Xilinx tech Xclusive

Hi Lars, They enhanced their site. I assume those TechXclusives were rubbish, so they got binned. Some of them got recycled into white papers. I found this by guessing the url...

If you insist on reading the old versions, try here...

HTH., Syms.

p.s. For those whose sarcasm detection is limited, the TechXclusives aren't rubbish. As for the decision to ditch them...

Ge thanks! Saved a lot of looking around!

Well, my opinion is easy to guess... Lots of gems in there!

/Lars

Aaaaarg!!! I was after "Six Easy Pieces (Non-Synchronous Circuit Tricks)" and it seems that didn't make it to the White Papers. And the web archive link lacks the images :( I guess I will have to ruffle through my stack of old "useful printouts" for that one, if it is there... Not high-tec stuff but useful to explain basic priciples to beginners.

Thanks anyway, and Austin and Peter; if you read this, please use your influence to correct some of the obvious mistakes made by the web- people at Xilinx!

/Lars

What a sad ending :(

Yes,

TechX is gone, and Peter, Ken, and I now have.....Blogs!

Each "good" TechX is polished and updated and republished as a white paper (or on its way to being republished).

I won't say anything more about the web folks except that we have a good understanding now.

It isn't the same as TechX, but it allows you to "interact" and comment directly with us, on topics of interest.

So, read my second blog post for the "story."

Peter's first post is actually of technical interest!

And, thank you to everyone who commented: we used your emails to get the TechX's on the fast track to be converted to white papers, and to get the Blogo-sphere created (as of yet still not officially out, as they still have a few minor bugs -- like our pictures are not displayed as they should be -- not that I care, but the web folks felt pictures were required).

We do appreciate the (constructive) criticism, and your comments.

Let us know if the blogs are a good thing, or not. As I have posted before, we do read your emails that you send to us directly, and I always reply,

Austin

I understand the original post is not about Blogs, but... Maybe I am too old to simply jump on new fashioned things like blogs, but why should a good thing be abandoned because so many cows like to follow each other instead of actually look around and go to the best place? Blogs may be a faster way to communicate but like other internet oriented things all they do is take more time in communication. Every new fashion in the internet is demanding more time online instead of improving our time at work (or at home). For instance, the complexity of the web pages and their servers stole a lot of processing time, bandwitdh and makes easy to loose important information in the process. When I access Xilinx's webpage usually the first thing I do is to type a question regarding what I want to read there (unless I know exactly where it is). So, I did test if I could find the messages you (Austin) and Peter have left in the blogs... and: no results. Try the word: blogosphere or "5.5 million" (in the P.Alfke text). No results. So, what is the point of having a blog page? To waste more time diging where it is? And what about the time you, Peter, Ken and others use to make dialogs in those blogs? It is just in the beggining.... I wonder where it goes in a year or two. I have to say that your (whole Xilinx team) efforts to answer directly a lot of questions from users are a real marvel. You must use at least half day just to answer emails and threads in this group... In my opinion information must be easy to get, use less time as possible to build it up (or to retrieve) and does not need to follow dotCom fashion. Best regards, Augusto

Amazing - how hard can it be to get that right ?

-jg

We try to please. If Lars had only given his real and usable e-mail address, he would have had the properly formatted information in minutes... Peter Alfke

...along with 593 emails offering pills to give him a 13 inch penis, and 264 emails offering a share of "an abandoned sum of$15million USD(Fifteen million US dollars)only" from "FOREIGN REMITTANCE DEPT. BANK OF AFRICA ( BOA) OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO".

Why not leave the TechXclusives on the website until they've been turned into whatever 'corporate image thing' the new VP has decided on?

Love you all loads, Syms.

Or, a web stub called

\TechXclusives, that the marketdroids don't need to know about - tell them it's museum archive stuff, for history students, and they'll never go there!

-jg

That is exactly why i didn't provide my regular email address there. Forgot to add the line: Remove the obvious from my email address to mail me. I still get about 50 spam letters a day fromold posts before I realized just how bad it was.

Regarding blogs v.s. old style TechXclusives, let's giv it a try. I am sure we all appreciate the huge effort that Peter and Austin (among others) put into keeping us all on the right track. Huge thanks for that!

/Lars

And, yes, remove the obvious from my email address to mail me...

I second that. No matter how well-intentioned the plan is, it seems likely that some useful information in older TechXclusives will be lost. Xilinx still has old issues of Xcell online, so it's hard to understand what problem was caused by having old TechXclusives online. Had I known they were going away, I would have archived them myself. (Hmmm... guess I'd better do that with the Xcell issues!)

Eric