Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

Most of my readers are probably aware of Red Gate’s decision to no longer offer a free edition of Reflector, the .NET assembly decompiler and analyzer. Much has already been said about the decision, and I am not going to jump in to debate the politics/ethics of the decision at this time. The fact is, Reflector is a great utility for any .NET developer’s toolbox. I think that, in the end, this move is going to create some competition in the market and hopefully drive Reflector and its competitors to deliver better, more feature-rich tools. We have already seen a couple of free alternatives pop up (here and here).

Red Gate has heard the concerns of the community and contacted me about running a promotion to help promote some goodwill. Over the next two weeks, you will have two chances to enter a contest sponsored by Red Gate. There will be 50 winners, each receiving a license for .NET Reflector Professional. There are two ways to enter:

1. Leave a comment on this blog post. At the end of the contest I will choose, at random, 25 winners.
2. Follow me on Twitter and tweet this message. I will choose 25 random winners from the list of tweets.

Hey @alvinashcraft. I want a copy of Reflector 7 from @redgate. #dewdrop

Here are a few rules/disclaimers/disclosures:

• You can only win one license. If the same person is chosen in both the comments and tweets, another random name will be drawn.
• The contest begins today, February 21, 2011 and ends on Friday, March 4, 2011.
• Winners will be contacted no later than Tuesday, March 8, 2011.
• As a Microsoft MVP and Friend of Red Gate, I have free NFR licenses for Reflector and ANTS Profiler for personal use. I have not been compensated by Red Gate in any other way.
• Gifts, bribes, complements, etc. will have NO influence on the outcome of this contest.

Good luck and thanks for reading The Dew!

 

 

I received a lot of great entries for the first MSDN giveaway this week, which made it very difficult to choose a winner. In the end I selected Marc Scheuner because I felt he most closely fits the ‘community influencer’ mold. He has been an MVP in previous years and has answered thousands of questions on Stack Overflow. I giving him the subscription will have the greatest impact on the community. I will be contacting Marc shortly to work out the details.

Remember there is still a second contest that does not end until next Friday. Check out the original post for all the information. The competition is still wide open!

Best of luck and congratulations to Marc!!!

 

Like my fellow Microsoft MVPs under the development umbrella, I have been given some MSDN Ultimate licenses to give to influential members of the community. I have found a deserving home for one of them. To find homes for the other two licenses, I decided to have two separate contests.

This hopefully goes without saying (Yes, I am saying it), but these licenses are not for resale. They have unique, traceable keys. Please enter the contests only if you really need the software and plan to give back to the community in some way as a result of winning.

Here are some things not included in these licenses, which would be available with a paid MSDN Ultimate subscription: MSDN Magazine, support calls, Office 2010 licenses.

Update: Office 2010 licenses are included for development and test purposes only.

Contest number one is simple. Send me an email at alashcraft [at] gmail [dot] com and explain (honestly) why you need the subscription and what you plan to do with the tools. Keep in mind that this is all about community. I will choose the winner based on need and community influence. I must receive your entry by Friday, July 9 at 8:00am EDT (UTC – 4) and will announce the winner at 12pm that same day.

For the second contest, I want to make things a little more challenging. Email me a .NET-related technical article to be published on alvinashcraft.com as a guest post. The content must be original, written by the submitter, and not available on any other web sites or blogs. Please include a short bio for yourself as well. All must should be emailed to alashcraft [at] gmail [dot] com, and they must be received no later than Friday, July 16 at 8:00am EDT (UTC – 4). I will select the winner that weekend and announce the winner on Monday, July 19th. If I receive an overwhelming number of great articles, I may dig up some smaller prizes for 2nd and 3rd place (probably books). The winning post will be published the week of the 19th.

I will do my best to scan my spam folder for entries, but please try not to mention Viagra, cheap meds, free Photoshop software or foreign bank accounts in your emails to me.

Any attempts to shamelessly promote my blog or Twitter account will have no effect on the outcome of the contests but are welcome nonetheless. 

If you have any questions, leave a comment, email me, or send me a reply on Twitter.