  Um…thanks?

Also in this issue:  JC Cruz has an article on getting started with the Report Editor in Real Studio.  Marc Zeedar walks us how he used Real Studio to make an app for his iPad.  Paul Lefebvre’s two columns cover Large Database Objects – working with pictures in databases, and Easy Web Services – create a web API.

Check it out.  If nothing else you can use the picture to scare away mice and small children.

In the column I likened the comic superheroes and their journey from average Joe or Jane to superhero to our day-to-day struggle for all of us developers to become Real Studio experts (superheroes, get it!?).  Okay, it was a bit of a stretch, but it seemed appropriate before the summer superhero movies came out.  Hopefully your story is better than the movie versions (which all seem to stink this summer).

Besides my awesome article, there’s a good optimization article from Brendan Murphy from True North Software where he shows us how to make optimized parsing routines.

There’s a nice article showing the Oklahoma University using Web Edition to simply their online application process.

JC Cruz introduces us to Real Studio threads.  If you’ve never used threads you should get to know them – really.

Happy coding!

My Briefs article is titled When a Handshake Just Isn’t Good Enough – Why A Contract Is Necessary where I relate about how a recent client stiffed me out of some serious money owed to me.  Of course I didn’t have a contract with him because of the referral and the connections this client has with Real Software and the RealBasic community.  Learn from my mistake and always have a contract in place before doing work!

And, as always there’s a plethora of good information and reviews in the magazine and I highly recommend getting it.  It’s not just for beginners as there is good information for all skill levels.

REAL Studio Developer Issue 9.3 (March/April 2011) came out this week.  My column topic in this issue was the risks and rewards of being a consultant.

I don’t think being a REALbasic developer is any different than any other consultant.  There are times when you’re so flush with work you can’t sleep and there’s times you’re looking for work.  There’s always the ‘next project’ on the horizon.

Cash flow is just one of the many risks of being a consultant.  The rewards though, are nice when they happen.

Did I leave anything out in the column?  Something I should have talked about?

As of this morning, we have confirmed attendees coming from Europe and Australia and, of course, from all over the United States.  This is an excellent opportunity to talk REALbasic with others that know REALbasic.  This is THE place to find REALbasic developers for your Macintosh, Linux, Windows and Web projects and also a good place, as a developer, to find some work.  Certainly this conference is a good way to network with the REALbasic community.

Geoff Perlmann and Thom McGrath from REAL Software are presenting several sessions which should be a lot of fun.  They’ll be presenting about the new Web Edition and upcoming features.  If I was a betting person I would bet that REAL Software will show off something very different at the conference (don’t ask because I don’t know what it is).

So there you go.  What are you waiting for?  Come join us for what promises to be a very fun time.  Get your geek-on!

More information on the conference can be found at http://arbpmembers.org/real-studio-summit-2011.  Complete session list is at http://arbpmembers.org/real-studio-summit-2011/sessionspeaker-listing.

Sadly, we (BKS) meet very few of our clients face-to-face.  Those that we do have become more than just clients – they’re colleagues, partners, and sometimes even friends.

Personally, I think this is why I’m so excited about the REAL Studio conference coming up in March in Atlanta.  It’s a lot of work to put on a conference and do a presentation.  But past conferences have shown that I always come home very happy and jazzed about the things that I’ve learned and people I’ve met.  Exhausted?  Definitely!  But well worth it.
What about you?

The bundle includes:

• Formatted Text Control
• Elastic Window
• Mask-R-Aid
• RB Code Reports
• REAL Studio Developer Magazine
• Aspen Icon Set
• Valentina Office Server Unlimited
• Franklin 3D Game Engine
• The complete Monkeybread Software plugin set
• Valentina ADK

I can tell you that there are more than a few items on this list that I already own and use on a regular basis.  I can’t tell you how happy this makes me to see this sort of bundle available to RB developers.
More information can be found at http://www.omegabundle.com

JC has an article on Trapping For Errors which is a good read.  Coincidentally, in my regular column I talk about how having a program fail can be instructive and how ‘failure is always an option’.

More information on REALbasic Developer Magazine can be found here.

In almost all of my applications I have an automated bug reporter class that allows the user to send me the Runtime Error type, the Error Stack and (hopefully) a brief description from the user on what they were doing.  It lives only in the App.UnhandledException event and nowhere else.  It’s far from perfect, but it’s better than nothing.

What do you have in your RB apps to get that crucial error information?

I talk about the pitfalls of providing tech support when people asking for (or is it demanding!) for tech support aren’t nice.  Email and forums posts are awful mediums for communicating to each other so you have to take the emotion out of the equation.

Do you have any horror stories, tips, or jokes about tech support you’d like to share?