Be a sport and click on this link:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5552696499
Then make a generous bid. If you'll win, you'll get an hour (or more) of help from a .NET guru/celebrity (or possibly me). But more, you'll also be helping Tsunami relief efforts.
The top bid gets to pick their consultant. Then next, and so on and so on. If you are in southern Ontario, and you get me, I'll make it up to you by coming to your office - for a whole day, hang out, and bring donuts. What will I do? I can tell you everything I know about Visual Studio Team System (breaking all kinds of NDA rules, etc.), try to convince you to use data sets, do some code reviews, help debug something nasty, defrag your hard drive, organize your mp3's, tell you what DataGrid girl is really like, whatever.
I'm visiting Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Montreal over the next 3 months so if you live/work near there, my offer stands, pending my schedule. I'll also be in Orlando possibly in June (for TechEd), LA in Sept (for PDC), and Chicago in August, so ditto on those as well.
For more info on how it all works....
http://www.stephenforte.net/owdasblog/#a61b646aa-ca24-47ef-b013-012bf852f79d
And finally, special thanks to the other RD's who are volunteering their time (especially all those fellow Canadians). Last but not least, special thanks to Stephen Forte and Julia Lerman for organizing this.
If you are as unfortunate as I am, you have a newer Dell laptop that isn't so good at supplying power to “USB bus powered” devices. In windows, it reports surges on the bus and shuts them down.
I get this with my external GB firelite drive and my IPAQ 5550 when using the sync'n charge cable and fast USB charging enabled. The firelite drive can be powered externally, but they don't give you a transformer in the box. Instead they give you a cable that connects from your PS/2 keyboard port to the drives DC input. That would be great if my laptop had a PS/2 keyboard port.
When at home, I use a USB powered hub. If you are in the market, I recommend* the Promedia USB and Firewire Combo Hub Repeater. In addition to it being a USB 2.0 hub, it also supports firewire, over USB, which is great since my Dell doesn't have a built in firewire port. *I have ordered this device which is nice and cheap at $21 CDN, but still waiting for it to arrive - I'll let you know if I notice anything wrong with it.
When I'm on the road, I also used to carry around a Iogear Microhub 4-Port Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Hub. It's nice and slim and also can be externally powered which solves my IPAQ/Drive problems. I still hate carrying around stuff I don't have to.
Enter the Ultra Mini 2.5“ Hard Drive Enclosure (available at Tiger's outlet store in Markham, but not on their site for around $70 if memory serves). It is your typical enclose that supports both USB and Firewire (a nice addition if used on my older dell that is USB 1.0, yet has Firewire) and also offers external dc power (and they include a transformer). The cool part is the enclosed 10 Hour Li-ion battery. The back of the box says “ when not in use, the battery charges from your connection bus (both USB and 1394). I can't verify that (in fact, first time I've heard of something charging over 1394/firewire), but I can verify that when plugged directly into my Dell laptop, without the DC adapter, it works fine and without USB surges on the bus.
I just got back from Ottawa, where last night I was speaking to the Ottawa .NET community about Visual Studio Tools for Office. (more on that later).
I wasn't surprised by the Grep Cup weekend inflated hotel rates, but I was surprised to find a “2.8% DMF Fee” on my hotel bill (on top of the 15% worth of federal and provincial taxes). Upon request, I was informed that this was a “Destination Marketing Fee” which goes to fund marketing efforts to promote tourism in the area. Various Ontario tourism centers (including Hamilton - go figure?) have been lobbying the provincial governments since post 9/11 in an effort for them to allow a tax (a real tax, not a fee) for the same purpose. This past summer however, the hotels decided that this was going nowhere so they decided to start collecting (on a voluntary basis) a fee (not a real tax).
Maybe it's just me, but I'm thinking the best way to attract people to your city is not to put a sneaky “DMF Fee” charge on those same people's hotel bill when they come to visit you and hope they don't ask about it. Even worst, because it's a fee charged by the hotel, and not a real tax - guess what - you pay tax on the DMF Fee. Icarumba! It turns out it's voluntary fee and not hotels collect it. The front desk staff sensed I was not pleased about being asked to pay for marketing fees on top of my room rate so they quickly waived the fee. But I wonder how many people willing pay this?
This all reminds me very much about requirements management and software development. Often, people, usually too close to the problem, design features into software that doesn't meet the requirements of the user. Take for example those goofy glyphs on the Lotus Notes login window. What about clippy? Is that satisfying anybody's requirements - or is it just pissing you off? With all of our best intentions, it is extremely important that we take the time to perform reality checks on what we are building against the requirements of our users.
Now to bring it all home. Do users really want to do their work in a web browser? Browsers are great for wandering and finding stuff, but do they want to see the value of their stock portfolio in a browser? You need to find the best environment for the job your users are trying to accomplish. If somebody is accustomed to using Excel to aggregate a bunch of their financial information, then maybe Visual Studio Tools for Office is the right tool for that job. While writing applications in Excel isn't exactly new, with VSTO you have the integration with the .NET Framework, Web Services, and the smart client deployment model, you can apply all professional development skills you have at your disposal to creating applications with Word & Excel. And don't worry, I have yet to see clippy show up in Visual Studio Office projects.
What does project management, test management, defect tracking, build servers, methodology, automated testing, code coverage, and software diagramming have to do with Halo 2? I'm not sure really, but if you want both - then you need to come to the Toronto Visual Basic User Group meeting tomorrow night. I'll be doing a “powerpoint free” drive through of Visual Studio Team System AND raffling off an xbox console and a copy of Halo 2, worth about $270. More details here:
http://www.tvbug.com/
Last night at the Toronto .NET Users Group talk I did on mobility, a gentleman had a question about directly connecting to an Enterprise SqlServer database from a Pocket PC using the Compact Framework. His users run on a shop floor and some times they lose their wifi signal. While he doesn't keep the SqlConnection open the whole time, it seems that when a wifi signal is back alive his application can't connect to the database using a SqlConnection.Open anymore - despite that he can still ping the server.
He was correctly doing a SqlConnection.Close in a finally clause around his data access, but I suspect that even though pooling is not supported on the compact framework, this is not doing a proper disconnect of the physical connection (a Sql Profiler session would probably tell you that for sure). So a using block in C# will ensure that the SqlConnection is disposed of immediately and will properly terminate the connection. So if between calls you lose and reaquire your wifi connection you'll be starting a bran new connection the next time. It's still a good idea to put all of your actual work in a try/catch/finally block with a SqlConnection Close in the finally.
using
(SqlConnection cn = newSqlConnection(CONNECTION_STRING ))
{
try
{
cn.Open();
//do some work with the connection
}
catch (SqlException ex)
{
//error handling
}
finally
{
cn.Close();
}
}
Ok this is too cool. Bell Mobility has this Location Service called MyFinder. Using Cellular triangulation they can figure out pretty close to where you are. It costs 25cents to locate yourself on any Bell Mobility Cell phone with a browser (plus air time ). You can do things like find the nearest gas station to where you are right now (or ATM, restaurant, etc.) and then using Map Point will give you driving/walking directions. I tried out this service in Waterloo and it found me within a block of where I actually was. Bell says within 150m. In my example that would be pretty close. So your mileage might vary (no pun intended).
If you are lucky enough to have Sanyo 8100 or an Audiovox 8450/8455 you can also use MapMe service which will download a map to your device and your location plotted on it - along with nearby places. This appears from the screenshot to be something along the lines of a Pocket Streets derivative. It costs $5 (one time) for the software, and again 25 cents to be located per use plus air time (unless you have the Mobile Browser Bundle).
Bell Mobility also has a few multiplayer games that you play against people nearby. Less cool. Get a life.
Perhaps the most (potentially) practical is a #TAXI phone number that connects you with the first available taxi based on your location. It uses many cab companies. It sounds like they might find you a taxi parked around the corner but I don't think it quite works that way. It found my city and routed me to the phone number of the nearest taxi company. It also sent me a text message with their direct phone number. A $1.25 a call? The taxi company should pay for that - no?
www.bell.ca/finderservices
You can develop applications using this service too. If you are lucky to live in Canada and be a Bell Mobility Subscriber - then you are in luck (as I am) since Bell is now providing realtime MS MapPoint Location Service. It almost makes up for being on a CDMA network and having that limited phone selection problem.
Microsoft MapPoint Location Server is a new component of Microsoft MapPoint Web Service. You will install this component (along with SQL Server) in your enterprise and using the MapPoint Web Service and location data from your provider you can get an inventory of all the people in your company and their locations. For doing dispatch type of applications, 150 meters is probably close enough. General Information on both here (http://www.microsoft.com/mappoint)
MSDN Universal, Enterprise, and Professional subscribers are eligible for a free subscription to MapPoint Web Service (a requirement of using MLS)(https://s.microsoft.com/mappoint/msdn/msdnspec.aspx)
Bell Mobility Developers Web site for location based services (http://developer.bellmobility.ca/lbs/)
As part of the continuing MSDN User Group Tour, I'll be speaking at the Canadian Technology Triangle .NET User Group in Waterloo on Thursday October 7th (tomorrow night). There is a new location for the meeting at Agfa (formerly Mitra) in Waterloo. All the details are here.
Correction: Adam Gallant is going to be the speaker at this event tomorrow night. Sorry for the confusion. It should be a good talk.
at ObjectSharp these days - more than usual. I attribute this to a recent upsurge in both .NET and BizTalk adoption - people doing real projects, running into real problems and needing real help from the experienced. We've been steadily hiring new consultants all year - but by one or two at a time and it's time to put the call out again. Are you a seasoned developer/architect? Do you have real world experience with .NET, BizTalk, or Sharepoint. Do you consider yourself an excellent communicator? Interested in teaching as well? Then we (or more importantly, our customers) need your help. You live in Toronto or Vancouver right?
Send your resume to careers@objectsharp.com.
I'm doing a talk at the East of GTA .NET users group tonight in Oshawa. This is the same MSDN User Group tour event sweeping across Canada. I'll be talking about some of the limitations of the Compact Framework and SqlCE. Should be fun - hope to see you there.
Registration Links and slides (afterwards) can be found here.