With word on the next version of the XBox360 coming out “soon” with some nice upgrades (HDMI = yummy). I’m sure glad I didn’t push to get my wife to let me buy one over the Christmas vacation. I’m definitely saving up now with the intention to buy one when it’s available.
Read more...With yesterday’s post from the googlereader blog detailing how they’ve added the new personal stats feature, a number of people have speculated on Google releasing the information in an aggregate form. As speculated earlier on this blog and others, Google may be in a position to compete in the social web with the likes of Digg. Of course this would require aggregate data on individual posts (which I’m sure they’re gathering). Another site that Google could easily compete with would be Technorati, the stats that they’re currently showing are for individual feeds, which usually correspond to an individual site. It would be trivial to provide a listing of most read and most shared feeds, those would be some interesting stats I think. Maybe call it Feedorati? Regardless, I’m expecting with 2007 to be the year of the Social Web that Google will be adding alot more social aspects to their services, and this is likely a step in that direction.
Read more...The ability to NOT overengineer a problem. One of my latest tasks was to take a spreadsheet and update a SQL database with data from that spreadsheet. A pilot had already been run, I was responsible for developing a deployable script. I asked the pilot team to send me the script they used. Turned out they took the spreadsheet, converted it to XML using a XML map, and copied and pasted that into the script. They then used OPENXML and proceeded to use a cursor to update each field one-by-one. Ostensibly, this was done for logging purposes. I replaced it with three update statements using OPENDATASOURCE direct to the spreadsheet with inner and left joins. Much more maintainable and likely more performat. Remember, just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD. And XML does not solve everything (sacrilege I know).
Read more...Rex (I hope he doesn’t mind me calling him Rex) pointed me to this site. The aim is to raise a million dollars in 30 days for kids with dyslexia and learning disabilities. A worthy cause, make sure you digg the article so we can get the word out. I think Rex brings up a bigger question as well, can the Social Web truly make a difference? Is it big enough, and well connected enough, to really have an impact in the lives of those who are not a part of it? I think the answer is yes myself. And if it’s not currently, it’s certainly heading in that direction. Unfortunately this is the first I had heard of 8wishes and their self-imposed deadline is in a week. So hurry up and get the word out!
Read more...Knowing when to quit and start over. Sometimes whatever design or architecture you’re working on isn’t the right one. The trick is knowing when to admit you were wrong, stop and start over. The sooner you realize you’ve gone down the wrong path, the better. I’ve just spent too much time trying to embed a number of controls into a ListView in an efficient manner. I went so far as to override WndProc and try to do the scrolling myself. Ah well, a left/right pane approach is probably better anyway.
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