Rix Bits

The 3 T’s of Giving Back to the IT Community

2011-09-14T01:02:00.001-04:00

[my article originally posted at ITMartini]

As IT professionals, we spend many years developing our crafts, and investing in our careers. Along the way, we have all probably been fortunate enough to get help from many sources, including colleagues and mentors who decided to take the time to share their knowledge and experience with us. As a result, we grow in our profession, and for most of us we inevitably ask the question – what can I do to give back, and make the same investment in others that someone made in me? Fortunately, there are many ways in which we can ‘return the favor’ in the IT community, and by doing so, make a positive impact on our industry.

Talk

For some, the thought of public speaking is frightening. Ironically, the best way to get over that fear is to do more of it. And if you can overcome your hesitations about public speaking, you’ll find that it’s both a great way to share what you know with others, as well as demonstrate your own level of expertise. You can speak at local events relevant to your field, and talk about topics that you’ve dealt with on your job which might resonate with others in your line of work. In addition to sharing your expertise, you can also share your experience. There are many local organizations who would love to have someone come speak to their group about the positive and negative aspects of your career or industry. You could speak to high school groups with students who are considering going into the IT field. Or speak to members of non-profit organizations interested in facilitating knowledge-share session on IT topics. Perhaps even your own religious or social groups would be interested in having you speak on a topic.

Teach

Giving away your knowledge may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s actually a great way to gain a relevant perspective on what you’ve learned over the years, and helps foster your own credibility as an expert in your field. Not only that, but studies show that your own understanding on a subject increases when you attempt to teach it to someone else. In addition to these benefits, there are many opportunities to teach what you know to others in your local community. Many schools are looking for technical professionals to serve as an instructor for their students, whether in the classroom or online. And youth organizations like TechCorps or BDPA HSCC are always looking for volunteers to teach youth computer skills that they can use to pursue careers in technology.

Text

No, I don’t mean pull out your phone and mentor someone via SMS. But I do suggest that by sharing our expertise and experience through writing, we can find another avenue in which to give back. In today’s world, one of the easiest ways to do this is by starting a blog. This can come in many forms. You may find that you simply want to keep an online ‘journal’ of your saga as an IT professional. Or you may take the more technical route and share technology-specific information about problems you’ve solved, and how you did it. Both have value to others who may find your blog, and you may soon find your writings being followed by others who are interested in your perspectives. Writing can also come by way of social media – learn to stay involved in social forums like Twitter, LinkedIn Groups, or any other online platform where other IT professionals come together to discuss issues and challenges in your industry. Not only can you learn from these forums, but your participation and contributions can be helpful to others following a career path similar to your own.

There’s no limit to the number of creative ways you can find for giving back to the IT community. Pick any one and get started – you’ll find that it not only gives you a better perspective on your own experiences, but helps strengthen and grow our IT community as well.

-Graphic art courtesy of http://gilbertyoungart.com/

BDPA Columbus earns 3rd Place in national competition!!!

2011-08-07T02:48:00.001-04:00

The results are in! As we close out the 33rd Annual BDPA National Conference and High School Computer Competition, I’m proud to announce that the BDPA Columbus high school team scored THIRD PLACE this year out of 19 participating teams!

This achievement earned each team member a $500 scholarship award, as well as a plaque and special recognition at the BDPA Awards Gala. This is the first time that the Columbus team has placed among the Top 5 teams, and is an improvement from last year’s 12th place prize (out of 24 teams). I should also point out that, in the Programming category (which specifically represents the ASP.NET website development work the team did as part of the competition), they scored the 2nd highest score of 509, missing the 1st place ranking in that category by only six points!

We’re all extremely proud of this year’s team! More details to come.

Game-changing tool for entrepreneurs coming soon

2011-06-25T05:32:00.001-04:00

I recently had an article published at IT Martini where I discuss the upcoming release of Office 365, Microsoft’s latest cloud-based services offering, and the value that the SharePoint component of that offering has for entrepreneurs and businesses trying to make use of SharePoint for collaboration.

While my focus in the article was on SharePoint specifically, entrepreneurs and small businesses should also be very excited at the opportunities and cost-savings that this offering could present to them. I spoke recently with a local non-profit organization, and helped them to see potential value in the following areas:

Office 365 can mean that your organization can upgrade to the latest version of Microsoft Office, while not having to worry about the large software costs of buying licenses of the software for each user – a subscription-based model is now offered.
Many organizations do not have an IT focus – so why try to be an IT shop. Get rid of the expensive, hard-to-manage servers in your closet, and let Microsoft manage your email and intranet implementation via the cloud.
Start incorporating effective instant messaging techniques in your office by using the included Lync instant messaging communication tool. Or, if you’re already using instant messaging, you can now stop using free tools, and use a more reliable, secure and private service that’s tied directly into the rest of your infrastructure.
Break free from your desk – using cloud services means you can get the same services, performance, and experience whether your’re at your desk, mobile with your laptop, at a public internet kiosk, or even via your phone.

This is a great time to be an entrepreneur, as we continue to see technology level the playing field for the sole proprietor or SMB. And I think Office 365 will be another step toward getting enterprise-level services in the hands of entrepreneurs at an economical and easily-scalable price point.

Technology & my international midnight presentation

2011-06-25T05:10:00.001-04:00

I just finished giving a presentation via Live Meeting for an event based out of India. Start time: 3:30AM EST. I’m so glad that someone invented coffee :)

I think it’s very kool, tho, to have lived long enough to see a world where people all over the planet

can have a community event with people from other countries, and do so effectively with relatively little effort, thanx to technology. Live Meeting did a great job of easily letting people from India, Australia, and South Africa join my presentation by simply clicking a web link. Once in the meeting, they were able to see my slides in real-time, streamed from the desk in my home office. The organizer in Australia was able to send me a text message to my phone to remind me that my presentation time was approaching. And of course, the party continued in the social media space, as we all used tools like Twitter (some right from their phones) to communicate with each other using the #SPSIndia hashtag.

Although I’m pretty sleepy {as I yawn one more time}, I’m glad I was able to participate – great experience.

HSCC Midwest Regionals 2011

2011-06-11T15:56:00.000-04:00

Today I’m in Cincinnati at the Midwest Regional Mock Competition for HSCC, supporting our high school student team, and helping to serve as one of the judges during the competition. Regional competitions are a great way for our students to begin to get a feel for what they can expect in the actual national competition in August.

Aside from a slightly abbreviated time schedule and fewer teams to compete against, the regional mock competition offers a pretty accurate representation of the real thing. The Cincinnati chapter of BDPA put a

lot of work into bringing this together, with special thanks going to Cincinnati State Technical and Community College for providing their facilities.

Among the teams represented at this year’s Midwest regionals are Columbus, Cincinnati, Detroit, and even Los Angeles (the West Coast did not have a regional event this year, so LA is participating virtually in our competition this year via Skype).

I’m always amazed at the stamina and endurance of our young students, as they sit through an entire day of testing and coding. The first couple of hours involves team quizzes and oral competitions, and a written portion as well. But the bulk of their day is spent in one room, huddled around a single computer, working together for several hours to solve a web development problem that they’ve seen for the first time that day. I know some adults that probably wouldn’t be able to hang in there for something like this. :)

Good job, HSCC – see you in Chicago in August!

Published article at NBSP

2011-06-07T10:50:00.001-04:00

In addition to being a big geek, I’m also a SharePoint dude. I blog on all things SharePoint in my other blog site, but every now and then some of my blog posts go viral. :) It turns out that one of my articles has been published in a well-known SharePoint website for end-users, admins, and developers called NothingButSharePoint.com. The article is based on a challenge I had at one my client sites, where definitions about key corporate artifacts like ‘documents’ and ‘forms’ had to be agreed on in order to make the project successful. Since then, I’ve learned that with any client, whether you’re implementing a SharePoint solution or not, agreeing on key terms as early as possible is always helpful for project success.

Take a look a the article and let me know what you think. And if you’re on Twitter, feel free to retweet me. Thanx!

Malware attack on Mac OS X

2011-05-21T21:57:00.001-04:00

Recently, Wired Magazine (UK) posted an article regarding a malware attack on the Mac OS X platform. I couldn’t resist commenting on this article, since as many know I've been known to bad mouth Apple products from time to time. :) But this one was particularly interesting because it reminded of a post I wrote about three years ago.

My favorite part of the article says:

It's an urban myth among many that the Apple's OS X operating system is immune, or at least highly resistant, to viruses and malware. In reality that's not necessarily true. Virus creators tend not to target the Mac ecosystem simply because of its low market share in comparison to Windows, and that's changing as OS X becomes more and more popular.

This sounds strangely similar to my post I wrote in 2008:

Let's get the easy one out of the way first - we know that viruses are created by crazy & malicious hackers out there that want to cause trouble, right. Historically Mac has never had trouble with viruses. Why? Cuz those hackers didn't bother wasting their time on Mac! Windows machines control the world - why would I waste my development time putting a virus together to affect all seventeen of the Mac users of the world! :- )

okay, i'm exaggerating, but you get my point. Anyway, this security piece is recently being proven now that Mac is starting to get products like the iPhone that are taking a bigger bite out of the market. Check the news - you hear more and more stories about Mac being 'hacked' these days. So yes, you probably will have less trouble with viruses while using a Mac, but please don't assume it's because Mac is somehow superior in its security design - and please remember that the more popular your Mac becomes, the more susceptible it will be - will Mac be ready when the hackers decide they're ready to launch a full-blown attack?

I wonder if I’ll live long enough to see the day when the hypnotic veil surrounding Apple products is finally uncovered for good. ; )

My Interview with BDPA

2011-05-20T18:33:00.001-04:00

I was recently interviewed by the Black Data Processors Association Education and Technology Foundation regarding my volunteer work teaching web development to youth in the BDPA High School Computer Competition (HSCC). It’s part of their Take Five interview series where they interview notable members of the organization. As you can see from the interview, I find a lot of fulfillment in my work with HSCC. Check out the full interview here.

Multiple Personalities in Social Media

2011-05-15T11:36:00.001-04:00

I recently decided to start shifting my SharePoint-related posts over to a new blog, instead of here at RixBits.com. My main concern was that I had [at least] two very different types of content that I was producing at RixBits, and I felt it was time to stop mixing them. SharePoint, while a very popular topic, certainly has a smaller and more specific audience than many of the other general techie topics I blog about. I wanted to make sure that anyone coming to RixBits to read about tablet PCs, or about how Apple is overrated, would not be confused when they see a post related to SharePoint team development using InfoPath. :)

But as I thought about it a little more, I realized how important the idea of multiple personalities is to social media……

In my presentation on how adults and business professionals can leverage Facebook, I had a slide (seen above) that addressed this. In Facebook, I recommend that you use the FB concept of ‘Pages’ to help separate your business persona from your personal profile. I also recommend using multiple Pages when appropriate. This is just as important, and probably even more useful, in the world of Twitter as it is in Facebook.

Here are some of the reasons why it’s a good idea to use different profiles/personalities in your social media world:

As ego-blowing as it may sound, I suspect very few of your followers are actually interested in ALL of the many hats you wear. The overwhelming majority probably tolerate your posts on other topics while they wait for you to discuss the idea for which they originally chose to follow you.
It gives you the freedom to represent your topic more passionately when you know that anyone following you did so specifically to hear your views on that specific topic.
The social media tools available to us these days actually make it very easy to manage multiple accounts/personalities across different social media platforms. This, plus the specificity that each of your accounts implies, means you can feel more confident about your posts without wondering if there’s someone listening for whom it might not be appropriate.
Cross-posting between your personalities provides additional exposure to your ideas.
For business owners, this becomes even more crucial – wrapping your personal image together with your business is probably only a good idea for movie stars and fashion models. :)

To those who would claim this as being unauthentic, I would say that in fact this is called focused marketing. Each of my social media personalities is genuine in the context of the topic or idea that I’m representing with that personality. And it provides a service to your followers, allowing them to decide the terms on which they follow you – whether they add you to their custom Twitter List, to their Facebook filter group, a certain folder in their RSS feeds, or any number of other options. As our attempt to control our social media intake grows increasingly more complex, certainly we can all see the value of a little good old-fashioned segmentation. :)

HP Slate 500: Using OneNote on the desktop and tablet

2011-05-08T13:54:00.001-04:00

I’ve often said that anyone who doesn’t understand what’s so cool about a tablet PC and a pen is probably someone who’s never used a tablet & pen with Microsoft OneNote. OneNote lets me store all my handwritten notes in one searchable location, including screenshots, documents, and even audio & video recordings (imagine recording the meeting you’re sitting in, and having OneNote keep track of the point in the audio at which you write each of your notes). Another way to think about – think Franklin Covey notebook without all the physical paper to keep track of. ; )

In today’s video, I’ll be showing how I use OneNote on both my desktop and tablet PC in order to sync changes between the two.

This is useful when I need to prepare some OneNote notebook pages for a meeting – I can prepare them via desktop quicker sometimes (with mouse & keyboard), then sync-grab-n-go to take my slate to the meeting with all my notes prepared. It’s also kool when I want to compile some screenshots or documents that I know I want to annotate on using my pen & tablet.

My desktop and tablet are sharing their sync via one of my local network drives, but you could also sync to the cloud (specifically, your SkyDrive account), and of course share this not just with yourself, but also with 1 or more other OneNote users.

Enjoy

SharePoint Cowbell up & running

2011-05-06T06:23:00.001-04:00

I’ve decided to start posting all SharePoint-specific posts to my new brand over at SharePointCowbell.com. Among other things, it’ll let me post some highly technical SharePoint posts w/o feeling like I’m boring any readers who came here looking for info about the HP Slate 500. :) Lemme know what you think of the new format!

Heartland SharePoint Conference Redux

2011-04-11T23:41:00.001-04:00

Ever since ICC presented the Microsoft Heartland Region SharePoint Conference 2011 in February, and even after a mini encore presentation via online webinar in March, I’ve had a few people ask me where they can get all the presentation slide decks from ICC’s SharePoint team in one convenient location. Poof! Your wish is granted!:

		Make Your Developers Love You! (aka SharePoint 2010 ALM for Dev Managers) -Ricardo Wilkins
		Success with SharePoint 2010 – Over and over and over again! -Mario Fulan
		Getting SharePoint 2010 Deployments Right -Veenus Maximiuk
		Social Networking Features and Governance in SharePoint 2010 -Chris Rygielski

HP Slate 500: Digital Ink for Windows

2011-04-03T13:54:00.001-04:00

I read an article about digital ink recently over at Simple Mobile Review. I think they did a great job of comparing the handwriting features of Windows compared to some of those other ‘tablets’. ; ) In fact, they included two images that I think do a pretty good job summing up the comparison (click them to visit the original post and see them larger):

(images courtesy of Simple Mobile Review)

I recently used my Slate 500 to draw a workflow diagram for a co-worker, which layed out how we would design our InfoPath and Nintex Workflow solution for a SharePoint project I’m working on. I thought it might be useful to point some of the many features that Windows gives us when it comes to handwriting and true digital ink. So I fired up the screen capture tool, and produced the video below. What you can’t see, unfortunately, is how my fingers played a role in creating this diagram. The Slate did a great job of managing my pen writing, finger touching, palm rejection, and flick gestures. Pay close attention to the video annotations for more details on that.

Some of the key features I try to point out in the video are:

Digital ink in Windows is not just line drawings – they are vector graphic ‘objects’. That means every individual line can be transformed, manipulated, changed, copied, etc.
The ability to move ink around means you can revise your handwriting – so if you’re writing notes, and would rather have the next point inserted between notes you’ve already taken, or if you want to draw in-between some drawings you’ve already done, just move your ink
You can convert ink-to-text, but you can also leave your handwriting as-is, and it’s still SEARCHABLE
With a device like the Slate, which is both multi-touch and pen-enabled, you’re writing experience becomes a combination of writing and touching – just like your real-world paper experience

Another homerun for the HP Slate 500? Let me know what you think!

High School Computer Competition class back in effect

2011-03-26T13:50:00.001-04:00

We’re back again with another year of the BDPA High School Computer Competition. We’ve got some new students as well as our returning students, and we’re already well on our way to getting up to speed on web application development! Thanx to Devry University for donating space in their facilities for our class.

In our classes, we learn web app development using Microsoft’s Visual Studio Web Developer Express tool – basically, a light version of the same industry-standard integrated development environment (IDE) that many .NET

professionals like myself use everyday. Today we took it kind of slow and eased into learning about tags in both XML and HTML. In fact, the students learned how to categorize the songs in their MP3 collection (they looked at me a little funny when I first tried to get them to categorize their CD collection – remember those shiny discs we used to slide into our stereos?) Not only did I help them see how to represent their music in XML, but they helped me learn the titles of some of the hot new songs that ‘the young folks’ are listening to these days. :) (says the mid-30’s out-of-touch computer geek)

To show my age even more, I kept giving history lessons about how technology has changed over time. We handed out 4-gigabyte thumb drives for them to store their files. This made me remember a blog post I wrote comparing the collection of drives I used to walk around with to the micro cards that now reside in our phones – I can fit 8 gigs into something no bigger than a dime! Ahhh…remember the days when it took an entire [expensive] hard drive to fit that amount data? [insert nostalgia here]

Anyway, I hope they’re having fun, and there’s plenty more to learn in the coming weeks. I’ll keep you posted.

HP Slate 500: Touching & Rubbing on Windows 7

2011-03-18T20:44:00.005-04:00

Well, it’s been a few weeks since I became the owner of an HP Slate 500, and I’m still pleased at its performance. In fact, I realized that all the people who I’ve heard say that Windows isn’t meant to be a Touch interface probably haven’t given Windows 7 a fair try. I had low expectations about its ability to provide a decent multi-touch experience, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how it’s been performing so far. For example:

I expected my slate to give the same kind of sluggish performance that a Netbook is known for. But in fact, it’s been very responsive, especially considering the hardware that it’s built on.
Finger-scrolling is enabled in more places than I had anticipated. This includes Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and the Start Menu.
Many apps that I wouldn’t have expected are allowing for pinch zooming, including the internet browsers and Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Speaking of PDF readers, I read a lot of ebooks on the Slate, and most of the PDF readers I use do a good job with full-screen reading modes, including good finger scrolling and flicks for page up/down.

Finger vs Pen vs Palm
One concept that many consumer tablet users out there aren’t aware of (because they don’t incorporate an active digitizer, aka a pen, in their tablet experience) is how to balance switching between needing to ‘touch’ the tablet, and needing to ‘write’ on the tablet. My tablet PC is able to accept my finger scrolls and other touch inputs, but immediately switch to writing-mode when the pen comes in contact with the surface. And by ‘switch’, I mean that it no longer accepts finger inputs while I’m writing. This is crucial, because that means it’s handling ‘palm rejection’ – meaning I can rest and move the palm of my hand on the surface of the tablet while writing w/o affecting the writing experience (the same way you would if you were writing with pen & paper).

My biggest fear with my new tablet was that it wouldn’t handle this palm-rejection and auto-switching well, but in fact it’s handling it like a champ! Imagine drawing a big diagram on a page, and easily being able to use your fingers to pan the page around the screen to get to other areas of the diagram. Or imagine finger scrolling thru pages of a PDF ebook, and then immediately being able to highlight a key section of a page with your pen.

I learned at least 1 trick that also helps make for a better experience – 2-finger scrolling. This makes it clear to Windows that you intend to scroll/pan, as opposed to highlight text with your finger, or push a button, and is particularly useful on pages with lots of text or interactive elements. It’s also especially useful in OneNote. Although OneNote has a built-in “Panning Hand” feature (similar to what you may be used to in Adobe Reader or Photoshop/Illustrator), the 2-finger scrolling allows me to pan around w/o clicking a button to tell OneNote that I want to pan. Also, surprisingly, 2-finger panning adds ‘momentum’ to my scrolling (pushing a page upward and having the page scroll quickly, then eventually slow down), whereas OneNote’s Panning Hand does not.

Granted, the scrolling features in Windows 7 don’t have all the silky smoothness and sexiness of the iPad or Android tablets. But this surprisingly finger-friendly experience, combined with things like Flick Gestures that I wrote about previously, makes this business-focused tablet PC quite a useful appliance!

Talking with the Buckeye SPUG

2011-03-14T22:38:00.001-04:00

No, not a Pug – a SPUG. :) That’s right, on Thursday March 17th I’ll be the guest speaker at the Buckeye SharePoint User Group (formerly the Central Ohio SPUG), discussing SharePoint 2010 development and ALM.

For those that have heard me speak on this topic before, never fear! You won’t be bored, because this time I should have a little more time to do some nice demos featuring the ease with which you can deploy solutions to SharePoint from Visual Studio 2010, as well as showing some of the koolness you get when you incorporate TFS into your SharePoint dev festivities.

Hope I see you there!:

Buckeye SharePoint User Group
Microsoft Polaris Office
March 17th, 2011
5:30pm-7:30pm

Best Practices Conference 2011

2011-03-13T13:00:00.001-04:00

This past week I attended the Best Practices Conference (BPC) for SharePoint in La Jolla, California. This is a 3-day conference that discusses not only “how'” to do things in SharePoint, but also asks the question “should you”.

It’s that very question – “should you” – that I think makes this particular conference so important. As more organizations ‘implement’ (there’s a loaded word) SharePoint in their environment, there is a danger of falling into the belief that a Click Next wizard and knowing how to get to Site Actions means you’re good-to-go. In fact, there are a ton of questions along each step of the way that we need to ask in order to discover how best to use & configure SharePoint for our particular needs, while leveraging and complementing the functionality that SharePoint was meant to provide. Each presentation in the BPC was meant to try to give a small slice of that answer, centered around audiences ranging from End Users to Developers.

In addition, the newly published book “Designing Solutions for Microsoft SharePoint 2010”, which was given away at the conference, is one that I think encapsulates the core of what the BPC tries to provide, and is also a must-read. And of course, I have my own copy signed by Robert Bogue himself at the conference! (are you jealous?) : ) #GeekEnvy

For those that use Twitter, I created a Twitter list of all the Tweeps who spoke at this year’s conference. And of course, there’s the official hashtag conference conversation that you can access here.

Look for future posts where I discuss some of the things I learned at the conference, as well as some HP Slate 500 posts where I talk about how my tablet PC performed in its first 3-day conference (spoiler alert: it performed like a champ!).

SharePoint Conference Mania!

2011-03-11T00:26:00.001-05:00

Well, it looks like March is turning out to be a very big month for SharePoint in terms of conferences. Seems like other geeks like myself just can’t get enough of that SharePoint goodness. :) Here are the March conferences I’m aware of:

Best Practice Conference (Mar 7-9; La Jolla, California)
- I was there! A great 3-day conference discussing not just the “how-to” of SharePoint, but also the “should you”. More on my experience at #BPC11 in a future post.
Australian SharePoint Conference (Mar 8-9; Sydney)
- Looks kool – sounds like a great conference for those of us who can’t wait for SPC2011. : )
SharePoint Cincy (Mar 18; Cincinnati, OH)
- If it’s in my hometown, then it’s gotta be good, right? Plus, our very own Mario Fulan will be a guest speaker there!
Microsoft Heartland Region SharePoint MINI-Conference (Mar 11; Columbus, OH and ONLINE)
- This is a repeat of the Heartland conference from February, and gives an opportunity to attend to those who couldn’t make it last time due to weather. Mario, myself, and our colleagues will be speaking again – be sure to register and at least check out the online version.

HP Slate 500: Customized Flick Gestures

2011-03-03T21:36:00.001-05:00

Well, it’s been a whole week with my HP Slate 500 table pc, and I feel like I’m starting to get my tablet swag back. :) Initially the pen writing felt awkward because it’s been a while since I’ve used a tablet on a daily basis, but I feel my rhythm returning.

So, as any respectable geek would do, I started looking at ways to customize and personalize my Slate – in other words, what can I do to trick out my tablet pc? In addition to picking a nice subtle wallpaper for my desktop, I decided to customize the native Flick Gestures that come with Windows 7. These gestures allow me to ‘flick’ my finger quickly in 1 of 8 different directions, and perform a task as a result.

In my case, I’m often performing the following tasks, so they made good candidates to be added to the list of Flicks:

Bring up the Task Manager
- This isn’t a need for me on my desktop, because my Taskbar is always available and gets the job done. I still have a Taskbar on the Slate (remember, it’s a full-blown Windows 7 PC), but because of less real-estate, I choose to auto-hide to maximize my viewing area. Now, if I want to switch to another program, I have to tap the edge of the screen to show my Taskbar, and if my icons are too small, figure out which tasks I need to choose. But now, with a Flick, I can bring up the Win7 Flip 3D Task manager, which not only gives me full-preview views of my windows, but is just generally pretty kool looking.
Take a screenshot
- On my desktop, I would easily due this with the Print Screen button, or with Windows+S for OneNote screenshots. Since bringing up the keyboard itself now involves a click, it’s great to instead start my screenshot with a Flick.
Switch to a new virtual desktop
- I have 3 virtual desktops running on the Slate – in a nutshell, think of them as 3 ‘sessions’, or 3 desktops with their own set of running windows and tasks. So, for instance, I could dedicate one desktop to email, one to my internet browsers, and another to an ebook I’m reading. Can you see now why starting this with a Flick would be useful?

I’ve done the best I can with a text explanation – it’s probably best to cue the video at this point. Hopefully this helps you see what I mean. Now, the question is, can you think of some other uses of Flicks that might be helpful or productive for me? I would love to hear what you think.

Stay tuned for more adventures of me and the Slate! :)

Here’s my attempt at demonstrating the flick features of Windows 7 on my HP Slate 500 tablet pc.

HP Slate 500: Finally

2011-02-27T06:09:00.001-05:00

Well, after quite a long wait, my HP Slate 500 has finally arrived. As I’m sure you already know, I’ve been a tablet PC user & evangelist for years. But this latest incarnation for me represents a form factor and price point that I’ve been waiting for a long time.

Expect to see many posts in the near future regarding my Slate 500 experiences. For now, you can start to do your research on just what the Slate 500 is by checking out HP’s promotional video. I’ll say for now, tho, that this device is targeted at business users, and not the consumer market. Thus, it shouldn’t be compared to the iPad or any of the other tablet ‘appliances’ coming out these days. Nevertheless, I’ll be sure to point out some of the advantages of a Windows 7 tablet ‘PC’ over devices like the iPad, simply because I love to expose the smoke-n-mirrors marketing that has everyone convinced that Apple products are the best. :)

More to come.

(Hanging out at B&N with my tablet and a Mocha)

Memoires of a Tech Speaker

2011-02-22T12:43:00.001-05:00

I was reflecting on the presentations I’ve given over the last 12 months, and thought it might be helpful to list them all in one place, including links to the slidedecks. I think I’ll also keep this particular post updated with future presentations as well.

Now you can’t say I never did anything nice for you… : )

2011	Introduction to SharePoint 2010 Microsoft and K2 SharePoint 2010 Solutions Roadshow – Columbus, OH
	Overview of the features and opportunities in SharePoint 2010
2011	SharePoint Development Enhancements in 2010 Microsoft Heartland SharePoint Conference 2011 – Lewis Center, OH Buckeye SharePoint User Group – Columbus, OH
	SharePoint 2007 vs 2010 as it relates to development What part Team Foundation Server can play in SharePoint development How MSDN licensing has changed How Silverlight has become an important technology for SharePoint
2011	Business Automation with SharePoint Dayton SharePoint User Group – Dayton, OH
	Workflows in SharePoint 2007 and 2010 InfoPath 2007 and 2010
2010	Document Management Using SharePoint SharePoint Saturday – Columbus, OH
	SharePoint 2007 SharePoint 2010 InfoPath Forms
2010	Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Columbus region Microsoft Launch Event: Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010, with Steve Caravejal
	Discussed new features of Office 2010 and Exchange 2010 Discussed the integration enhancements with Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Discussed Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7
2010	How to Use Facebook Effectively BDPA Information Exchange Meeting
	Discussed advanced features of Facebook A portion of my presentation talked about the [then] upcoming integration with “Docs”, ie Office Web Apps. Demonstrated the advantages of Office Web Apps in general.
2010	The Challenges of Real-World SharePoint Central Ohio SharePoint User Group
	Discussed challenges related to using SharePoint outside of the corporate enterprise Discussed how SharePoint 2010 addressed and improved the issues that I mentioned
2010	S.O.L.I.D. Principles in Software Development nPlus1 Architects Summit
	Discussed the Single Responsibility and Open Closed principles Also showed how the principles could be applied to SharePoint development
2009	Application LifeCycle Management and Team Foundation Server; Team System Webinar; nationally-broadcast
	Team Foundation Server 2005 Application Lifecycle Management principles

SharePoint Workflow for Cowboys: my slide deck from DaySPUG

2011-02-10T18:06:00.001-05:00

I had a great time hanging with the members of the Dayton SharePoint User Group this past Tuesday. We discussed “Business Process Automation with SharePoint and Workflow – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”. I talked about how the tools and development experience of automating process using SharePoint have improved in SharePoint 2010 (the Good) versus SharePoint 2007 (the Bad, the Ugly). [I gave them the disclaimer that the “Bad” and “Ugly” bit was just for effect – MOSS 2007 is still awesome] :)

I then showed the demo of designing workflow using one of my favorite workflow products, Nintex. Kudos to Nintex for providing the virtual demonstration environment to its partners like ICC – I was able to access a fully-loaded SharePoint environment and do a hands-on demo of Nintex for the folks at DaySPUG.

Thanx again, DaySPUG, for the invite. And for all you greenhorns and city-slickers out there that want to take a gander at the slides, you can find them below:

Intro to SharePoint 2010 in 60 minutes

2011-02-08T15:27:00.001-05:00

I was asked by Microsoft to speak this morning to a group of customers interested in some of the ISV products built on top of SharePoint, like K2 and BA Insight. I gave a 1-hour introduction to SharePoint 2010, to help the audience get a good foundation in preparation for product demonstrations they would later see during the day.

As you might guess, giving a comprehensive overview of SharePoint 2010 in less than 60-minutes is no small feat. I had to rush through some of the content, but in general, I think it gave everyone a good idea of the many features and opportunities that exist in the platform. Many customers requested access to the slide deck – I’ve included it below.

Of particular interest is slide page #19, where I included some screenshots of some mobile branding solutions that ICC has provided for some of its clients. Mobile branding is a great area of opportunity as it relates to SharePoint customization, and ICC is doing some pretty exciting work in that area. More to come on that in future posts.

If you were there this morning, and have a more deep-dive question to something I presented, feel free to leave a comment on this post and let me know. I’ll see if I can help answer your questions.

Business Process Automation Tips

2011-02-05T21:02:00.001-05:00

On Tuesday, I’ll be the guest speaker at the Dayton SharePoint User Group (www.dayspug.org). I’ll be speaking on Business Process Management/Automation using SharePoint and Workflow.

As I consider this topic, I thought I might share some guidance on the process of automating your organization’s business processes, regardless of whether you use SharePoint or any other automation technology. Anyone who has endured the fun of auditing, documenting, and ultimately automating the way in which their company does things will tell you that the planning side of it is just as significant, if not more so, than the technical implementation.

Here are some tips that could help you and your team have a smoother and less frustrating experience:

Talk about your process first, not the process technology – Many times, a company begins to consider automating their processes because they’ve recently acquired a new tool that can help them do it. A kickoff meeting is scheduled to begin the process, and what tends to happen is that the conversation centers around the capabilities, or lack of capabilities, of the new tool. Instead, what’s really needed first is a conversation about the specific details of the process itself, regardless of what tool or technology will be used to automate it. It may be true that later you’ll discover that the specific feature set of the tool limits your ability to automate certain parts of your process, but at least you’ll have a clearer understanding of where you need to make those compromises.
Be on the same page – literally – It’s important to document your process before you begin designing an automation strategy. Visual flowchart diagrams are best, especially since they allow the viewer to focus on the big picture rather than the wordy details. But what’s also important about this document is that it can become the Bible from which all future discussions on the topic can start. Someone who believes there should be a change in the organization’s process should express their view by discussing how the official flowchart should be changed. Discussing the issue separate from the flowchart results in vague conversations and wasted time.
No frills for the 1st iteration – Business process automation should use an iterative approach. Even the most complex process, with dozens or hundreds of steps, can probably be abstracted at a high level into a flowchart of just a few steps. For instance, the process of getting approval to publish a new company document might involve many steps that include multiple people, revision strategies, and document management. But, at a basic level, it may just involve 1) storing the new document in a specific location, 2) emailing a single approver, and 3) publishing the document to its final location. A lot of value can be gained from making the Beta version of your new Approval process be an automation of simply these three tasks. Not only does it allow people to get a feel for things like the having approval emails arrive in their inbox, or using some 1-click publishing tool, but as the design grows in complexity, it helps users see early on where there may be functionality gaps that need to be addressed.

By using an iterative and well-documented design strategy, a team tasked with automating a process in their organization should be able to do so with far less frustration, producing a final product that contains a level of detail that the team can have confidence in.

Slides from Microsoft Heartland SharePoint Conference 2011

2011-02-02T18:33:00.001-05:00

Conference Theme: Transforming Your Business with SharePoint 2010

Disclaimer: The pictures that reference SharePoint 2007 are for effect only – SharePoint is still awesome no matter what the version! (well… maybe not version 2003) : )

Countdown to the Conference: The Show Must Go On

2011-02-01T19:48:00.001-05:00

Although the dreaded snow storm is approaching, I’m told the Microsoft Heartland Conference here in Columbus, Ohio is still scheduled to continue tomorrow. So, you still have a chance to hear from the likes of SharePoint Evangelist Joel Oleson, SharePoint Master-Certified Mario Fulan… and even me! :) It’ll take more than a few snowflakes and some ominous-looking clouds to keep us from geeking out on SharePoint.

Speaking of clouds, I wrote in a previous post about the impact that I think Microsoft’s cloud-based offering, Office365, will have on SharePoint developers. I’ll be talking more about this topic during my presentation, and mentioning how certain aspects of developing for SharePoint Online present both advantages as well as challenges.

Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow – be sure to tell ‘em that Rix Bits sent ya! :)

Countdown to the Conference: Buy vs Build in SharePoint

2011-01-30T15:43:00.001-05:00

In my talk next week, one of my topics will be related to the question:

…do I build my solution from scratch, or do I buy something off-the-shelf?

Hopefully I will help people to see that one of the main reasons why we invested in SharePoint to begin with is because of its “out-of-the-box” value. There are so many solutions that can be created using features already included with SharePoint, that many times we can avoid custom development altogether. (which sometimes makes poor Visual Studio 2010 feel very lonely and neglected)

Also, even if out-of-the-box features don’t quite cut the mustard, we must also remember that there are some great 3rd party tools out there as well, especially for things like workflow and web part development.

There will be several well-known vendors at next week’s Microsoft Heartland SharePoint conference, including Nintex (workflow) and Quest (web parts). Don’t miss it – register today!

Countdown to the Conference–Team Foundation Server

2011-01-29T11:39:00.001-05:00

Many moons ago I did a webinar about application lifecycle management using Team Foundation Server. Since that time, TFS has been upgraded to version 2010, and with it comes some exciting new enhancements. This is also good news for SharePoint developers, as the 2010 suite of Microsoft products helps push SharePoint development into 1st-class citizenship. In fact, it’s even easier now to use TFS as part of your tool set thanks to your MSDN subscription.

I’ll be talking about this topic a little more during my presentation at the Heartland Conference next week. I think it’ll be somewhere around slide #15. :) See you there!

Countdown to the Conference – Sneak Peek: Sandboxed Solutions

2011-01-28T00:37:00.001-05:00

Next week, I’ll be speaking at the Microsoft Heartland SharePoint Conference 2011 in Lewis Center, Ohio. My topic will be:

Make Your Developers Love You! (aka SharePoint ALM for Dev Managers)

As we countdown to conference day, I thought I’d give you a sneak peek at some of the subjects I’ll be covering during my talk. One point of interest in SharePoint 2010 that I’ll be speaking on is the concept of sandboxed solutions – custom code solutions that operate within a subset of the Microsoft.SharePoint namespace, and that can be easily deployed and monitored with minimal impact to the stability of your farm.

Register today to check out my presentation and see why sandboxed solutions are one of the enhancements in SharePoint 2010 that will help make SharePoint Devs and Admins a happy family once again. :)

2010 In Review

2011-01-01T12:04:00.001-05:00

Well, we’ve closed the books on 2010. :) As I reflected back, I thought it would be nice to look at all the kool geek stuff I’ve been able to be a part of this year. 2010 marks the beginning of my journey into full-time SharePoint consulting, but there were also some other memorable techie moments as well. Let’s see….

SharePoint: In 2010 I decided to do all SharePoint, all day, all night. :) And it seems like that was a great decision. SharePoint has been fun, and I’ve been able to help several clients maximize their SharePoint investment this year by doing things like building document management solutions, integrating line-of-business data through the Business Data Catalog and the Business Connectivity Services, automating business processes using InfoPath and Nintex Workflow, and leading SharePoint Health Check sessions. All that, plus I was able to do some public speaking and still keep up on watching Seinfeld re-runs. (Happy Festivus, by the way) :) I’m expecting big things in the SharePoint space in 2011. Not to mention I’ve got 2 speaking engagements coming up in 1st quarter – more on that later.

High School Computer Competition: This year provided me some great opportunity to volunteer by leading the web app development instruction for this year’s BDPA HSCC program. The team did great, and I’m looking forward to us doing even better in 2011. Thanx to BDPA Columbus for giving netbooks to each of our student team participants, and thanx to Microsoft for giving them Xbox games.

Moofing tech: What do you mean “what the heck is moofing?” Didn’t you read my post about being ‘mobile out of office’? :) Well, in 2010 I enjoyed some great tech that helped me with my moofing. I started the year out as a Windows Mobile fanatic with the Touch Pro 2. I waited patiently for Windows Phone 7 to get to me this year, only to be disappointed. So I’ve gone Evo 4G for the moment (and I’m not too mad about it either – great phone). I also started the year off with an HP 2710p convertible tablet PC. I ended this year by ordering the HP Slate 500, and although I won’t receive it until this month, I still consider it a 2010 tool. Top that off with the Xbox Kinect and the Nook Color (okay, I got that one for my wife, but still…), and you’ll have to agree that 2010 had some nice gadgets in it.

Social Media: Although I started messing around with social media in 2009, 2010 was the year that I, and social media in general, took it to the next level. I was very active in Facebook/Twitter/Linkedin this year, and was even able to speak on the topic publicly a few times. All of these tools had some pretty major updates this year – no telling what we can expect in 2011.

So what geeky topics am I keeping my eye on in 2011? On the fun side, I think the Xbox Kinect will smash the competition this year once more games and practical applications start to surface. On the business end, I think cloud computing and software-as-a-service will finally get some very serious attention in 2011 – this might be the year that the whole game changes. ;) I’m also anxious to see what the entrance of new PC-based tablets into the market does for the enterprise – hopefully business will see the greater business value in tablet PC’s (eg Slate 500) over tablet appliances (eg iPad).

I’ll check back with you in 2012 to see if my predictions are correct. Until then, Merry New Year!

Tablet PC + PowerPoint = Productivity

2010-12-19T10:14:00.001-05:00

Like many others, I patiently await the delivery of my new HP Slate 500 tablet PC. Having been a long-time fan of tablets, this latest incarnation is especially exciting.

As I started thinking about how I would fit this new device into my SharePoint Consultant toolbox, I started thinking about some of the ways that I’ve used my old tablet PCs in the past. One particularly useful technique I’ve used is to do quick drafts of my SharePoint presentations using handwriting on my tablet. Those who’ve never used a Tablet PC might respond, “why not just write it out on paper?” (sigh…) Paper is dead. :) Plus, there are other advantages to the tablet. Among them is the ability to distribute my handwritten slides electronically to others for feedback or collaboration. Not to mention being able to add images, side notes, etc to my slides, as well as re-ordering the deck on the fly.

Below is a demonstration on my first tablet, a 2005 WinXP Toshiba convertible. I thought it would be particularly useful to see how well even the old tablet performs, and show how Windows has for years included a lot of functionality that even today’s newer devices still don’t include.

What tools or methods do you use when preparing a presentation?

Facebook for Grown Folk

2010-11-19T07:27:00.001-05:00

Last nite I was a guest speaker at BDPA Columbus’ Information Exchange networking meeting at CSI International. My topic was on how to use Facebook effectively, particularly as adults (in contrast to my presentation to young high school students).

I tell you… the BDPA group is a lively bunch! : ) We had a great discussion with lots of interaction, laughs, and feedback. I think many people learned some new techniques, and I expect to be getting a lot of new Facebook Friend Requests pretty soon.

One interesting part of my presentation was on the recently announced integration of Office Web Apps to Facebook. Though I wasn’t able to show this feature in action, I was still glad I could enlighten them on the value of using Office Web Apps in conjunction with the other services in their Live account.

Hopefully I was helpful in getting people to see that Facebook is more than just Farmville. : ) My slide deck can be found below:

DogFood Conference 2010–Columbus, OH

2010-11-10T01:09:00.001-05:00

Last week the annual DogFood Conference, a local conference centered around technical presentations on Microsoft technologies, took place. In addition to listening to some great presentations (my colleagues Mario, Veenus, and Bill were among the presenters), I also volunteered to work the registration table. I was able to see how many people had registered, and folks were pouring in bright and early. The waiting list seemed almost as long as the registered list!

A few technologies took center stage in many presentations – cloud services, SharePoint, and Windows Phone 7. This to me makes perfect sense, since the level of interest and activity in these spaces is huge. Anyone looking to get an update on what’s hot with these technologies right now would have been well served by attending.

As a SharePoint geek, I was tickled by the handful of people at the conference who uttered the phrase “what is SharePoint?” : ) Yeah, I know – not everyone has surrounded themselves with SharePoint and all things Microsoft like I have… but that still baffles me.

Anyway, if you missed it, at least you can check out the slide decks that have recently been posted. Also, you can see the Twitter convo that occurred around the #dogfoodcon hashtag. Other than that, all I can say is, you shoulda been there. : )

The Age of the Devs approaches… thanks to Office 365!

2010-10-23T18:32:00.002-04:00

Well, if you’ve been keeping up with the latest Microsoft news, you might have heard that MS has been pretty excited about their upcoming release of Office in the Cloud – Office 365. In a nutshell:

we’re talking Microsoft Office suite, Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync (instant messaging and presence) being offered ‘online’ with pay-as-you-go pricing
we’re talking no more server patching, updating, or upgrading
we’re talking a subscription-based option for businesses that want to purchase Office
we’re talking about cloud services being offered to public schools as a no-cost or low-cost hosted service
we’re talking access to all your productivity tools and enterprise data wherever you go, across PC, phone, and browser

If you’re thinking, “hey, this could be a game-changer”, I’d say you’re probably right. The opportunities here are huge, not just for Microsoft, but for consumers and IT professionals like myself who are constantly striving to use technology effectively for our own productivity. And the positive impact this could have on small business, particularly in today’s economy, is also exciting.

But I’m actually excited about it for another reason. As a SharePoint Developer, one of the things I’ve noticed in the different companies in which I’ve consulted is that, when SharePoint is introduced, there is often a LOT of activity related to installation, hardware optimization, scaling, and maintenance. And for good reason – SharePoint is certainly a strategic and central platform for many enterprises. But many times what that means is that developers like myself, itching to start building solutions on top of SharePoint, are given the ever-popular “no custom code” speech.

I think this mandate comes from the fact that they’re so out of breath from the efforts put into standing up the SharePoint farm, and so worried about its ongoing maintenance and stability, that they don’t want to also have to police some cowboy developers trying to create the next best super-solution within the SharePoint environment. : )

Certainly, that’s an oversimplification, but here’s the punchline – in a world where SharePoint is reliably managed in the cloud, backed by best-of-breed data centers with 99.9% uptime guarantees, data backups, and pay-as-you-grow scalability… I wonder if, in that world, companies will begin to sit back in their chairs, breathe a sigh of relief, and then start to wonder what kind of kool solutions might they be able to get their developers to create on their new worry-free collaboration platform!

Thus begins the Age of the [SharePoint] Devs – an era where there’s more code deployments than infrastructure patch updates. An era where business meetings are more about envisioning creative solutions rather than discussing how many web front ends we need. Where business users EXPECT their developers to deliver innovative solution designs – and not just for SharePoint in the browser, but also SharePoint Mobile, offline capability, and integration with LOB .NET applications as well.

That’s the day I’m waiting for. I’m not sure how near or far we are to that day – certainly, SharePoint Online still has some capabilities that must be added. Perhaps for now I’ll have to be happy living in the world of cloud-based sandboxed-solutions. But the point is, I see a new day a-coming. Do you?

Responsible Social Media for Young Men

2010-09-18T16:03:00.001-04:00

Last week I spoke to a group of local high school boys about how to safely and responsibly use tools like Facebook and Twitter. As you can probably guess, those tools are very popular with kids these days. The problem is, they many times use them inappropriately or recklessly.

What I tried to get them to understand is that, these days, we live in a world where social media is mainstream. Perhaps 5 years ago, you could have gotten away with some ‘extreme behavior’ on Facebook, because nobody knew what it was and no one was looking at it. Today, your co-workers, employers, and even potential employers are using these tools as ways to increase their ability to network with you, as well as research who you are and what you’re about.

So essentially, these days we have to start realizing that our online behavior, and the information that can be found about us online, all impact our ‘personal brand’. For entertainers and professional athletes, this is not a new concept. Developing and protecting their ‘brand’ is a part of their business, and affects their earning potential. But now, regular folks like you and I also have a brand to protect, and yes it can even affect our earning potential as potential employers use our brand to determine whether or not we would make a good asset to their company. For entertainers, traditional media is the playing field for their brand – mainly TV and print. For us, the playing field is the ever-growing ecosystem of social networking sites.

I was told by teachers at the event that they heard a lot of good comments from the students after my presentation. It sounds like my advice really made them think about their use of these tools. But I also had some of the adults who attended the talk thank me afterwards as well – apparently even us grownups still have some things we can learn about using social media these days. :-)

You can view the handouts I used here.

Putting a Cool Glow on your XML code

2010-08-20T13:00:00.000-04:00

Lately I’ve been looking over the XML code contained in the Application Definition File for some SharePoint Business Data Catalog work I’ve been doing. As I normally do, I used Visual Studio as my XML viewer of choice. But I had to pause for a second to sit back and appreciate how Visual Studio 2010 makes looking at all that XML code a lot nicer. : )

In Visual Studio 2008, we’ve got this view:

Nice standard white background w/ collapsible outlining. Yeah, that’s kool. But in my Visual Studio 2010, I get:

Oh, yeah! : ) First off, lemme say that all the kool kids like myself use the Cool Glow style as their Visual Studio theme. White backgrounds are so 1990’s. ; ) But I also like the subtle addition to Outlining that VS2010 has added. You may notice from the screenshot that it shades the portion of the code that would collapse for you if you so choose. Although I can see that as well via the indentations of my XML code, that little feature is a nice one.

Oh well – enough of the pretty color stuff. Back to shoving more external line-of-business data into my SharePoint farm. See ya!

Document Management Using SharePoint – SharePoint Saturday slides posted

2010-08-16T20:07:00.001-04:00

Saturday’s SharePoint event here in Columbus, Ohio was great. I give kudos to the folks that worked hard to put it together, and who pulled off bringing together such a great lineup of speakers. If you’re a SharePoint junkie in Central Ohio and you missed the event, I now shed a tear for you. (wiping away fake tear) The only consolation I can give you is that you can scroll down a little to see the slides from my presentation. Although it doesn’t include the live demos I ran during my talk, it at least gives you a peek at what I think are some of the main points of interest as it relates to document management in SharePoint 2007 and 2010.

There – don’t you feel better now? :)

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Columbus

2010-08-08T14:05:00.001-04:00

On August 14th 2010 I’ll be joining an all-star lineup of SharePoint speakers at Columbus’ SharePoint Saturday, an all-day event filled with sessions on a large range of different SharePoint topics. These Saturday events happen all over the country, but I believe this is Columbus’ first one. The firm I work for happens to be one of the sponsors.

My topic will be Document Management in SharePoint. So of course my challenge is now to condense all the kool stuff that SharePoint can do as it relates to enterprise content management into a 75-minute talk. Of course, I know from experience it’s much better to have too much content to work with for a presentation than not enough. :-)

I also want to try to make sure I don’t get caught up into too many of the super-kool SharePoint 2010 DM features like the Content Router, taxonomy tagging, the Document ID service, or Office Web apps, and try to spend more time on the SharePoint 2007 feature set. I know many of us are excited about our future plans to move to SharePoint 2010, but for now, when the Saturday sessions are finished, the reality is that on Monday most of will go to work needing to be able to put our new knowledge to work in a 2007 environment.

Planning on coming out this Saturday? (my presentation occurs around 3pm according to the schedule) Got a DM topic you want to make sure I cover? Let me know – I’ll slip a slide into my presentation just for you! :- )

Good Job, Team!

2010-07-31T23:51:00.002-04:00

The results are in – the BDPA Columbus team scored 12th out of 22 teams in the 25th Annual BDPA High School Computer Competition! Congratulations team!

Here’s a few key facts to put this achievement in perspective:

This is an improvement over last year, in which the 2009 team scored 24th place out of 25 teams.
Out of the 4 students on the team, 3 of them were first-time participants, and one of them is a high school freshman.
Most of the team had no prior knowledge in web design or .NET programming.
The top 5 teams receive awards and recognition at the yearly Conference Gala.

This marks the culmination of a lot of hard work on the part of these students. We are very proud of them – way to go Team! (see some of the team’s highlights on BDPA Facebook)

UPDATE 8/2/2010: Here is the Problem that the student’s had to solve from this year’s competition. And yes, it is as complicated as it looks... :)

Hscc2010 Problem Statement

View more documents from Ricardo Wilkins.

Mid-point of BDPA 2010

2010-07-30T16:51:00.001-04:00

The high school students are currently wrapping up the final part of their computer competition. Kudos to all of them for hanging in there. Today was an 8am – 4pm all day marathon for them, as they work together throughout the day to finish a challenge programming assignment. This year’s assignment centered around a fictional construction company, and involved many aspects, including the design of a login interface, a Requests for Proposal submission form, and a system to generate estimates based on construction costs. I anxiously await hearing back from the students to see how they think they did.

The High School Computer Competition is an important part of the BDPA conference, whose focus is on highlighting and developing the African-American presence in the IT industry. I also find it interesting that this same week there are a couple more conferences of similar perspective going on. The National Association of Black Journalists Conference is happening this week in San Diego (10TV’s Jerry Revish told me about that one as we both waited to board the plane leaving Columbus), and this week also marks the 100th anniversary and conference of the National Urban League.

So, lots of history going on this week. Let’s see if our BDPA Columbus team can also make history in their competition today. Go Team Go! :-)

BDPA 2010 Here We Come!

2010-07-27T22:41:00.001-04:00

This week I will be traveling to Philadelphia with a group of talented high school students as we all attend the 2010 Black Data Processors Association (BDPA) National Conference. These high school students have spent almost every Saturday morning with me for the past few months learning ASP.NET web development skills in order to compete in this year’s BDPA High School Computer Competition (HSCC) at the Conference. I’ve been teaching concepts such as object-oriented programming, master page development, and page event handling. And I believe their Saturday commitments will pay off, as I’ve seen them make great progress in their understanding of the concepts.

It should be a great event for all of us. In addition to the Competition, the Conference includes a Youth Technology Camp, Career Fair, Technology Expo, and great workshops on topics like ‘IT Workforce Development’, ‘Business Process Management’, and ‘Cloud Computing’. And of course there’s the National BDPA Golf Classic, which I would attend if I had any golf skillz whatsoever. :- )

Expect to see a retrospective post from me once I return, and feel free to follow my real-time Tweets live from the conference using the hashtag #BDPA.

Maybe I’ll see you there! :- )

Blogging at ICC

2010-07-22T17:58:00.000-04:00

Every blogger hopes that their blog is useful and interesting to their readers. I’m going to try to add some value to my blog very soon by posting some info regarding solutions I’ve recently discovered for a couple of SharePoint and InfoPath quirks I’ve bumped my head against recently. When I scour the Googleverse/Bingiverse and don’t find a solution to my issues, I figure that might be a good sign that it’s time for me to add a new Rix Bit. :)

If you happen to like reading my blog, you might be interested in some of the other blogs from my talented peers at ICC, like our SharePoint Infrastructure guru Veenus (MCP/MVTS). More ICC bloggers will be added to this list in the future, so stay tuned.

Video Post: 10-minute Lightning Talk–The Challenges of Real-World SharePoint

2010-07-16T21:29:00.001-04:00

Since it’s only 10-minutes, I thought I’d go ahead and post my slides with live narration, in case you weren’t able to attend last night’s COSPUG meeting (that means you, Brian!) I’m also interested to hear any feedback or comments on the topic – what has your own experience been trying to use SharePoint outside the office environment? Post a comment below. Thanx.

Your browser cannot play this video. Learn how to fix this.

Real-world Challenges of SharePoint

2010-07-15T11:31:00.001-04:00

Today I’ll be presenting a Lightning Talk on SharePoint at the Central Ohio SharePoint User Group meeting. That means I’ve got no more than 10-minutes to dazzle the crowd with my thoughts about the challenges of using SharePoint outside of a controlled office environment, specifically as it relates to:

Access
Installation
Device integration
Learning Curve
Choice of tools

This is a free event, but if you show up please don’t heckle me. :)

UPDATE: I posted a video of this presentation with live narration.

Why I use Twitter and why you should too

2010-07-11T00:46:00.001-04:00

There’s an online techie forum I subscribe to, in which a conversation got started regarding Twitter. They were discussing the relevance of Twitter versus ‘more popular’ services like Facebook. I got a slight suspicion that maybe they simply had not been given a good reason why Twitter was a useful tool for today’s techie, and since I also remembered being in their shoes oh so many twitter-months ago, I decided to respond and see if I could shed some light on the subject. Let me know if you find this useful as well.

I've heard it said that 'people who don't get Twitter aren't Following the right people'. I think there may be some truth to that. Twitter certainly becomes more valuable if you’re Following interesting people. There are certainly lots of folks out there in the Twitterverse saying anything that comes to their mind. This includes, but is not limited to, details about personal errands they’re running, pictures of food they’re about to eat, or tweets representing a conversation they’re having with one or more other Tweeters. But there are also lots of folks out there like myself who try to only tweet messages with a bit more substance – tweets that try to provide value.

‘Value’ is obviously subjective, but in the context of techies, I think you can understand what I mean. Twitter has major value for me because the experts and thought leaders of the types of tech topics I'm interested in are all on Twitter. I don't follow them to find out what they had for lunch - I follow them because they share tech ideas, blog posts, interesting links, and even real-time thoughts while they're working. So if you’re looking for Twitter value and want to follow topics with broad interest, I recommend you Follow those kinds of folks.

A point was raised against Twitter regarding the 140-character limit it imposes. However, the 140-character limit is not only useful for SMS compatibility (which is good when I want to get real-time Twitter info like traffic alerts straight to my cell phone via txt msg), but it's also a good way to encourage people to deliver maximum information in an efficient package. Newspapers use it (short but direct headlines in order to make you read the whole article), and I even like how 12seconds.tv uses the concept - basically, we get bored after any more than 12 seconds of video, the same way we'd get bored if a Twitter message let you write a 1-page paragraph, or the way you're probably bored at this post that is already getting too long. :)

For me, Twitter is the new Google. But in real-time. I've gotten stuck on technical projects and looked for answers on Bing/Google (for an hour) and on Twitter (where someone responds in a couple of minutes). And has anyone used Twitter to follow on-the-ground eyewitnesses during the Haitian earthquake recovery? Or the riots in Iran? Or even to see what people are saying [right now] about that new blu-ray player you plan on buying?

Yes the amount of data can be overwhelming. But just like we've got search engines to filter bajillions of bytes of Internet data, we've got tools like Tweetdeck, MoTweets, and Twitter Lists to help filter info. Using these tools, I can get focused feeds of information on certain topics, without having to read about what people are having for lunch.

When thought about this way, I'd say Twitter should be as important to the techie as blogs are, cuz that's what it is - microblogging. It's also interesting to note Facebook and LinkedIn's efforts to incorporate twitter-concepts in their offering (the Facebook newsfeed concept is the same as twitter's). Tho each has it's place - Facebook is where your familiar friends are, where u share thoughts that go just to them. Twitter is where your thoughts go out to a bunch of strangers, but with that comes the opportunity for a larger dialogue.

What are some other good ways to highlight the value of Twitter?

Volunteers are kool

2010-07-10T17:14:00.001-04:00

This weekend in Columbus, Ohio a whole room full of smart people are giving their time to make websites for non-profit organizations. It’s called Give Camp, and it’s a 3-day all-night marathon of coding goodness. Local developers work thru the wee hours of the night helping organizations with their tech needs. Follow the official Twitter hashtag (#cmhgc) to see real-time tweets and pictures.

I couldn’t participate myself, partly because I do a little techie volunteering myself on Saturdays. I help teach .NET web development to high school students through the local chapter of BDPA and the HSCC program, a national competition which this year will take place in Philadelphia. Today they learned a little more about accessing MySQL databases with .NET (explaining datasets and connection strings to teenagers is not as easy as you might think). :) I’m proud to say that they’re doing a great job grasping the material, including object-oriented concepts.

It’s great to see Central Ohio talent giving back to the community. I hope the Give Camp folks can stay awake long enough to dot[notation] every I[nterface] and cross every [app domain] T[hread]. ;-)

nPlus1 ArcSummit talk

2010-06-28T15:01:00.001-04:00

Today I teamed up with James Bender and Bill Sempf to present the SOLID principles at the nPlus1 ArcSummit in Columbus, Ohio. My part of the talk focused on the first two principles – Single Responsibility and Open Closed. There was great participation in the room of software developers, architects, and project managers. It was very illustrative to hear everyone talk about the pros and cons of the principles, and I think I might have gotten more out of the talk than my audience did. What was also great was that I was able to insert some SharePoint sidebars into the talk as well – I don’t go anywhere without mentioning good ole SharePoint! :)

My slidedeck is below:

S.O.L.I.D. Principles for Software Architects

View more presentations from Ricardo Wilkins.

Document Management & SharePoint: Forms vs Documents

2010-06-20T17:11:00.001-04:00

I’ve spent the last couple of months developing a customized document management system in SharePoint 2007 for a client. Many interesting challenges have surfaced as a result of working thru the different requirements for this solution, and I thought it might be useful to write about them. Check back from time to time to read the ongoing saga. Now, of course, it would be a miracle if I were able to discuss them here in any kind of logical order, so I’m going to settle for random thoughts instead. :)

The first random thought as it relates to document management is the use of documents and forms in a document control solution. Out of the box, SharePoint has preconfigured Document and Forms libraries to help you get started using both. But as you audit your own existing files in preparation for a migration into SharePoint, it can sometimes be unclear which of your files are forms, and which of them are simply documents.

For example, when identifying Forms, it can be very easy to simply say that all existing InfoPath documents are forms. InfoPath forms have fields that need to be filled in, and usually have a Submit button of some kind. But many organizations also use Microsoft Word or even Excel to create and use as Forms. These Word or Excel documents also have open fields that expect data, and many times are filled out by first being printed to paper. But it gets even better! These Word documents could very closely resemble Word templates – files meant to be used as starting points for other Word documents, which also could have data-ready areas within them. Now the distinction between forms & documents starts to blur a bit.

How, then, do we decide whether a particular Word document in this scenario should be a form or a document in our new SharePoint document management system? This is a crucial piece of information in the design of our solution, as we consider which library to place the document in, whether the document should be converted from Word to InfoPath, etc.

If you were to ask me to give you an elevator pitch version of an answer, I would say this: a form is a file whose primary intent is to ask a question, and a document is a file whose primary intent is to answer a question.

I know this won’t satisfy my more cerebral readers, so I scoured a bunch of word definitions and came up with a slightly more specific answer:

Document – A physical or digital representation of a body of information designed with the primary intent to communicate/provide said body of information.

Form – a physical or digital file containing spaces (fields) in which to write/type/select, and whose primary intent is to capture/consume/store information.

Template – a physical or digital file containing information that is meant to be replaced/extended , and whose primary intent is to be used to begin or guide the creation of another file.

A form without data is a template.
A document with areas intended to be filled-in is a template.

In future posts, I’ll dive a little deeper into what these definitions mean to us as we design & develop our SharePoint-based document management system, including records management.

Office Web Apps released

2010-06-08T18:46:00.001-04:00

Today Microsoft released Office Web Apps (aka Google Apps killer) 1 week ahead of schedule.

I immediately jumped into Office 2010, specifically Excel and OneNote, to see just how easy it would be. Made some quick docs, then went to the Backstage to push them to the cloud. Very seamless process – everything just worked, and the fidelity and parity on the web side for my client-created documents was very impressive.

The first thing I thought about was how it was nice to be able to create content using tools I already know, and have been using for about 2 decades. :) My attempts at using Google were decent, but having to learn a new system, no matter how similar to my other experiences, was less than appealing.

The 2nd thing I thought about was using this to post some spreadsheet content for one of my study groups, who in the past have fought my attempts at getting them to use cloud-based collaboration tools. Perhaps the familiar interface will make this latest effort more successful. :)

I’ve yet to try my Office Mobile 2010 software on my Windows 6.5 phone to see what’s offered there. But so far, it’s looking like a good start.

Columbus 2010 Launch Event – Office/SharePoint

2010-05-17T00:22:00.001-04:00

Last week I presented along with Steve Caravajal at the Columbus region Microsoft SharePoint/Office 2010 Launch Event, sponsored by ICC. There are exciting features coming from the new 2010 suite, and it looks like the product teams put some good thought & work into these new versions of Office & SharePoint.

My slide deck is below, and the other slide decks from the event should soon be posted to the ICC website. Stay tuned.

Office 2010 Launch Event - May 2010

View more presentations from Ricardo Wilkins.

My SharePoint Consultant toolbox

2010-04-27T01:42:00.002-04:00

So, it’s been about 6 weeks since I’ve stepped into the role of full-time SharePoint consulting. In that short time I’ve already worked with several clients, and I’m definitely enjoying the variety. But juggling different clients also means that I need to keep my self organized, and to do that I use kool tech! :) So I thought I’d share some of the tools I’ve come to rely on over the past few weeks to keep this SharePoint train running like a well-oiled machine:

DropBox & SkyDrive
I’m sure some of my other tools also fall into the category of cloud-based storage, but these two are the ones I like to use for on-the-go mass storage of all that good stuff I need. What makes them somewhat unique is their integration into Windows Explorer (almost like a mapped drive) so that I can drag-n-drop my files w/o thinking too much about some clunky upload interface in order to do it. Sweet.
Evernote & OneNote
I get a lot of ideas (some of them are even good ones) throughout the day. Evernote and OneNote really help me capture them. One day I might even get to organize them. :) But for now I’m just happy to know that all my scraps of virtual paper are at my fingertips, waiting in the cloud for me to access via mobile, or any other Internet-connected device.
VirtualBox & Windows Virtual PC
I use VM’s a lot these days, particulary to prototype solutions in the recently-RTM’d SharePoint 2010 environment. The 6-8 Gigs of RAM that my machines have, tho, are crucial to making the use of these VM’s enjoyable. With that amount of memory, I can run a VM in the background with relatively little affect on the rest of my work. Nice.

HTC Touch Pro 2
Tho I haven’t blogged about the TP2 as much as I would have liked, you might be able to tell from some of my previous posts that I’m a big Windows Mobile fanatic. So my TP2 is central to my productivity. Particularly, the seamless integration of my Exchange account, and OCS instant messaging access, allow me to stay connected with the office. And having my Calendar, Tasks, and 700+ contacts at my fingertips is a big help also. But what’s particularly important for me as a consultant is my built-in turn-by-turn GPS navigation, which helps me get to client locations. And of course, the voice-activated MP3 player to listen to Stevie Wonder on the way. :)
3-monitors
On a typical day, I’ve got a bunch of stuff running on my machine at the same time. I’ve got my email client open, I’ve got my social networking apps like Tweetdeck running, I’ve got a virtual machine and/or remote desktop session(s) going, and I’ve probably got some reading material on the screen as well. So, not 1, nor 2, monitors is enough for all that. I go with a 3-monitor setup to give me plenty of space. Using the Matrox TripleHead2Go, my 3 monitors work together seamlessly, and as far as my computer’s concerned, it just thinks I’ve got one really big 3840x1024 screen to play with. This is especially useful now that Visual Studio 2010 has better multi-monitor support.
My SharePooch
I’ve got a 4-year old Boxer named Kwali who also plays a roll in the SharePoint machine – he guards the house while I beef up my SharePoint 2010 capabilities. :)

I know I’m missing something, but this is definitely some of the main tools I use in my ongoing quest for SharePoint euphoria. :) What tools do you use?

SharePoint 2010, Architects, VM’s and all that good stuff

2010-04-02T01:23:00.001-04:00

Last month I took a new step in my career, and began a journey into full-time SharePoint consulting. I’m now a SharePoint Solutions Architect for ICC, an IT services firm and Microsoft Certified Partner here in Columbus, Ohio.

So far, it looks like my timing was pretty good, as the excitement among our customers seems to be continuously building as we near the launch of SharePoint 2010. One of my primary tasks at ICC is to help us prepare to be effective in the delivery of SharePoint 2010 services, specifically in the area of application development. That means I’ve had to spend a lot of time recently getting acquainted with all this SP2010 goodness. :) And as I’ve started diving deep into its many offerings and improvements, I can say that the excitement seems well worth it.

There’s been some challenges, though. Usually, when one wants to play around with the latest Microsoft offerings, one of the best ways to do so is to grab a virtualized environment that contains a pre-built copy of the software and all the other goodies. However, the caveat this time is that all the software is now built on 64-bit architecture. No argument from me on that decision – 64-bit is the future, and I’m even running 64-bit Windows 7 at home. The problem is, Microsoft’s current virtualization solutions don’t easily support 64-bit. So now, developers like myself have to jump thru extra hoops in order to enjoy the convenience of a VM playground.

Enter VirtualBox. This open source masterpiece helps bring order to the chaos. It allows me to run 64-bit OS VHDs right on my Windows 7 box. So now, I can take advantage of, for instance, the SharePoint 2010 Information Workers Beta Demo. Yeah, it would have been nice to run all my VMs via Windows 7’s built-in Virtual PC solution, but hey, why complain if no one’s listening? :) You will, however, also need to throw as much horsepower at the VM as possible. So give up on your 8-year old eMachine and go put 6 or 8 Gigs of RAM in a new box with as many processor cores as you can find.

With all that said, 2010 looks to be an exciting year for Microsoft geeks like myself. So, I’m gonna grab my trusty Touch Pro 2, ignore all those ridiculous iPad gimmicks, and jump right in! Hope to see you there! ;)

Webinar on Application Lifecycle Management & Team System for BDPA

2009-07-08T08:50:00.001-04:00

I delivered an ALM presentation focusing on Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server for the BDPA Webinar series. I tried to make it a high-level “Intro to ALM” talk – hopefully I was successful. The slide deck can be found in my SkyDrive (link below).

There was a Q&A session at the end, and the participants asked some great questions. One of the questions was, “have you found that Team System has helped you increase your time to market (TTM)?” For me, that question brings to mind a great quote – “…that which does not get measured never gets improved…”

I can’t definitively say that VSTS has helped our TTM because I can’t say that we’ve ever [consistently & systematically] tracked that metric. The only answer I could give is that I have a “warm fuzzy feeling” that yes, it has helped. :)

---

My webinar slide presentation
(use Slide Show mode to see full animations):

Obama adds social networking aspect to credit card legislation

2009-05-25T08:07:00.001-04:00

“…Sources today informed us that the Obama Administration has made a significant amendment to their Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act (CARD) – they have added a requirement that all credit card companies must allow online Recent Activity data to be integrated into Facebook and/or Twitter feeds.

The goal is to allow consumers to use their online friends to help encourage them to achieve better debt management practices, by letting them see their friends’ credit card usage, and either praise positive behavior (like making a payment larger than the minimum balance) or chastise negative behavior (liking buying a Mac when a PC could have gotten the job done for less money).

Sources say this could soon be extended to credit score reporting agencies as well - soon online friends might start seeing messages like “John Smith’s credit score changed today: +12 points!”, to which they can respond with encouraging comments in their Facebook and Twitter feeds.

“We believe that Americans can help each other help themselves,” said a government spokesperson, “and that current technology provides great opportunities to do so in the area of social networking…”

Response to this amendment has so far been positive, as consumers have begun to see the importance of managing their finances, and allowing their friends to help them do it…”

Yes, this is a joke – I repeat, a JOKE. (the whole Mac vs Pc comment should have given it away). :) But what do you think – should it be a joke, or does that sound like a good idea? Hmmmm….

Speaking at COSPUG SharePoint event

2009-05-23T15:11:00.001-04:00

This week I was a speaker at a SharePoint event in Columbus, Ohio, where local business & technical professionals gathered to share their respective experiences with SharePoint. I spoke on the use of MOSS 2007 at the Ohio Attorney General’s office.

Macs – easy to use, or easy to get used?

2009-03-31T06:07:00.001-04:00

I don’t know why it requires a Mac-mocking message to materialize before I will pull myself out of a 3-month blog-posting slump. But when I saw the article regarding the researcher who broke into a fully patched MacBook machine, my blog fingers started itching, and I couldn’t resist. :)

The article can be summarized with the following classic quote:

“…Hacking into Macs is so much easier. You don’t have to jump through hoops and deal with all the anti-exploit mitigations you’d find in Windows….”

He basically goes on to give the impression that the Mac has hardly any defensive mechanisms in place at the operating system level – as a hacker, exploiting Macs is easy for him because there’s “almost no hurdle to jump through”. Priceless.

So, this falls right in line with my previous post about Macs needing antivirus software. Day after day, the machine touted for being so reliable and secure keeps getting its frailty exposed. And now it seems like Apple is taking their “it just works” mantra to the next level – they seem to say that not only will it work easily for the end user, but also for the hacker – come on in, we won’t get in your way… we’ll let you do what you need to do. LOL

The scariest part in my opinion is that I think most Mac users are buying their own hype so much, they won’t realize the danger and take the necessary precautions until it’s too late. However, unlike the antivirus issue, there may not be much they can do about this newest exploit. Remember, this MacBook was fully patched.

Now I’ve got to look at my mac Mini and wonder – is she the weak link in my network security? Do I need to take her offline to protect my PC’s??? Well, since I’ve still been unable to find a practical way to work my mac Mini into my cyber lifestyle, I guess yanking the plug on her would also be “easy to do”. :)

Windows 7 Beta

2009-01-08T21:31:00.001-05:00

So, I figured I’d join the ranks of those who are trying out the new Beta of Windows 7. So I fired up a VPC and gave it a shot. I only messed with it for about a half hour, so this is just some initial thoughts:

Install process and time to install was good – seemed pretty quick. Loads fast.
For the most part, it feels just like Vista. (which for me is a good thing, since I like Vista)
It kinda felt like the new taskbar was a rip-off of the Mac taskbar. Usually I’m okay with Windows ‘borrowing’ good ideas, but I never did like that Mac taskbar.
For some reason, I haven’t yet been able to experience the “full-screen taskbar previews” or the “invisible windows to see your desktop” stuff. Either I haven’t enabled something, or maybe it’s got something to do with me running virtually?
Do I need Outlook installed before I can view email metadata? I threw a few .msg files in there hoping all the metadata would be magically exposed with what I assumed is a ramped up Search engine. Nothing new so far.

It’s a little early for a final verdict, but I guess the good news is that it ‘feels’ at least as good as Vista. I’ll give it a little more time to see when it starts to feel better.

HTC Touch Pro Review – Part 2

2008-12-24T22:53:00.001-05:00

In my previous post re: the Touch Pro, I talked pretty bad about the Touch Flo 3D (TF3D) software, and about the little zoom wheel on the phone. I think I may have used the word “useless” for both of them. I’ve come to learn that perhaps that’s too strong of a word. :) Although they still have a long way to go before they get a glowing review from me, I’ve found some subtle benefits to these two Touch Pro features:

TF3D Music Player vs. Windows Media Player: For a while I ignored the music player that was part of the TF3D, and instead used the default Windows Media Player (WMP) for listening to music. But I’ve found that there are two distinct advantages to the TF3D music player that I didn’t realize until I really gave it a good try. Check this out:

- An equalizer/Audio Booster: comes in handy when I want to make the bass hit a little harder. Besides that, there’s a full-blown equalizer that you can tweak, or choose from the standard presets like Jazz, Rock, etc.

- A better Library experience: Whenever I add a new song to my phone, I have to manually update the WMP library in order for the song to appear in the list for me to select it. Not so with the TF3D player. As soon as it’s in my storage card, it’s automagically in the TF3D player Library. Nice.

- Bigger buttons: Also, the Library itself is easier to navigate thru, thanx to smooth finger panning action, and bigger fat-finger style buttons:

(TF3D vs WMP)

The fatter buttons are extremely useful when looking for a song while driving…. I mean, while drinking a can of Sprite. ;-)

The disadvantage to the TF3D player – it doesn’t respond to my voice commands. The WMP seems to be the default player used when I issue commands like “Play Stevie Wonder” to play all the Stevie Wonder songs I have on my phone. Using the voice commands obviously makes finding music while driving a much better and safer experience. :)

The Zoom Wheel: A friend of mine once asked me if my phone was able to zoom in on web pages like the iPhone does. My response was that it zooms with a double-tap like the iPhone, but that’s it. Actually, I was wrong. Not only does it double-tap zoom, but the Zoom Wheel also works in Opera to zoom in on a page. This can be compared to iPhone’s multitouch finger swipe gesture for zooming, tho I prefer the Zoom Wheel because iPhone’s method insists that you use two hands rather than just one thumb.

So, here’s my initial
view of a webpage:

Here’s the view after a
double-tap:

And here’s the view after zooming in with the wheel (it’s just coincidence that it happened to zoom in on these words – I’m not trying to drive a point home or anything): :-)

Notice that the words wrap. Also, I find this comes in handy when I’m trying to click a small hyperlink. Instead of trying to get precise with my finger pressing, or trying to use my fingernail for pinpoint accuracy, I can just just make everything big and fat-finger the sucker!

As it turns out, there are a few other places where the Zoom wheel can be used (some of these are even documented in the manual – go figure!):

Viewing photos (obviously)
To forward or rewind during a song with the music player
To zoom while using the Camera
To change the size of text on-the-fly (like when reading e-mail or text messages). This is my favorite use.
to scroll up/down in a list on certain apps

So, looks like had I not dug a little deeper into my phone’s functionality, I might have missed out on some pretty nice features. What can I say – you learn something new every day (hopefully). Maybe those guys over at HTC actually know what they’re doing after all. :)

Big things in small packages

2008-12-24T11:03:00.002-05:00

I upgraded the storage card memory in my Touch Pro from 1 gig to 8 gigs. Nice!

Before the days of tiny micro storage, I was walking around with all the thumb drives pictured below. The drives in this picture total 6 gigs of memory – I’ve now replaced them all with something no bigger than a dime!

I bought my 8 gig microSD card local for $29. I haven’t seen the 16 gig card in the US (the Touch Pro supports up to 16 gigs), but I think I saw one online from the UK. I’m good with my 8, tho… for now. ;- )

Mac needs antivirus

2008-12-10T17:53:00.001-05:00

In InformationWeek, the author wrote:

“…Apple has always boasted that "Mac OS X isn't plagued by constant attacks from viruses and malware" because its operating system was "designed with security in mind."

But about two weeks ago, Apple updated an old note on its support Web site advising its customers to use more than one antivirus application to make their computers more secure, affirming a longstanding divergence between its marketing and its technical concerns…”

In RedmondMag.com, the author wrote:

“…Here's why it's so important: Many Mac users are so confident that they pile up gigabyte after gigabyte of personal documents, photos, data and songs. If a virus hits, they have lots to lose, and often haven't taken as many precautions as their PC brethren…”

In his blog post in August 2008, Ricardo (that’s me) said:

“…So yes, you probably will have less trouble with viruses while using a Mac, but please don't assume it's because Mac is somehow superior in its security design - and please remember that the more popular your Mac becomes, the more susceptible it will be - will Mac be ready when the hackers decide they're ready to launch a full-blown attack?…”

In “I Robot”, Detective Spooner said:

“…Somehow, ‘I told you so’ just doesn’t quite say it…”

Classic…. ;-)

Review of the HTC Touch Pro for HTC Mogul owners

2008-11-22T11:54:00.003-05:00

Well, I’ve upgraded my phone. For the past two weeks I’ve been using and adjusting to the HTC Touch Pro from Sprint, trying to see if I like it, or if I need to take advantage of the 30-day money-back guarantee. I’ve got a lot friends who have the Mogul, so I thought I’d write something up to say how I feel about the Touch Pro (6850) in comparison to the Mogul (6800). With that said, this review is specifically for Mogul users, and I’m not gonna spend time talking about the specs (you can read about that here), nor will i be talking about how HTC’s 6000 series phones are so much better than other phones like the iPhone, for instance. (insert devious giggle here)

In general, I like the new phone, and would recommend the upgrade. There are improvements in lots of areas, and the improvements far outweigh the shortcomings. So, based on my previous post, this post could also be called “The HTC Touch Pro is… Awesomer!” :)

I’m gonna talk about my experience in the following areas:

Software

Pros: The Touch Pro has a September 2008 version of the ROM with WinMo 6.1. This is definitely a better version than the last Mogul ROM. Although it introduced at least 1 stupid glitch (no standard word completion), it fixed a lot of other issues. In general it feels more stable, and I’m sure the extra hardware is helping that as well. They built-in a lot of software functionality that I was previously installing separately (picture mail, voice commander, scrolling/panning).

And they’ve added a lot of goodies also (see below). One of the nicest goodies is a choice during sync – you can use ActiveSync, or just treat your phone (with storage card) like a flash drive. Perfect for grabbing a few MP3’s before you get in the car (which by the way has me now using my phone more as an MP3 player than i did with the Mogul).

Cons: They could have left the TouchFlo 3D software off of this phone. I mean, I know what they were trying to do: put some fancy eye-candy software on the phone to make your friends envy your new phone, and to make you feel like you’ve got an iPhone-ish interface. But I don’t need that. In fact, the TouchFlo interface is so useless I went ahead and re-installed my SPB Mobile Shell software; I still prefer it over the fancy stuff. I've found that there are others that agree. [updated]

Hardware

This, my friend, is the key area that made me want to buy the phone in the first place (ie Pro’s), and is also the area that made me initially not want to buy the phone ever (Con’s):

Pros: The major value this phone brings is in a whopping increase in memory – any current Mogul user will probably salivate over the screenshot shown here. This is the #1 reason why I even considered this phone. As Forrest would say, “that’s all I’ve got to say about that”.

Also, although I don’t have official data just yet, it ‘feels’ like the power management on this phone is better. I think I’m getting maybe 50% better battery life out of this thing than I was with the Mogul. It also feels like it charges faster as well.

Finally, one kool hardware feature that I haven’t yet explored is the TV-out capabilities (I need to first buy the cable to do it). Imagine playing YouTube videos from your phone onto your friend’s TV, or just demonstrating the phone in general on a TV. But mostly, this is probably useful for showing PowerPoint presentations from your phone – this is a way to get your non-techie colleagues to awe at your greatness, and fellow-geeks to covet you. :)

Other subtle hardware benefits:

the D-pad has a better feel, especially for the push-select
ergonomics of the phone are nice
video screen looks beautiful
screen auto brightens/dims (which probably helps the battery life), and looks better in sunlight than the Mogul does

Cons: My major problem with this phone was/is (haven’t decided yet) the lack of hardware buttons. Certainly taking away all the buttons adds to the sleek sexy feel of the phone. But me – I had tricked out all my buttons to do some amazing 1-touch kind of things on my Mogul (as I describe in the latter part of my other post). I really felt that those extra buttons were so useful that it wasn’t worth an upgrade. I’m starting, tho, to learn how to live without them, and the SPB Mobile Shell software is certainly helping me break my addiction. So, maybe this isn’t so bad after all.

Another con is that the little scroll wheel on the D-pad is pretty useless. It’s mainly for zooming in on pictures, and that’s about it. Why not make it useful in other apps as well? Perhaps they’ll do so in future versions of the software, but for now, that scroll feature is just another piece of eye candy like the TouchFlo software. [updated]

Finger-friendly

Pros: One of the main things that makes this new phone ‘feel’ good is the solid finger functionality. With the Mogul, I had bought some SPB software to enable things like finger panning and scrolling, but now that feature is built into pretty much every app. And it works much smoother than it did on the Mogul, especially in Opera Mobile, probably due to the beefed-up processor and memory. And they also size up the text throughout the phone areas to support this finger-friendly experience.

Another benefit is in the area of 1-hand action, which comes in handy while I’m ~~driving~~ holding a can of Sprite (as I’ve heard Jeff & Josh say). :) The on-screen keyboard on the Mogul was only useful if you wanted to pull out the stylus, where as the Full and Compact on-screen QWERTY keyboard on the Pro finally makes thumb typing a reality. Again, I had bought software on my Mogul for better 1-handed typing, but now it’s built-in. This is mostly useful for quick text messages where I just need to say a couple of words – you’d be amazed how often that scenario comes up. For full-blown emails and stuff, tho, I obviously am still using the slide-out keyboard.

Cons: I think I might need to do a registry edit to increase the sensitivity of the screen. Every now and then I need to press something twice before I get it, or I have to make use of my fingernail rather than just my finger for more precise presses.

Goodies

Here’s a quick list of goodies that they threw in on the Pro. This is not a comprehensive list – it’s basically the list of things that I think are actually useful (so you won’t, for example, see the TouchFlo software on this list):

Built-in Voice Commander ($40 value)
YouTube app
Bluetooth FTP and Explorer
Sync vs Disk Drive option
Built-in picture mail
Opera web browser
RSS Reader (Newsbreak; $20 value)
A few new games, including the geo-sensitive Teeter
Sprint Radio
Business Card reader (WorldCard Mobile; $25 value)

So, in general, Yes this is a great phone, and an improvement over the Mogul. Besides all the specifics I’ve laboriously explained above, in general the Touch Pro just ‘feels’ like a better phone (from a Mogul user perspective). And that, certainly, should be the first step for a phone maker in getting you to buy the latest and greatest thing – get me to ‘feel’ like I’ve bought something better than what I had. For lovers of WinMo, I think this phone makes Windows Mobile shine the way you always wished it would. There are still quirks, of course. And there’s still a need to stay friends with the software gurus at SPB and PPC Geeks and XDA Developers - but nevertheless, a worthy new addition to your mobile computing toolset.

Happy Moofing! :)

Update: 12/24/08 – Review Part 2: Music Player

Please Fix the iPhone

2008-11-20T23:27:00.001-05:00

I think I’m officially done with my crusade to debunk the so-called coolness of the iPhone. Why, you ask? Because of the 1,800 “please fix” wishlist items I just saw on pleasefixtheiphone.com!

If you take a look at this list, you’ll see that the iPhone is just as flawed as any other phone out there. Well, actually… it might be worse than that. You might be surprised at some of the things on the list? No cut-n-paste??? Hasn’t that been a standard for personal computing since like the 80’s???

This just solidifies my view that Mac is a less about ‘superior technology’ and more about ‘marketing hype’. And now that I’ve seen thru the veil – it doesn’t seem worth talking about it anymore. It’s like laughing at the kid who always loses the playground races, only to later learn that he has asthma. Awww… a tear for iPhoney…. I mean, iPhone. :)

Talkin’ ‘bout good ole Sharepoint

2008-11-09T11:51:00.001-05:00

I was recently presented with another article that supposedly talks about the weaknesses of Sharepoint 2007 and why it might not be a good choice. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the strongest of articles – in fact, I’ve yet to see a published critique truly worthy of my rebuttal skills. :) However, this one had some points that were fun to refute (even the vague comments that he didn’t bother to try and prove), so I thought I’d post it.

Notice the date, however – May 2008. As you’ll see below, one of the things this points out is how fast and ever-evolving MOSS and the ECM, DM, and WCM industries are. May 2008 is kind of old at this point.

In general, though, it sounds like these comments come from an organization with a non-existent or weak IT shop. I can see MOSS being seen as a weak tool for organizations w/o the expertise to take advantage of it's open API and customization options, or w/o the insight to see how MOSS can integrate with their current IT infrastructure. Those organizations probably do need a tool that thinks for them. But for us IT folks, MOSS is pretty kool, and it becomes our job to show just how kool it is to the organizations that we support.

Anyway, here we go:

The pros and cons of SharePoint

by Toby Ward on Mon 19 May 2008 11:57 AM PDT | Permanent Link | Cosmos

SharePoint continues to be at the center of much of the intranet buzz – regardless of the water cooler, conference or country.

Shawn Shell, CEO of Consejo, and author of CMS Watch’s The SharePoint Report 2008 from CMS Watch, accurately summarizes SharePoint in one telling quote during his SharePoint presentation at Enterprise 3: “SharePoint does a lot of things, but it does very few things very well.”

I have maintained for sometime that SharePoint is an excellent intranet platform for departments, or small to medium-size enterprises. We in fact use it for our intranet at Prescient Digital Media (disclosure: we are fully technology-neutral with no partnerships nor reselling agreements with any technology vendor including Microsoft). But I don’t think that Sharepoint (MOSS 2007) is an appropriate enterprise intranet for medium to large organizations that need more robust content management, document management, and application integration.

--So, the high-profile, large orgs that are using it now for millions of documents and/or international collaboration (Dell, Air Force, FAA, HP, General Mills (records management), Bank of America (compliance), - are we saying they're crazy? :)

Nonetheless, SharePoint does have its strengths, and weaknesses, regardless of the client organization.

In no particular order, here are some of Shawn’s insights on SharePoint (and his company Consejo works almost exclusively on SharePoint implementations):

PROS:

Biggest strength: collaboration features and forcing compliance with information management policies.

OTHER STRENGTHS:

Blogs are built into every My Site

Wikis are out of the box

Reports – the ability to display and work with data from an Xcel worksheet.

Simple to use out-of-the-box

Search is very fast

Contributing content is simple

Direct integration with Office (XP to 2007)

Most functionality “exposed” through web services (e.g. all content can be subscribed to via RSS)

Mobile views via a PDA or phone is out-of-the-box

Alerts and workflow (though limited to email notification)

WSRP and SAP integration is included

I would add that if you’re an enterprise Microsoft customer, you can get MOSS for very cheap if not free (but the licensing typically represents 10-30% of the total cost). As well, simple out-of-the-box SharePoint management needs little to no training.

CONS:

Biggest weakness: Records management and digital asset management (non existent).

--Non-existent??? Then what is this? And this? And this?

OTHER WEAKNESSES:

The wiki piece is a little weak (“The rumor is that the wiki and blog components were very late additions… they work very well (???), but the functionality is considerably lower than what you would expect from an enterprise deployment.”)

Sharepoint does not support AJAX (though there are work-arounds, MS will not support AJAX)
--Sharepoint 2007 shipped before ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 did, but as of SP1 Ajax is supported.

Customization can be expensive and complex (and limited) --if you have weak or no IT support

Content management (“It’s very average content management… its not very fabulous.”) --sounds like a bells-n-whistles point, instead of core competencies

Analytics are very, very simple

Non-Active Directory authentication capabilities --really???

Social networking built into MySites

Search returns documents and people --huh???

WSRP and SAP integration is not terribly strong, but it works.

I would add the following weaknesses: immature technology, weak templates, and a reputation for weak service and training.

Shawn’s recommendations when considering or implementing SharePoint: --The following sounds like it was taken directy from Microsoft's Planning & Architecture guidance... plus, doesn't most of this guidance apply to any tool of this kind?

Understand information quantities and needs

Don’t just throw collaboration tools out there (he cited one client with “out-of-control” team sites and SharePoint sprawl)

Establish & enforce standards for use

Establish and closely monitor metrics for content creation

Continually evaluate and adjust approach to match reality

Enforce workspace use metrics

Notify of non-use after 60 days

Four notifications

Delete after fourth notification

Use workflow to suspend assets

Re-map and migrate intranet sites into Sharepoint

Use Search to Capture Outlying Sites

Create a controlled vocabulary (taxonomy and meta data)

Measure and measure again

Track search requests against workgroup assets

Shawn’s advice of what not to do:

Enforcing standards inappropriate for collaborative environment (ditch the Big Brother persona)

Repeat monolithic hierarchy (reduce the red tape)

Exclude active participants / authors

Ignore advantages of “competing” tools (e.g. Lotus SameTime)

Search results must be validated and in context

By the way… the next version of Sharepoint will be released in 2010 along with Office version 14 (MS is superstitiously skipping version 13).

I’m sure MOSS doesn’t work for everyone, but it sure does seem to work for a lot of folks. And I’m thinking many of those folks who simply like to randomly talk about MOSS weaknesses might want to strengthen their arguments soon. Because I’m betting the next version of MOSS might really make the competitors start to sweat even more than they are now. :)

Sharepoint Conference via COSPUG

2008-10-31T21:18:00.002-04:00

Today I attended a local Sharepoint Conference sponsored by our User Group. Kudos for a job well done! Topics included:

Governance
InfoPath
Troubleshooting Environment Issues
Custom Branding
Content Types 101
Search – Keywords, Best Bets, and Property Mappings
Content & Infrastructure Deployment Challenges

Interestingly enough, I think I learned the most not so much from all the expert presentations, but rather from the Local Spotlight track, where local folks gave presentations on how they are using Sharepoint in a real-world environment in their own organization. Sometimes all the APress books and Level 200 demos in the world just can’t beat good ole fashion real-world scenarios! ;-)

Three’s Company

2008-10-24T20:42:00.001-04:00

I was shopping for a new bluetooth headset for my Mogul. Found a site that made me appreciate having a triple-monitor setup. :) I was able to view their side-by-side headset comparison w/o too much scrolling:

(i added lines to symbolize where my monitor boundaries are)

For the most part, 2 monitors is enough. It certainly is the new minimum – I can’t go back to just one. But many times, that 3rd monitor does come in handy. I particularly like it while developing web applications with Visual Studio:

I expand VS to use 2 monitors
In one monitor I have the Designer view of my ASPX page
In the other monitor I have the code-behind view
In the third monitor, I have a IE open for when I need to View In Browser

Nice! :)

Sharepoint adoption outside of the workplace

2008-10-12T09:26:00.001-04:00

Although I work daily on Sharepoint development as part of my job, I also think Sharepoint is such a great tool that I’ve also been using it at home. I administer two WSS 3.0 sites for my two small group bible study groups from church.

It helps with the distribution of readings, membership rosters, and calendars. Each study meeting has it’s own meeting workspace. The discussion boards allow for additional conversations on the readings. And we even have a convenient way of posting Prayer Requests and Praise Reports.

But, just like in the workplace, adoption is slow. My study groups have certainly accepted e-mail as a way for us to communicate, but Sharepoint as a way for us to collaborate has only caught for some so far.

For instance, I’ve realized that the simple power of sending readings as text via email is still more valuable to some than posting a nicely-formatted list item of the reading into a document library. They prefer reading it directly from their phones & blackberry’s as opposed to logging into a website. My first thought was to combat this preference by using the power of the built-in mobile version of WSS sites. However, that feature is very weak. Most things in the WSS site don’t translate well, if at all, to the mobile version. And meeting workspaces don’t work period. I appreciate that Microsoft threw that little extra feature in there, but it feels more beta than anything else. I wait for the day when that becomes full-feature.

My personal use of WSS helps remind me that there are still some simple technologies and methods that still make sense in today's WSS world. It’s important to be realistic about the needs of your audience, and not pull out the WSS hammer for every one of their nail needs. :)

The one who smelt it dealt it?....

2008-10-06T15:57:00.003-04:00

I know my blog may sometimes seem like I'm pretty anti-Mac. ;-) Even tho ever since I got my Mac Mini, I've been trying to find the positive side of the Mac experience (with little success so far). Nevertheless, when I read articles like the one below, it's just like - this stuff writes itself! Is there no limit to the amount of material that's out there??? LOL

This one truly brings the pun "Macintrash" to life. Apparently, there's a complaint about an odor coming from the Mac Pro. And there's speculation that it might be TOXIC!

All I can say is, for all the bugs and computer crashes that Windows may have put me thru in the past, at least it never tried to kill me!!!

The Union of the Century

2008-09-12T20:25:00.004-04:00

Two of my favorite things - computers and Seinfeld - have finally been brought together via the new marketing campaign Microsoft has been doing. I'm a big fan of Microsoft products, but when I'm not on the computer, I watch Seinfeld re-runs as if I haven't seen them 47 times already. :)

My friends are making fun of me because of the not-so-funnyness of the first commercial. I told them that I'm convinced there is a master scheme at work here, and if we don't get it, there must be something wrong with US! Okay, I'm being silly, but I actually am kinda thinking that down the line this whole thing is gonna unfold as some masterful marketing magic. How can you go wrong with Seinfeld on your team??? :)

I watched the 2nd commercial via Microsoft's website in its full HD, Silverlight-powered glory. I can't wait to see how this turns out.

Errata - Administrator's Companion book

2008-08-27T13:18:00.003-04:00

In case you didn't know, I'm a Sharepoint [2007] Architect by profession, among other things. One of the must-have books for administrating MOSS 2007 is the Administrator's Companion by Bill English.

Back in January I ran across a section of the book with conflicting information (see below) - namely, a false statement was made that if a user profile is deleted from, say, Active Directory, then the corresponding profile would also be deleted from MOSS during an update. I confirmed this with the author.

Unfortunately, I'm a little sad to see that my contribution doesn't seem to be reflected on his website. Hmmm, maybe it's somewhere else and I missed it. Oh well, I'm just happy to have made my small contribution to the wonderful world of Sharepoint. :)

mac vs vista

2008-08-16T07:36:00.004-04:00

I got into a little discussion this week with a couple of guys re: Mac vs Vista. One guy was a Mac owner who claimed Vista was bad, tho I don't think he's used it (see Mojave experiment). The other was a PC owner, tho not necessarily a power user, who had recently been dazzled by a Mac presentation in a store and was now considering buying one.

Then there was me - long time Microsoft-lover as well as Mac-owner. I had to give them my $0.02 because their opinions were starting to be driven by the same factors that seem to drive many folks - Mac's "i" software, Mac's "stability", and Mac's alleged freedom from viruses.

Let's get the easy one out of the way first - we know that viruses are created by crazy & malicious hackers out there that want to cause trouble, right. Historically Mac has never had trouble with viruses. Why? Cuz those hackers didn't bother wasting their time on Mac! Windows machines control the world - why would I waste my development time putting a virus together to affect all seventeen of the Mac users of the world! :- )

okay, i'm exaggerating, but you get my point. Anyway, this security piece is recently being proven now that Mac is starting to get products like the iPhone that are taking a bigger bite out of the market. Check the news - you hear more and more stories about Mac being 'hacked' these days. So yes, you probably will have less trouble with viruses while using a Mac, but please don't assume it's because Mac is somehow superior in its security design - and please remember that the more popular your Mac becomes, the more susceptible it will be - will Mac be ready when the hackers decide they're ready to launch a full-blown attack?

Re: stability, for the most part I usually concede that Mac is more stable. But the reason behind this is what's important to understand:

Windows is like those 60's hippies - everyone's welcome to join in, love is everywhere, let's all join hands. Mac is like a fraternity - very selective about who gets in, and once you're in, play by our rules.
Windows is like a wild toga party of 300 people crammed into small house - noisy, wild, people spilling drinks on the floor - but fun. Mac is like 12 people studying in a locked library - yes, you're getting your work done, everything's nice and neat, but you're missing the party.

What the heck am I talking about? I've found over the years that Windows instability for most users comes from the non-Microsoft software they put on it. Vista has been extremely stable for me, and those times that it wasn't ended up being a 3rd party software or driver issue. Is it Vista's fault that it invited another software maker to the toga party that didn't know how to hold his liquor? Meanwhile, Mac doesn't invite quite as many people to library, and when they do, there's a lot of "Quiet, please!" going on.

So yes, normally I'd say Mac is more stable, but for a user like I me, I simply prefer the toga party - I've got more options, and I'm the kind of user that nows how to clean up spilled beer... i mean, troubleshoot stability issues. :) I will point out, however, that mere days into my Mac ownership, I was already having stability issues reminiscent of my Windows experience - could it be that maybe Mac isn't quite as stable as advertised?

Re: software, many people on the web have compared iPhoto vs Windows Photo gallery, iTunes vs Media Player, and iMovie vs Vista's Movie Maker. Here's my comments in a nutshell:

each side's software essentially gets the same job done. tho there's a different experience for each. whose experience you prefer is up to you, but let's not act like one of them is doing something more remarkably groundbreaking than the other.
I like to remember that although both are giving me these software tools for free, with Windows OS & hardware being significantly cheaper than Mac, I wonder if Mac is truly free after all???
Anybody that has traditionally felt Mac's tools were better than Windows needs to try Vista - maybe in the past the argument was true, but Vista pretty much copied a lot of ideas from Mac and put them in Vista.
I agree with many that Mac's tool take away a lot of freedom - which is why i never could make the jump over to iTunes and iPhoto. They're very specific about how they want you to manage your photos & music, and I don't like them telling me what to do. Maybe my 70-year old grandmother, who doesn't care either way and just wants to store her grandkids' pictures, would like iPhoto, but not me.

In closing, here's a pretty good feature comparison I found. The green boxes essentially mean it's better. However, there's a few points I disagree with it on:

Find windows - both Expose and Flip 3D are equally useful (or equally useless, depending on your usage)
Virtual desktop - although Windows doesn't come with it, there is a free virtual desktop tool built by the developer community that does the same thing that Spaces does. Tho I'm one of these guys that has never found a lot of value in the concept. Although I'll many time have a dozen or more windows open, I'm never quite comfortable saying that "these 4 windows can be pushed out to another view" - my mind jumps around to all my windows simultaneously! :)
Calendar - iCal and Windows Calendar are equally useless. :)
Remote desktop - VNC is an inferior user experience compare to RDP in Windows. This has been a major issue for me in my Mac adoption.

Alright, i guess I've talked enough. Hope this helps someone. Vive la difference!

iPhone frenzy - why?

2008-08-03T14:38:00.007-04:00

Today I laughed [a little more] at the iPhone after watching a satirical video ad on the show The Soup. Being a proud HTC Mogul owner, I always tell my Apple-loving friends to "get a real phone, not an iPhone".

In fact, during a recent business meeting, I noticed that someone else in the room also had a Mogul. Turns out we are old college buddies, so we decided to share each other's information. Why pull out our business cards? We just beamed each other's contact info via Bluetooth. Took just a few seconds, and we didn't even have to worry about pointing our IR ports at each other like we used to have to do 'back in the day'.

After swapping info, she told me that she wanted me to check out her company website to see if I might be interested in re-designing it. Since her web address was right there in her contact info, I was able to pull up her site right then and there! (and with the new Internet Explorer that comes with WinMo 6.1, I was able to zoom out and get the full birds-eye view the same way Opera does!)

After doing all this, I felt the need to make a smart-a** comment to my friend sitting next to me. You see, just moments before all this technological euphoria had taken place, he had commented that his son had just bought an iPhone. "Let's see your son's phone do that!", I sarcastically exclaimed. :)

In actuality, tho, I assumed that the iPhone COULD do that. I thought beaming info (contacts, files, etc) via bluetooth was something all high-end phones could do. Well, I just did a little research, and it sounds like the iPhone doesn't do that. Now I admit, the bluetooth stack is a fickle lady that all phones sometimes have trouble with, but I just was sure that the holy iPhone had that stuff mastered. What a surprise. Of course, this also means that the iPhone also can't be used as a wireless Phone-As-Modem the way my phone can. Interesting....

So tell me again why everyone's in such a frenzy about this whyPhone... i mean, this iPhone?.... ;- )

Vista - Hey Mickey! They like it!

2008-07-30T14:51:00.003-04:00

There was an interesting article that talked about an 'experiment' that Microsoft did. They took 120 people who previously said "I don't like Vista". They put them in a room and had them try out a brand new operating system called "Mojave". Afterwards, they revealed to them that they were actually using Vista (minus any identifying logos). Those peoples average rating of Vista went from 4.4 (unfavorable) to 8.5 (out of 10).

Most were XP users. About 22% were Mac users (insert devious giggle here).

I've been using Vista for quite a while with very few problems (especially post-SP1), and I prefer it over XP. Perhaps more people should actually TRY it before they dismiss it. :)

Update 8/17/08 - found Microsoft's website for the Mojave experiment.

The Mogul is.... awesome!

2008-07-13T10:27:00.014-04:00

Would it be weird for me to say that I fall deeper in love with my phone with every update? LOL

Okay, maybe not love, but I sure do like my phone a lot with the latest ROM update. There's lots of stuff I could say about the Mogul and related software, but I don't have much time, so I'm gonna hit the high points.

There's several major software updates. One being an upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.1. We'll have to see if over time this manifests itself in stability and performance. But also, two other goodies they added in this update are Sprint TV (which should have been there from day 1 but for whatever reason was not), and threaded text messages.

I'm not a big one to watch videos on my phone, but hey, with this Sprint TV maybe I can be converted. The quality is decent - certainly no high-def videos being displayed, but enough to make watching things bearable.

The text messaging I think is pretty kool. I'm sure all it did is bring the Mogul's text messaging interface up to par with other people's phones, but for me it's a kool feature. Essentially now we've got threaded conversations instead of having to view one disjointed text message at a time.

Aside from some other subtle improvements, the other thing I must say is that I started to create a list of must-have apps for this phone. Three of these must-haves are: SPB Mobile Shell, SPB Pocket Plus, and Pocket Controller. (see screenshots)

They say that SPB Mobile Shell does things on the phone that Microsoft should have done already but didn't. I totally agree. I had the 6700, 6800 for months before getting the SPB suite, and when I started using it, it made me say, "Yes! This is how it should have been all along!"

One of the many many kool features it allows is for additional function assignments to the phone's hardware keys. So for instance, the phone can already be programmed to make the Internet Explorer button do something (like, for instance, open Internet Explorer). But with Pocket Plus, you can also program that button to do an additional tasks when you HOLD DOWN the button! I used this feature to turn the Comm button on the side to a Task Manager shorcut - by holding down on it, I go straight to the Task Manager to be able to jump to some other minimized program (see screenshot). This is crucial when I'm on a call, using my bluetooth headset, and the caller needs me to check my calendar, or I need to take notes while on the call, or the caller needs me to find someone's phone number in my Contact book - or all 3 at the same time!

The Pocket Controller software allows me to connect to and operate my phone via my computer (and also allows for the kool skin that you see in the screenshots). This is now a must-have software if for nothing else

because it made an easy task out of getting my phone back up to speed after the full data erase necessary for the ROM upgrade. Re-adding my 4 email accounts is such a pain via the Mogul keyboard and my two thumbs, but using the Controller allowed me type with all the furious keyboard speed contained in my lightning-fast typing hands! :) The Controller does lots of other stuff too, but again, I'm running out of time.

I just had to put my $0.02 out into cyber-space along with all the other Mogul users to let you know my thoughts on this great phone. Don't get me wrong - it is a love/hate relationship, just like everything else. Somedays the screen freezes or missed calls or battery life issues are frustrating. But overall it's a good phone, it still make's the iPhone look like a toy I'd give to my 7-year old nephew, and it keeps getting better with every update!

Can't wait to update!

2008-07-08T17:24:00.003-04:00

Rumor has it that we're just days away from the official Sprint update of my phone, the HTC Mogul. This will be update #2 for this year.

I'm trying to be patient and wait for Sprint (even tho they've already missed two advertised delivery dates for this update). Otherwise, I can always download the official unofficial leaked version of the ROM. It's amazing how talented folks are out there - there are some super-techies out there developing software for my phone and hacking the existing ROM - and they do a better job of it than Sprint and HTC do!

The strong connection these days between manufacturers and their educated consumers is pretty impressive, especially when compared to, say, 10 years ago. As I surf the Net, I see unprecedented levels of community involvement in the development and QA of software and electronics. I believe most companies nowadays have a policy of putting out betas or leaked versions for the specific purpose of allowing the community to test and tweak their products (w/o paying them of course).

That makes me both excited and uneasy at the same time. It used to be that you could depend on manufacturers to make high-quality stuff that you can depend on. Now it seems like they throw 'whatever' over the fence, and let us figure out how to fix it. Somewhere around version 3.x the product is usually good enough to use. :-) Hmmm, interesting...

Site Design advice from the SEO Rapper

2008-06-14T09:16:00.002-04:00

I actually learned something from this. Why can't all technical information be delivered this creatively? :)

Hitting the road with my trusty PPC

2008-06-08T04:51:00.006-04:00

Took a trip to Toledo, Ohio this weekend. Used my HTC Mogul with Sprint Navigation for the whole trip. That included getting there, finding the hotel after leaving the event, finding an IHOP in the morning, and getting back home. It worked very reliably. The GPS is accurate to literally within a few yards of my location.

I've been meaning to blog about all the kool features of my phone, so I guess I'll start here with this navigation experience. I use Sprint Navigation when I need turn-by-turn directions spoken aloud to me by the little navigation lady. :) I also have Google Maps installed, which lately I've been using as a backup when Sprint Navigation information seems suspect (which isn't often). I also use it for fun when I walk the dog, to see the blue dot follow us around the neighborhood. :-)

Also, I realize that both of them make for great Yellow Pages. I can search for stores or restaurants near my location (or near any location with Google Maps) and get a listing, complete with phone numbers, links to websites, etc.

It's very liberating to have the power of navigation at your fingertips. Even in a new city, I felt like I could find my around anywhere I needed to go. I even matched my navigation directions up against those of a hometown local - they conceded that my phone was superior. :)

Classic movie interfaces

2008-05-20T07:45:00.005-04:00

Iron Man was pretty kool. But not only was it a good movie, it also showcased yet another 'hypothetical' futuristic computer interface. From fancy HUD interfaces to 3-D prototyping to voice-commanded AI robotics. Sweet. Do they sell any of that at Microcenter???

Here's my short list, in no particular order, of classic movie interfaces:

Iron Man - the crazy part is that the only part of the technology that he used that I think is 'way off' in the future (other than the suit of course) is Jarvis - I think we're a long way from being able to tell a computer to "throw some hot rod red into my design...", and have the computer do so in an aestethically pleasing way. And even if it did, to be able to do it so reliably that I don't even have to review it? To be able to walk away from the screen the way Tony Stark did??? Can I trust Vista like that? :)
Minority Report - the famous hands-free "magic wall". Goodbye thumb drives, hello big sheet of glass with all my data on it? :)
Lost in Space - there was a very brief scene where one of the characters was typing on a small interface, and in doing so mentioned how fast the interface was. What I thought was kool was how small the interface was, and yet in theory he was able to program all these complex commands, as well as get any necessary feedback that he needed. I don't think the movie makers were going for realism here, but I still thought it was kool.
Swordfish - remember the 6-monitor setup that the main character uses to create his super hack? I really don't think 6-monitors would be helpful for what he was trying to do, but it still looked cool.
The Matrix - here's an interface that I always wish I had whenever I'm trying to learn some new technology. Why can't I just download all the Wrox and APress books in the world directly into my brain??? :) Also, the idea of feedback to the user in the form of green flowing characters - interesting.
Disclosure - a "virtual reality" interface for content management? Kool! Interestingly, he still had to flip virtual pages in his virtual reality environment to read one of the documents. Is that a step forward or a step back in speed and efficiency?
iRobot - imagine not having to walk into a certain room at home to use my computer. Why can't my computer be whereever I am? Why can't every wall be a monitor? Or have the computer to create a holographic display right in front of me whereever I am? That's what V.I.K.I. was in this movie. I gotta get me one of those - minus the going crazy and trying to destroy the human race, of course. :)

Okay that's all I've got for now.

Show me...Teach me...

2008-05-12T22:04:00.007-04:00

I've always been pretty impressed with the out-of-the-box handwriting recognition capabilities that tablets provide. Even my sloppy handwriting gets recognized about 80-90% of the time.

I just realized, though, that there's actually a feature in Windows that helps the tablet to be even more accurate. Through a series of "write the following sentence" examples, I can train the tablet to be more familiar with my writing style.

I don't know why I didn't assume that this type of feature was there all along. Maybe with enough training I can get my tablet to recognize my infamous "-ing" - a squiggly line that looks like I'm falling asleep while writing any word that ends in "-ing". :-)

Fellow Blogger

2008-05-07T16:54:00.004-04:00

He was gracious enough to give me a shout-out, so I'm returning the favor: my friend and fellow Xbox player (Oblivion is the best, but he seems to favor Bioshock) Brian Prince has a blog. His is much more informative than mine, tho. :)

HP 2710 Tablet PC

2008-05-07T11:46:00.005-04:00

I've recently begun using HP's latest tablet pc, the 2710. My previous experience with tablets has been with my trusty (but old) Toshiba Satellite R15. To it's credit, it's definitely done it's job pretty well over the years, but as of now it's about 3 years old, and we know that in tech-years that means it's ancient and outdated. :)

But like many things in life, having the old stuff makes you really appreciate the new stuff. Here's what I appreciate so far about not just the HP tablet, but today's tablets in general:

Screen size - most tablets these days are 12 inches, and although that's smaller than my Toshiba, I've come to appreciate that 12 inches is enough. Also, it's a good deal because of my next point
Weight - because of the smaller screen size and other form factor decisions, even the heaviest of today's tablets seem to be lighter than my Toshiba. I'm pretty sure the HP is at least half the weight of my Toshiba, which means I'm now more comfortable with moving around, and to onlookers, I look less 'awkward'. :)
Integrated Bluetooth - on my Toshiba I need an external bluetooth receiver, separate software, and favor from the heavens to get bluetooth to work. Now with integrated hardware and Vista's built-in support, it's a much more pleasant experience.
Indoor/outdoor screen viewing - need I say more? Now I can work comfortably on a nice day in my sunroom! :)

Expect more info about my tablet experience in weeks to come...

Crisis

2008-04-28T15:48:00.003-04:00

Today I had a doctor's appointment. When I walked in, the standard ritual began. Fill this out, give me your insurance card, sign here, etc.

I started thinking about this process - in 2008, these doctor's offices are still doing the same things they did when I had doctor's visits in the 90's and even the 80's:

new patients have to fill out forms of the same standard name/address/etc information - more paper
they use a big photocopier to scan my little insurance card - more paper
i assume someone later types all this into an antiquated medical document system

Is this a "crisis" of information management? The quantity and rate of data that we want to store and manage in the world is growing every day - why isn't everyone embracing new content management systems that maximize the use of that data??

This I must ponder....

Pizza-tech

2008-04-25T17:51:00.002-04:00

I like pizza. Specifically Pizza Hut. So I of course was thrilled when years ago Pizza Hut was one of the first to add online ordering to their website. (if it was up to me I'd never pick up a phone and talk to a live person in life - so inefficient). :)

Now, they've added mobile phone ordering! I can use the browser on my phone, log into the mobile-friendly site, choose my pre-configured favorite pizza selection (medium pan with chicken & mushrooms), and that's it! They even have a Text Messaging option - I can text in my order! Sweet.

I love it when technology helps bring the delicious goodness of pizza to my fingertips. :)

2 brownie pts for Mac email

2008-04-18T22:46:00.005-04:00

Okay, anyone that knows me knows that it takes a lot to get a Mac compliment out of me. :) But I must admit, Mac made a small victory with me today with a little feature it has that apparently Windows doesn't.

Actually, the victory comes in using Mac's built-in email viewer vs. Microsoft Outlook. The other day my friend sent me about 10 emails. Each email had 1 photo attachment.

In both Mac and Outlook I had a way to preview the image w/o actually have to double click the file and open it in some other program. Outlook, however, required 1 click for the Preview, Mac didn't require any.

But that's not the victory yet. What I realized is that I wanted to save all 10 images into a folder on my hard drive. What's the easiest way to do this? What I would assume is that I can just highlight all the emails, and save "Save All Attachments".

In Mac, that's exactly what I was able to do.

Apparently Outlook couldn't fathom that such a scenario would ever occur. :) Outlook assumes I'd ever only want to Save All on a per-email basis - not across multiple emails.

So, for once I had a pleasing Mac experience while trying to do some practical work. Who would've thunk it... :)

Homestyle ECM - Archiving Emails

2008-04-18T22:28:00.006-04:00

How do you go about storing your emails?

In the past, I've always used PST files from Outlook. Every year or so, I spit out a huge honking 1 Gig PST file that represents all the emails from the previous year. Store it somewhere nice, do a big, time-consuming Import later if I ever feel I need it again.

Okay, that's getting old. What I really want is to be able to access 60 years worth of emails right at my fingertips without having to do any importing/exporting, and w/o having a huge data file in Outlook that affects performance.

Two options I'm looking at right now - both are "desktop search engines": Vista and Copernic.

Copernic will index and search emails just fine. It pretty much does what I want except for one thing: it wants me to keep those emails in Outlook in order for it to index them. I don't want that. I know that Outlook isn't going to be happy with me keeping tens of thousands of emails in its data file.

What about Vista's search engine? Turns out that yes, Vista will index my emails within normal file folders. Great! So now, instead of PST exports, I can just copy the raw emails to file folders.

The caveat - it doesn't seem to be working right:

Where's all my metadata? This interface (above) is exactly what I need ... if it was actually working. I need those columns to actually display the data that they claim to display. Hmmmm. If anybody knows what's up with this, please let me know.

i'll keep researching...

Enterprise Content Management... at home???

2008-04-18T22:16:00.002-04:00

In the corporate enterprise, content management issues are no surprise. How do we as an organization manage, store, search & retrieve the huge amount of data that makes up our business? Emails, documents, images, etc.

There are certainly plenty of fancy tools and options at our disposal for helping with this process. I myself and currently involved in the implentation of MOSS 2007 at my job, which seems to be one of the more popular ECM solutions right now.

But the interesting thing for me now is that, after 15+ years of being a power user of my computer and related technologies - as well as being a pack rat who can't throw away his digital artifacts - I realize I'm now facing the same issues that many large organizations face:

What do I do with 8 years worth of personal emails? What's the best way to archive emails 8 years ago in such a way that I can still find it easily if needed?
How do I store/search/retrieve old documents?
How do I search thru my e-books for specific information?
What's the best way to organize terabytes of data spread across 8 different hard drives that I've accumulated over the years?
How do I categorize physical backup media? Data that I've burned to CD/DVD for backup - how can I find it now that it's sitting on the shelf?
What kind of distaster recovery processes should I have in place? ie, how do I keep from losing gigabytes worth of precious digital family photos? Do I trust my hard drives? Or do I trust physical media like DVDs as backups? Will any of these technologies last as long as my grandmothers old picture scrapbook? - will I be able to show my grandkids my childhood pictures via DVD???

I'm gonna explore these issues over the coming months, and try to document my findings. I mean, if big business can find a way to manage its content, why can't I? :- )

This goes out to my Mac-head peeps...

2008-04-17T22:11:00.001-04:00

See, what did I tell you? Vista ain't so bad after all. :-)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=sPv8PPl7ANU

Giga to Tera

2008-04-13T11:02:00.000-04:00

I found my old hard drive from college collecting dust in a box downstairs. I'm now realizing this was only a 2 gigabyte drive I was running back then. I don't even remember ever having issues with running out of space. That was the 90's. In 2008, I'm now shopping for deals on TERABYTE drives, thinking that I can no longer live without one (or two). :)

Mac needs "stability fixes"????????

2008-04-04T19:27:00.003-04:00

Well, there certainly are a whoooole lot of tweaks and fixes included in the latest Leopard OS update. I even see a few STABILITY fixes in there.

Now that I'm a Mac owner, I'm privy to these updates and what-not. Prior to, I never would have known that Mac's required software updates. In fact, it seems like everytime I turn on this Mini in the couple of months that I've had it, seems like I always see that little Update icon bouncing around. When I go see what the big to-do is, I see a list of some hefty-sized updates it wants me to download.

Hmmm - they're certainly not putting THAT little factoid in the commercials... :- )

(originally posted 2/12/08)

Macbook air hands-on

2008-04-04T19:27:00.001-04:00

Got a hands-on introduction to the Air laptop today. It felt a lot more sturdy than I thought it would be for its size. Also seemed like it was handling heat dissipation pretty well. If it wasn't for the outrageous price it might make for a pretty good compliment to a moofing lifestyle.

--sent from mobile phone--

(originally posted 2/12/08)

Vista ain't so bad

2008-04-04T19:26:00.001-04:00

I read an interesting article talking about the upcoming service pack for Vista and XP. Some of the folks commenting on the article started the standard debate among Windows OS users about how XP is better than Vista (aka "Vista sucks").

I actually upgraded to Vista on my main machine a few months ago. I did it for a few reasons. One, I was doing my personal bi-annual "build myown monster machine" routine, and so I figured I might as well put the latest and greatest on this new machine, especially since I knew my hardware was beefy enough to handle it. Also, I know that Vista will ultimately become the OS of choice, despite what the critics say, and I made the decision that I was ready to deal with the standard headaches of the early-adopter until Vista got nice & stable & popular.

Anyway, I thought some of the comments in the article were both quite ignorant and quite eloquent. Check it out:

"if XP can perform 5% better than Vista...it means Vista is crap..."
- I would say it a different way - "Vista has a ton of new features, has a fully-overhauled and visually pleasing graphic interface, and with all that it only performs 5% slower than XP..."
"XP can perform better on older computers and Vista requires some pretty heavy hardware to be useful..."
- I think it's funny how people still want to be able to use their grandmother's hand-me-down computer for the next 20 years, and if something new comes out that doesn't work well with their hamster-driven machine, they have a problem. Nevertheless, as someone pointed out, if you actually go price a new machine these days, you'll see that you can buy a new machine that is fully Vista-capable, plus some extra memory, for as little as $400 if you shop right. If your money is too funny for that expense right now, then sure, stick with your Hyundai without making fun of our Escalade.
"Notice how few folks are around saying that XP's an abortion and Microsoft should have stopped with Windows 98? The trend is already starting to turn around in exactly that way for Vista versus XP..."
- Amen, brother.

It's true that we as consumers basically tell folks like Microsoft, thru our behavior, that we want NEW NEW NEW and we want it NOW NOW NOW. So when they speed-push the new stuff to market, it's funny how we then complain when a few bugs got thru in that hurried process. Oh well, I guess we'll all have to wait and see how this new generation of OS's turns out. Tho I have a suspicion that I already know..... ;- )

(originally posted 2/1/08)

I won

2008-04-04T19:25:00.002-04:00

I went to a microsoft event tonite (yes, that's how I spend my evenings) and won this tshirt in the door prize giveaway. Had to take a picture to capture the unique packaging - figured that posting it here was the best way to document it. :) in case you're wondering that symbol is for Visual Studio, a Microsoft product.

--sent from mobile phone--

(originally posted 1/24/08)

One Device to Rule Them All...

2008-04-04T19:25:00.001-04:00

I think I've found a good analogy that describes my experience thus far with the Mac:

Let's say this remote is my Mac. Obviously, very simple. Some might say even stylish in it's simplicity. This remote probably has about 10 features, and each one of those features it probably does flawlessly. Everything's laid out intuitively and you never have to worry about getting lost. You don't have to worry about it accidentally turning on/off any of your other devices, because it only works specifically with the TV that it came with. It's not a universal remote - you can't put codes in it to operate your other entertainment systems. And not much thought is required about "how" to use it - you use it the way it's designed. If you had some other ideas about how a remote should work, you should forget them.

Now, in my house, I own a universal remote called the MX-500. It's a fully-programmable universal remote. You can map actions to the hardware buttons. You can program macros commands (I have a macro that turns on/off the tv, cable, audio receiver, and DVD with one button. I have macros that change the tv and audio receiver configurations for, say, DVD-viewing vs. VCR-viewing, etc.) The buttons illuminate. The remote can "clone" another remote by pointing the IR sensors together. It can even be programmed to remote control light dimmers should I be adventurous enough to install them.

Nevertheless, as a result of all these features, I will admit that this remote is not very "friendly" to the casual user, including my wife. (over the years, she has grown to live with it and learn just enough of its features to get by) You would not be able to just look at this remote and figure out how to use it the way I do. (You wouldn't know to press "Main", then hold down one of the panel buttons to run a macro). And if you pressed the wrong sequences of buttons, you might find yourself stuck in some state that you would not easily be able to recover from, thus making the remote useless [for you] until I came over and helped you out.

But - and ay, here's the rub - I wouldn't trade this 1 remote for any of the 6 stylish and simple remotes that it replaced in my house. I gladly give up simplicity and even stability for the God-like power to control and interface with any and everything, and to do things with this remote that perhaps the manufacturer hadn't even thought about. Many times, I do experience limitations. It happens when my TV's manufacturer, for instance, doesn't give my remote the proper access or code authorization to access all of it's features. So, every now and then there's some sublte, hidden feature of my DVD, for example, that I can only access by getting up off the couch and doing by hand, or (heaven forbid) grabbing that DVD player's remote to access the feature.

But do I fault my remote control for this? No, I give it a pat on the back for doing a 85% good job of interfacing and playing nicely with all these other components. My remote has made a decision to bravely enter and play in the world of other electronics. It has not required me to make my home on an island called Basic Remote - an island with one TV, and one set of rules, and one way of thinking.

Rather than being the ruler of that island, a small kingdom though tightly controlled, I'd rather rule the world. Yes, I may have only loose control: a few riots every now and then, a recession or two, a stock market crash maybe, a war here and there. But still - I rule. Ask your boy GW Bush - he'll tell you the same... :)

(originally posted 1/21/08)

Deceptive (aka bold-face lie) commercials

2008-04-04T19:24:00.002-04:00

I was reflecting on Apple's commercial where they were making fun of Vista for its new security feature, which asks for your permission everytime it wants to do something that could be potentially dangerous.

Well here I am on my MacMini, and lo and behold they have the same thing - every now and then when I try to do something, the Mac confirms that I want to do it. To do that, it asks for my user password (on Vista, you can just hit Continue). I found this very interesting.

Well, let me get back to troubleshooting my Mac printer installation - the very process that one of my friends went on and on about in terms of Mac-simplicity. Perhaps I'll blog later on the details of my printer woes, but the short story is that I installed from disk the drivers to a Mac-compatible Canon printer, but yet now I find it hard to find anything related to the printer driver i just installed. Perhaps the Mac is hiding the details of the installation from me in an attempt to "keep things simple". Yeah, that's working out real well...

(originally posted 1/20/08)

Moofing

2008-04-04T19:22:00.001-04:00

I just learned a new word that describes my lifestyle pretty well - moofing. Mobile out of office. Describes 'where you are/ what you're doing when you're not at your desk or office but yet fully contactable and able to work as normal'. If you arm me with my trusty tablet pc and my pocket pc cell phone (which doubles as a wireless modem), then a moofer is what I become!

Unfortunately my mac mini has yet to prove itself as an ally in my moofistic lifestyle. Being that it is morally opposed to my windows mobile device, and thus refuses to sync nicely with my calendar items, puts yet another barrier between it and my coveted primary workstation area. :)

--sent from mobile phone--

(originally posted 1/4/08)

iChat, You Chat, til our connection goes to crap...

2008-04-04T19:21:00.001-04:00

So, I hooked up with some of my Mac buddies - two in Cali, one in Ohio - and got a 4-person video chat going. As you can see from the snapshot, it's got a pretty impressive interface. What was also impressive was the file/photo sharing. I was able to stream a Billy Ocean music video ("Caribbean Queen", of course) and an Al Green mp3 to the other 3 people, pretty seamlessly. Nice.

The only downside is that I was the only one in the bunch without a native Mac-friendly web cam. Mine is more of a Vista-certified Logitech USB camera. I had to install 3 different pieces of software on the Mac to get it to work, and even then, I was the one that kept getting dropped out of the chat, or my mike would stop working.

I guess the question is, do I ding Mac for making me install 3 pieces of 3rd-party software in order to use a name-brand web cam? Or do I ding myself for not following the Mac motto: use our stuff, and only our stuff, til death do us part?

I know that the major instant messenger folks on Windows also have video chat capability (I chat with my wife via MSN Messenger video all the time, cuz I'm too lazy to walk up the stairs to her office). Never tried 4 people on video chat, tho. And, although I'm sure both Win & Mac can do basic video chats, I'm pretty sure the iChat interface is a lot better than the others.

On a side note, this is the first blog post I've composed while on the Mac. it's also the first blog post to give me formatting errors that made me have to look at the HTML to figure out what was going on. I don't know if this is just coincidence, but I HAD to mention it (hehehe...)

Hmmmm, on we go....

(originally posted 1/3/08)

Force Quit... Already???

2008-04-04T19:18:00.000-04:00

So, I'm like just a couple weeks into my Mac ownership, and already i'm using the 'task manager' to kill rogue processes? In this case, one of the disc mounting processes was running in the background and keeping me from ejecting [another] disc. Hmmm...seems like i'm using all the same troubleshooting skills I learned in the Windows world. I didn't think I was gonna need those bag of tricks in Steve's world. :)

I also tried to do a screenshot of my error message using the Grab service. Thought I could capture the image and paste it into an email message. Does that sound too much like right? Wouldn't let me do it.

I also realized that I never liked the menu bar for the apps always being context-sensitive and sitting at the very top of my screen. "Attention managment" is important to me - seems inconvenient to have to take my eyes all the way up to the top of the screen to do something with a window I'm using near the bottom of my screen. And that's if the menu updates to the new context fast enough, and is not still showing the menu for the last window I clicked on. (hmm, maybe that's a Mini thing)

To top it all off, I love the message Mac gave me about my problem from their Help files:

"If this happens, WAIT A FEW MOMENTS and try again..."

Who is this message written for? Are there computer users out there in 2008 that actually DON'T wait a few moments prior to being frustrated enough to check the Help files??? And apparently, in this case a 'moment' was like 10 minutes before I started having to search for a process to kill.

So far, I feel right at home in my Mac world - my woes thus far are very familiar..... ;- )

(originally posted 1/1/08)

Window resizing

2008-04-04T19:15:00.000-04:00

So, I've been told that it's "all the subtle little things" about Macs that make them so nice. But for me, so far it's the little things that are getting on my nerve. In Win, I can resize a window from any corner/edge. In Mac, only lower right-hand corner. That's gonna bug me eventually. I wonder if somebody has a good reason for this limitation? Interesting...

(originally posted 12/28/07)

Journey to the Dark side

2008-04-04T13:15:00.000-04:00

Well, I decided to drink a little of the kool-aid and give Stevie J. and his backstreet boys a try by buying a Mac Mini. I had planned on blogging every step of my journey, however, since I know I don't have the time & patience to write a cohesive and comprehensive chronicle of my experience, plus the fact that folks like Anand have already expressed it so thoroughly, I think I'll just throw random thoughts out here along the way. We'll see how this little experiment goes...

I'd like to point out that on Day 1, I put a CD in the drive. Standard task, right? The Mac didn't see the disc. Wouldn't let me eject it. Had to restart before it would work. Did I buy a Mac or is this a mini-Windows98 box? Hmmm, not what i expected......

(originally posted 12/23/07)

And the adventure begins...

2008-04-04T13:13:00.000-04:00

Step 1 for my new blog is to migrate my technical posts to this blog from an older blog I have (those posts weren't really appropriate there). Then the fun will begin...