tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-145704722024-03-13T21:39:43.643+00:00史蒂文 :: Release 2.0A StartUp 2.0 GuyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger298125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1165684995268959522006-12-09T17:23:00.000+00:002006-12-27T11:39:28.993+00:00Francisca Daniela<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1505/1001/1600/838731/DSC00026.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1505/1001/320/238076/DSC00026.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />At 10:12 AM today our new arrival was born. She is a few weeks early so she is in an incubator to help with her breathing but is doing well. Her name is Francisca Daniela and is the double of when her brother was born.<br /><br /><br />Loreto is doing fine but everyone is knackered. Time for a relaxing beer and some sleep (me, not loreto!).Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1165544842869183912006-12-08T02:25:00.000+00:002006-12-08T02:27:23.196+00:00Baby II on the wayMy wife's is now in hospital with our second baby arriving later today or tomorrow.<br /><br />I think it's adrenaline that's keeping me awake as it is a few weeks earlier than we expected and so we have a ton of stuff to organize, not to mention a Spanish market she was involved with on Saturday.<br /><br />Amazing thing is my 3yr old has slept through the whole thing and doesn't even realize yet!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1164917515700267722006-11-30T20:06:00.000+00:002006-11-30T20:12:12.140+00:00SUSE Linux 10.1So this is my first post from my new SUSE Linux 10.1 installation, running in VMWare on Windows XP Pro. I was tempted to dual boot, but after the hassles of the last week (and to make backing up easy) i went for the virtual option.<br /><br />I want to get Mono and the Mono IDE on it now. If i can develop on C# and it works, then i'll be very happy indeed. Long, long time since i played with Mono!<br /><br />It's a very nice OS and i only wish it had a "Safe Mode" as i screwed up my display and had a bit of a nightmare figuring out command line options to revert it. I did - eventually.<br /><br />I am tempted to go with Apache rather than XPS on Mono (XPS kept breaking in my tests in the Windows install), but i'll maybe start with XPS.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1164810135574981942006-11-29T14:08:00.000+00:002006-11-29T14:22:54.236+00:00Installation NightmareThe last week has been a nightmare.<br /><br />The idea came to me in a dream. Store all data on an external drive. Re-format the hard drive. Run everying on virtual machines. The PC has proven it can do all that with no hassle.<br /><br />What i didn't account for was the hell that re-installing a Dell PC is. The result was machines running with hard drives hanging out, cables being detatched and re-attached, PATA drives in one machine, SATA in the other with a mish mash of cables....<br /><br />It all happended because i removed the "factory" partitions and created my own. The Dell startup didn't like that. In fact, it said the disc was damaged "Return Code 7". My Dell setup disc would check for hardware and just go blank. So would every other disc i could get my hands on. Unless of course i turned off the primary drive and put my external drive in. This time however it would detect the drive was external and wouldn't allow me to go any further.<br /><br />I just could not believe that by some coincidence the hard drive stopped working that very day i formatted it - yet many of the forums say it is broken, so give it back. Dells own hard drive utility tells you the disc is damaged. "No, I don't believe you" i said at 2 am in my underpants.<br /><br />After opening up some machines and playing for a bit and temporarily borrowing some wires i managed to set up the hard drive as a slave on an existing box. I deleted all partitions, created a single partition and re-formatted. I installed Windows, took it back to my own machine and .... it fekin crashed. However, i had suspected the hardware between the two machines would be different and so i re-formmated and installed and everything worked. No damaged disc. All runs faster. I have my VM's all running and life is good.<br /><br />I can now get Suse Linux installed and put Mono on as was the intention. I will leave the base alone and put put all the potentially shady stuff in VM's.<br /><br />The lesson here - don't go with the crowd. If you got a hunch, then go with it. Go with it with a whisky, late night telly and your favourite underpants. Make sure you've every box open in the house with wires hanging out. Your 3rd old son gets to know what memory looks like, what a capacitor is, what resistence is (like he needed to know that) where the fan is - the only remaining question will likely be "Why is daddy doing this?".<br /><br />Don't let the bastards grind you down and get that PC working.<br /><br />Either that or spend the £50 for a new hard drive.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1164125746327465752006-11-21T16:06:00.000+00:002006-11-21T16:15:49.710+00:00When iWoz a kidI've started reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/iWoz-Computer-Invented-Personal-Co-Founded/dp/0393061434">iWoz </a>- the story of Stephan/Stephen Wozniak. It's funny as my name was also written wrong on my christening certificate as "Stephen" and my mum had it changed but they just wrote a huge "V" through the "ph".<br /><br />It started of really well, so i ended up reading for more in one sitting than i really had time for.<br /><br />What interested me was his story about how his dad taught him stuff when he was young. His dad worked at Lockheed and would explain things in fairly technical detail, but in a way he could understand - even at the age of 4. It's not that he wanted to force him into being an engineer - it's more than he knew he'd listen and learn and that can only be good no matter what you end up doing. iWoz (alpha version at that time in his life i guess) therefore knew a whole bunch of stuff kids his age at school never knew. I certainly didn't know that stuff.<br /><br />I really struck a chord as this is exactly how i am with my son. He is 3 but has a "secrets" book which is a science book and we read it quite often. He just keeps asking why and i figured i's get a book so when i don't know quite "why" i can ask the "secrets" book for help. This morning he wanted to know what happened with steam rollers and so we ended up with a discussion on how the shape of the tar changes with heat and the atoms move around, only to settle into a mor structured shape when cooled down.<br /><br />Well, it wasn't quite like that - i tend to move around a bit and make weird noises as it keeps his attention more. We build a (small) robot the other week and he helped every step of the way. It's an easy way to get kids learning - don't make it a task - make it something you just *do*. I very rarely say "i'm going to learn this" - it comes as part of my day, i just end up reading or typing.<br /><br />Looking forward to reading more.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1164106974357062442006-11-21T10:55:00.000+00:002006-11-21T11:02:54.800+00:00ProtegeI used the <a href="http://protege.stanford.edu/download/registered.html">Protege </a>editor some years back and due to my issues around requiring support for multiple inheritance in my Schemas, i decided to see where it hasd got to. Well, it has added full OWL support and some excellent tutorial papers.<br /><br />So, when working with OWL, here is my suggestion.<br /><br />1. <a href="http://protege.stanford.edu/download/registered.html">Download Protege 3.2</a> with the full plugins.<br />2. Create a new <a href="http://www.w3.org/2004/OWL/">OWL </a>document using OWL/RDF Files<br />3. Use <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-guide/">OWL DL</a><br />4. Install <a href="http://pellet.owldl.com/">Pellet </a>as the reasoner and run the DIG Server on port 8181<br /><br />With this creating and reasoning with your Ontologys is really quite simple. In fact, structuring them properly is harder than using the tools - the tools are really quite excellent now.<br /><br />The cool thing is that with the reasoning engine and Protege taxonomy option, you can get multilpe inheritance indirectly by defining based on a monotonic inheritance hierarchy, but using inference through the reasoner to build your hierarchy. Now I can start looking at building some of these things now!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1164037178260128492006-11-20T15:35:00.000+00:002006-11-20T15:39:40.026+00:00Your help needed<p>Here's a shot in the dark!<br /><br />My wife is the director of a Spanish kids toddler association in Glasgow. They are having a Christmas market next month and they ask for small donations from local businesses etc.<br /><br />Does anyone know someone may be interested in donating something (not cash)? They have quite a few things, most of them from local businesses, but why should that stop you folks from the online world from participating!!</p><p>So, if any of you run an online business, would like some local advertising (even if you are a music start-up in the South of India!) and have a small donation to make then please contact me at connect AT stevenR2.com</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1163841488031025952006-11-18T09:09:00.000+00:002006-11-18T09:18:11.996+00:00Inheritance in Xml Schema and OWLI've been using Sparx Systems <a href="http://www.sparxsystems.com/">Enterprise Architect </a>for a few years now and recently I have been using it to model and generate Xml Schema using UML. All was going nice until some requirements determined that I needed to support multiple inheritance.<br /><br />The problem is that <a href="http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema">Xml Schema </a>does not support <a href="http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/20543.html">nonmonotonic inheritace </a>- that is, it only supports single inheritance. There are some <a href="http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=15672070">work arounds</a>, but i prefer to call these hacks and hacks always come back to bite you.<br /><br />I haven't had any real issues with the single inheritance models in C# and Java, mainly as they at least support it indirectly via interfaces. However, it remains to be seen whether the current requirements for multiple inheritance cause any issues when i look at procedural definitions of the types i am creating.<br /><br />However, in ruling out using Xml Schema I am getting back into the world of <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/">OWL </a>and <a href="http://www.w3.org/RDF/">RDF</a>, something i did quite a bit of work on some time ago. Gladly <a href="http://protege.stanford.edu/">Stanford's Protoge editor </a>has evolved and now has native OWL support and is pretty neat (unfortunetly i can't get their latest <a href="http://protege.stanford.edu/download/prerelease-alpha/prototype.html">alpha </a>4.0 release to run, but that may be my lack of Java configuration knowledge - there are no instructions you see).<br /><br />OWL does support the concept of multiple inheritance and much more. In fact i suppose in a way i am happy i have been driven back to it as tool support is now getting there. I'll be trying a few examples out over the weekend and it should be very interesting to start using some of the latest reasoners and see how they have evolved too.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1163761470492014722006-11-17T10:54:00.000+00:002006-11-17T11:04:31.050+00:00PuskasI just got the news that Hungarian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferenc_Puskás">legend</a> <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/6155766.stm">Puskas</a> has died. I have only ever seen videos of him play and one of his greatest moments was here in Glasgow when he scored four goals in front of 135,000 people at Hampden Park in probably the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Cup_1959-60">best European final of all time</a>.<br /><br />Of all the players whose records i have looked at his is the one that sticks out - almost a goal a game in over 300 games for Hunary and the same in almost 500 games for Madrid.<br /><br />You look around now and with Zidane going you wonder whether there is anyone near his class. Well, there isn't - but hopefull he's an inspiration for some and it won't be long until we see a new world number one.<br /><br />R.I.P. PuskasUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1163678169881237032006-11-16T11:41:00.000+00:002006-11-16T11:56:10.166+00:00Create Xml SchemaWriting Xml Schema by hand is good to know, however after a while it can become a bit of a burden writing everything in notepad. I have been using <a href="http://www.sparxsystems.com/">Sparx Systems</a> Enterprise Architect for some years now, but only recently used their Xm Schema development tools.<br /><br />They could make things a <em>little</em> more friendly, but not much. In the same way you create classes, relations and set multiplicity in UML, you can do the same for Xml Schema. Inheritance and more is very simple and generating the Schema is a single click.<br /><br />Give it a shot and you'll be much happier in managing your schema development in a proper UML based IDE than in notepad or VS!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1163597464997872452006-11-15T13:19:00.000+00:002006-11-15T13:31:05.733+00:00Mungo Bunce of BrockenboringsYou got a <a href="http://www.chriswetherell.com/hobbit/">Hobbit name</a>?<br /><br />I read the following blogs:<br /><br /><a href="http://ross.typepad.com">Fard Broadbelt of Buckland</a><br /><a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/">Drogo Sandybanks of Frogmorton</a><br /><a href="http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/">Drogo Loamsdown of Deephallow</a><br /><br />...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1163517059181013622006-11-14T15:08:00.000+00:002006-11-14T15:10:59.520+00:00ACS acquired by Dell<p>ACS, the company i am doing some work for has just been acquired by Dell.</p><p><a href="http://www.acseurope.com/pages/PressStatement.htm">http://www.acseurope.com/pages/PressStatement.htm</a></p><p>Well done and best of luck!</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1163144917650674182006-11-10T07:47:00.000+00:002006-11-10T07:48:38.616+00:00like.comlike.com has just launched - they allow you to discover things by appearance.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1162372361606724922006-11-01T09:11:00.000+00:002006-11-01T09:12:42.820+00:00Google has acquired JotSpot<a href="http://www.jot.com/">Well this one took me a little by surprise!!</a><br /><br />I've used Jot since the dawn of time it seems (or a good while anyway) and I never saw this one coming.<br /><br />Best of luck to them!!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1161792283263892382006-10-25T17:01:00.000+01:002006-10-25T17:04:44.100+01:00Windows Workflow IssuesSam Gentile <a href="http://codebetter.com/blogs/sam.gentile/comments/150991.aspx">posts </a>about potential issues with the sept RC of WF. I've not ran into any issues yet, but be aware this may happen and save your entire Saturday afternoons! Some upcoming stuff from the guys at Redmond:<br /><br />26-Oct<br />Live From Redmond: An In-depth Look at UpdatePanel<br />Kashif Alam<br /><a class="blines3" title="Link outside of this blog" href="http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032311350&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US" target="_blank">link</a><br />2-Nov<br />Live From Redmond: Enriching Existing ASP.NET Applications with ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions<br />Richard Ersek<br /><a class="blines3" title="Link outside of this blog" href="http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032312743&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US" target="_blank">link</a><br />9-Nov<br />Live From Redmond: Introducing the Microsoft AJAX Control Toolkit<br />Joe Stagner<br /><a class="blines3" title="Link outside of this blog" href="http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032311335&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US" target="_blank">link</a><br />16-Nov<br />Live From Redmond: Building your own Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX control extender.<br />Joe Stagner<br /><a class="blines3" title="Link outside of this blog" href="http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032311339&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US" target="_blank">link</a><br />21-Nov<br />Live From Redmond: Using the Microsoft AJAX Library with “other” server technologies.<br />Joe Stagner<br /><a class="blines3" title="Link outside of this blog" href="http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032311343&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US" target="_blank">link</a><br />30-Nov<br />Live From Redmond: Microsoft AJAX Patterns - Implementing Predictive Fetch with Microsoft AJAX<br />Joe Stagner<br /><a class="blines3" title="Link outside of this blog" href="http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032311345&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US" target="_blank">link</a><br />8-Dec<br />Live From Redmond: An in-depth look at the "ListView" control<br />Kashif Alam<br /><a class="blines3" title="Link outside of this blog" href="http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032312745&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US" target="_blank">link</a><br />12-Dec<br />Live From Redmond: Team development on web applications<br />Jim Bresler<br /><a class="blines3" title="Link outside of this blog" href="http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032312747&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US" target="_blank">link</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1161789928391134032006-10-25T16:09:00.000+01:002006-12-06T14:37:36.686+00:00Opodo NonsenseWith our second baby due this Christmas last night we booked flights for my wifes parents to come over from Chile to spend some time in the UK. After some looking around we go some decent prices at Opodo, booked them and after many failed attempts to get their paper ticket version working, we just booked the physical tickets. It was "very easy" accoring to their sales guy on the phone who had clearly never actually done so.<br /><br />It was a little while later that i realised no insurance had been offered with the flight. I called them only to be told that "insurance isn't offered when your origin is outside the UK" and that "I " ... couldn't expect the system to work out that i was coming from outside the UK".<br /><br />I can only imagine that a label indicating that your selected location was NOT the UK would't be beyond the souls that built the system - i even pointed out to her the fact that it displayed in a large orange box that there IS travel insurance for flights originating in the UK and that if the system can handle that, then the reverse isn't surely too tricky (the "else" part of the statement i'd hazard a guess).<br /><br />She then started rambling on about reading the detailed terms and conditions, and mentioning that only important things can be placed on the front screen. Hands up who finds lack of flight and medical insurance to a country 2000 miles away a side issue??<br /><br />The crazy thing is that she is saying it is MY fault even though we spent a reasonable amount of time booking. Sure, there are specific things in the T&C's you have to be aware of, but as a service provider and more importantly a company who would have possibly got repeat business from me, the fact that a fairly serious piece of information was glossed over and not even indicated by the system (or in fact by the rep on the phone earlier in the day) goes to show how bad services seem to be these days.<br /><br />The response should be "Yes, we see that could be missed and we will look at putting a message to indicate there is no insurance with a link to possible 3rd party providers of your insurance".<br /><br />The net result is that they are now way down on the list of companies i will any of my future trips with.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1159855458220741182006-10-03T06:31:00.000+01:002006-10-03T07:05:16.736+01:00The Long Tail of Steve JobsI've just finished reading both iCon and The Long Tail. My conclusion is that Steve Jobs is himself a Long Tail. From Apple to neXt to Pixar and likely Disney, with the first PC, to iTunes, kids films and likely user generated content he seems to be gradually moving down the tail towards entertainment for the individual.<br /><br />iCon was interesting - it certainly gives a frank opinion of Steve Jobs and you leave the book not sure sure whether he is a nice guy or all in it for himself, and whether he was very skillful or very lucky.<br /><br />The Long Tail is an interesting read. I was amazed to read that when video's first emerged they were priced as much as $80 per film - a reaction to the fact less people would be going to see the film in the pictures - of course, the reality being video actually increased their reach.<br /><br />So doesn't make you wonder how long they will react against cheaper music and film and at what point they will realize tat reducing the cost actually reaches out to a far larger audience who will consume more, for less. The key of course is getting the user to listen to that first song, or wactch that first video and then link them into a wealth of music and film they would never have discovered in the first place and which would have sat rotting away somewhere.<br /><br />I even came to start appreciating how <a href="http://vidyo.tv">video may work on an iPod </a>- short films really sound like something that may work. If i could watch something for 5-15 minutes it would fit nicely into my travel routines (rarely do i travel for longer, other than long distance).Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1159804954991288712006-10-02T17:01:00.000+01:002006-10-02T17:02:36.163+01:00Attributes in codeI've rarely using the Attributes class in .Net mainly because often when i consider it's use, i can see better ways of doing it in a more dynamic way.<br /><br />As an example of this in the real world, not too long ago i was discussing Windows Authorization Manager in conjunction with Web Services. In fact, what the client wanted to do, was to protect a specific method call but push control out to application administrators. Of course, .Net offers Role based security as a technique of protecting methods based on the Windows groups a user belongs to. This uses attributes and can be written something like:<br /><br />[SecurityRole("Manager")]<br />public int Add( int operand1, int operand2 )<br />{<br />return operand1 + operand2;<br />}<br /><br />This limits the Add() method to being called by users who are members of the Manager role which is an issue if you wish to make access to this method more dynamic and perhaps add other roles at some point in the future. Using AzMan, you can check at runtime whether the context user has access to the method using an out-of-band role management database, maintained by application administrators.<br /><br />public int Add( int operand1, int operand2 )<br />{<br />(!store.HasAccess(currentIdentity, "Add")) {<br />throw new SecurityException("Access Denied");<br /><br />return operand1 + operand2;<br />}<br /><br />In situations where you want to interop on platforms or make calls accross boundaries such as a business component and stored procedure which may not be using SSPI, the having your role information accessible out-of-band can be hugely beneficial!<br /><br />Furthermore, in most cases where I pull data for configuration purposes, i figure there is a good reason why they are configurable in the first place and so make these changeable through the web or application configuration file. Even a simple switch to move to debug mode or limit the size of soap messages can be useful in an external configuration file than as an attribute in compiled code. I suspect the huge effort that went into declarative support in WCF has this at the forefront of the original design.<br /><br />I struggle to think of many places where attributes derived from the Attribute class and applied imperatively in code are useful. Perhaps "WrittenBy" or "CheckedBy" which are immutable on a per version basis, but as far as i'm concerned, anything that has more than one potential configurable value, just now or in the future, should be available declaratively.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1159254837835169642006-09-25T08:04:00.000+01:002006-09-26T08:20:10.886+01:00Happy BirthdaySo that's me 32 today - and for the first time ever i was working on my birthday (it's a bank holiday, but the company i work for is English and don't have it).<br /><br />Work has been really busy this week as it's the last week of my contract before i head off elsewhere to the murky world of web services - something i have now been working on almost daily for most of my adult life it feels. At the moment tho' it's working on .Net to Java signing and encryption with certificates in what is one of the most bizarre parts of a project I have ever worked on (at the request of a supplier i should add).<br /><br />Almost finished reading iCon about Steve Jobs (opened my eyes - Bill Gates is a saint compared to this guy!) and also almost finished The Long Tail.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1158816856616333442006-09-21T06:34:00.000+01:002006-09-21T17:04:57.063+01:00Before you start writing code ...After the enterprise i am doing some consultancy with spent 7 hours because of mis-configuration between development and system test, i have been asked to help them with instrumentation and tracing within their apps... something i had actually provided prototypes on (integrating MOM etc) a while back but which became less of a priority.<br /><br />I got me thinking about the kinds of things that get pushed down the stack in terms of priority, but are very easily added at design time. Security, tracing and instrumentation don't offer the end user much - most of the time it's invisible to them, but the benefits are huge. So I am starting a list of things to do and think in parallel to your development process.<br /><br /><strong>Security</strong> - think about the big and small. Transport, message, Code security, permission demands and so on. At least be aware and make your team aware of what is avaialble and then think about the areas that should use it. Start with key areas and get familiar and then extend to other areas.<br /><br /><strong>Tracing</strong> - in ASP.Net for example, you get tracing for free. Just add some trace statements and turn it on to see the result in your environment. Put in statements for core data (connection strings is a nice example of the one that screwed people up yesterday). At least know that deploment managers can look at a simple file and compare the values with what they expect.<br /><br /><strong>Instrumentation</strong> - Another of the "ah, we'll do it later" things. Make a list of 5 key areas and instrument them. Add performance metrics, such as measuring the amount of memory taken up by a particular variable (yep, stored 5k cached SOAP messages for 300 concurrent users in an Application Varible isn't a great idea!).<br /><br /><strong>Versioning</strong> - If you are working with endpoints in ASMX or WCF, then think about versioning. I personally like to version the endpoint, the wsdl and the xsd, but as long as you are AWARE that you DO have to think about versioning when it comes to web services, you'll be ahead of most of the companies i go into.<br /><br />This isn't complete and i'll revisit - add your comments if there are more.<br /><br />It's not implementation that is key here - it is awareness!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1158304934115683862006-09-15T08:13:00.000+01:002006-09-15T08:22:14.733+01:00Long Tail of CultureI've read The Long Tail and just finished reading a book about the long tail poster child, in Ebay - "The Perfect Store". A lot of the discussion is on niches and filters to access those niches, but in reading the books, something else occurred to me. Uniform access to address those tails is almost impossible - in some cases because no single person or entity can really understand all of the cultures as you move down the tails.<br /><br />As i read both books, i got increastingly irritated (particularly in Alan Cohen's book) of the mixing between "British" and "English" as though they are the same thing. Now, i'm neither anti English not anti British, but i DO live in Scotland and am aware it is also apparently part of the UK. IN short, these books address long tail issues, but within them isolated readers in that long tail who happen to live in Scotland. In short, if they were content sites in the long tail, they'd lose 5 million potential customers.<br /><br />I expect such issues arise across a multitude of cultures in the long tail and wonder whether it will ever be possible to provide a google type search that actually is culture aware in the long tail. It's fine searching content, but if it starts isolating or irritating consumers due to cultural indifference then they won't be using it for long.<br /><br />Oh, the long tail of weird stuff gets longer every day... <a href="http://www.bedjump.com/">http://www.bedjump.com/</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1158219052732794782006-09-14T08:27:00.000+01:002006-09-14T08:30:53.013+01:00Continuous Partial AttentionI was talking by email with Linda Stone about her thoughts on soemthing called <a href="http://continuouspartialattention.jot.com/WikiHome">Continuous Partial Attention </a>which i was directed to by<a href="http://joi.ito.com/"> Joi Ito</a>.<br /><br />My views are probably orthogonal to the concept of CPA as she sees it, but it did strike a chord based on some things i have read in the last few years and how i operate day to day ....<br /><br />I'm only recently reading about your thoughts so some comments may not<br />hit the mark on what CPA really conerns, but i'll add my comments<br />anyway.<br /><br />In Smart Mobs, there is talk of kids (in Korea i think) that can walk<br />talking with their parents whilst participating in a peer based chat,<br />typing using mobiles in their pockets! When i read about CPA i thought<br />of this immediately.<br /><br />My view on a distributed CPA would be this. Consider a sine wave.<br />Something like how you may operate through the day (it's not as<br />regular as that, but possibly not so far away either), every so often<br />dedicating your attention to things outside the norm and then back to<br />your core objective.<br /><br />Now, consider adding some noise to that wave. These are my signals (we<br />all have different signals) - they all vary - things like reputation,<br />source, physical or electronic and so on all play their part in adding<br />noise. My normal daily course will then be influenced based on the<br />noise of others - indeed, the "noise" from Joi Ito's blog (his<br />reputation, good blog quality and interesting paragraph "signals")<br />brought me to your paper, despite me scanning over 500 blog posts in<br />Bloglines. There is probably a relation between the noise and the time<br />you have to evaluate the noise (for me it's about 5 mins every hour).<br /><br />So, i am trying to stay connected as much as possible, but can only do<br />that through various signals i get from others - your posts on CPA<br />will now add additional noise - if that's not to harsh a term :)<br /><br />It can be good and bad as you say. I would rarely use CPA when with my<br />son or wife (at least i'd try to filter out most of the noise!) but<br />day to day it would be invaluable for me, but i'm struggling to learn<br />how to stay connected, but not read everything, or try everything or<br />watch every video or podcast.<br /><br />You know, i created something called taghop a long while back really<br />to try and catch the "buzz" of cyberspace so you could have some level<br />of feeling part of a community and staying in touch - a softer type of<br />multi-tasking. It works for me :) I'm actually reading about ebaY just<br />now ("The Perfect Store") and what *I* think of CPA (which may be<br />different from what the actual story is!) applies in online Auctions<br />in a big way.<br /><br />These are just my initial thoughts mainly because i had looked intoUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1158133564294897142006-09-13T08:36:00.000+01:002006-09-13T08:46:04.623+01:00Used underwear on ebayI'm in the last few pages of "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Store-Inside-eBay/dp/0316150487">The Perfect Store</a>" by Alan Cohen and came across one of the classic phrases of modern writing. If ever we need to sum up our generation over the last 10 years, this has to be it:<br /><blockquote>"At first Ebay treated used underwear sales like any other used clothing sale.<br />But users begain to complain that when they searched for <em>ordinary</em> used<br />underwear, they came across listings designed to appeal to fetishists."</blockquote><br />Now, in my book there must be very little "ordinary" used underwear in the world. What does it even look like and when does underwear worn by someone else become ... well, extraordinary???<br /><br />My wife suggested it was underwear worn by the stars and such (erm, worrying insight into her little world), but how much of a market would there be for that and more importantly. how the heck do you get hold of it.<br /><br />My view of the world is now tainted a little bit more and i'm avoiding the temptation to search for used underwear to see what's going on in that little subculture.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1158006826095784282006-09-11T21:24:00.000+01:002006-09-11T21:42:08.290+01:00Reading blogs that are blockedOne thing that irritates the hell out of me is corporate companies that block blogs. I use blogs constantly to stay on top of what is happening, but often in work (and for legitimate use) i try to access a blog that has been blocked... often by someone who has no idea what a blog *is*, but has added an entry somewhere.<br /><br />That's what i love about the web - you don't have that kind of control. There are probably a bunch of things that should be banned through human decency, but inside the firewall, all hell lets loose (or it's diametric opposite) and you end up being unable to view the blog sites you read regularly (security topics being a favouite for me to read - as well as to be blocked .... if "hack" is mentioned it will likely be blocked).<br /><br />If you are in this sitation, then just get bloglines :) It does the work of pulling in the feeds and (as of yet) i haven't seen it blocked. You can even ask it to dynamically fetch new blogs and away it goes and returns with the results.<br /><br />Now, no-one in the place i consult will read this as my blog is blocked ( i don't think it *my* blog they are blocked - it's blogger in general) - so i don't expect to see bloglines blocked any time soon.. and when it is, there will be something else out there!<br /><br />Oh, just finishing reading "A Perfect Store". Yet again i am amazed by the luck that goes along with pure hard work... i read the Google story and thought the same thing. In fact StartUp by Jerry Kaplan is probably one case where his luck was out. I hope to have some of that luck soon too :)<br /><br />It is also amazing how there are little networks of people and companies that span all the books... Kagle, Oydimar, Whitman, Kaplan and so on... all linked together in some bizarre subnet. I feel like i know some of them quite well now!<br /><br />... by a weird quirk of click, i discovered Mike Wilson (ran tech ops at Ebay for a number of years) is at <a href="http://www.there.com">There</a>. Of all the things there is no blog which makes following it a pain :SUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14570472.post-1157699748689549212006-09-08T08:12:00.000+01:002006-09-08T08:16:10.526+01:00Orcas RC1 outThe Orcas tools for the RC1 Winfx release are now out <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=935AABF9-D1D0-4FC9-B443-877D8EA6EAB8&displaylang=en">here</a>.<br /><br />Oddly they are titled "Community Technology Preview " rather than RC1, but reading further on, sure enough it's RC1.<br /><br />Downloading and installing just now ....Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0