It has been over a month since my last update. I just want to put to rest any rumors of TestDriven.Net's early demise. With the help of my lawyers, I responded to Microsoft's lawyers' letter and am now attempting to come to a resolution of the issues. Continuing to play this out on the blogosphere would unnecessarily antagonize the situation and undo the good progress which has been made.

To be clear I am not anti-Microsoft. I am simply a passionate advocate of unit testing for developers of all experience levels. To my mind test driven development is like climbing with ropes. Beginner climbers can gain the confidence to climb without the fear of landing in a mess at the bottom. Expert climbers can take on overhangs and other hard problems that they wouldn't otherwise have the confidence to try. Climb without ropes if you like, but I am certainly not going to encourage it for anything outside your comfort zone.

My concern now is to do whatever is most constructive for TestDriven.Net and the projects it integrates with (NUnit, MbUnit, Visual Studio, etc.). I'm optimistic that a positive resolution can be found. Watch this space.

To end on a happy note the Wells for Zoë charity that many of you supported last year through the .NET Developer's Charity Auction is about to enter a new phase. You can read about the pump workshop which is being set up in Mzuzu, Malawi later this year. There is also a photo blog which is being updated by our guy in the field (when the Internet works). Perhaps the people who suggested I put up a PayPal button to help with legal fees would prefer to save their money for something worthwhile and make a donation here instead. :-)

Europe's burgeoning startup culture just got another boost, with the launch of Seedcamp - a project to support Europe's young entrepreneurs, by giving them funding and contacts. It's very similar to Silicon Valley's Y Combinator, the Paul Graham-led investment fund that specializes in early stage startups. We profiled Graham and Y Combinator in December last year.

Seedcamp was created by Saul Klein from Index Ventures and Reshma Sohoni from 3i. The project is being run out of London. To participate in Seedcamp, entrepreneurs have until August 5 to submit an application through the Seedcamp website. The top 20 teams will then be selected and invited to London for "a week of intensive mentoring and networking" with industry experts in fields like HR, law, marketing, product development, etc. At the end of that week (Sept 3-7), the top 5 teams will be announced and they’ll receive $50,000 euros in funding and an additional 3 months of mentorship.

As Saul wrote in a post on the Seedcamp blog, "we have no more excuses in Europe not to create big, world-beating businesses". I also liked Sumon Sadhu's comment in another post that "geographic separation leads to original insight, lack of group-think and an international outlook." I couldn't agree more :-) So if you're in Europe and have an idea for The Next Big Thing in web technology, go check out Seedcamp.

Two months after a massive DDoS attack shut down many Estonian web sites, security researchers from the United States are investigating and preparing for exercises later this year.

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