Its amazing to see the number of activities the Ohio State Parks service runs. One of those being an outdoor rifle and pistol range in the southern Waldo, Ohio. Yesterday Mike and I went up to sight in his M1 Garand. Aside from me shooting out both legs of the target stand (was aiming for the second one) we had the outstanding opportunity to shoot a Barrett 98 Bravo which fires a .338 Lapua Magnum round. Let me just say this thing is unbelievable! It was putting round after round almost though the same hole. Here is my ‘bulls eye’ shot from the bench and Mike’s too.

It’s good to be back from the Avectra Users and Developers Conference for 2009; had an amazing time in the sessions learning about product enhancements, additional functionality, and meeting the friendly and amazingly knowledgeable staff.

I’d say some key takeaways for me would be:

• Strong focus on web services for integration; makes me excited about developing a mobile app
• Strong focus on Sharepoint as NetForum’s external presence and great conversation with susqtech.
• Each staff member REALLY knew their respective area of expertise and showed a willingness to find solutions
• Really good technical tracks in the conference series
• Brought back some good information and specifics on looking at the NetForum 3.0 upgrade

Some stuff I’d like to see:

• Would be nice to have a highly technical session for SQL developers and .Net; maybe sharing with the Q&A practices that Avectra’s developers use. I think that is what makes the ‘Open Developer’s Forum’ so good is because it allows for asking those kinds of questions … getting deep into the tech.
• OLAP … and this comes from the technical concepts at point above. I think business intelligence (BI) is a hard piece to integrate. From the developer’s perspective though it would be a great benefit to have Avectra put forward an OLAP structure its clients can build their own reporting and BI from. It’s something I’ve seen in other enterprise products such as BlackBaud enterprise (not quite the same market space but I think it plays).
• Access to power outlets in the conference rooms; on a few occasions it would have been great to pick-up a quick charge.
• Perhaps there is a way to improve the vetting of the association speakers; not displeased but one or two were a little more of a ‘miss’ than a ‘hit’ as I felt the content could go deeper.

Just recently I was in an interesting meeting discussing the ubiquitous topic of social media. In the advent of millions of people using Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter it’s interesting to hear what’social media means to people and their interpretation of its value. My interpretation of value in social media is the opportunity for technology to expose the interesting details of our day to day lives which are commonly hidden to others because we are at work, traveling, or any other situation where traditional or personal communication doesn’t readily keep us connected.  By no means is my interpretation ground breaking but does serve as a segue to an interesting question.

What is the best to expose the interesting details of our lives or organization and create a sense of connectedness; what should those details be?  For me it’s this blog because I can controll the format, content, and have ownership. Sure I use Flickr and Facebook but only for a point of contact and things I have no problem with existing and living in a public domain.

As a slight tangent … I’m definitely a fan of CommonCraft and their style of presentation; they’ve basically built a small media company based on the Back of the Napkin style of presentation. Staying with the topic of social media they’ve done a nice clip about Twitter in their ‘plain english’ format.  It’s mostly about the service itself but really describes the value point of social media I previously mentioned.

Social media is amazing. Whats even more amazing is when artists give raw content to a community and begin to see the community shape and mold the content on its own.  If you have not already, give a listen to NIN.REMIX.COM.

Just recently I mentioned to some friends the Buckeye Traffic website and they were totally surprised such a service existed.  Its a State of Ohio, Department of Transportation website which overlays the state’s traffic cameras on a Microsoft visual Earth map.  Its not pictured below but there are a series of options to select various areas of the state, zoom in and out, select warnings and notifications, but most importantly open a link to a live feed (image snapshots) from specific cameras on the state’s highways.  This is what is pictured below. Clicking on a purple camera icon will open a dialogue box with the most recent picture from that camera. At times it can be hard to tell the orientation of the camera, which cardinal direction its pointing but a quick observation of where the sun’s position is should be a good indicator.  So far on a day  like today, where OSU is closed and most of the city is on a delay or shutdown its a totally handy tool.

Now its time to go shovel the driveway. :(

I’ve listened to this song previously but just found a video was made for it. To me its a relaxing song and interesting video to watch. Samuel Beam uses a lot of imagery in his folk music; not something I’m heavily into bit a nice departure from other forms of musical entertainment.

Marketing is ubiquitous. You and every single person you meet at some point is a marketer ranging from managing their personal brand to the profession of marketing the world’s most recognizable corporate images.

Its interesting to note that in the world of ‘tech’ there has been a huge marketing shift in the making among the industry’s two major brands, Apple and Microsoft. Philip Schiller replaces Steve Jobs at MacWorld and Steve Ballmer replaces Bill Gates at CES as their leading corporate front-men. Now that they’re here lets see what they talked about:

Philip Schiller, Apple

• New 17 inch Mac book with prices and a general release date for Jan ‘09
• iTunes gets new pricing and goes DRM free with pricing for an upgrade in April ‘09
• iLife ‘09 with pricing and specific features such as facial recognition in Jan ‘09
• iWork ‘09 with new productivity features and milti-pricing levels available now
• iWork.com launches in beta 

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft

• Ballmer speaks about Windows7, best windows OS to come
• Ballmer speaks about Windows7 have touch functionality
• Release of Windows7 in beta on 1/9/2002 (alredy leaked in Dec ‘08)
• Next game in the Halo series coming in Feb ‘09
• Announced partnership with Dell for Windows Live

Its keynote season for a lot of companies and these are two of the best; but looking at how they both use their marketing opportunities.  Its no wonder Apple fanatics are lining up around the corners of the retail stores to purchase what they just heard about from the man at the top.  

It really begs a simple question…

So now that everyone is a marketer, are you a news maker?

Of the many times of year this is one of my favorites. Having long lived on the north end of Columbus I’ve always been around large neighborhoods with their many lighted streets. With the close proximity of these neighborhoods, Polaris mall, and the great cloud cover this time of year offers there is a night-time reflection of lights in the sky. It makes for a nice glow, almost like summer time with a full moon lighting the sky.

One of my favorite bands, songs, and videos. This fall it was amazing to see this performed live again in Columbus; can’t wait for the next NIN tour.  If you havn’t checked it out NIN has a concert DVD from their last tour. When exercising at home I’ll put this on the big screen and crank the speakers.

edit: google video removed the video, replaced from one with youtube

Note: song gets NWS at 2:24

Click here

Right now the goal is every few days to complete a chapter of the book ‘Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK.”  I’m not a big fan of the title but then again its the title that sells most book; a double ’iPhone’ in the text seems a bit awkward. The book sets out to walk you though the fundamentals of the SDK and being a few chapters in its doing a decent job. Its been some time since I’ve done C development with a language like like Objective-C and development tools such as Xcode. Transitioning from C# and .Net 3.5 is a little bit of a leap but thankfully I did some linux GUI programming back in the day. Having worked with Apress and being familiar with their style guidelines for Curtis’ book; my only critique would be a few minor formatting and style issues in the early chapter. IMO, some links and tips should be formatted differently.

Chapter 3 covered basic interactions and in this case a two button demo. Consisting of a label and two buttons you work though the steps of defining outlets, actions, builder, and linking it all together. When you finally build the project the the iPhone simulator comes up, loads your app, and lets you click left button and right button until your heart is content.

Its nothing to write home yet but getting the fundaments of iPhone development so far is pretty straight forward from a pretty good book.  Next comes working though some advanced interactions and then diving into specific library objects such as sliders, tables, images, network functions, etc…  I’ll keep working a couple of chapters but I’m sure at some point I’ll break from working page to page and begin actual application development; keeping the book on my desk as a reference.