“Truck Nutz” let you communicate to the world that you’re a bold and sassy guy in a way that words just can’t convey, but what if you don’t have a truck? For that Truck Nutz message without truck ownership, this iPhone case might fit the bill:
Cartoonist Chris Onstad came up with this idea back in January 2006 with this surreal and funny Achewood comic in which Ray Smuckles comes up with “ChatSacks”:
If someone will make one for a Windows Phone 7 device, I’ll buy one of those cases.
The best antidote for a day full of meetings in boardrooms in a suburban office park is to finish it in different surroundings. So when my last meeting on Friday ended with a couple of hours of business day to spare, I made a beeline for one of my favourite “field offices” – Cafe Novo, located across the street from High Park, and a very short walk from home.
The photo above was the view from my “workstation” at 4 p.m. on Friday: the bar facing the roll-up front wall which in turn faces the park. Pictured are the tools of my trade – my trusty Dell Latitude XT2 tablet with the memory maxed out at 5 GB and the so-last-century mechanical hard drive replaced with a solid state one, my favourite portable mouse and an iced mocha.
Working in settings like this is one of the perks of the job.
Windows Phone 7 is coming soon, and we’re holding a couple of full-day workshops to show you its underlying architecture, walk you through its development frameworks, show you how to build apps with Visual Studio Express and sell them in the Marketplace, and then hold a codefest – and yes, it’s free-as-in-beer to attend!
We’re holding two of these workshops, which Yours Truly along with Paul Laberge and Jamie Wakeam will be co-hosting:
Here’s the agenda:
| Time | Session |
| 8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | Check-in, registration and refreshments |
| 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | Session 1 – Introducing Windows Phone 7 and the user experience – Selling your apps in the Marketplace – The Windows Phone 7 architecture |
| 10:00 a.m. – 10:15 a.m. | Break |
| 10:15 a.m. – 11:15 a.m. | Session 2 – Building Windows Phone 7 apps with Silverlight |
| 11:15 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. | Session 3 – Building Windows Phone 7 games with XNA |
| 11:45 a.m. – 12:00 noon | Q&A |
| 12:00 noon – 5:00 p.m. | Lunch, followed by the Coding Challenge Bring your laptops, form a team and try your hand at building a Windows Phone 7 app or game in an afternoon! |
| 5:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. | Coding Challenge Results Teams will present their apps, one will be selected as the Coding Challenge Champ and will a prize, and we’ll wrap up the day. |
Want in on these workshops? As I said earlier, they’re free – just click the links below to sign up:
Earlier this week, I was asked to make a short video that would be shown during a round table discussion on a hot topic: HTML5 vs. proprietary rich internet app technologies, such as Flash and Silverlight. My video was supposed to take the “RIAs complement HTML” side of the debate, while someone else would produce a video taking the “HTML5 trumps RIAs” side.
My own personal belief is that HTML5 – actually the stack of HTML5, CSS3 and Java/ECMAScript – has closed the interactivity gap between the web and desktop apps and will continue to close it. However, for the time being, there are still cases where HTML5 just can’t cut it – for various reasons, such as performance, browser compatibility or designer-friendliness – and that’s where RIAs shine. Hence I found it rather easy to put together an amusing little video titled HTML5 and RIAs: Friends with Benefits (5:47, YouTube).
I did the production work on Tuesday afternoon and evening using the following tools:
Enjoy the video!
First came GovCamp in Ottawa (May 31st – June 1st), and now GovCamp is coming to Toronto! GovCamp is an “Open Government” or “Goverment 2.0” unconference with these two goals:
GovCamp Toronto will take place on the evening of Thursday, June 17th and will be an evening where all sorts of people, from private citizens to government officials to representatives of publicly-funded organizations will get together to talk about the intersection of:
Is GovCamp the sort of thing you should attend? It is if you’re one of the following:
Few people know more about setting up “Government 2.0” unconferences than Toronto’s favourite high-tech policy wonk Mark Kuznicki, and we’re very fortunate to have him as GovCamp Toronto’s MC and facilitator. Mark has been behind a number of similar unconferences, including ChangeCamp, TransitCamp and Metronauts.
There will be a number of special guests including:
GovCamp Toronto will be hosted by:
GovCamp Toronto’s venue is nice and also quite central: the Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge Street, just north of Bloor).
Here’s the agenda:
| 5:00 | Catered reception |
| 6:00 | Welcome |
| 6:10 | Opening remarks (David Eaves) |
| 6:25 | Discussion hosts introduce topics |
| 7:00 | Small group discussions and demonstrations |
| 8:30 | Closing wrap discussion |
| 9:00 | Catered reception |
There are a number of ways to participate:
There’s lot of information, ideas and reportage from the recent GovCamp in Ottawa at the GovCamp site – be sure to check it out!
Windows Server 2008 R2 is the latest version of Windows Server, which runs all sorts of goodies from ASP.NET/ASP.NET MVC, SharePoint, Exchange and SQL Server, as well as PHP.
Right to Play is an organization whose goal is to improve the lives of children in some of the world’s poorest areas by using sports and play to promote development, health and peace.
Microsoft and Right to Play have put together a special offer for Windows Server 2008 R2 called Kick-It, named for this summer, the “Summer of Soccer”. If you purchase Windows Server 2008 R2 through a hosting provider, and Microsoft will make a donation to Right to Play. Here in Canada, the participating hosting provider is myhosting.com.
