---
title: "Assorted News"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/5/21/assorted-news.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/5/21/assorted-news.html"
published: "2003-05-21T15:53:00"
updated: "2003-05-21T15:53:00"
tags: ["Cool Tools", "Off Topic"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Comparison Tool : Beyond Compare is the comparison tool I've used. Araxis Merge 2001 is light years behind in functionality (Although has better UI) Matrix Invitations : If you still haven’t gotten those Matrix…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Assorted News

By Roy Osherove May 21, 2003 In [Cool Tools](https://osherove.com/blog/category/cool-tools), [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

**Historical article** · Originally published May 21, 2003; technical details may be outdated.

- **Comparison Tool**: [Beyond Compare](http://www.scootersoftware.com/) is **the** comparison tool I've used. [Araxis Merge 2001](http://www.araxis.com/) is light years behind in functionality (Although has better UI)

- **Matrix Invitations**: If you still haven’t gotten those Matrix invitations from MSFT and feel neglected, this might help : My wife, Tal, didn’t get an invitation either, **but**, she just called up MSFT service (The phone number was written in the email invitation I received for the movie ) and asked for 5 tickets for her and her work mates. The person at the other end of the line simply said "**No problem!"** and gave her the invitation numbers over the phone. Just like that. Initiative can be a powerful thing :)

- **Back from the future**: I needed to do some maintenance on a VB6 application I wrote. What can I say, I miss VS.NET already :)

## More in Cool Tools

[All posts in Cool Tools](https://osherove.com/blog/category/cool-tools)

- May 23, 2003

    ### [VB6 is not dead, so you'll need this tool](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/5/23/vb6-is-not-dead-so-youll-need-this-tool.html)

- May 23, 2003

    ### [CodeSmith goes out to the wild](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/5/23/codesmith-goes-out-to-the-wild.html)

- May 19, 2003

    ### [I Was Naked](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/5/19/i-was-naked.html)

- May 19, 2003

    ### [About Productivity](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/5/19/about-productivity.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/