Rotating Knives

I have spent a lot of years working in technology.  When I was in 6th grade my best friend Jason decided to get a computer. It was an Ohio Scientific model with a 6502 processor and a a whopping 3k of RAM.  He and I taught ourselves BASIC.  He taught himself 6502 assembly language and used it to write his own Atari-style Tank game.  I played with for about 2 seconds (Jason was and is WAY smarter than me) .  That was 34 years ago and I’ve been in love with technology ever since.  I also played with Apple II computers at that time, but I have naturally gravitated toward the PC rather than the Mac for the same reasons most of us at that time did.  The PC was more affordable, had an open architecture, was friendlier to low-level fiddling and had more titles written for it.  And so, my technology hobby, which became my technology career, has been PC-centric.

I got a job with Microsoft in 2002.  As you might imagine, Microsoft is a fantastic company for which to work.  I had access to early builds of pre-release products, got to work with some of the smartest people I had ever met, and (and this is most relevant to my post) got the best Windows Mobile phones money could buy.  As a technology evangelist, I would talk with customers about building applications on Windows mobile.  I would try to show off my new devices to friends and family and was always puzzled by their remarks.  One of my younger friends in tech industry commented that my Pocket PC Phone looked like “a brick”.  He and the others at the after work gathering, openly laughed at it..  I didn’t get why they weren’t as excited about it as I was. 

Last year, I left Microsoft and started work as manager of an architecture department at an insurance company.  On a lark, I decided to get an iPhone.  It is difficult for me to state how thoroughly I was blown away.  My Windows mobile devices of the past 6 and a half years were slow and rebooting them was a regular occurrence.  Any applications I tried to use other than solitaire or basic email were not useful to me.  Even the Windows Live Search application, which came the closest, was not particularly useful because of slow response time. 

Then, I started to use the iPhone.  I was blown away.  It was fast, responsive, had an incredibly intuitive and well-thought out interface and had created and leveraged an ecosystem of creativity in the App Store that made it altogether different from any mobile device I had ever used.  I ACTUALLY USED this thing!  I used it for GPS.  I used it for texting. I used it for blogging, taking photos, editing photos, playing poker, reading news, BROWSING THE WEB (all but impossible to do on my previous devices).  I came to understand that Microsoft’s approach to mobile devices was the past and purpose-built hardware/software architectures were the future. 

So, with great anticipation, I reserved an iPad.  This Saturday April 3rd, I will be one of the first consumers to buy this new technology.  Like many of you, I’ve read the articles talking about what a disappointment the iPad has turned out to be.  Some have predicted its failure and even insulted people like me who will buy it on day one.  No multi-tasking.  No camera.  No phone capabilities.  Ugly bezel.  Did I mention no multi –tasking?

They may be right, but I highly doubt it.  The iPad will be an enormous success.  It will because it is a game changer in several markets at once.  Readers, casual gamers, people who are normally technophobes..these are all markets that the iPad will hit hard.  In other words, there are many, many people who will buy one and love it. 

I pick mine up in 7 days.  Count on hearing more about my experience with it here.

  Kudos to my good friend and colleague Joe Rubino!  Like me, he’s an ex-Microsoftie and, also like me, he’s got a little more time to dig into Apple technology.  With me, it’s my iPhone.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I am still a big Microsoft champion.  They still create some of the best software on the planet and their work is changing the world for the better.  But after 6 and a half years of the best Windows Mobile phones money could buy, my mind was blown by the elegance, simplicity and power of the iPhone.  But that’s food for another post.

For Joe, it’s his iMac.  His new machine is a thing of beauty.  He’s running Snow Leopard and Windows 7 through Parallels software and he tells me it’s been a great experience.  But here’s the thing about Joe.  He’s what you’d call “handy”.  For example, a while back, he needed more space for his music than his Zune provided.  Most people would go out and buy a bigger Zune, but not Joe.  Instead, he cracked it open and swapped out the standard hard drive for a bigger one.  That’s the kind of guy Joe is.  His motto seems to be “I void warranties.”  He still gets email to this day about his blog post on the Zune hard drive swap.

Now Joe is sharing his new adventure with his iMac with the world.  If you have a Mac and are interested in getting to your Windows Live Mail, or in using Entourage with your Exchange account, or in any of a number of nifty tricks, you owe it to yourself to visit Joe’s blog Adapting to a Mac.

[Good article done as a slide show with screen shots and explanations of features in both. Well done. http://www.pcworld.com/article/170882/snow_leopard_versus_windows_7.html

The July CTP release of Windows Azure came out today. The biggest new feature is the ability to write services that have multiple worker roles and/or Web roles. While it may not seem like much at first, this will allow for more elegant designs that separate concerns and workloads for better manageability and scalability.  The new release also supports building Azure services through TFS Build and has the ever-appreciated "Enhanced Robustness and stability." Download it here, and as always, run pre-release software at your own risk

Those of you who enjoyed creating mashups on Microsoft’s PopFly.com will be sad to learn that the service is being discontinued after August 24th. As a registered PopFly user, I got the email this morning from John Montgomery. Not sure what was behind this decision, but I suspect that the mashup maker had run its course. This is by no means a death blow to creating mashups with the Microsoft platform. .NET is still a great platform for consuming services from multiple sources and mashing up the data in whatever way you wish. Not every idea evolves to the next level, I suppose. Rest in peace, PopFly.

LINQ is an excellent technology, but moving from T-SQL syntax to LINQ syntax is not an easy jump when you start getting into complex queries.  Enter Linqer, a tool that converts SQL to LINQ.  I tried it out recently and it worked like a charm on some pretty hairy SQL.  When you put something like this:

SELECT AttributeTypes.TypeName, AttributeValues.AttributeValue
FROM  Attributes INNER JOIN
               AttributeValues ON Attributes.AttributeValueID = AttributeValues.ID INNER JOIN
               AttributeTypes ON Attributes.AttributeTypeID = AttributeTypes.ID AND AttributeValues.AttributeTypeID = AttributeTypes.ID
WHERE (Attributes.SystemID = 1)
Order by AttributeTypes.TypeName

 

into Linqer, you hit a button and get this:

from t in db.Attributes
join t0 in db.AttributeValues on new { AttributeValueID = t.AttributeValueID } equals new { AttributeValueID = t0.ID }
join t1 in db.AttributeTypes
      on new { t.AttributeTypeID, Column1 = t0.AttributeTypeID }
  equals new { AttributeTypeID = t1.ID, Column1 = t1.ID }
where
  t.SystemID == 1
orderby
  t1.TypeName
select new {
  t1.TypeName,
  t0.AttributeValue1
}

Using the tool actually helps you learn LINQ syntax more quickly as well.  Definitely worth the $60.

Home | Linqer

Check out this great article on Wired about how Facebook is quietly changing the way people seek information on the web.  What really amazes me about the story is how quickly entire business strategies must change in the Internet age.  The lifetime of “killer apps” is getting shorter every day, and that’s a very good things for consumers of technology.  If you have a few quiet moments and want a peek at the future, take a read.

Check out my interview with the godlike Roger Sessions on MSDN Channel 9.  For the one or two of you reading this who don’t already know Roger, he is the CTO of Objectwatch.  He has authored six books, is on the Board of Directors of the International Association of Software Architects, a Microsoft MVP in Enterprise Architecture and a disturbingly good chess player.  In this interview, Roger discusses complexity as a quality attribute of applications.  In fact, he claims:

“The failure to manage IT complexity is the single biggest reason that IT systems so often fail. And when complexity is the culprit, the failures are catastrophic, expensive, and usually highly visible.”

Take a look and see why Roger has been a sought after expert for the past 13 years.

ARCast continues producing excellent pieces picking the minds of the best architects out there today.  This episode focuses on architecting interfaces for better testability.  Here the godlike Dr. “Z” talks with David Makogon of RDA about how decoupling makes your app more testable.   A good use of 17 minutes and 25 seconds. 

ARCast.TV – David Makogon on Architecting Interface to Improve Testability | ARCast.TV | Channel 9

  I finished installing the RC1 of Windows 7 this morning and all things considered it went pretty well.  I have an issue with a USB power pack Network Adapter that I have to work through, but the OS is performing admirably.  My home office machine was still on 32-bit Vista, so this was the big jump for me.  I had Windows 7 beta on my notebook. 

First of all, the performance is MUCH better.  I run a quad core machine and it seems that W7 makes much better use of that power.  The UI just snaps and the usability touches are excellent.  The new task bar icons are not as wide as the old ones, so you can fit many more icons on the bar without having to scroll.  Also, hovering over the icon brings up thumbnails of all open windows grouped under that icon.  For example, if I have 4 IE windows opened, only the one IE icon will appear on the task bar, but when I hover over it all 4 windows appear as selectable thumbnails.

What interests me is the XP compatibility mode that uses Virtual PC technology to run programs that have breaking changes in Windows 7.  Perhaps a post on that later.