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June 27, 2005

Interfaces and dynamic assembly loading

Scott Hanselman's article from a couple weeks back could be useful for an upcoming project where we have to connet with several different data sources.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/coding4fun/someassemblyrequired/hotinhere/default.aspx

Posted by mikel at 11:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 20, 2005

Indiana Brain Drain

Lots of people in Indiana keep talking about the brain drain. It's one of the benefits of my company that we always bring up when talking to people at Purdue or other places around the state. Kyle and I were both born in Indiana, I graduated from Purdue, and with both would like to work in technical fields in Indiana. There were some options but not many. Most people complain and just move out of state, I guess. But I think that's ripe territory for starting your own business. So far it hasn't been that difficult. There have been several workshops that I've attended around the Lafayette area.that were helpful.

Anyway, this post prompted by this article in Inside Indiana Business and then this little tidbit from Joel on Software (FogCreek Software is in New York City).

For some reason, this year’s summer intern class consists of 75% people who are either from Indiana or who went to school in Indiana.

Posted by mikel at 07:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 19, 2005

PayPal Payment Processing

You can now use PayPal to accept credit cards without having to redirect your customers to PayPal's site. DelMar currently uses PayPal and it's worked well for our low volume sales. But we have had a customer or two question PayPal. But with this all the PayPal stuff is invisible.

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_wp-pro-overview-outside

via

Signal vs. Noise

Posted by mikel at 04:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 14, 2005

No functional specs

Stories, scenerios, and the UI is the place to start.

Functional specifications document are yes documents. Theyre political. Theyre all about getting to yes and we think the goal up front should be getting to no. Functional specs lead to scope creep from the very start. Theres very little cost in saying yeah, ok, lets add that to a Word document.

http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives/001050.php

Posted by mikel at 09:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 09, 2005

T-Mobile GPRS Settings for Microsoft Smartphones

Yesterday I got an i-mate SP3i to test out from Kyle for CPT 355. Microsoft donated two of them and a Pocket PC Phone Edition device but we needed to provide our own sim cards. Not a problem since Kyle already had lots of actived sims from Abe's project that used TMobile Pocket PC Phone Edition PDAs. Everything was working except for data access over the GPRS network until I found these settings.

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?s=61bd49024b59d41a66c8b86c2f327c48&t=576307&page=1&pp=15

Now everything seems to be working great.

I'm off to the Verizon Wireless store tonight to see what the options are for getting a new sim for my personal use since Jessica and I are due for new phones anyway.

[Update] No luck with Verizon Wireless. I didn't realize that none of their phones use SIMs. He said I'd have to go with Cingular or T-Mobile (both that we've used at Purdue) to get a SIM. Most of the people I talk to the most use VZW, so we really like those unlimited in network minutes. Shoot.

Posted by mikel at 01:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 07, 2005

IEEE Suggestions

Several issues brought up in this article could be addressed by the CPT project Jessica, Kyle, and I are looking at starting.

Increase women's enrollment in CS. A greater disparity exists between male and female students enrolled in CS in the West than in the East. For example, 65 percent of the computing students at the Carnegie Mellon University campus in Qatar are female. The "Globalizing Computing Science Education" sidebar speaks to this issue.

Train high school computing science teachers. This can be accomplished through summer workshops. CS departments should also help high schools redefine their computing curriculum for grades 10, 11, and 12.

Make CS courses fun. Design computer programming courses suitable for students in the arts.


http://www.computer.org/computer/homepage/0505/profession/index.htm

via Pat Phillips

Posted by mikel at 12:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Processing - Programming for Kids

Something else to investigate for teaching kids how to program

http://processing.org/index.html

Haven't tried this out yet, but so far Alice is still my favorite.

Posted by mikel at 11:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Windows Mobile 5.0 Emulator Images

Localized emulator images for Windows Mobile 5.0.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=eec33ae3-c129-4c25-abaa-18e8e842178f&displaylang=en

Stashing here for testing later this summer for Swoosh and to use in CPT 355 next fall.

Posted by mikel at 11:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack