CommunityOne Presentation 
May 8th, 2008
In addition to my slides, Andre recorded my CommunityOne presentation and put it on Blip. Check it out!
Archive for the 'Web' Category
CommunityOne Presentation
CommunityOne and RedMonk
May 7th, 2008
So far so good.
My talk at CommunityOne went off without a hitch and was possibly even well received. After which Andre and I went on to check out the RedMonk track at CommunityOne, which was inciteful as one would expect. We participated in a few discussions around cloud computing, twitter and, of course, RIA. I think from the discussion about RIAs I pretty much decided the only thing that makes an RIA is when an online application does not use page refreshes (too much). Flash, Silverlight and Ajax all share this one common thread. It was a good time and got even better at the house of shields after (between which was dinner with Dion, Ben, Chet, James and Andre).
At any rate, there have been lots of good conversations with all sorts of different people and the creative juices are flowing. Can’t wait to find time to get some code written 
Tomorrow is the Anchor Steam tour that Mike Chambers has organized - needless to say I can’t wait!
Nitobi Hack Day V3
May 3rd, 2008
The next Nitobi Hack Day has been scheduled for May 24 - put it in your calendar.
Check the details at Upcoming or on the Wiki.
Last time was wicked awesome and by awesome I mean totally sweet. Lots of hacking got done and the beer was cold.
And if you missed it last time we also have another Ajax and Scotch event the thursday before so that people can plan their exploits.
Complete UI Q2 Released!
May 1st, 2008
We managed to finally pull things together and get the release out despite some attempts by .NET build tools to sabotage the entire release!
With this release we now support Safari 3, have added a bunch of new themes to help you make your apps look hot, some new Dreamweaver extensions that mean there is no JavaScript to write to make master-detail grid or combo applications, and most importantly Mike did an awesome job on getting the new TreeGrid component done!
There are some exciting things in the works as well for next week - including screencasts and even some JavaServer Faces love!
iPhone Comes to Canada - Almost
April 29th, 2008
Finally Rogers and Apple have agreed on a deal to bring the iPhone to Canada.
Not that I particularly care since I am a big fan of my Blackberry Curve. Multitouch or touch at all is great but when it comes to browsing through emails and doing the things that I do on a daily basis the Curve trackball gets my vote.
Future Shop Ordering Sucks
April 29th, 2008
As a break from working on the imminent Complete UI release I decided to do my taxes tonight and rant.
I am seriously fed up with ye’ old Future Shop and their ordering process. I have commented on their broken search before which has generally proved to be completely useless. Not to mention their terrible product taxonomy - I mean who would look for a computer mouse in Home / Computer Add-ons vs Home / Computer Accessories! What the heck is a “Computer Add-on” anyways?
Now I did eventually find something that I wanted from Future Shop, some nice new monitors for a few people at Nitobi who don’t have monitors for whatever reason (myself included). I checked out with little pain aside from the constant logging me out.
The next hurdle was the email that they sent me pretty much immediately saying that they needed to verify the order and were going to get in touch with me and that I was to call them. That left me sitting there scratching my head thinking am I to get in touch with them or are they calling me since they said both in their email, and I certainly didn’t want my order to be canceled if we didn’t talk within five days as they threatened! So i searched for a customer service number - which I would have though might be in their email they sent me but of course was not - and called them after finding a general number. The phone system I was connected to insisted on hanging up on me several times, after I had already navigated several levels deep thoughtfully considering which option from each menu would be most appropriate. Throwing my hands in the air along with a few expletives I gave up for the moment.
Two days later (three days after I had ordered by this time) I got another email saying that I should call them on some 1 800 number. I have already gone onto their website to order the damn products and now I need to call them to verify something. So I give in and call. Once again I am connected to a phone system with the same bilingual automated phone agent - let’s call her Shelly - who sounds like she really, genuinely wants to help me. However, our interaction quickly goes south. Was it something I said? This time rather than the call just being dropped I accidentally entered the wrong order number. Long story short Shelly gets pissed and tells me “You seem to be having problems using the phone system” - as though I am a complete idiot for ever entering a wrong number - “please call back later and try again” - yes she is right I think to myself, I was just so sure and head strong about actually getting the products I ordered that I couldn’t hit the correct keys and should probably take a timeout to think about what I have done and try again once I have simma’d down a bit.
After pouring myself a scotch to settle my nerves I give it a second try. Shelly answers again and this time I am very careful at entering my correct order number for fear of having my ego shattered once more and successfully enter my order number. Rejoice! Surely that should cinch the deal you are thinking now. How wrong you are my friends. Shelly then proceeds to ask me if my phone number is something prefixed with 44 … clearly living in BC I probably don’t have a UK phone number. So I politely tell her that is not my number and am prompted to enter my phone number - the very same phone number that I entered in my billing information when I checked out. At which point, as directed by Shelly, I hang up the phone and Shelly promptly calls me back asking me if I have really made this purchase. I press 1 and she says my order has been released for shipping.
That entire process was unnecessarily complicated, error prone and completely ridiculous. What is the point of making me call some number and tell them the number that I want them to call me back on to verify the purchase? How does that verify anything other than the fact that I have access to a phone that I know the number of? They already knew my number since I entered it when I checked out so why didn’t they just call me on that as soon as possible after I made my purchase?
Future Shop should really hire us to help them out.
Complete UI Q2 Progress
April 28th, 2008
We are almost a month behind now on the Q2 release of Complete UI but Mike and I are in the final throws of polishing. We are shooting for releasing today and if that fails tomorrow at the latest. As people will know from the beta we are releasing support for Safari 3, new Dreamweaver Extensions, new themes and, most importantly, a new component called TreeGrid for displaying hierarchical data. I have a can of Red Bull in hand and one last Safari Combo bug to fix before the building will commence!
CommunityOne Presentation
April 26th, 2008
So I have been accepted to give a presentation at CommunityOne, which occurs the day before JavaOne on May 5. I am going to talk about JavaScript + DOM patterns. I was going to focus on the JavaScript and DOM details around some common Ajax patterns such as those covered conceptually by Michael and Bill. Any ideas would be more than welcome!
Andre and I are also going to take part in the RedMonk CommunityOne festivities as much as possible as well which should certainly be a blast.
This is a bit of a digression but what a sweet picture. Ryan looks badass and Cote is all choked up!
Methane Rising?
April 25th, 2008
After a relative leveling off of atmospheric methane levels, the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration released new figures indicating that there has been a large rise in global atmospheric methane levels over the past year. While certainly not a trend, it is something to keep an eye on. Atmospheric methane, coming from cows, landfills, forests, and melting permafrost, does last long in the atmosphere - thus the recent leveling off - however, it causes about 25 times more warming than carbon dioxide!
CompleteUI Q2 Release Update
March 31st, 2008
We are still gathering feedback from our later than expected Q2 Beta release and so are trying to get things working for an April 18 release.
As Sean mentioned on my other post about Q2 Beta there are a few holes in the beta (like .NET libraries ) that will certainly be patched up for the release.
Stay tuned as this release should be a great one!
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