On the FoxPro wiki, Alex Feldstein documents the most recent of many problems with New Hill Services, aka Eli Research, the latest purchasers of the FoxTalk newsletter, originally from Pinnacle Publishing. (Disclosure: FoxTalk published several articles of mine, starting in 1992 and ending in 2004). These people are just incredibly clumsy in the way they have worked with the community that once supported the newsletters. Terminating the editor, dropping or antagonizing their top-notch contributing writers, harassing former subscribers and failing to engage the community have ruined any chances of FoxTalk’s recovery. I wish they would just terminate the paper and spare us all the embarassment.
Just this morning, I received an email announcing “Your latest FoxTalk 2.0 is Available Online!” Curious if they were giving away free online content or offering a trial, I navigated to http://osslogin.com/login/pin, which asked for a login and displayed the Pinnacle (not Eli, not New Hill) logos and no links — no “Who we are,” “Read our other publications,” nothing. Really suspicious. Examining the HTML source, there were no signs of foul play (it does look like a phishing expedition, doesn’t it?), so I tried the “forgot your password” link and supplied my email address (I already get and squash 500 spams a day, so one more wouldn’t hurt). I promptly got an email with my password, and attempted to log in. “Account Expired” it told me, again with no other information or links. How annoying! If it was expired, why send the email notice? And wouldn’t this be a killer opportunity to ask me to re-up? Nothing. Bozos.