Mikel Berger: September 2004 Archives

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September 30, 2004

Data Sources

Data Sources, a listing of software companies, sounds like something to check out. I wonder how we get listed.

http://wesnerm.blogs.com/net_undocumented/2004/09/data_sources.html

Here's where to find it in the Purdue Libraries

Posted by mikel at 07:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 28, 2004

Stuff to learn from the Bubble

Some select quotes from Paul Graham's latest article. While I'm partial to the point about 26 year olds, I the real point is that it's your ideas and execution that matter more than how old (or young) you are.

The hard part, if you want to win by making the best stuff, is the beginning. Eventually everyone will learn by word of mouth that you're the best, but how do you survive to that point? And it is in this crucial stage that the Internet has the most effect. First, the Internet lets anyone find you at almost zero cost. Second, it dramatically speeds up the rate at which reputation spreads by word of mouth. Together these mean that in many fields the rule will be: Build it, and they will come. Make something great and put it online. That is a big change from the recipe for winning in the past century.

There is a huge standard deviation among 26 year olds. Some are fit only for entry level jobs, but others are ready to rule the world if they can find someone to handle the paperwork for them.
A 26 year old may not be very good at managing people ... The most important quality in a CEO is his vision for the company's future. What will they build next?

That's the problem with formality. Dressing up is not so much bad in itself. The problem is the receptor it binds to: dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as "suits."

When one looks over these trends, is there any overall theme? There does seem to be: that in the coming century, good ideas will count for more. That 26 year olds with good ideas will increasingly have an edge over 50 year olds with powerful connections. That doing good work will matter more than dressing up-- or advertising, which is the same thing for companies. That people will be rewarded a bit more in proportion to the value of what they create.

Posted by mikel at 09:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Re-throwing exceptions

We just covered exception handling in CPT 355 and several students were rethrowing exceptions in their labs. Good advice on how to handle that situation.

http://dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com/archives/004118.shtml

via http://blog.mobilizedsoftware.com/archives/001491.html

Posted by mikel at 04:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

.NET Mobility Road Show

Maybe the CPT 355 class should take a field trip :)

http://www.msmobilityroadshow.com/

Posted by mikel at 04:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

.NET Remoting vs web services

A couple of links about when to choose remoting vs. web services.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/bdadotnetarch14.asp

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/bdadotnetarch16.asp

http://blogs.msdn.com/shawnmor/archive/2004/05/27/143211.aspx

With an eye towards the future...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/understanding/pillars/Indigo/default.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/longhorn/understanding/pillars/indigo/default.aspx?pull=/msdnmag/issues/04/01/Indigo/default.aspx

Posted by mikel at 04:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 27, 2004

cross platform .net development

A couple of good postings on developing applications for the compact framework and the full framework

http://www.zen13120.zen.co.uk/Blog/2004/09/share-code-if-fullframe_17.html

http://www.zen13120.zen.co.uk/Blog/2004/09/retargetable-256.html

Swoosh! uses the same "business logic" dll (exact same binary) and then different exe UIs (one compact framework and several full framework) on top of that. I definitely agree that in general it isn't worth it to use the same exe. Who wants a Pocket PC UI on a 17" monitor? I had heard of the conditional compilation constant approach before but wasn't comfortable enough to use it at the time I started Swoosh!. This article lays out more of how to set things up. I think if I had done it that way, it would have saved a lot of time copy and pasting stuff back and forth.

via Windows Mobile Team

Posted by mikel at 03:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Mobile2Market Catalog and Pop Ups

Swoosh! is listed in Microsoft's Moble Application Catalog. However, there is a major flaw that results in the catalog being a lot less usefull. You can search or browse to find Swoosh!, but if someone is actually interested in learning more the catalog makes that difficult. There is a link to our site, but the catalog launches it in a popup window. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer on XP SP 2 block it. So using Microsoft's web browser to view the Microsoft catalog for software to run on the Microsoft platform doesn't work.

I emailed the Mobile2Market Team back on Sept 4 but I haven't received a response yet. Does anyone else involved with the catalog have any ideas on if they even know this is a problem?

It doesn't look like we've gotten any downloads of Swoosh! because of the Mobile2Market catalog anyway, so I'm probably making a big deal out of something that won't affect the bottom line. But I went through the trouble of getting Swoosh! accepted in the catalog, so I'd like it to work.

Posted by mikel at 03:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 21, 2004

C# Strongly Typed Collections

I've never used strongly typed collections before but for a little side learning project I decided to. It was really simple and the benefit of type safety seemed to be worth it. But it's not really that big of a gain in the whole scheme of things. So while I thought I was missing out on something big, it's really not that big of a deal and should be even more of a mute point once we have generics.

Anywhere, here are few references just in case I decide to revisit this in the future.

http://www.samspublishing.com/articles/article.asp?p=27578

http://builder.com.com/5100-6373-1050004.html

http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2003/03/10/collections.html

And a little debate on the topic

http://weblogs.asp.net/asanto/archive/2003/06/24/9201.aspx

Posted by mikel at 08:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 20, 2004

401(k) For The Self-Employed

Something to look into in the future.

http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/contributors.asp?id=307

Planning Idea: If your business is just getting started and your compensation is $13,000 or less, you can contribute the entire amount to a solo 401(k). This is an opportunity to shelter your entire income from taxation.

Posted by mikel at 02:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

At least they got Fortran right

for David anyway.

The 2004 home computer as predicted 50 years ago.

http://manalang.com/archives/2004/09/19/the-home-computer-of-2004/

"With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use"

via Scoble Update: It's a hoax, but still funny. :)

Posted by mikel at 11:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

MSDE Workload Governor

This article explains how the workload governor works and when it kicks in in MSDE 2000.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/?url=/library/en-us/architec/8_ar_sa2_0ciq.asp?frame=true

Posted by mikel at 10:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 16, 2004

Starting a software small business

The Linux Show did a show on Tuesday about starting your own software business. They pretty much covered all the basics. They interviewed a lawyer and Barry Moltz.

Posted by mikel at 06:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 14, 2004

Mattern has a blog

David told me that Ryan Mattern has a blog. Now I can listen to him rant about fantasy football on the league site, on the Yahoo! group, and now on his blog!

Posted by mikel at 01:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

CutePDF

Via a comment on slashdot, I found a new free PDF writer. Much nicer than PDF995 that I was using because it doesn't show an ad after writing the PDF.

http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp

Posted by mikel at 12:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 10, 2004

lunch links

I had an interesting lunch with Brad, Chad, and Kerry yesterday at Olive Garden. Links below to several of the random things we talked about.

NGallery
Picasa
GMail Notifier

But the biggest excitement was when the waiter knocked a coat rack over on my head!

Posted by mikel at 11:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 05, 2004

Basketball Statistics Software

This week we're going to release Swoosh! and I received a link to to a similiar application called SCORE. My first thought was that they had a lot more than what Swoosh! has to offer. They might, but I think that's part of what makes our product better. Just the stats you need for your team, nothing more to get in the way or cause problems. On the surface it seems similiar, but the markets are really different. SCORE is targeting college scouts and the high school coaches that deal with them. Swoosh! targets the high school or small college coach who wants the easiest way to gather and analyze basketball statistics.

I'd recommend you check out their site, but it's not much more than a Flash ad. I'll be sure to post here when you can download the free trials and try out Swoosh! for yourself.

Posted by mikel at 10:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 02, 2004

Icons

This looks to be a good resource for icons. Good icons can make an application look really professional and bad icons can make even an awesome app seem horrible.

Mikel Berger

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