DECEMBER 18, 2013

Featured Content

What's New at Experts Exchange
From SLO and beyond

Nata's Corner
Doing the right thing for Christmas

The Long and Winding Road
A decade or more from 3,351

There's still some time
One, two, three more guides

In Brief
Things you might have missed

Milestones
Who did what through Dec. 14

What's New at E-E

Upgrades: Experts Exchange is releasing upgraded profiles this week. Among the major changes:

• You can now upload a custom avatar that will replace the EEples. Yes, the Badgers will be paying attention.
• You can now use a "display name" that isn't your account username.
• The statistics and activity tabs have been replaced by a single search interface. The grading history, however, is not included in it.
• Any information posted in your profile that was marked "private" has been deleted. Only that information marked as public has been migrated.
• You can now access a profile via the username: http://www.experts-exchange.com/members/[username] will bring up the profile. You cannot access the profile via the display name, however.
• You can now set your "top contributions"; the default listings will be based on page views (for questions) and points (for articles).

EE will also be suspending new question notifications to accounts that have not logged in during the past year, and has upgraded the on site notifications system to reflect the user's local time zone.

Most Valuable Experts: The Gamma Class of EE's Most Valuable Experts includes JamieMcAllister, byundt, leew, hanccocka, MASQUERAID, lherrou, woolmilkporc, padas, jimhorn, RainerJ, garycase and barryhoudini. Get to know them a little better at EE's blog.

Moving on: Mark Barbir, most recently EE's vice president of product, has announced his resignation. One of EE's earliest hires (as the art director, in 1999), Mark returned to EE in September 2006 and has been the strongest advocate of the membership since then. He will be missed; godspeed, Mr B.

In requiem: Lea Allison Prentice, wife of EE Admin Gerry Prentice, passed away December 7 following a five-year battle with an extremely aggressive form of cancer. For those of us fortunate to have met her, we know that one of the world's charmingly rare points of light spent the past several years with grace, courage, dignity, and one of the world's all-time great smiles, and is now enjoying a well-deserved but somehow unjust rest. Our prayers are with her and her family. The family has requested donations to a special fund at the Guelph General Hospital; read Lea Says Hello for specifics.

T-shirt Donations: Recently, we were asked about donating t-shirts; in the past, we have taken the money that might have been spent making the shirts and matched it, but for the holidays -- considering it gets cold -- EE will match every t-shirt donated with another shirt, and we'll donate the whole kit and kaboodle to the United Way. Donations will be taken through December 31; simply fill out the redemption form in your profile with the word "Donate" in every field.

Points: As we mentioned last issue, almost everyone who has earned points will see the numbers in their Topic Rank change due to the consolidation of a number of topic areas. You haven't lost any of your certificates, but you might have gained a rank or two here and there in the process. We expect the process to be completed in the next week or so.

Referrals: We mentioned EE's new referral program that will let you earn some extra cash by referring friends, co-workers and your Aunt Suzie to Experts Exchange, but before saying anything, you should probably check the new price structure. New Premium Service and Business Account members get a discount, and you can earn up to $50 per account. The caveats: 1) it's for new accounts only; 2) the email address in your profile must match the email address in a PayPal account; and 3) your referred member must use the link created by the system when registering. It works for people who earn Qualified Expert status too.

Tech Trends: Experts Exchange wants to know what you think will be the major trends in technology that will emerge in 2014. Give EE your two cents worth by taking a short survey.

Blog Posts: A post in the Featured Solutions series of the EE blog highlights a solution from jimhorn and ValentinoV about SSIS lookups.

Free trial: Know someone who could benefit from Experts Exchange, but who has always said that s/he doesn't want to spend some money on something without trying it? Have that person fill out this form and they'll get a 90-day free trial.

Kudos:

• DanielAttard's problem with arrays using CodeIgniter was solved by TerryAtOpus barely an hour after the question was posted: Thanks Terry, that was awesome. You nailed it first shot. Made my night..
• Gismo3 was running into issues with an upgrade of Windows 8, and thinkpads_user came to the rescue: I am happy to get a solution even on Saturday!
• An hour to process a file seemed like a bit much for justmorri, who got help with the problem from slightwv: A column was out of place! I fixed that and the data loads in 3 mins 1 second! THANKS!!!