From 9 till 2

This is *really* worth a watch, as it's easier to understand when you see it moving.

http://wave.google.com/

Nice summary here: http://mashable.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-guide/

I'm fascinated by collaboration technologies, and this one seems to have real potential. Really interesting to compare/contrast this as a XMPP style vs the Atom / FeedSync's out there.

Still absorbing it all, but the specs /apis are a good start: http://code.google.com/apis/wave/

- David

I like my iPhone, although a better name for it would be iBrowser, as it's a fairly ordinary phone but a great web browser. As nearly everything I do is web-based then the device has turned into a really important computer that I need and use every day.

One thing that wasn't obvious to me initially is that the native apps and the app store are a crucial feature. The combination of the sandbox attitude to keeping the core functionality always working (uh, well, 'always' being subjective I guess) and the integrated download/buy app store is superb. It's basically a true mobile computer that trojan horse'd its way in to my pocket from being called a phone.

The really odd thought for today for me is that I can't easily write code for it. Since about 1993 I've written apps for all sorts of different Microsoft platforms (including some WinCE) and here I have my first really practical mobile PC and I can't do 'what I do' with it. I know enough C++ to be dangerous, but my head is full with existing frameworks and I can't summon up the energy for yet another platform/sdk.

How did it happen that the best asset that Microsoft can use (their dev community) got left behind in terms of mobile computing?

You don't have to be Nostradamus to predict that for a lot of people, both personal and business, that mobile devices (and smaller laptops) are the way forward. I can't think of anything more important that Microsoft should be working on than competing with the iPhone 'experience'. Either that or start targeting more device platforms with their tooling and run-times.

The PC BeigeBox market of a hardware vendor with a software vendor may not be a do-over in terms of the mobile computing platform. Experience is king. 

- David

PS Yep, Android, yep windows moble, yep mono/unity etc. Flame on...

After some pretty nice things written about OutlookDeck I thought it would be daft to just leave it alone. Today I put a bit more time in, tightened up a couple of things, and worked on a new feature.

In the spirit of OutlookDeck being a 'test bed' of new email visualisations I've added a 'Word Cloud' generator. Here's one for me for last year (i.e. notice the query):

Note: This cloud was against my spare gmail address, hence the adsense spam obsession (how do you get them to stop sending daily reports anyway?). Hopefully yours will be much more interesting.

So what you can do is setup any specific query you like in OutlookDeck and then see what sort of words are most commonly used in the content of those emails - just press the new wee button next to the close 'x' on each deck header. The text processing is fairly simple, with the top 100 terms shown (with some stop words and stemming used).

Think of it as a 'personal zeitgeist' machine. The concept behind the cloud is to capture some nice snapshots in time for various things you talk about in email. i.e. try a "From: MyBoss' date:last week" and see if they ever change subject. Maybe try various newsletters and see what they concentrate on etc.

Have fun!

- David

PS The beta feedback is trickling in and I have a couple of ideas in mind, but please do let rip on ideas and comments here: http://outlookdeck.uservoice.com

Download (Windows, .NET 3.5 required) from here or read more from here.

 

'OutlookDeck' is a homage to the popular Twitter desktop client 'TweetDeck' but for all your Outlook emails. It's an experiment in a different way to view your mail info. You can get a good idea of what it does from this screenshot:

The background to this is that I spent the day today writing my first WPF app and needed an excuse of something (real-ish) to do. While over the last couple of years I've read books/articles and seen presentations on WPF, I haven't really had the opportunity to use it that much. Truth be told, I'm fairly sceptical (Editor Note: Gosh - really?!) about where the technology is generally heading, as I see web apps as the real future; and if it wasn't to be HTML then I'd go for Air or Silverlight. In this case I found an excuse for a desktop app, i.e. your local email store.

But anyhoo, I unexpectedly had today free and it was fun. WPF makes it very easy to data bind (it's Windows Search underneath all this) plus Expression Blend is a nice way to lather everything up with rounded corners and gradient grays. As you can see, Edward Tufte will be running scared at my inspired UX skills. If you are feeling brave and want to try it out then please feel free. Download here (Windows, .NET 3.5):

Update (again, last one): A ClickOnce install with updates and fixes here (better than installers, as you get the latest as I fiddle):

http://www.from9till2.com/OutlookDeck/OutlookDeck.application

Requires .NET 3.5 from here if you get an error on install. Oh, and if you're on XP then WDS here.

Smallestdotnet says:

Update (I lied about being the last one above, ignore): If you do try OutlookDeck and want me to fiddle with it some more then please vote/suggest some things to do with it here: http://outlookdeck.uservoice.com

- David

PS I wasn't planning on fiddling with it much more but the '1 day plan' was to put an installer for it, plus finish off the 'Groups' stuff (i.e. the 'All Friends' was a stub, if you know TweetDeck you'll know what I mean) and make it 'less black' with some anims/re-sizey-fontness; but alas the day is over. Contact me on twitter 'david_ing' if you have questions/ideas/beer/hockeytickets.

This book is interesting for a couple of reasons, in that all the contributions were first drafted via a wiki and that the author submissions are part of a Creative Commons license. The submissions went through a group review process, with the final the bits being scooped up for publishing. It's an interesting and light-weight approach to a group book.

I'd often been tempted to invest some more time in tech writing, but have heard through friends in the field that it has to be a true labor of love, i.e. the time you put in will very rarely pay the bills. The best way to think of software books from a writing perspective (at least in the relatively narrow fields that I could write about) is as something that bolsters your self-marketing but not much more.

This book from my perspective is sort of the opposite of that, i.e. very little time required from me plus a painless editing/review cycle. Plus of course it was fun to read the other submissions too. I also think that some short bite-size chunks of anecdotes and advice on software architecture probably fills a hole in what's out there, as software books do tend to be pages of screenshots/code and prescriptive advice and this is quite a contrast to that.

PS: I wrote chapter 56, although most of my jokes, commas and mid-atlantic spellings got, quite properly, edited out.

Dear Readers,

This blog has billions of customers. To best serve them I've decided to tune it up to a number of much-asked for SKU's. The concept and SKU choices for this blog are quite simple:

- From9till2 Starter Edition.
You can only read three blog posts at one sitting, plus comments must be left via VT-220 on a token ring lan. This SKU was requested by Netbook users who felt overwhelmed and over-excited with too many features.

- From9till2 Home Basic Edition.
For this SKU you have all the benefits of Starter Edition plus a three colour CSS theme. You may also leave mixed-case character comments via any device (not including iphone). Note: the words `A Basic Person` will be appended to your name for any comments you leave.

- From9till2 Home Premium Edition.
In this much requested SKU the back button now works, plus I am addressing the specific market of people who like to read text with punctuation characters included. Note '?' character not included. You may also not translate any postings to Portuguese in this SKU.

- From9till2 Home Premium Basic Edition.
As requested by Home Premium Edition customers, to enable Portuguese *and* punctuation characters I have created this special SKU to meet both this specific market need and your convenience. Note: CSS colour theme is now disabled.

- From9till2 Professional Non-Basic Edition.
A combination of the Starter, Home and Home Premium Edition with features removed by using an XOR bitwise mask on any function that starts with a vowel. Or a 'y', which is almost a vowel.

- From9till2 Ultimate Home Basic Professional Non-Portuguese Edition.
As requested by this blogs customer's, the exciting UHBPN-P Edition removes the ambiguity created by the word 'Archive' starting with a vowel. Note: Disk image 'archive' not included.

- From9till2 Enterprise Starter Ultimate Home Edition.
Ideally read in large homes, where the reader is targeting business software for < 10 users. A VT-220 keyboard mapping poster is available as a downloadable XPS file. Note: XPS reader not included.

As you can tell, I am pretty excited to offer this blog in these SKU's. Don't forget you can upgrade to any of them at any time by using money.

More info here.

- David

Cool, or should I say 'wonderfl' (the web 2.0 heinous crimes against spelling continue, despite economy).

http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/02/01/wonderfl-online-live-flash-code-wrangling-service/

So, how about:

- Um, Flash? I already know the CLR, so how about a Silverlight version so Ruby/Python/C# people can play?

- An online Silverlight XAML Pad? That would be neat.

- A community of examples, i.e. a youtube for code. Instant gratification.

- Browser -> View Source probably taught more people to program than colleges. This shared interactive sandbox has got to be good.(*)

- I wonder how sharing chunks of code (libraries/modules/snippets) would fit into this rather than whole apps.

- Not realistic, but an Oslo 'Quadrant' editor online would be pretty good, i.e. share the code with all the config/metadata.

So has 'Actionscript' really become this generations equivilent of Sinclair Basic? Or are we just moving towards an online collaborative smalltalk?

- David

(*) Good as in a intro to programming that spawns a legion of attention deficit procedual hackers all building missle command clones type good.