Global Nerdy

My coworker Rick Claus (that’s him and me at a recent team get-together) is a great guy and knows his way around a Microsoft IT setup, but the guy is cursed. He has a reverse “Midas Touch”, and can render just about any technological device by touching it or even being around it. He’s managed to do it so many times that the Developer and Platform Evangelism team uses the word “Claused” for broken or non-functional (example: “My TV fell out of the moving truck while it was on the highway. It’s totally Claused.”)

The wifi on my Dell Latitude XT2 worked just fine until the last TechDays conference. While in the “Ask the Experts” lounge, I was looking for a place to set my laptop down, and the only spot was on a tiny table where Rick’s closed-up laptop was sitting. I put my laptop down on his for a couple of minutes while I had a conversation with some local attendees. I then opened my laptop, and after not being able to connect and after trying every troubleshooting trick (even the obvious ones, like checking to see if the wifi switch was on) and even showing it to a couple of IT pros, it became obvious to me that my wifi card was Claused.

The Cisco Linksys AE1000.

Between the holidays and having an extra two weeks off when I wound up in the hospital in January, I haven’t had a chance to get Dell tech support to drop in and fix my wifi (which I assume is a matter of them plunking in a new wifi card). I’ve been dragging around my 17” “Dellasaurus”, but while it’s great for full-on programming and doing demos, it’s not the easiest thing to drag around. So before I left for my 11-day trip to Seattle for Microsoft’s employees-only TechReady conference, I picked up a Cisco Linksys AE1000 USB 802.11n dongle.

I bought the AE1000 right before my flight to Seattle, so I simply emptied the contents of its box into my knapsack and headed out the door. I had a stopover in Vancouver, whose airport has free wifi and decided to install the software and take it for a test run while waiting for my puddle-jumper to Seattle.

The Cisco Linksys AE1000, placed beside a number of items for size comparison.

Installation was a breeze. Cisco put together a very nice, layperson-friendly setup program with a clear and pretty user interface with comprehensible, straightforward instructions and clean, unambiguous icons. Once that was done, the little blue LED on the dongle came to life and for the first time in many weeks, I was getting wifi on my little touchscreen laptop again!

I’ve had the AE1000 for only four days, but I’ve used it without any trouble in a number of places with varying levels of wifi: Vancouver airport, my hotel in Seattle, Starbucks, the Microsoft offices in Bellvue, Top Pot Doughnuts, and it’s worked so well that I forget that I’m using it instead of my laptop’s own built-in wifi. I think that’s the mark of a good product.

If you find yourself in a situation like mine and have a Windows laptop with dead wifi, or perhaps if you’ve got a Windows desktop machine without a wifi card, the Cisco Linksys AE1000 is easy to install and works well (Note: it won’t work on a Mac; no idea if someone’s written Linux drivers for it). I picked mine up at Best Buy for CAD$70; you might be able to find it for less at other places. I recommend it.

Full disclosure: Cisco is not one of my sponsors; I don’t even know anyone at Cisco. I’m just a satisfied customer who needed an interim wifi solution since my small laptop’s wifi was Claused.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Don’t forget, Microsoft Canada’s got a competition called The Great Canadian Apportunity, and it’s your chance to win CAD$10,000 (USD$10,125 at the time of this writing) for writing the Great Canadian App for Windows Phone 7! You can find out all about The Great Canadian Apportunity, the competition rules and how you can compete at GreatCanadianApportunity.ca.

In addition to covering the details of the contest, The Great Canadian Apportunity has a blog, and for the next little while, it’s where I’ll be posting all my articles on mobile and Windows Phone development. (And worry not, I’ll cross-post here on Global Nerdy.)

I’ve posted an updated version of my earlier article on Windows Phones in Canada at The Great Canadian Apportunity, in which I talk about which Windows Phone 7 devices are available in Canada, and who’s carrying them. The revision includes the HTC HD7, the Windows Phone with the largest screen, as well as a link to a handy chart comparing the physical dimensions of various Windows Phones.

For the benefit of those new to Windows Phone development, and as a way to properly start The Great Canadian Apportunity’s blog, I also posted an article titled Getting Started with Windows Phone 7 Development. If you’re looking to get into writing apps for Windows Phone – and perhaps competing in The Great Canadian Apportunity – this step-by-step guide will get you up and running in no time.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Sorry about the recent silence on this blog! I’ve been bogged down with all sorts of things, including travel.

As I write this, I’m in a Starbucks near Union Square in Seattle and many of my teammates – Damir Bersinic, Rick Claus, John Bristowe, Frederic Harper, Paul Laberge, Ruth Morton and John Oxley – are arriving here later tonight. We’ll be here for the remainder of this week and all next week to attend TechReady, a regular Microsoft-employees-only conference where we get briefed on the latest tools and technologies. Microsofties from all over the world fly in for TechReady, and it’s a chance for us to connect with our counterparts from the US as well as places farther afield. Some of us from the Canadian team will be doing presentations at TechReady: Paul and I are jointly doing one, as is Rick. Not to be outdone – and he will write lines of code – John Bristowe’s doing two.

Since TechReady’s an internal conference, there’s a sort of Fight Club rule when it comes to session content: the first rule of TechReady content is that you don’t talk about TechReady content. However, since TechReady is also a chance for us to meet with various teams from both Redmond and around the world, I’ll be able to share what I consider to be some of the most valuable info you get at conferences – those “hallways conversations” with other geeks that take place between sessions and at apres-conference gatherings.

I spent a good chunk of yesterday literally above the clouds rather than “in the cloud”, but I kept running into our cloud message everywhere. Here’s a photo I snapped yesterday afternoon in Pearson Airport’s Terminal 1:

It’s very rare when I get to check into an airport around noon on a Wednesday, but it’s a great time to do so. There’s almost no line either at the ticket counter or at the Tim Hortons.

Here’s a photo I took from my seat, getting as much geek mileage as I can: that’s The Social Network playing on the in-flight entertainment system (until yesterday, I still hadn’t seen it), and below that is me getting screenshots for an upcoming Windows Phone 7 development article on my Dell Latitude XT2, my phone- and touch-development demo machine. If you caught Kate Gregory’s webcast on developing touch apps for Windows 7, you’ve seen this machine: I loaned it to her for her demo.

I couldn’t get a decent rate on a direct Toronto-Seattle flight (but somehow got one for a direct flight back), so I debarked in Vancouver. Here’s another Microsoft cloud ad, located on the long schlep from YVR’s domestic terminal to the international/US one:

In fact, there were many of these ads in YVR:

The Azure ads weren’t just static billboards; they were also running TV ads between news segments on the TVs in the departure lounges. It’s good to see that we’re working on getting the message out there, talking about the cloud and spelling it out as more than Azure, but Windows Live, Office Live, Office 365 and a whole other host of applications and services that are accessible anytime, anywhere, as long as you can get online. I hope that this promotional push isn’t just good for us, but also good for you and helps your customers “get” what our vision of the cloud is all about, and call on you to build cloud-based stuff for them. After all, we don’t succeed if you don’t succeed.

While going through security to board the “puddle-jumper” that would take me from Vancouver to Sea-Tac, the security people asked me to prove that my accordion was indeed a musical instrument. I played the refrain from Black Eyed Peas’ I Gotta Feeling as proof and got a “standing O” at the end.

Here’s a photo I took from my hotel room early this morning. It’s actually sunny in Seattle! Better still, it’s balmy in comparison: 6 degrees C here, versus –10 back home. I’m going to enjoy the next ten days here!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

What better way to start the working week than by showing you ways to throw a wrench in your productivity? Here’s The Procrastination Flowchart (provenance unknown; a reader sent it my way), showing you how it’s done. Click it to see it at full size:

Click the flowchart to see it at full size.

As you can see, you can put a lot of work into avoiding work. Being a practitioner of what I like to call “enlightened laziness”, I much prefer this much simpler version:

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

You vs. the IRS

If you’re a Canadian Developer writing Windows Phone 7 apps, you want to fill out the IRS paperwork – otherwise, Microsoft is required by US law to hold 30% of the money you’re due for US Federal taxes. Of course, as a non-US citizen, you shouldn’t have to pay US taxes, so it’s important that you fill in that paperwork!

Paperwork isn’t fun and government paperwork is often byzantine and confusing, but worry not: Mark Arteaga, one of my go-to guys for Windows Phone knowledge, programming experience and code, has written a blog entry explaining how to do that paperwork in a straightforward, step-by-step fashion. Check it out, follow his steps, do the paperwork and get all the money that you’ve earned!

(Yes, Superman had to take on a tax man. Read more about it here.)

Don’t get taken like Superman did: read Mark’s blog entry!

Mark Arteaga and RedBit Development

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, the name Mark Arteaga should sound familiar. He’s a Windows Mobile MVP from the pre-Phone 7 days and he’s now a Windows Phone MVP. You’ve probably seen him speak at Techdays – in 2008 and 2009, when we had to beg and bribe people to attend his Windows Mobile sessions, and then in 2010 when he was presenting Windows Phone 7 to standing room only crowds, with more people watching his sessions outside the lecture hall on the external monitors. He also does presentations on Windows Phone at user groups and many of our Windows Phone workshops.

He’s got his own mobile development firm, RedBit Development, where he works with developer Barranger Ridler.

RedBit Development are behind some of the highest-profile Canadian Windows Phone 7 apps out there:

• Globe and Mail
• MTV News
• VanGuide
• Where’s Timmy?

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

As this College Humor video shows, some things are best not shared on the internet.

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

No matter what technology stack you build on, no matter whether you build for web, desktop or mobile., no matter what programming languages or developer tools you use, you should be reading PragPub. Put together by the publishing company behind such gems as The Pragmatic Programmer, Programming Ruby (a.k.a. “The Pickaxe Book”), The Passionate Programmer and Pragmatic Thinking and Learning, it’s a monthly e-magazine covering a wide range of programming topics, all with the intent of making your better developer and helping you make the most of your career.

The February 2011 issue of PragPub is a celebration of Agile’s tenth birthday. Ten years ago this month, 17 software developers of note – including Andy Hunt, one of the founders of The Pragmatic Programmer – got together at a ski resort in Utah, supposedly to discuss lightweight development methods. I am impressed that the end result of their get-together was the Agile Manifesto and the kick-starting of what we now know as Agile Software Development; I would’ve opted for hitting the slopes, turning apres-ski at the chalet into my own private beer commercial and generally turning the entire event into Hot Tub Time Machine. (I suppose that such a smart group of developers could’ve done both, but in a webcast last year, Andy told me and John Bristowe that the gathering was all business.)

To celebrate this occasion, ten of the authors of the Agile Manifesto, Andy Hunt, Kent Beck, Ron Jeffries, Jon Kern, Ken Schwaber, James Grenning, Arie van Bennekum, Stephen J. Mellor, Ward Cunningham, and Dave Thomas have each written a reflection on the programming movement they started, There’s also an article in which they look back at two years of articles on Agile in PragPub and there’s also a new installment of their regular Way of the Agile Warrior column.

This issue has other articles covering other topics. One I found noteworthy and which you might useful is Refactoring Your Job, an article on not just surviving, but thriving, in these economically precarious times.

Download PragPub! It’s a good, quick read, and it’s free!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.