MongoDB

So next session at DCC2012 is on MongoDB.  Last session had me wondering if Kanban might be better for us than Scrum or maybe some combination (Scrumban?).

Desert Code Camp 2012

Brought my Surface along to DCC2012 today.  Boy, I should get a spiff for selling the surface because I’ve already given like 3 demos.  First session is on Agile: Scrum & Kanban.  Fortunately, I got the guest network working here at GCCC so I can blog.  The surface wouldn’t boot this morning so I discovered that I needed to pulse the power button to trigger it to start.  Grrrr. Still, I like using it at the conference.

Techphx 2012

Was able to arrive late to techphx this year.  First session: The Legal Side of Blogging with Ruth Carter (@rbcarter).  The surface is being field tested today.  I have a camera to the left and wordpress to the right.  Pretty interesting in this form factor.  The theatre room at UAT has small desks but the Surface seems up to the task. 

Well that was awkward

Forgot to put in a title in the previous post Oh well.

New Post

Well, here’s something I never would ever happen: I’ve purchased Microsoft’s Surface and will be selling my iPad. The hope is that my youngest daughter would buy the iPad so it would stay in the family and because she uses it a lot. Reasons for the change? Well, it’s the road not traveled in some ways.  At the moment, I’m posting this from my Surface with a an attached USB keyboard. While this is possible on the iPad without jailbreaking, somehow it seems more of an integrated experience on the Surface. I don’t think the performance is fully tuned up on all of the apps (it’s definitely pokey in the his app). Still, there are many delights in the surface. For desktop mode, I recommend a USB or Bluetooth mouse. The USB keyboard makes typing great but the typepad cover seems more than adequate for short writing. This morning, I was able to hook up printers via Wi-Fi; much easier than with iPad. So far…so good.

Freddie vs JSON

Well, after a half a day at my first hackathon I really have little to show.  I’ve discovered that my Yahoo pipes application doesn’t actually have a GUI behind it; the yahoo pipes site is simply able to take advantage of certain kinds of feeds to display how they look.  This means I actually have to spend time on the rendering side of the equation.  With a deadline rapidly approaching, I’m less confident that I’ll actually have something working.  However, free breakfast, free lunch and some shwag is not bad compensation, even if I don’t have a working program.  I hope I can find some green beer….:)

Choice Hackathon

Well, tomorrow, I dive headlong into an entirely new experience: A hackathon.  There’s a Wired article on hackatthons and the subculture they engender among software professionals (a scene in “The Social Network” movie pays this off as well.)  I suppose I’m feeling a bit anxious to perform.  There seem to be a lot of steps to creating an interesting mashup that takes advantage of the Choice API.  This includes selecting a language to write in, how to select a framework to wrap around the API, presentation design, how to host, etc.  Admittedly I have pretty nothing much to start from and I’m feeling anxious whether I’ll even have something to show by the end of the day.  Perhaps failure isn’t such a bad option if there’s the opportunity to learn.  WIth a grand prize that seems more and more out of reach, I would be satisfied with something that works.

Wish me luck.  Increasingly I see that I’ll need it.

Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing5 Ways To Make An Email Newsletter Your Best Sales Tool

http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2011/11/29/5-ways-to-make-an-email-newsletter-your-best-sales-tool/

So…why did I leave the iOS world for Android????

I have gotten a lot of feedback from people wondering why I would have gone to Android instead of sticking with the iPhone.  First, I’d like to start by saying I really, really liked my iPhone.  Certain things were just intuitive (to me at least) and once I was able to Jailbreak, I got the kind of power that I really wanted/needed.  However, with the end of my iPhone contract (I mistakenly thought it was over in October when it actually ended in July), I was looking for the next iPhone to switch to.  Internally I said if the iPhone 4S was not an LTE phone, I was going to skip the iPhone and my heart sank when I discovered that 4G/LTE was at least a year away.  This indicated to me that Apple chose to play it safe, or wasn’t ready for 4G.  In retrospect maybe this was because of Steve’s ailing health.  But as a consumer, I was unwilling to settle for a “half measure” for a year and then pay a premium to upgrade to 4G when the new iPhone 5 comes out next fall.  Instead, due to some scrounging, I was able to secure my new Droid Bionic for exactly $0.01 through Amazon Wireless/Verizon.  No matter what I think of Android, that price allows very little buyers remorse.  Besides, this is a chance to “kick the tires” on the Android platform for the next two years.  Adding diversity to my mobile background is a very good thing and the Android platform has grown to parity with iOS over the last year.  About the only thing I’ll truly miss is the grandfathered unlimited data plan I had on iPhone and AT&T (but given Sprint’s hasty retreat on that, I’m not optimistic that it will last for much longer on AT &T anyways.)  My first order of business is to get a superior mail client because I was addicted to push mail on my iPhone.  Maybe rooting on Android will come first (Tried k-9 mail but apparently it doesn’t work with Exchange 2010?)  Anyways, it’ll be good to see how things break down over the next tow years.  I’m sure we’ll see a few more Siri videos and snapshots before the majority of people ignore it, but with regards to iOS, more of the same was not what I was looking for for the next two years.  I hope folks who make the iPhone such a big seller are happy for the next year.  I suspect I will be.

First post from Droid Bionic

Just a quick post from my new phone. Wondering about rooting it now