Programmer's Heaven have teamed up with Alpha Software to give you the chance to win one of two Garmin GPS 18 sensors or one of ten copies of their award winning database application development software - Alpha Five!

The GPS sensor is a Garmin GPS 18. Plug it into a USB or serial port, install the included software and your laptop becomes a street navigator. Or take it with you when you travel and see what points of interest are nearby using its extensive points of interest database. We're sure you can think of plenty of other creative uses!

Entering is free and easy: just supply your contact details (these will, of course, not be disclosed to anyone, including Alpha Software) and answer a few questions about the Alpha Five product. So what are you waiting for?

http://www.programmersheaven.com/competition/alphafive/

This is a review of Alpha 5, a tool for developing database backed web and desktop applications.

Distributed by: Alpha Software
Price: From $199 for IDE, from $399 for web application server

An awful lot of web and desktop applications are very similar: basically, just front ends to databases. Therefore there is a market for tools that make the job easier or do a lot of the tedious repetitive work for you. This not only saves time over hand-rolling the application yourself, but saves you from fixing the same types of bugs again and again. I've been there and written such a tool for web-based front ends myself. One of the largest challenges is making the most common things really easy without making the less common things really hard or just plain impossible.

What is Alpha Five?

I'm reviewing version 8 of Alpha Five. You can get a free trial version that lasts 30 days, if you want to follow along with the application I'm going to try and build in this review. But first, let's see what it claims to offer...