Installing Hudson as a service on Windows Server 2008 R2 x64

I'm currently installing HUDSON on a VM to handle the CI for a project I'm working on.
Unfortunately I got errors when trying to install it as a Windows Service .

To investigate this further I checked the event log:

 Checking hudson.wrapper.log I saw:

2010-03-08 10:49:21 - Starting java -Xrs -Xmx256m -Dhudson.lifecycle=hudson.lifecycle.WindowsServiceLifecycle -jar "C:\Users\Administrator\.hudson\hudson.war" --httpPort=8080


 This made me realise that the problem was that it didin't know how to start Java.exe.  So I simply added it's directory ("C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\") to the PATH environment variable.

Problem sorted.  Hudson now runs as a service without problem.

DevEvening: ORM Showdown

Last night at DevEvening we had on ORM showdown.  6 people each gave a 15-20 minute presentation on a different ORM.

I went first and gave a quick overview of SubSonic.  There are some screencasts which are similar to the demos I gave on the SubSonic site.

Next up was Dave Hawes who spoke about LLBLGen Pro.
This struck me as a cross between SubSonic version 2 and Entity Framework.  I was impressed to see Access & Azure support.  It's a commercial product and so offers a level of support.  If I was looking for an ORM similar to SubSonic but with commercial support I would look at this.

Before we broke for food, Jeremy Skinner presented NHibernate.
I'm aware of NHibernate being very popular so was keen to get a look at it.  It's clearly powerful but seems to require a massive amount of configuration via XML files.  The fluent version means that the configuration can be in code, but it's still a lot of configuration, even if the model and schema are the same.  The prospect of using a bespoke query language (either HQL or criteria) doesn't appeal either.
I still don't see the benefits of using NHibernate yet compared with the other tools avaialble.

After the break for food and an advert for Azure, Andy Pike presented Castle ActiveRecord.
This is an attempt to build implement Martin Fowlers Active Record pattern, based on top of NHibernate and apparently influenced by Ruby on Rails.
Andy claimed that a plus to AR was the lack of code generation.  There was still a need to write a lot of configuration code to be able to use it though so I don't buy this argument.
I certainly found this more appealing than working with NHibernate directly and was particularly impressed by the validation functionality.  Easy integration with other Castle tools is also an appealing factor.

Nick Haslam enlightened us on Telerik OpenAccess.
The price of this means that I'll probably never use it but I was very curious about it's built in caching and disconnected API functionality.  Maybe the Express version, which works with SQLServer Express & Oracle Express, may be a way I may use it.  If you're a fan of drag and drop development I can see this being appealing. 

And finally, Howard Richards covered LINQ to SQL.
This is SQL Server only and "de-emphasised" in place of Entity Framework.  As such it is no longer being developed.  From that respect I don't think I'd consider using it.  If I wanted a designer based way of interacting with an ORM without the expense of the Telerik solution this could be the answer.

As a short bonus at the end Jez gave us a quick overview of something, he'd written himself, which he uses rather than an ORM.  While interesting, the general consensus of the room seemed to be that while we'd just spent the last 2 and a bit hours learning about some of the solutions which already exist, the prospect of spending any time and effort doing the same ourselves didn't seem worth the effort.

I can't see a good reason not to use an ORM.  At the very least they have the potential to save lots of time.

The importance of simplicity and usability

Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling—the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration. Possibly this trend results from a mistaken belief that using a somewhat mysterious device confers an aura of power on the user.

—Niklaus Wirth

Introducing .NET 4.0 with Visual Studio 2010

What happens if you take a year or so to learn about everything that's coming in .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010?

Well, if you are Alex Mackey you learn enough to write a book.  And an ambitious book at that as it covers a very broad range of subjects:

Visual Studio IDE changes, MEF, C# & VB.net Language changes, CLR, BCL & Code Contracts, Parallization and threading, WF, WCF, Entity Framework, ADO.NET data services, ASP.NET 4.0, ASP.NET AJAX, jQuery, ASP.NET MVC, WPF 4, Siverlight 3 & Azure

The aim of the book is simple:

Be an introduction to the range of new features, functionality and tools available in VS2010 & .NET 4.0.  The intention is it's a book which is accessible to any developer. Even those who wouldn't normally go out of their way to learn about what's new.

I found the book to be an excellent source of insight to the topics it covers.  Alex provides a clear and easily readable introduction to these technologies and how they may be useful.

Don't be put off by the "Introducing" part of the title.  This is not a book for developers who are new to Visual Studio and the .NET Framework. Rather, it is a book for those who have worked with earlier versions of these tools and want to find out what the new versions contain.

While I was familiar with some of the topics in the book I found it very informative and have learnt a lot from reading it.

If you are a developer working with .NET I can only think of 3 reasons not to buy this book:
1. You are confident that in the rest of your career you will never use anything other than the tools you are currently using. (Unless you plan on retiring soon I can't imagine this being the case.)
2. You already know everything about ALL the topics it covers. (In which case you could probably write your own books on the subject.)
3. You have it already.
If I had any criticism of the book it would be that the sample code isn't available. (Or if it is it's not somewhere obvious.)  My guess is that the reason for this is that the final version of both Visual Studio and the .NET framework have not yet been released.  The book and many of it's examples are based on information from the beta versions and early documentation.  It's possible (likley?) that there may be some level of breaking changes when the final version are released.  Any sample code might not then work. I can therefore, see why it may not be appropriate to release the code.

Disclaimer: Alex set up DevEvening in the UK, which I now organise. I reviewed the early version of some chapters of the book in early 2009.  I also wrote a small secction in the introduction.  This (below) is an affiliate link - but no-one ever clicks on my affiliate links so I don't really expect anything from it.

NonSilent Windows DRM license delivery and duplicate web page requests

On the off chance that someone else may come across this issue.

If you are issuing windows DRM licenses via the embedded browser control in WIndows Media Player be aware that the first request the player will make will be with a user agent similar to

User-Agent: Windows-Media-DRM/11.0.5721.5145

If a license is not returned for this request a second request will be made using the Internet Explorer user agent.


This can matter if you are using cookies or session values which you are only persisting for a single subsequent request but WMP mkaes 2 requests and it's the second you want.  (No comment on the number of hours I spent learning this the hard way.)

Knowing what's unacceptable

The company I work for currently has an office provided by a company offering "serviced offices". That is the company provide all the services for the companies renting offices there. Amongst other things, this includes phones (including a reception service), internet access, cleaning and teas & coffees.

Apparently, over the weekend the ISP for the building was changed. When I got to the office, just before 10 (I start late on Mondays to take my son to nursery) there had been problems accessing the internet that morning. By half past 10 access to the internet was completely gone.

Just before lunch time someone came round and told us they were very sorry about the problems. They didn't know when they would be fixed and they knew it was "unacceptable".

Just what was unaceeptable wasn't clear though?

Was it unacceptable that there was no backup system?
Was it unacceptable that the phones use VOIP so no internet meant no phones?
Was it unacceptable that systems were changed with no overlap so it wasn't possible to go back to the old system when/if there was a problem with the new one?
Was it unacceptable that there wasn't an SLA from the service provider for a time to fix?


Lots of companies in the building sent some staff home in the afternoon.  While this may have just been a kind gesture, I can't help but think that a 5 minute walk into town to sepnd a few quid on a 3G dongle would have been a good use of time and money.

Visualising Product Sales

Displaying sales data in a bar chart has got a bit boring. So, I've been exploring some different ways of displaying this information.

Here are the products sold at a bar (sorry - can't tell you which one or where) as a tag cloud.

Obviously this isn't appropriate in all situations but as an indication of which products are the most popular it makes a pleasant change.

Have you written off all search engines apart from Google?

What's going on in the world?

First there was talk of Bing becoming the default search engine on the iPhone. Yes, the iPhone as made by Apple!?!

And now the Bing toobar is being bundled with Java!  Yes, Java - from Sun who are now owned by Oracle.

Have you written off every other search engine except Google?

Have you written off Microsoft?

It seems that when it comes to a lot of big companies, when considering Google and Microsoft, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

iPhone developers, welcome to some new headaches courtesy of the iPad

A, hopefully, slighlty different take on the bandwagon jumping and hype that is the iPad:

For a long time I (and many others) have been saying that developing for the iPhone is not the same as developing for what's commonly referred to as "mobile".

By creating something (app or website) that specifically targets the iPhone developers do not have to deal with many of the problems and challenges experienced when creating applications or websites which run on a wide variety of mobile devices.

Arguably the number of iPhones in use has meant that by targeting the iPhone you can still have the same number of potential users as if you targetted a number of different devices but without some of those headaches.

Of course, I'm not saying that developing an app that works on the various generations of iPhone and iPod Touch is without challenges due to variations in functionality available from the SDK or the actual device. e.g. not including 'phone' or camera related functionality on the iPod Touch.  It's just that as of today those challenges just got a lot bigger.

I'm not going to go into great detail here as I'm working on a larger, more complete discussion of the issues you may face. However, here are a few questions to get you thinking:

• Do you dectect visitors to your web site using an iPhone and show them something different?
  Do you show them an optimised version? How will that optimised version cope with being displayed at 1024x768 (or 768x1024)? Are you sure that your detction can tell the iPhone and iPad apart? does it matter?
  

• Do you not show some information on screen because of the limited available real estate? Could you redesign your pages/views to make better use of the increased space available on the iPad?

• Can you display information in a better/clearer way with more space available?

• With more space do you want to change what is displayed based on orientation? Possibly similar to the way the iPad email client does.

• More space on screen means you can show larger, more detailed images. But how are you going to show an image of appropriate detail for different size screens? Can you afford just to let the browser resize larger images for you?  Is that what's best for the user?  What if the difference is in the resolution of dowloaded video? Does the increased time (and cost) of always downloading the larger file matter?
  

• Can you do somethign new with the iPad which you weren't able to do on the iPhone? Maybe something that you considered for the iPhone but wasn't practical based on a restriction or limitation that doesn't apply to the iPad.
  

• Does the size of the iPad mean it's likely to be used in differeent places/ways that the iPhone typically is? It's propbably to early to say for sure, but does this change in context mean that you wish to design your application or web site to be better suited to this different context?  This may mean making different features or options available.
  

And many more questions....

Can you afford to do nothing?
Despite what you may think of my opinion, what does the fact that Apple have redesigned all their apps for the iPad say?

If you are an iPhone developer the very next thing you should do is read Apple's "Introducing Universal Applications for iPhone OS" and start preparing for the new wave of challenges ahead.


I'm not in a position to pass judgement or share an opinion on the iPad at the moment as I haven't used one.  It sure looks interesting and I'd be keen to try one out though.

What every web developer must know about URL encoding

What every web developer must know about URL encoding

Code Offsets for bugs

I've written about code offsets previously and I think it's a noble idea.  In reality I don't find the idea of paying on a per Lines Of Code written basis practical.  Instead I'm keeping track of reported bugs I've introduced and offsetting each bug for a credit.
I see it as giving something back without going bankrupt.

I don't know da time

Bad puns FTW!

When Jon Skeet announced his intention to port JodaTime to .NET I said I would be interested in helping in the process.

NodaTime was born and I have carefully following the discussions in the groups and seeing contributed code as it's checked in.

Unfortunately a number of other commitments and the realisation that I actually have only about 8 hours a week free time (for all my interests - not just writing my own code) have so far prevented me from making any kind of contribution to the project.

Despite my lack of involvement I've learnt some interesting and hopefully valuable things from looking at the code already contributed to the project and from reading the discussions around it's development.

Based on this experience I'd recommend that any developer follows the discussion and looks at the code from new open source projects.  It's a great way to see how other people work and solve problems. Of course if you have the time and opportunity to contribute also then all the better.

Some times I like doing support

Not sure if this is ego stroking but the following have certainly cheered me up.

I don't know if it is appropriate to respond to this email but I wanted to let you know that the download did work fine the second time.  I wanted to thank you for your excellent customer and technical support.  Your response was very quick and your assistance was extremely helpful.

Plus

First of all, I would like to thank you for responding my e-mail on a timely  manner.
I have successfully finished downloading the movie I desired with your kind help.
Again, your help and support are really appreciated.

Thanks Andy & Max. You cheered me up.

Times are hard

Working with time is hard. Especially when working with multiple threads - which seem to have their own timers.
I just posted a reply to someone in Outlook 2007. Then, briefly my list of Sent Items looked like this:

It seems that even though I sent an email at what it knew was 00:00 which can (should) only ever be today something hadn't updated the date for the comparison of now and the date the messages was sent.

This is one of those issues which just looks foolish when you see it but very few people will ever see it.  It's also something that'd likely be very hard to test and unless you knew this sort of issue could occur you'd be very unlikley to look or test for it.

I guess this is merely just an observation. It's not like this would be easy particularly or worthwhile to fix.  I merely note this here so you might think about and avoid similar issues in any code you write.

A little blog post analysis

While it's popular to do blog reviews at the end of the year I'll miss that band wagon and provide you some anlaysis of what was popular on my blog in 2009 now - in 2010!

Top 10 Posts of 2009

1. 10 Firefox Add-ons for Mobile Developers
2. What's new in Windows Mobile 6.5?
3. In C#: generate a class for an XML file
4. Vista "Program Files" Virtualization   
5. StackOverflow DevDays - sad rant :(
6. Comparing touchscreens - Capacitive V Resistive
7. Holiday scam? - 0800 988 9900
8. My StackOverflow DevDays app - in action
9. Windows Phone Advert
10. DDD South West

Top 10 posts in 2009

1. Installshield: Change product name, but not MSI file name
2. broken hal.dll with XPSP3 - will not boot   
3. Installshield conditions
4. Checking database permissions in SQL Server 2000
5. 10 Firefox Add-ons for Mobile Developers
6. Checking for default constraints on SQL Server 2000 AND 2005 - CORRECTION!
7. SubVersion Vs Vault
8. What's new in Windows Mobile 6.5?
9. In C#: generate a class for an XML file
10. Incorrect shortcut icon in start menu

project52

If you look over at the right hand side of this blog- and probably down a bit - you'll see links to the archive of my posts.  It shows I've made a lot fewer posts last year when compared with the two previous years.  In an attempt to try and encourage myself to post a bit more and with more frequency, I've committed to taking part in Project52. 

In simple terms, the project is simply to commit to publish a new blog post each week in 2010.


Find out more at: http://project52.info/

10 Programming Proverbs

I'd like to call out this excellent post on the 10 Programming Proverbs that Every Developer Should Know.


http://www.kevinwilliampang.com/post/Programming-Proverbs.aspx

In my last project at work I used:

Technologies used in last project, in no particular order:

• ASP.NET MVC (1.0)
• SubSonic (2.1)
• MvcContrib
• WMR DRM
• Castle Windsor (for IoC)
• jQuery
• NUnit
• a 3rd party CDN

This was all to produce:

• 2 Websites
• 1 WinForms App
• 1 Console App
  

DevEvening CodeFest

One of the things I've been keen to do at DevEvening is to see what would happen if we did a session where everyone came and wrote code.

For this reason we had an event and called it the 'Christmas CodeFest'.  (Yes, the name wasn't very good but the event was.)

From the original event advert:

We all learn in different ways. While it can be good to learn by hearing people present and demonstrate new techniques, it can also be good to learn by seeing how different people solve the same problem.  That's what we hope to do at the CodeFest.

The plan is for everyone to write automated players for a simple game.  Don't worry if this sounds complicated, it will only involve implementing an interface containing 4 methods (and one of them just returns your name!).  The logic therein can be as simple or complicated as you want to make it.  It will be practical to achieve something good in the time frame available and plenty of examples will be provided to get you started.

In addition to having each persons 'player' compete against each other we'll also look at the way each person approached the problem and how successful that was.

My initial expectation was that this may not be a popular event - after all I'm not aware of any other user groups having done an event like this before.  Perhaps there's a reason why?

Writing something productive and fun in about 2 hours is actually quite hard. If you want to make it possible for people with varying skill and experience to be able to achieve something in the time limits things further.

If you've scanned down to the image below you'll see that the game used was Connect 4.  This was deliberately not made known before the event so no-one could get a headstart on working out any game logic or tactics.

What I provided for those who came along to use:
A solution containing:

• A WinForms 'host' application which displayed the board, managed 'players', etc. (This host also allowed manual playing of each player.)
  
• A WPF user control to represent the game board.
• A set of tests to verify the logic in detecting wins, etc.
• A library containing the interface that each player was required to implement
• A copy of MEF Beta 2 Preview 8 (which was used to load players from the individual DLLs)
• A sample player written in C#
• An identical sample player written in VB.NET
  

What each person had to do to implement their 'player':

1. Open Solution
2. Add new class library
3. Add reference to ComponentModel (project)
4. Add reference to IConnect4Player (project)
5. Create a class that implements IGamePlayer (make sure to include necessary export attributes)
6. Write some code to implement your player!

The competition
The aim was simple: everyone has about 2 and a quarter hours (including a break for food) to write the code to implement their player.  We then allowed each player to compete against the others in a knock out tournament (using the sample random players to make up the numbers - so no one got a bye). 

2 players were beaten by the random player in the first round. Boo!

The games were played projected onto a screen so everyone could see what was going on.  The host app automatically called each player in turn until there was a winner.  There was a slight pause (500 milliseconds) between each each move.  This gave everyone a chance to see what was happening and allowed for some audible reactions as people were blocked from winning moves or failed to make winning moves.  The host app I had developed required manually loading the players each time. In practice it would have been useful and saved time if the players could all be loaded at once and it take care of managing who played who and recording the results.

The final came down to a best of three between Jeremy and Mark. Mark won the best of 3 games by taking the first 2.

A selection of swag as prizes from our generous sponsors (http://www.devevening.co.uk/links.aspx) was available on a winner gets first choice style.  People who found bugs in my code also got a choice of prize.

Speaking of which. Unfortunately a couple of bugs were found in my host app code.

Both of the people who were using VB.NET found a bug (now fixed) in my host code where I didn't handle the player returning the 'GiveUp' move correctly.  At the time I was happy to dismiss this as a bug in the way I had done something which affected interacting with VB in some way.  They were both certain that they were never returning a GiveUp result.
In my subsequent analysis of their player code I discovered that for one 'player' there were valid paths through their code to determine which move to make next which returned the default value for an enum. Sneakily of me this default value was 'GiveUp'.  I looked at working out where the error in the code was but it was highly complex (lots of conditionals and recursion) and used lots of single letter variable names so I decided to pass.
After a bit more digging in the other VB player's code I found that on certain passes through multiple nested loops it tried to access an array element which didn't exist and then threw an error.

Both of these issues show me the importance of making code easy to read and follow. Also to be very wary of complex nested loops.  I actually used nested loops in some of the host code which checks for wins.  During the evening I had a discussion about this issue.  I chose to use nested loops only once I had a large number of tests in place and beccuase it allowed me to massively reduce the amount of code I had to work with. Nesting loops is definitely a tick in the negatives column so to use them they must provide a benefit which puts a bigger tick in the positives column.

A bug was also found where it sometimes reported the wrong person winning. Oops.

One of the players was not developed with the instructions I gave. Instead they customised one of the sample random players.  This caused problems when the developed player was drawn to play against the random player.  Based on my very limited knowledge of MEF the problem experienced was one that shouldn't be possible as both players were loaded in different containers.  I'll definitely investigate this further when I have the time. Maybe we've found a bug in MEF?!

What I learnt from organising the event

Unsurprisingly it was a very different DevEvening to 'normal'. Part of me was expecting that I'd be running around answering questions, etc.  I hadn't expected that most of the time everyone would be quietly working.  In theory this is a good thing.  In practice it's something to be aware of for the future.

Analysis of what people did (a random collection of observations - not marking any code)

• Some people still use Apps Hungarian notation for variable naming.
• The people who used TDD had code that was really easy to follow.
• The people who used detailed, explicit names created code that was easier to understand.
• Some people use properties for things that I assumed would always be constants.
• I'm more positive about opening a code file for the first time if there is an accompanying test file (even when I haven't seen the tests)
• Assumptions documented in comments in the code are reassurring that the original coder has thought about what they are doing and have to do.
• Seeing lots's of TODOs in the code is reassurring that the original coder has thought about what they are doing and have still to do.
• I've learnt that there's a 'Assert.Inconclusive'
• I've seen some people default "unwritten" tests to return true. I'm not sure this is a good idea.
• Some people, seemingly, started by using using the sample random code and replaced this bit by bit as they wrote their own. - Seems like a good plan.
  
• Code is easier to read when spread across multipel lines.
• I find use of the conditional shorthand operator (? :) difficult to read when all on one line and I'm not familiar with the code.
• 2dimensional arrays seem to lead to code that is just as complicated to understand as a number of Lists (or equivalent) - at least when there are a small number of 'Lists' in use.
• Hooray for amusing comments!
• Comments which add no value are disappointingly common.
• Lots of people wrote code which they didn't use - presumably because they thought they would need it later. This seems a bad but understandable thing to do when very limited with time.

What I got from the experience

• I got to exposure to the way some other people work.
• I got new ideas for how to solve a problem.
• I had an excuse to do some practical development with MEF.
• I had an excuse to do some more work with WPF (embedded in a Winforms app)
• I had an excuse to use T4 in an actual project.
  

Some random/assorted statistics I gathered on the night:

• Teams/people who made notes on paper before starting: 1
• People who used the internet for reference: 0
• People who looked at the code I wrote for reference: 0 (assuming everyone was honest when asked.)
• Teams/people who wrote tests (of any sort) for their code: 4
• Which external libraries did teams/people use: only NUnit
• Teams/people who felt they had "finished" in the time allowed: 0
• Players developed by pairs fo developers: 3 (of ten players)
• People who used a black background in Visual Studio: 5
  

If I can come up with another suitable task/game/project we'll definitely do this again.  The feedback from the people who came was very positive that they'd come again.  I'm not sure how well this would work with much larger groups or how we'd fit many more people in

If you're interested in knowing more or running this or something similar at another user group drop me a line.

Donate at the office!

The reason they want you to fit in...

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/11/the-reason-they-want-you-to-fit-in.html

Assorted mobile web notes

Another assorted collecction of notes from some old notebooks - including some from Mobile Web 2.0 Summit.

mobile: point of inspiration & entertainment & need
users value dependent on relationship with other users
value in getting data from device
* combine knowledge of users across different screens
valuable data can't easily be replicated/recreated
who owns data? - Key Q

Monetisation is complex
- getting the right, loyal customers
contextual advertising doesn't work in socail media
value is in context + contacts
target people, not content/context
profile based on demographics/behaviour/social interaction
how to calcualte the value of mobile marketing?
Privacy - users must be able to utilise data themselves

1 billion people own a Nokia phone
Nokia make - 450M devices a year / 15 per second
1/2 sale price goes on R&D (£6B) - Europes largest - workd 3rd largest researchers
Devices are all alike - what it does for the user is the differentiator
unlimited is the key to packaging services
Nokia want mobile web browsing at same speed as desktop
- Users want it now
Must make service work across devices

The real battle for real estate is in users pockets!

Users expet the ability to do desktop stuff on mobiles
Younger people want more from/on mobiles
make it REALLY easy for uesrs to do things

people communicate with those closer to them with their mobile.
- content changes in context

people would do more on mobile if it was faster

Most important features on mobile:
1. Internet
2. SMS
3. voice

targeting marketing based on device > which are targetted at demographics

users want to buy via operator portal as they trust it

mobile apps for social networks
- 2 times as often
- 4 times the page view

Make advertising/marketing social graph friendly

apps are hard to change - the web is easy

massive users volumes only come from operator portals

focus on what is key of service - not the platform optimising for.

UX is harder to get right - 10x harder on mobile (as screen is 10x smaller?)

software is the future of differentiation
- software will become key for operators

optimising for more powerful devices is likley to become an issue in the near future.


75% of Africans will never have a PC!
Businesses, not consumers willing to pay for content when consumer has very low disposable income.

turn customers into fans

reexamine business practices - don't just evolve

web browser as runtime
- reuse web developers skills for mobile.
mobile web - moving to apps, not just pages

widgets at epicenter of mobile and web convergence
widgets -for social applications(?)

do we need standards? - who benefits?

 You don't have to be a destination - e.g. Twitter.

Turn users ito a community:
- Engage - reason
- Content - useful or entertaining
- Convergence - acknowledge cahnges in user behaviour
- Loyalty - GREAT experience
- Analytics - Use them - to understand audience need.

"digital" connecting web & mobile.

lots of scope for sponsored experiences/apps
mobile advertising has little opportunity to do big things
where's the value of ads in social networks where content has little or no value.

need for local/regional/national variations of global systems
- things won't be the same across cultures but may be able to learn something

league tables as loyalty drivers
Get users doing something, not just watching
realtime feedback enhances participation
showing location of other users  builds community & loyalty
people want to be part of something - don't need to have a conversation
everyone likes to play - "underappreciation of frivolity"

the thing people want to do mpost with their phones is communicate
8 year mobile adoption curve
netbook as biggest mobile web usage device
mobile - a world of fads

communities may/can/do live longer thna the event/product/property they were created for

make payment simple - tightly integrate with app store / payment channel

will governments end up paying for essential infrastructure?
- if no long term business model to provide it at a price people are willing to pay
- would we want that?

captured informaiton is enriched by knowledge of context

look at web and mobility at the same time

charge for more than just the web - depth of network interaction

converged address book =? defacto social network

where data is physically located affects legal access to that data

open not necessarily free

Digital dividend - mobile opportunity based on digital divide

smart objects
sensorconomy

devices drive everything!!
people will pay for
- new types of devices
- deep integration of services

customers understand and will pay for services

use of web as a platform is accelerating
browser as client for the cloud

OS not a differentiator

dConstruct notes

Just been going through some docs and found my notes from dConstruct.

Please be aware that this is unlikely to be of use or interest to anyone but me.


Elements of a Networked Urbanism
People blame themselves - when usability is poor.
Ubiquitous computing - the future!?
Networked urbanism - but surely not everywhere?!
sustainability - empowerment - privacy
City: "a layered representation of experiences over time"
More than half the world live in cities (including slums & favelas)
squallor & vitality
Component / Resource
- Everything: addressable -> queryable -> scriptable
Consistent / Variable
- static > fluid
Latent / Explicit
- information revealed/available:
-- now actionable responses
-- know more than you want to?
Browse / Search
- choice drives option
-- less happenstance/chance
-- removing personal/local/insider knowledge
-- democratization of information
-- expertise becomes harder
Held / Shared
- possibly easier
- contribute back
Expiring / Persistent
- history reamins and becomes available in new ways
- including new levels of personal information
-- personal reinvention becomes harder
Deferred / Real Time
Passive / Interactive
Wayfinding / Wayshowing
Object / Service
- improved utalization of objects
- increased abstraction
Vehicle / Mobility
Ownership / Use
- change in understanding of consumerism
Schelling / Schoaling
- location of common meeting / soft appointment place/time
Community / Network
- changes in level of minimal acquaintance
- society & community based on levels of not knowing
- association by choice / association of circumstance
-Beware:
-- speed of change
-- changing what don't understand
-- what don't understand (almost certainly more than you realise!)
Consumer / Constituent
- Variation
- require: sensitivity/intelligence/tact
Privacy of information
Serendipity is good - you don't want to remove it


Let's See What We Can See (Everybody Online And Looking Good)
Show you/user and others on a map
- creating a virtual community is a good thing
Social is more important than visual (MySpace?)
Indicate:
- Importance
- Popularity
- Relationship
Holisitc views / Peripheral viewing
Include textual representation of what is being shown
Highlight specific information amongst complex screens
From language to behaviour
- experiencing daat
A physics of information
- applying a dynamic display
- visual models
Indicate possibility
- "sculpt the data into the statue of your choice"
Tuning in patterns
Synesthesia
- one input/experience triggering memory of another
Medium = message - depending on representation
Experience!


What’s Next? How mobile is changing design 
What is our perception of the future?
- Influence
- Bias
Now
- everything is touch
GenY - do things collectively
Mobile generation = born after '91
- have greatest buying power
iPhone - fastest consumer ramp up since DVDs
Touch - 4th largest OS (by popularity)
WebKit - 95% of devices accessing the web
Universal language: HTML + CSS + JS + APIs
Are we already designing for the web of tomorrow?
AppStores - more iPhone apps than Mac apps
Mobile apps are now moving to the desktop (Tweetie)
Constraints of mobile design - lead to greater focus
Design for medium or context?
Context = circumstance/settings
The era of single context web is over
web widgets on TVs
Neurolinguistic programming
Audity|Visual|Kinesthesic
Design is a multifaceted experience
what's next?
- anything
- everything
The future will come from investments made in mobile today!
people/user driven
We are the gatekeepers to the information age
portable + personal + always connected
- collaboration
-(-) "we already know the answer"!

Make It So: Learning From SciFi Interfaces
research behind anthromorphism attempts in software
sound is enought to represent something
- audio interfaces
- can create empathy/emotion with sound
behaviour good - likeness better
- giving more than expect
representaiton embodies/implies additional information
constraints ease learning curves
Inputs should know affected stated
- don't respond to something unusual when users wouldn't really want you too

	Loving Your Player with Juicy Feedback

Unpredictability
Variability
Aiming for desirable emotional response
emotional investment
challenge - fellowship
Perception of achievability
Mechanics -> dynamics -> Aesthetics
meaningful activities
avoid clutter
create iteration
avoid feature driven design
Don't fix what isn;t broken
QWAN - Quality Without A Name
Juciness
- constant feedback
- No goal (task)
- Responsive audio feedback
- Aim to produce an emotional response from user
Bubble wrap
Make user care and think it's cool.
Not for it's own sake (feature)
Interpreting more than what's shown
remove arbitrary constraints



Experience and the Emotion Commotion
It's often counter intuitive
Play - in everything(?)
Experience v object
work/play
prickles/goo
Dialectic - no dualism
embedded intelligence in objeccts
embedded emotion in objects
simple questions = complex answers (& vice versa)
emotion = a mental reaction to physical experience/responses
system output > user input


Materialising and Dematerialising A Web of Data. (Or What We’ve Learned From Printing The Internet Out)
"the front of the train is less crowded"
post digital
real objects - digital identities
beyond digital infatuation & analogue nostalgia
"things I would rather read on paper"
new combination of existing things = all new things
victory/success is a dnagerous thing
screens are a cliche
are we just solving the problems we are causing?
- what about entirely new things?
stuff takes up space and is expensive to move
physical things have more importance
redomaining!

Everyware: Adam Greenfield

 A few quotes and notes that caught my attention while reading "Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing".  I was inspired to finally get this after hearing Adam speak at dConstruct earlier this year.

Present IT development practices as applied to everyware will result in unacceptably bad user experience.

"If computers are everywhere they had better stay out of the way."

Build it as safe as you can, and build in all the safeguards to personal values that you can imagine.

"in dreams begin responsibilities."

It will not be sufficient simply to say, "First, do no harm."

We're not very good at doing "smart" yet, and we may never be.

"some problems routinely put forward [in ubicomp] are actually AI-hard."

Ubiquitous systems must default to a mode that ensures users' physical, psychic, and financial safety.

ubiquitous systems must not introduce undue complications into ordinary operations.

WMRM DisableOnClockRollback

I've been working on a project which involves using Windows Media Rights Manager (WMRM) Digital Rights Management (DRM).  As part of that project I have been applying rights to specific content (movies in this case)
to meet the rules specified by the client.

Unfortunately I was receiving an error and serchin on the error message returned exactly no hits.

{"Error HRESULT E_FAIL has been returned from a call to a COM component."}
 
at WMRMOBJSLib.WMRMRightsClass.set_DisableOnClockRollback(Int32 pVal)


In case anyone else runs in to this in the future, here's how what the bug actually was.


I was setting a DisableOnClockRollback value of true, but was getting the error when I did so.  A short MSDN search later and and I found http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb649390(VS.85).asp. In it is the line:

This property works only if you have set an expiration date first.


That'll be the problem then.  Another case of the person making the decisions not knowing the whole story.  Ho Hum.