Test upload of video via Gmail to Posterous

Download now or watch on posterous

video-2010-05-07-17-21-31.3gp (252 KB)

This video was just shot at the Pub at Crestview Hills.

Thank you,
Mark McFadden
www.markmcfadden.tel

Posted via email from Mark's Musings

Is Yours a "Hunch-Friendly" Environment?

Kathleen Carr, editor at the Harvard Business Review Blog, recently posted an interesting entry entitled, "To Innovate, Create "Hunch-Friendly" Environments."

Thought #1: Within the post Carr states,  "...give your employees the latitude to explore their ideas and you'll be amazed what they come up with."  I understand that you have core objectives that you must and should meet. However, does your company provide any time for your greatest asset, your people, to think of new processes, products, and/or services?

Thought #2: Carr also states that organizations and individuals should be "...thinking in terms of next practices instead of best practices." In other words, we must think not only about how to improve current processes but what would could be doing going forward?

Thought #3: The post also mentions "...the importance of respecting people and their ideas, and how people need to feel a human bond at work if they're going to feel invested." While we know the value of respecting differing views, how do we increase the sense of "human bond" among ourselves?

I think each of the above ideas take one thing that we all seem to have little of--time.

With that said, my assumption is that providing small amounts of time for innovative thinking will be be well worth the investment. After all, any company is really an information based organization--both formal information with customer data and informal information of ideas that could improve the use of that formal information.

Posted via email from Mark's Musings

Multiple Information Streams, Self-Motivation, and the Outcomes

Dana Boyd in her Web 2.0 Expo talk Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media brings up some interesting thoughts as to the value of capturing shrinking attention spans by both businesses and individuals.

Within the rarity of sustained attention, other factors than limited time and having too many options come into play. When considering a more open access to data via the internet, one's attention will not always be placed on content that is most substantial or fact based:

We may be democratizing certain types of access, but we're not democratizing attention. Just because we're moving towards a state where anyone has the ability to get information into the stream does not mean that attention will be divided equally....Some in the room might immediately think, "Ah, but it's a meritocracy. People will give their attention to what is best!" This too is mistaken logic. What people give their attention to depends on a whole set of factors that have nothing to do with what's best.

She then goes on to say:

Our bodies are programmed to consume fat and sugars because they're rare in nature. Thus, when they come around, we should grab them. In the same way, we're biologically programmed to be attentive to things that stimulate: content that is gross, violent, or sexual and that gossip which is humiliating, embarrassing, or offensive. If we're not careful, we're going to develop the psychological equivalent of obesity. We'll find ourselves consuming content that is least beneficial for ourselves or society as a whole.

Boyd then goes on to discuss having multiple information options also results in selecting sources that look and think like we do, therefore limiting valuable, serendipitous encounters with differing ideas and concepts. However, that is a later post. :-)

Finally, I understand that what is considered "valuable" information is subjective. In my view, the determining factor is not "limited attention" but rather what motivates us to direct our limited attention to the information streams we select.  Are we constantly drawn toward and given to the siren songs of gossip, violence, and sex? I think a valid question is, are the content streams you consume beneficial for you let alone society as a whole?

Posted via email from Mark's Musings

Status Last Ten Facebook App

I created this Status Last Ten Facebook application over a year ago and it is just starting to get some use. Display a list of your last ten status messages.

Posted via email from Mark's Musings

"Killer" Apps...Humans to Blame

CIO.com editor Thomas Wailgum provides a few scenarios of the darker side of the use of our data in his recent post The Killer Apps of Capitalism.

As he states, "Now, millions of customer records and corporate interactions can be examined with ease; seemingly disconnected swaths of data points can be mined, categorized, analyzed and presented to executives and line of business managers; and new trends and patterns discovered can show profit and loss at both granular and enterprise levels....But there is often a powerful human downside."

Wailgum then details how an insurance company used patient data to determine potential fraud cases and then canceled their customers' policies based on often unsubstantial information. A typical knee jerk reaction that calls for an abandonment of technology is not the correct response to it's improper use.

Finally Wailgum writes, "While technology is the enabler in all of this, technology isn't to blame. We must remember that real, live human beings are making decisions from the software's computational capabilities. We still have to hold the people accountable....Just because IT applications are dispassionate and without feeling doesn't mean we—the humans using the tech—have to be, too." (emphasis mine)

Posted via email from Mark's Musings

B2B - Twitter | B2C - Facebook (?)

In a recent Harvard Business IdeaCast there was a discussion on the question of should every seek to utilize social media. The guest, Alexandra Samuel, director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University and the cofounder of Social Signal  mentioned that for those companies whose customers are other businesses then Twitter may be the tool of choice. She then proposed for organizations that are B2C (business to customers) channels, Facebook may be the best tool. Thoughts?

Posted via email from Mark's Musings

Redirect your hatred of Flash to the W3C

TechCruch's article The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man details tweets by Joe Hewitt, a software developer currently at Facebook, that was in response to Steve Jobs' blog post on Adobe's Flash. Within the article Hewitt states: 

"Redirect your hatred of Flash to the W3C, whose embarrassingly slow pace forced devs to use a plugin because the standards were so weak." 

To this I say Amen and bring on HTML5!

Posted via email from Mark's Musings

Testing inline images from Gmail post to my Posterous.com blog

A few weeks ago Gmail added support for inline images, so you can place photos anywhere in the text of your post. Posterous will support this, in addition to posting attached images and automatically creating a gallery view for multiple images in an e-mail post. OK, here is image one below:

Below is the next image for testing:

I will assume that this is working and say, SWEET!

Posted via email from Mark's Musings

One of the Best Things a Marketer Can Do....

According to The Marketing Edge podcast, one of the longest running marketing and public relations podcasts, host Albert Maruggi, who weaves his 25 years of marketing and PR experience asks, "One of the Best Things a Marketer Can Do, Befriend A Developer." Indeed!

Posted via email from Mark's Musings

Posterous already had the Facebook "Like" Button implemented

Had just added the Facebook Like button IFrame code to my Google Blogspot blog and was wanting to do the same for my Posterous site but they had it completed for me. Very nice!

Posted via email from Mark's Musings

Dilbert's take on the Lost (insert "Apple" here) 4G Phone in the Bar

Here is Dilbert's take on the Lost (insert "Apple" here) 4G Phone in the Bar:

Posted via email from Mark's Musings

Question--How to use data to predict and act to better serve customers and gain a competitive edge?

SAS, a company that produces business analytics software and services pitches their new Social Media Analytics tool SAS Social Media Analytics states,
"SAS Social Media Analytics is the first enterprise solution designed to meet the needs of marketers in medium and large companies. It helps them understand, predict and act based on social media data." (emphasis mine)
This is what we must consider going forward with all data, including social media based data. How can we use data to predict our customer's behavior and then act on those predictions to both better serve them and gain a competitive edge? Now that is a question! I am not certain that this SAS tool can do that but as we consider the implementation of social media, how can we use the data to anticipate and act upon customer need?

Posted via email from Mark's Musings

It's about what it can do, not just what it is

Often, within the technology sector it is the technologists that form the etymology of terms and phrases.  We who make our living from technology need to understand that it is not just about the device or shinny new gadget or new programming language but really about what it can do for the individual, group, and society. 

The term "Social Media" is no different. For example, we are enamored with the emerging use of location based services and tools. And yes, it is cool. But, what does this mean for you, your friends, family, and culture at large? How will it help? Indeed, will it help you and/or your business? We talk about and discuss Twitter's search value and Facebook's Graph API and this is great. Yet, what can it do to better help developers enable users with better and more convenient tools?

Rob Key just wrote a great article on that very question entitled, Why we need to kill "social media." Please read it.

Posted via email from Mark's Musings

Which is Smarter--Man or Machine?

Which is Smarter--Man or Machine? Clive Thompson considered this question in his Wired Magazine article Advantage: Cyborgs. As the article title states, a blend of human and technology is the best senario. "The most brilliant entities on the planet, in other words (at least when it comes to chess), are neither high-end machines nor high-end humans. They’re average-brained people who are really good at blending their smarts with machine smarts."

Although, we are may not be sporting hardware hooked directly into our bodies like the Borg of Star Trek fame, hopefully what we do daily with our devices enhances our performance and brings enjoyment. After all, "resistance is futile" right?

Posted via email from Mark's Musings

LinkedHashMap, dynamic int Array, and an ArrayList in Java

Needing to build some dynamic items today and threw together: LinkedHashMap, dynamic int Array, and an ArrayList in Java. Perhaps they might help. The first class is TestHashMap.java code:



Here is the TestHashMap.java output:



Here is the TestDynamicIntArray.java class code:



Here is the TestDynamicIntArray class output:



Finally, here is the TestArrayList.java class code:



And the TestArrayList output:

Posted via web from Mark's Musings

Pulling the Core to the Edge

In a recent post I discussed a few aspects of the book The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion that I heard of during a Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Lecture Series talk by John Seely Brown. Within the talk Brown uses the substantial and rapid knowledge growth and distribution among World of Warcraft gamers as an example of the efficiencies and scale of ideas that can be obtained in a pull based knowledge economy. Brown states “Look at the knowledge economy on the edge of this game.” According to Brown, the World of Warcraft gamers produce 12,000 ideas on average every night. The gamers have dashboards of data informing them and keeping them updated on new data and ideas, they review and critique submissions from other gamers, and they review game actions to improve performance! This was not in the actual core of the game but rather on the organized periphery where gamers interact.
Within the talk Brown also mentioned how that organizations need to “pull their core to the edge.” I thought, wow! Now that is interesting! Poking around on Google I found an article in the Harvard Business Review Blog entitled “How to Bring the Core to the Edge.” http://blogs.hbr.org/bigshift/2009/02/how-to-bring-the-edge-to-the-c.html by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison.

In short, the article states the:

Edges within firms represent early stage business initiatives with high growth potential, whether new market-oriented initiatives or new work practices, often generated by the born-digital generation entering the workforce…. The ‘core,’ by contrast, is where the money and resources are today, whether we are talking geographically about the developed economies of the US, Western Europe, and Japan, demographically about the older generations with greater income and assets or technologically about mature technologies driving today's revenue and profitability. At the firm level, the core symbolizes the inside of the enterprise, its principal capabilities and primary revenue streams…. Edges spawn significant growth opportunities but, to scale this growth, it is essential for edge participants to gain access to the resources and markets of the core. At the same time, core participants experience margin pressures as competition intensifies and become increasingly desperate for new growth platforms to continue to create economic value…. Disruption theory suggests it's by bringing the edge to the core.

The article then states, "The approach we suggest is to instead bring the core to the edge, to expose your company to institutional innovations and new management practices that emerge on the edge."

Now this is good stuff! Imagine bringing the creative edge of your organization into a symbiotic relationship with the company core. This would result in positive disruption for the organization in general and individuals in the company in particular.

Social Media and the Big Shift to a 21st Century "Pull" Economy

During a morning jog, I listened to a talk from John Seely Brown where he discussed what he calls the "big shift" from the 20th century "push" economy to the 21st century "pull" economy. In summary, the "push" paradigm is largely the traditional command and control model while the "pull" based structure is a more dynamic interaction with what Brown calls "knowledge flows." Upon further investigation, I found an excerpt from a new book, of which Brown is one of the authors, entitled The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion at www.edgeperspectives.com. Here is what I see as the essential elements pulled directly from the text:

At the most basic level, pull helps us to find and access people and resources when we need them. At a second level, pull is the ability to attract people and resources to us that are relevant and valuable, even if we were not even aware before that they existed. Think here of serendipity rather than search. Finally, in a world of mounting pressure and unforeseen opportunities, we need to cultivate a third level of pull the ability to pull from within ourselves the insight and performance required to more effectively achieve our potential.

The first level of pull, access, is very powerful. But in a world of near-constant disruption, its value is finite. Many of us are increasingly finding that we no longer even know what to seek, even with the growing power of search. While it’s great that all sorts of information is indexed and sorted on the web, even a daily tour through ones Facebook newsfeed reveals many new people and resources that could be relevant.

How do we find out which ones? How do we specify, when we go to Ask.com, Bing, or Google, the areas of knowledge and expertise that would be most valuable? Show me the stuff that I really need that I don't even know exists, isn’t much of a search string. Access only truly works when we know what were looking for. At times like these, the cursor blinks in the search engines textbox, mocking us, asking the existential question: Do you even know what you are looking for? And even if we think we do, it’s guaranteed that unknown unknowns, as Donald Rumsfeld memorably called them, are waiting for us, both as opportunities and as barriers.

We must supplement search engines and their equivalents by exploring additional ways of pulling people and their knowledge to us. To address this challenge, we will need to master the techniques of attraction in both our personal and professional lives and learn to harness the power of serendipity, which is the faculty of finding people and things that we did not know we were looking for.

We need serendipitous encounters with people because of the importance of the ideas that these people carry with them and the connections they have. People carry tacit knowledge. You can’t learn brain surgery just from a text. You've got to stand next to someone who already knows and learn by doing. Tacit knowledge exists only in people’s heads. That means we must not only find the people who carry this new knowledge but get to know them well enough (and provide them with sufficient reciprocal value) that they’re comfortable trying to share it with us.

All of this might make attraction an effective form of discovering the things we didn't know we didn't know, but it also brings up a problem: How can we possibly have enough time to put this into practice? There are only twenty-four hours in the day.

To master attraction, we need two elements to come together in a powerful and reinforcing way. First, we need amplifiers that can help us reach and connect to large groups of people around the globe that we do not yet know (and may not even be aware exist). These amplifiers relate to our choice of where to live, what gatherings we attend, how we conduct ourselves online, and what we do to draw the attention of others. Second, we need filters that can help us to increase the quality as well as the number of unexpected encounters and ensuing relationships that are truly the most relevant and valuable. These filtering techniques help separate the wheat from the chaff in our interactions with others and become ever more crucial as we begin serendipitously drawing more people toward us. By simultaneously amplifying (to increase the sheer number of unexpected encounters) while filtering (to spend time only on those interactions that yield value to us and to others), we can shape serendipity in order to attract from the edges of our fast-moving world the people and knowledge we need in order to thrive.

The third level of pull: Achieve. Accessing and attracting in fact have diminished value unless they are coupled with a third set of practices that focus on driving performance rapidly to new levels. These practices involve participation in, and sometimes orchestration of, something we call creation spaces--environments that effectively integrate teams within a broader learning ecology so that performance improvement accelerates as more participants join.

Creation spaces differ in at least two ways from the learning organization approaches pioneered a couple of decades ago. First, they emerge as ecosystems across institutions rather than within a single institution, so they reach a much more diverse set of participants. Second, they are not primarily focused on learning their goal is to drive more rapid performance improvement, and learning occurs as a byproduct of these efforts.

The moral of the story? To get better faster at whatever it is you do, you've got to be supported by a broad array of complementary people and resources from which you can pull what you need to raise your rate of performance improvement.

This, in my view, is the goal of each of us. What I found of most interest was the concept of amplifiers and filters in the "attraction" step. Your social media tool(s) of choice can function as the tool to see these concepts become a reality. In the midst of your busy days of family, work, and various interactions please remember that social media tools enable us to both scale and sift our knowledge base to make us more informed and productive.

Organic...Better than Artificial

I recently noted an blog submission from a co-worker discussing the Technology Adoption Lifecycle utilizing Everett Rogers' Bell Curve (below).

Within her post she discussed how that the curve demonstrates that technology users adopt technologies and tools at differing rates. Therefore, allowing the statistical rate of adoption to take place in an organization was better given that it was organic. She then stated that one would need to, "Trust that organic structures are stronger than artificially forced ones...." After reading her insightful, well written post I realized that she was correct. Anything that is "artificial" has a high probability of not working within an organizational ecosystem, just as it would not in a natural ecosystem. I then replied to the post with this comment, hoping to increase that trust by providing a quick look at, at least in my view, why organic structures are stronger. In short, I took a page from nature itself.

First, organic structures emerge by leveraging the objects in its environment and therefore better suit the environment. This is dramatically different than an imposed, artificial structure that attempts to change the existing DNA matrix and kills existing organisms (existing ideas and business competitiveness) in the environment.

Secondly, organic structures are more adaptive. Because it is built upon the attributes of its environment, when change in the environment happens it contains the elasticity to "bend without breaking" and can gain an advantage over competing entities.

Finally, because organic structures are more adaptive, more fit organisms (ideas/products/services) emerge more quickly. Artificial structures must first remove competing organisms and then take root in the ecosystem before it can produce the fittest organisms.

Therefore, in my humble opinion, we can rationally and confidently trust that organic structures are stronger than artificially forced ones.

html:checkbox gotcha

Was in the midst of testing a JSP that utilized the html:checkbox form input and what I quickly noted was that the checkbox values that were unchecked were not calling the settter methods in the JSP's corresponding Action. Upon inquiring with the finer brains in my area, Ahmed, co-worker in the next cube, helped by pointing out that his experience was that unchecked checkboxes are ignored and to handle the default settings in the Form's reset method. Sure enough he was right. Here is an excerpt from Apache's Struts site here:

A problem with a checkbox is that the browser will only include it in the request when it is checked. If it is not checked, the HTML specification suggests that it not be sent (i.e. omitted from the request). If the value of the checkbox is being persisted, either in a session bean or in the model, a checked box can never unchecked by a HTML form — because the form can never send a signal to uncheck the box. The application must somehow ascertain that since the element was not sent that the corresponding value is unchecked.

The recommended approach for Struts applications is to use the reset method in the ActionForm? to set all properties represented by checkboxes to null or false. The checked boxes submitted by the form will then set those properties to true. The omitted properties will remain false. Another solution is to use radio buttons instead, which always submit a value.

It is important to note that the HTML specification recommends this same behavior whenever a control is not "successful". Any blank element in a HTML form is not guaranteed to submitted. It is therefor very important to set the default values for an ActionForm? correctly, and to implement the reset method when the ActionForm? might kept in session scope.

What Level Are You?

With the advent of personal computer technology in general and social media specifically, everyone is a potential “media mogul.” The question becomes, what level of intimacy do you want with your audience? The graphic below, from http://loichay.tumblr.com/post/178728159/10-levels-of-intimacy-in-todays-communication, shows us 10 levels of intimacy using various forms of media available to us. Let’s look at each level starting with 1 and working up to level 10.

Levels 1 and 2 – These levels enable us to communicate with large amounts of people. In a nutshell, social media has made mass communication the purview of the individual. What was once the domain of traditional broadcast media, the common person can now take part and “social-media cast” to thousands. While this level allows one to scale to more people, obviously it is not intimate. The value here is casual contact with the masses. In this venue, clubs and civic organizations can make meeting announcements at virtually no cost.

Another value of levels 1 and 2 is the amount of either positive or negative“buzz” that tools such as Facebook and Twitter provide. For example, you purchased a product and it is not working correctly. You contact customer service but they are apathetic to your plight and give you the normal spiel that, “You can only return the product on the third Tuesday of each month between 1:35 and 1:40 PM with the receipt and a notarized statement promising both your right arm and first born child.” However, because of Twitter and Facebook you now have additional channels and leverage. You tweet (on Twitter) and post a status (on Facebook) about your less than satisfactory experience with the vendor. Others read of your situation and enter the fray. If the vendor is smart, they monitor the “twitterverse” and “facebookdom” looking to remedy what could be a potential run-away PR problem.

Levels 3 and 4 – I put these levels together given that both a Facebook message and traditional email are “push” technologies that do not require real-time interaction. The idea here is that you to not require an immediate response and can send or push the message to the intended recipient(s) and wait for the response at the convenience of the responder(s).

Levels 5 and 6 – Real-time communication is of a higher level of intimacy in that it requires your attention “then and there” and is therefore more intimate. The only difference in these levels is the media. Level 5 is with a mobile hand-held device and level 6 with a device (desktop or laptop computer) that provides a larger form-factor of view and keyboard input. While some would argue that the form-factor size is of no barrier, the larger form-factor, in my view, allows for a more intimate experience.

Level 7 – Here—the handwritten letter—appears to be a dying media. The fact that effort must be made to handwrite the message, the time it takes in forethought to prepare (given that editing a handwritten letter is not easy, especially with a pen), and the tangible properties of the letter (texture and smell of the paper) make this a more personal media.

Level 8 – While this level is difficult to scale, unless you are conferenced into a group or on a speaker phone with a group, this one-on-one media is real-time and auditory. You hear the person which provides a level of intimacy not achieved in the previous levels.

Level 9 – This level is considered more intimate than the lower levels given that the person or persons that you are speaking with are able to be viewed. With technologies such as Skype and an inexpensive webcam, we can achieve a high level of intimacy in spite of geographic location.

Level 10 – The most initiate level is face-to-face, physical presence. Here you have visual and an auditory exchange of signals as well as tactile contact. This results in a more direct attention to the person(s) with which you are communicating.

In summary, humanity has always operated on different levels of intimacy in various environments and settings. With the internet and social media, we have more avenues to operate within these levels of intimacy. More opportunities means learning which media is appropriate for which situation, is it good for personal or professional use, or what are the emerging social norms for the media. Again, what level are you?

Your Consumed Information--Useful and Valuable?

With the torrent of information coming at us it is useful to ask, "Is the information I ingest beneficial?" Below is hopefully a helpful quadrant to assist in the determination of the use and value of your information:

Every Garage or Computer--an Industrial Player

This month's Wired magazine has an interesting article, In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits. In this piece the magazine's editor Chris Anderson discusses how with the availability of free or affordable software tools and outsourcing, a home garage or wannabe inventor has the potential to be a viable industrial manufacturer. Good stuff!

Dynamic Java String Array

A business needed to split data elements in the display to it's customers via a report. Since the data was returned from the Java Data Access Object layer as a String array, the quickest way was to detect an existing data item and then insert what the business wanted to display in the report for that data item.

Here is an example of what I did to dynamically insert items into a Java String array:

public class DynamicStringArray {
public static void main(String[] args){
 String[] originalArray = {"a","b","d"};

 System.out.println("----- Original String Array ----"); 
 for(int i = 0; originalArray.length > i; i++){
   System.out.println(originalArray[i]);
 }

 //create a fixed-size ArrayList from the String array.
 ArrayList oldList = new ArrayList(Arrays.asList(originalArray));
 //create an ArrayList to hold the inserted items.
 ArrayList newList = new ArrayList();

 //assume no "b" in the array
 boolean hasB = false;

 //check if the array has a "b"
 for(int i = 0; originalArray.length > i; i++){
   if(originalArray[i].equalsIgnoreCase("b")){
     hasB = true;//we have a "b" Houston
   }
 }  

 if(hasB){//the array has a "b"
   for(int i = 0; oldList.size() > i; i++){
     if(oldList.get(i) == "b"){//found "b"
      newList.add(i,"newB");//replace "b" with "NewB"
      newList.add(i + 1,"c");//add "c"
     }else{//not "b"
      newList.add(oldList.get(i));
     }
   }
 }

 //create new String array
 String[] newArray = new String[newList.size()];
 newList.toArray(newArray);
 //pass new String array to old String array
 originalArray = newArray;

 System.out.println("----- Updated String Array -----"); 
 for(int i = 0; originalArray.length > i; i++){
   System.out.println(originalArray[i]);
 }

}
}

The above code results in the following:

Security Management - Better to be loved or feared?

Recently I created a fictional case study that discussed management styles when dealing with internal security threats.

Click here to read and then let me know your thoughts.

5 exabytes in the last 2 days. We better get busy!

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, at a talk given at a forum jointly hosted by Google and the Pittsburgh Technology Council, stated that the amount of data generated from the birth of humanity to the year 2003 was 5 exabytes (point 8:30 of the talk). The date of the presentation was September 23, 2009. Schmidt, then stated that given the connectivity we now have the amount of data generated the last 2 days was equal to these 5 exabytes. What!!!???!??!?! An exabyte is one quintillion bytes. Just within the last year could you buy a 1 to 4 terabyte hard drive. An exabyte is 1,048,576 terabytes or 1,073,741,824 gigabytes, i.e a lot of data!

OK. We may have generated that amount of data the last few days. And do not misunderstand me. I realize there is intelligence in that data. And yes, let it instruct and assist us. But my thinking is that the 5 exabytes in the last several thousand years is of much better quality and substance that the 5 exabytes in the last 2 days, right? If not, then the quality and substance is hidden therein and let us get busy and mine it out!

Digital Utopia--Free?

Was considering purchasing the Kindle version of the new book by Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of a Radical Price and looked for reviews (An ironic note is that I fully understood that I would have to pay for the digital version of the book). In my search of reviews, I did find the "free" review by Malcolm Gladwell at The New Yorker.

Gladwell discusses that Lewis Strauss, the former head of the Atomic Energy Commission, famously predicted in the mid-nineteen-fifties, due to the advent of nuclear energy, that “our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter.” Gladwell then states, "It is pointless to wonder what would have happened if Strauss’s prediction had come true while rushing past the reasons that it could not have come true."

Strauss appeared not to consider the cost of the infrastructure of energy distribution. In a similar way, with the phenomenum of YouTube, "A recent report by Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube’s bandwidth costs in 2009 will be three hundred and sixty million dollars."

Time will tell but the Achilles' heel, at least for now, that I see for a Digital Utopia of "Free" is the "cost" of distribution. Bandwidth, batteries, e-readers all cost money.

@Erlanger911 offers a nice twitter service for Erlanger, KY residents

@Erlanger911 offers a nice twitter service for Erlanger, KY residents in that it provides traffic and emergency service based tweets.

Posted via email from m2web's posterous

Look mom I sent this from Posterous.com!

Here is a sweet service. Posterous.com. Send to Facebook, Twitter, and your Blogger blog from e-mail.

I uploaded the Sisyphus the Software Developer image via an attachment!

Posted via email from m2web's posterous

IBM's Many Eyes Data Visualization Project

Per a previous post where I show my Facebook friend social graph, I mention that the social graph displays "more" information than a grid of your Facebook friends' pictures. In short, data visualization can help us analyze data and more easily notice patterns. IBM's Center for Social Software is doing this with their Many Eyes Project. Here is a blurb:

It is that magical moment we live for: an unwieldy, unyielding data set is transformed into an image on the screen, and suddenly the user can perceive an unexpected pattern. As visualization designers we have witnessed and experienced many of those wondrous sparks. But in recent years, we have become acutely aware that the visualizations and the sparks they generate, take on new value in a social setting. Visualization is a catalyst for discussion and collective insight about data.

Check it out

Twitter - knowledge or data?

In a blog post entitled, Dull Networks? How microblogging might turn the wisdom pyramid upside down, Miguel Encarnação presents concerns that the brevity of microblog messages such as Twitter may circumvent the way we process data into more useful forms of knowledge. He provides examples:

• Data represents a fact or statement of event without relation to other things.
  Ex: It is raining.
• Information embodies the understanding of a relationship of some sort, possibly cause and effect.
  Ex: The temperature dropped 15 degrees and then it started raining.
• Knowledge represents a pattern that connects and generally provides a high level of predictability as to what is described or what will happen next.
  Ex: If the humidity is very high and the temperature drops substantially the atmosphere is often unlikely to be able to hold the moisture so it rains.
• Wisdom embodies more of an understanding of fundamental principles embodied within the knowledge and is essentially systemic.

In my view, even with the 140 character limit, tweets can be and often are more than bits of data. In my view, they are bytes of knowledge. The example of knowledge in Miguel's post is: "If the humidity is very high and the temperature drops substantially the atmosphere is often unlikely to be able to hold the moisture so it rains" This is 146 characters. This can easily be shortened to: "If the humidity is very high and the temp drops substantially the atmosphere is often unable to hold the moisture so it rains" which is 130 characters and can be tweeted. Moreover, tweets can and often do contain links to other websites that contain full explanations on the topics referenced.

In fairness, Miguel is correct that information received on microblogs such as Twitter, as all information sources, need to be closely examined and verified.

In summary, tweets, if used properly can augment both knowledge and wisdom.

Facebook GreaseMonkey Scripts for a better view in Firefox

Was scoping out my Twitter feed when I noted a tweet that I follow from Atul Arora. The link went to a Jeff Smith’s blog that discussed Facebook tweaks with GreaseMonkey. GreaseMonkey allows you to customize the way a web page displays using JavaScript. Via the highlighted scripts I was able to get a more desirable viewing experience on Facebook.

Click here for the full article with screen shots and links.

Fittest CMOs and Business Intelligence from Social Media

Recently, in my Marketing Management class for the Master's in Business Informatics program at NKU I had to write two short research papers that were part of the course's two initial exams. In each of the papers, we were given three to five days to research and complete. Here is an excerpt from the first paper entitled Survival of the Fittest CMOs:

Given the rapidly "evolving" role of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), one paradigm to consider when surveying the swiftly changing CMO phenomenon is to look at natural ecosystems and how ever changing environment pressures facilitate the change or evolution of the organisms in those ecosystems. In this paper, we examine the characteristics of the "primitive" CMO, the new environmental pressures challenging the CMO, and finally the fitness factors that are involved in the survival of the fittest CMOs.

Here is Survival of the Fittest CMOs.

Here is a section of the second paper, Business Intelligence from Social Media:

Given the need for understanding the trends and patterns exhibited in data, utilizing the data in a way that can provide a competitive edge is vital. Three particular products or opportunities for this need are systems to store the data, systems to warehouse the data, and systems to mine the data for analysis and decision making. Data storage is a well understood concept of the use of computer systems to store customer information and transactions as well as other business related data. However, data in a data warehouse is different that the data stored by point-of-sale systems.

Here is Business Intelligence from Social Media.

Favorite Software Dev April Fools Joke

Here is my favorite April Fools software developer related joke: The "Phails" Web Framework at http://phails.com/ . Released on April 1st of course!

Visual Facebook Social Graph

Was reading about social networks in the NKU project management course textbook that I am currently taking and thought to myself there has got to be an application that you can use to login to Facebook and have it gather your social graph or "Friend" data and produce a visual social graph. A few minutes on Google and what I found was the Curl Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform from Curl along with a sample application called CurlGraph.

Long story short, after downloading their Run Time Environment (RTE) and pasting a URL into the address field of my browser, I installed the CurlGraph application on my system. Then after logging into Facebook with the app, it collected my Friends network info and then produced the following social graph visualization.


Click on the pic to get the larger image.

The neat thing about the app is that I could select anyone represented on the graph and they would then move to the center of the display. You could drag your friends around on the display and sort your social graph by alphabet or by popularity. Note that your Facebook friends are represented as circles. Also the popularity, or size of the circle, is based on the intersection set of friends that you have in common with each friend not on their total set of friends. That is why my wife's circle is large as we have nearly the same set of Facebook friends. Also note that while the bold lines connect my friends to me, the web of relationships that exist from all the friends is visible. This changes when you select a friend with your mouse as the connecting lines from them to your other friends then become bold.

In summary, I find it interesting when finding different ways to visualize data. This certainly tells you more about your Facebook Friend network than a grid of pictures.

Here is Curl's press:

Using Curl, developers can implement a new class of complex, business-critical, Web-based applications that cannot easily be developed with Ajax or other smart client technologies.

Curl allows organizations with legacy client-server applications to move to Web-based delivery, increasing reach, improving processes, accelerating productivity and reducing cost.

Customer driven #marketing? Now that's an #idea! for #social products.

Social computing as an interface between the business and their customers as a mechanism for product ideas and input? Go to http://ping.fm/f3ujg.

From Bill Taylor's Practically Radical Blog at HarvardBusiness.org. In lean times, there's nothing more valuable than a great new product idea. Why not invite your customers to share their creativity with your company -- and turn the best ideas into actual products! That's what legendary shoe designer John Fluevog has done, with a project he calls open-source footwear.

Status Last 10 List for Facebook

Just finished the final touches on a new Facebook application I entitled, "Status Last 10."

In a nutshell, the app displays a list of your last ten status messages that you entered into Facebook. You can display the list on your Wall or Boxes Tab. Much of the blogoshpere speculates that Facebook opened their status API to compete with Twitter.

In any event, the app is coded in PHP. The next step will be to show the code once I get the refactorings completed and share the discoveries. More to come once I get the time.

People are not shapes on a diagram....they're people

Was listening to the Manager Tools Podcast in which they were discussing the fact that while we may plan and plan we must, the aspect of managing a project is really about the people involved. Moreover, the various diagrams that we create during the project inception and elaboration may be neat and pretty, the reality of working the steps are anything but that.

During the discussion they cited a poem from Stephen Vincent Benét entitled John Brown's Body dealing with the U.S. Civil War. Here is the relevant section:

If you take a flat map
And move wooden blocks upon it strategically,
The thing looks well, the blocks behave as they should.
The science of war is moving live men like blocks.
And getting the blocks into place at a fixed moment.
But it takes time to mold your men into blocks
And flat maps turn into country where creeks and gullies
Hamper your wooden squares.  They stick in the brush,
They are tired and rest, they straggle after ripe blackberries,
And you cannot lift them up in your hand and move them.
--A string of blocks curling smoothly around the left
Of another string of blocks and crunching it up--
It is all so clear in the maps, so clear in the mind,
But the orders are slow, the men in the blocks are slow
To move, when they start they take too long on the way--
The General loses his stars and the block-men die
In unstrategic defiance of martial law
Because still used to just being men, not block-parts.

Stifling Technological Innovation?

A straight forward post from Dave Hatter on the effects of corporate taxation on small business.

It would appear given the present political fervor of a new administration coupled with the current financial crisis that a perfect storm of over-regulation is on the horizon.

Value of Shorter Iterations in Project Management

Now with the start of the Spring 2009 term in the Business Informatics Graduate Program at Northern Kentucky University, I am taking Marketing Management and Project Management classes.

In the initial readings in the Project Management course deal with Work Breakdown Schedules, Organizations Breakdown Schedules, and Work Packages and how to best organize, monitor, and measure each step. As I read I am thinking of the value of shorter iterations within the cycles of a project.

Here is a discussion on the value of shorter iterations within software development that are in my view applicable to project management. Aspects such as more frequent feedback and a better understanding of the work package status makes shorter iterations attractive. With that said, I am sure that as the term progresses I will learn both the advantages and disadvantages to shorter iterations in project life cycles.

Simple Facebook Application

While I was off on vacation through the holidays I took an afternoon to put together a simple Facebook application in which Facebook users can display on their profile wall or box tab an English Standard Version (ESV) Bible Verse of the Day.

The application utilizes the ESV API.

Resizing an image on mouseover with Flex 2

I was updating my personal site created from Flex 2 MXML and ActionScript and needed to create hyperlinks from thumbnail images. The html markup for the image is created from content from an XML file. In the past, one had to escape html markup contained in XML elements and create a link to a larger size of the same image. In short, I was hoping to avoid that unpleasantness.

Enter the mx.effects.Resize class. Using this object you can control the resizing of an image when the user passes their mouse over the image. For example, you have a thumbnail image that you are displaying that is 150 by 150 pixels in your MXML file:

<mx:Image source="yourImgPath/imgName.jpg"
height="150"
width="150"
/>

You want to enlarge the image to a size of 450 by 450 pixels based on the action of a user. Instead of a link to a larger image, we will enlarge the image when the user passes their mouse over the image. To do this you can utilize the mx.effects.Resize class. Enter the following into your MXML file:

<mx:Resize id="resizeBig"
widthFrom="150" widthTo="450"
heightFrom="150" heightTo="450"
/>
<mx:Resize id="resizeSmall"
widthFrom="450" widthTo="150"
heightFrom="450" heightTo="150"
/>

Then, within the Image instance, modify it with the following:

<mx:Image source="yourImgPath/imgName.jpg"
height="150"
width="150"
rollOverEffect="{resizeBig}"
rollOutEffect="{resizeSmall}"
/>

Finally, recompile and you will see that when the user passes their mouse over the image it enlarges without the use of links to the larger image.

Genetic Algorithm for Network Intrusion Detection Rule Sets

This term (Fall 2008) at Northern Kentucky University (NKU), in the Data Communications & Networking class, I conducted some research for a project dealing with the use of machine learning applications for network security. Specifically, I created a genetic algorithm (GA), with the JGAP Framework, which can be used to produce Network Intrusion Detection Rule Sets.

Special thanks to Dr. Frank Braun, class professor, Dr. Richard Fox, Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Department of Computer Science at NKU, and Mr. Klaus Meffert (soon to be Dr. Klaus Meffert) the primary author of the JGAP framework, for their assistance.

Here are the paper, presentation, and related files:
Paper
Presentation
GA Output
XML Output

Graffiti CMS C# Extended Link List

I have setup a site for a customer that utilizes the free version of Graffiti Content Management System (CMS ). The framework is great and runs pretty much out of the box on Microsoft's ASP.NET 2.0 framework software and runs on Windows Server with Internet Information Services (IIS). In fact, Intelligent, the creators of Graffiti state that their goal was to create an environment where users would not have to understand programming, design, and or system administration. I think they have come pretty close to achieving it.

What it meant for this client was that the setup and intial labor of the site was greatly reduced, thereby saving them money. In any event, I setup an account for the client and placed then in a manager role (which were setup and ready to go), that allows them to publish content via a handy WYSIWYG editor. One thing that the role is not able to do is to use the many widgets that are available for the site.

I posted a question on the Graffiti forum that asked is there a way to allow users in the manager role access to the Link widget where they could create links in a special area of the site where the widget is placed. I found that to date you can not. While looking I did find a widget that extends Graffiti's Widget class called an Extended Link List, that was developed in VB.Net. To better learn how to create extended widgets I ported the project to C# and posted it on CodePlex, Microsoft's open source project hosting web site.

If interested, here it is.

IT's About Business Objectives Stupid

Last term I was contacted by a professor, Dr. Kevin Gallagher, as he was questioned by a reporter who was working on a story about IT (Information Technology) programs, their variations, and how and why students pick their chosen degree program. Upon his request, I provided a short list of answers and that was that. Dr. Gallagher recently notified me about the article.

In short, the article is spot on concerning IT programs and the need of those enrolling in them to consider broader aspects of business objectives and not just technical knowledge.

Check it out.

Please skim this.

In a recent IT Conversations Interviews with Innovators podcast, the discussion centered on removing clutter from the visual field of students when training. That same morning I also listened to Scott Hanselmans’s podcast which dealt with micro-blogging. Here, the discussion utilized the metaphor of information as a river and how one deals with the torrent of news and data, specifically how one organizes it to be useful with tools such as twitter and RSS Feeds.

In both podcasts the talk touched on the issue of how possibly this instant information has made us less tolerant to large amounts of text in mediums such as books. There was also a mention of an excellent article in Atlantic Monthly by Nicholas Carr that asked the question, "Is Google making us stupid?" The question in my mind, along the same thought, is, "Does micro-blogging technologies such as twitter, IM clients, or text messaging foster a culture that lacks the ability to maintain a sustained period of attention to the formation of ideas and thoughts?"

Ironically, I used Google to find more information on the topic searching with the words, "google learning sustained thought." What I found an interesting article from the New York Times by Motoko Rich entitled, "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?"

For those with diminishing attention spans I will get to the crux: some purport that digital text is read by those who otherwise would turn to the television or electronic gaming, and is therefore a gateway to more sustained reading. While that may be true, my concern is along the lines of Rich’s article:

Critics of reading on the Internet say they see no evidence that increased Web activity improves reading achievement. "What we are losing in this country and presumably around the world is the sustained, focused, linear attention developed by reading," said Mr. Gioia of the N.E.A. "I would believe people who tell me that the Internet develops reading if I did not see such a universal decline in reading ability and reading comprehension on virtually all tests."

Then, Rich’s article refers to Carr’s Atlantic Monthly piece:

Nicholas Carr sounded a similar note in "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" in the current issue of the Atlantic magazine. Warning that the Web was changing the way he — and others — think, he suggested that the effects of Internet reading extended beyond the falling test scores of adolescence. "What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation," he wrote, confessing that he now found it difficult to read long books.

In summary, I think that any technology that helps present, streamline, and make information accessible is good. However, what are the side effects? Good question, but now my attention is distracted and I must move on to something else.

Programming: A Social Activity

I have been listening to a weekly podcast, Stackoverflow with Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood. Podcast 15 features a question that asks what the most effective code review methods are. On the podcast site, the show notes state,

Joel and I both agree: one of the most effective coding practices you can adopt on your team is interactive, sit-down-with-your-coworker code review. 90% of the things you will learn have nothing to do with the code. I believe programming is a far more social activity than most realize. If you write code, and nobody but you ever sees that code — did you really extract all the benefit from writing that code?

HEAR, HEAR!

Notepad2: A light-weight ABAP external editor

(a.k.a. Look Dr. Raghavan, no SAP environment!)

OK. It has been awhile since I have posted anything. Reason: I am heavily involved in church and family, working full-time, and going to school part-time. Enough said. Anyway, I have been taking a few SAP classes this summer as part of the Business Informatics graduate program I am in at NKU. One of the classes is an ABAP programming class.

I have to admit that after being skeptical at first, I like ABAP and its development environment. However, while still in the course, I want an external editor that I could use that color codes the syntax to make it easier to read and edit. Granted I will not be able to debug the code but it is nice to have an editor to drop code into, as I do not have to login to SAP, for a quick look.

My favorite light-weight editor is Notepad2 from Florian Balmer. Since it is open source, and I saw where others have added different language-syntax highlighting capabilities, I thought I would give it a go.

First, I downloaded the Notepad2 source from Flo’s Freeware Page and opened the C++ project in Visual Studio 2005. Then, after bombing on my first build, I read the readme file which stated to include the source from the editor that inspired notepad2, Scintilla and tweak one of the source files. After another bomb on the rebuild I set the project property to NOT embed the manifest. Then, it built.

Next, I wanted to get an ABAP lexer working for Notepad2. A quick look on Google and I found another build of Scintilla, SciTE Ru-Board Edition. Now is when the fun begins. What I essentially did was to dig into the SciTE Ru-Board source code, grab what I thought was the needed to implement the Notepad2 ABAP lexer, and then attempt a rebuild. With each attempted build I find various sections that I needed to modify within the Scintilla source code. Finally after about a dozen attempts, I had the Notepad2 project building.

Then, I wanted to update the Notepad2 Styles header and program files (Styles.h and Styles.c ) so that the color coding will work for ABAP files in Notepad2. Once this was completed, I had a light-weight ABAP editor that provided syntax highlighting for files with an ".abap" or ."abp" extension.

Finally, if you pull down the Notepad2 source from Flo’s Freeware Page, do a "diff" on the /src/Styles.c and /src/Styles.h files to see the updates. Also, to see where the Scintilla source was modified diffs should be done comparing the following files: /include/PropSet.h, /include/SciLexer.h, /src/KeyWords.cxx, /src/PropSet.cxx, and /src/StyleContext.h. I also added the /src/LexABAP.cxx file to the Scintilla source (thanks to VladVro [one of the SciTE Ru-Board Edition project owners]) as that is needed by Notepad2.

NOTE: The Visual Studio 2005 Notepad2 project and binary downloads were updated 9/18/2008 with more Object Oriented ABAP keywords.
Click here to get the Visual Studio 2005 Notepad2 project.
Click here to get the binary Notepad2 files.

NOTE: By the way, I added Scott Hanselman’s Ruby lexer to this project for Ruby file edits.

JavaScript HashMap

Okay, this is not new nor exciting but I was looking to create something like a Java HashMap or a C# Dictionary object in JavaScript. What I did find was that you can use a JavaScript Array to function as a hashmap or dictionary object. I would then use it to iterate through to do some quick client-side validation for a web page. Here is the code:

function formFieldArray(){
   var myArray = new Array(10);
   myArray['myname'] = "Name";
   myArray['myaddress'] = "Address";
   myArray['mycity'] = "City";
   myArray['mystate'] = "State";
   myArray['myzip'] = "Zip Code";
   myArray['myPhone'] = "Phone Number";
   myArray['myEmail'] = "Email Address";
   myArray['cardname'] = "Name as it appears on the Card";
   myArray['cardNumber'] = "Card Number";
   myArray['expDate'] = "Expiration Date";
   myArray['cardCode'] = "Card Security Code";

   return myArray;
}

function validateForm(){
   var theFormFieldArray = formFieldArray();  
 
   //iterate thru array and clear values
   for (key in theFormFieldArray) {
     if(eval('document.myForm.' + key + '.value.length == 0')){
       alert('Please enter the value for the ' + theFormFieldArray[key] + ' field.');
       eval('document.myForm.' + key + '.focus()');
       return false;
     }
   }

   document.myForm.action = "yourNextPage.php";
   document.myForm.submit();
}

Want to be influenced?

Caught this interesting post by Valdis Krebs on social networks and how ideas are spread within them. There has been much discussion about the "influential elite" and how, if they champion an idea, it is more probable that it will grow and gain acceptance. However, this post points to the thought that it is not so much the influencing elite who control what ideas gain intellectual and social traction, but rather the willingness to be influenced by those adjacent, in the social network graph, to the elite.

Narrative Thinking

I was doing a few days coding for a client and informed them that I only had a few more free days before starting back into a new term at grad school and that I would probably not get much done given I was still learning the e-commerce package that they were using. But in order to provide them with a deliverable I decided to record my steps and thoughts in a document in narrative form for their future information and use.

There is much discussion about narrative verses symbolic code and moving computer languages more toward a natural language. Such is the discussion about Domain Specific Languages. However, when I say narrative form I am not speaking of actually writing code but rather simple prose mixed with code as needed, to record thought processes, research findings, and general steps in a discovery process.

Here is an example layout of what I did:

Saturday, January 05, 2008
Login Test
Current Steps Planned:
I would describe the steps/tasks that I planned on taking for this date. It could include a list of items, a brief description of what is planned, etc.

Actual steps:

1. Here I would describe actual steps that I took, thoughts in the process, rationale for decisions, etc.
2. I added a check to the Customer.Authenticate method.

if (customer.ID[0].Status != Customer.Validated){
throw new CustomerException(CustomerExceptionType.NotValidated, "Customer Not Validated");
}

3. This resulted in an error when attempting to login with the userid and password.
4. ......
   

Next Steps:
Here I would describe the steps/tasks that I planned on taking the time.

What I found was this forced me to be more precise in my thinking which naturally resulted in a more precise research and coding process. I have always known that writing makes one organize their thoughts more orderly in order to communicate more clearly. However, I must say I enjoyed the controlling aspect of thinking in a narrative format. It somewhat reminded me of the Test Driven Development in which you are controlled by getting the current test you are working on to pass with the simplest code. You do not have the opportunity to thrash around or run down this rabbit trail or that. You record your processes, organizing and analyzing your thoughts as you go, making sure you are focused and productive.

Dynamic and Domain Specific Languages in a Language Tiered Structure?

In a recent post I linked to a paper that I composed for a graduate class on Dynamic Languages in software development. Today, at InfoQ there was an interesting review of a post by JRuby developer Ola Bini. In a similar view to n-tier layered architecture, Bini describes language types of static, dynamic, and domain specific in a layered fashion.

For example, in an n-tiered layered architecture you would have a presentation tier on top of a business logic tier which is over a data layer. Bini states:

The first layer is what I called the stable layer. It's not a very large part of the application in terms of functionality. But it's the part that everything else builds on top off, and is as such a very important part of it. This layer is the layer where static type safety will really help. Currently, Java is really the only choice for this layer.

This layer corresponds to the data layer mentioned above.

The next tier Bini mentions is the dynamic language layer:

This is where maybe half the application code resides. The language types here are predominantly dynamic, strongly typed languages running on the JVM, like JRuby, Rhino and Jython. This is also the layer where I have spent most of my time lately, with JRuby and so on. It's a nice and productive place to be, and obviously, with my fascination for JVM languages, I believe that it's the interplay between this layer and the stable layer that is really powerful.

In my paper that I referenced above, I discussed that Groovy has great potential given it is designed for the JVM. Here I see this corresponding to the business logic layer.

The last tier mentioned is the Domain Specific Language (DSL) layer. For a discussion on that, go here. Bini states:

The third layer is the domain layer. It should be implemented in DSL's, one or many depending on the needs of the system. In most cases it's probably enough to implement it as an internal DSL within the dynamic layer, and in those cases the second and third layer are not as easily distinguishable.

Finally, in my view, this tier corresponds to the presentation layer. In a similar manner, the business logic and presentation tiers in many applications are often tightly coupled and "are not as easily distinguishable" as they should be. In any event, Bini’s post is an interesting perspective on the use and place for both dynamic and DSL languages.

MIT’s new Open Courseware (OWC) web site

I was listening to IT Conversations earlier this week while jogging and heard the mention of MIT’s new Open Courseware (OWC) web site. After checking it out I found that OCW is a free publication of course materials used at MIT. The site provides access to course lecture notes and audio and video files, labs, and resources on a variety of subjects.

Of late, I have been diving into the business aspects of development. I must say to my shame I should have had this perspective much earlier in my career. Do not misunderstand me, I have always developed to solve a business need, but I am looking further up the value chain to explore how software applications in particular and technology in general can enhance innovation. With that said, I find OWC’s link to the Sloan School of Management providing helpful resources. For example, the reading list from the Management Information Systems: Generating Business Value from Information Technology provides a list of resources to read. One of the resources listed is an article from Harvard Business Review, October 2002, entitled Six IT Decisions Your IT People Shouldn't Make. A quote from the article states:

Our center runs a seminar called "IT for the Non-IT Executive," and the refrain among the more than 1,000 senior managers who have taken the course runs something like this: "What can I do? I don't understand IT well enough to manage it in detail. And my IT people - although they work hard - don't seem to understand the very real business problems I face."

I want to better understand real business problems and more effectively utilize software to solve them.

Finally, while this does not present an MIT education, it does provide supplemental materials for one’s academic and professional pursuits.

Dynamic Languages and Increasing the Quality of Software and Velocity in the Software Development Lifecycle

This last semester in my Systems Analysis and Design graduate class, we were assigned to present the results of a brief research project. We were to decide the topic and then provide a written paper and presentation.

My project was entitled Dynamic Languages and Increasing the Quality of Software and Velocity in the Software Development Lifecycle. Within this project I attempted to see if the current literature showed empirical evidence that dynamic languages, particularly Ruby and Groovy, shorted the development lifecycle and increased the quality of the software application.

Click here for the paper from the project.

General Unification Theorem Proof Concerning Functional Dependencies in Relational Databases

For a problem that was to be solved in my database systems graduate class this last semester, we were asked to prove a theorem by Hugh Darwen that is known as the General Unification Theorem concerning Functional Dependencies within Relational Databases.

Click here to see the proof.

Selenium IDE HTML Compare Pattern

I was needing to test sorting for a web-based application UI this last week. What I needed to do was check that a listbox control’s account numbers were sorted in ascending order. What quickly emerged was a pattern of steps when using Selenium IDE HTML scripts to compare values.

First, get the string values to compare. Then, compare the values. You may need to parse the value as a float via the JavaScript parseFloat() function if working with decimals such as currency. If you use the eval() function (see below), you are good on comparing numbers such as integers. Finally, verify the expected outcome of the comparison.

As stated above the first thing is to get the values to compare:

<!-- get the first account number in the listcontrol -->
<tr>
            <td>storeEval</td>
            <td>var Account1 = ""; var
accountOptionList =
selenium.browserbot.getCurrentWindow().document.getElementsByName('accountList');Account1
= accountOptionList.item(0)[1].value</td>
            <td>Account1</td>
</tr>

<!-- get the second account number in the listcontrol -->
<tr>
            <td>storeEval</td>
            <td>var Account2 = ""; var
accountOptionList =
selenium.browserbot.getCurrentWindow().document.getElementsByName('accountList');Account1
= accountOptionList.item(0)[2].value</td>
            <td>Account2</td>
</tr>

Next, compare the values and place the comparison value into a variable:

<tr>
            <td>storeEval</td>
            <td>var isLess = false; isLess =
eval(${Account1} &lt; ${ Account2});</td>
            <td>isLess</td>
</tr>

Finally, verify that the comparison value evaluated as expected (that
the first numeric value is less than the second if sorted correctly):

<tr>
            <td>verifyExpression</td>
            <td>${isLess}</td>
            <td>true</td>
</tr>

JQuery Demos

Considering that most JavaScript development deals with Document Object Model (DOM) Element collections, JQuery provides a framework that results in cleaner and more concise code.

For the documentation go here. I have some basic demos here that cover very basic AJAX and drag and drop functionality.

JavaScript Functions in Selenium IDE HTML Tests

I wanted to run a JavaScript function in my Selenium IDE HTML test. Specifically, I wanted to remove any currency symbols and commas from currency values. Here is the best way that I have found to do it.

First, declare the JavaScript function.

<tr>
<td>storeEval</td>
<td>
function(input) {var output =""; output = input.replace",","");
return output.replace("$","");}
</td>
<td>replaceText</td>
</tr>

To call the replaceText function do something like this:

<tr>
<td>storeEval</td>
<td>var parsedTotal = 0; parsedTotal =
parseFloat(storedVars['replaceText']('${Amount}')).toFixed(2);
</td>
<td>parsedTotal</td>
</tr>

Now I can use the parsedTotal value later in the test:

<tr>
<td>verifyExpression</td>
<td>${parsedTotal}</td>
<td>SomeValueHere</td>
</tr>

Adobe's Integrated Runtime - Heavenly

Back in August I attended an event sponsored by Adobe that highlighted their new AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) product. The new runtime looks great but what was of particular interest at this event was the venue in which the event was held.

It was at the Bell Event Centre at the Verdin Bell & Clock Museum in downtown Cincinnati. The museum is an old church. What was cool was the majestic atmosphere that the building provided for Adobe’s informative outing. Moreover, as I sat there listening to the content of the presentation and looking up at the interior structure of the church, I could not resist the irony of the situation given the evangelism (of glad tidings for all developers) that was taking place.



As the faithful, seekers of inspiration, and the skeptical gathered the Adobe AIR clergy (team) was prepared to deliver a message of hope. The sermons (presentations) consisted of building an AIR application with Adobe Flex, HTML and JavaScript, and utilizing JavaScript frameworks in AIR applications.

The content was inspiring (informative) and Adobe’s integrated runtime shows much promise (potential). In addition to the miraculous (cool) features such as ability for JavaScript developers to utilize ActionScript objects via script bridging, the sermons (presentations) contained the occasional rebuke (pokes) at Microsoft for their heretical ways (.Net platform), at which the congregation (those in attendance) responded with various utterances of “amen” (chuckles and head nods).

Although I left the service (event) unconverted from my agnosticism (the belief that no one technology can meet every business need), I was inspired to look to the holy city (Adobe) for more revelation (documentation) to see how AIR could potentially be the way (an answer to a business need).

Confession: You know I have to admit that I had fun with this one.

HTML ListBox Quick Item Select JavaScript

It has been awhile given that I have been busy at work and also started a graduate business informatics program. Anywho, a customer recently requested a way to select an HTML Listbox control and key in an account number and have that number be selected as they were entering the perspective number.

A coworker and I came up with the following. The referenced JavaScript file is here.

The trick here was utilizing the onkeyup event. The entered text is appended to a string that is compared to the listbox content. If there is a match, it is added to an array of matched items. On each onkeyup event, the first matched element in the array is selected in the listbox control. If the listbox loses focus, then entered string is set to an empty string.