I've noticed my use of Twitter has really increased since I got my BlackBerry and found TwitterBerry (OTA download link here). The recent 0.6 update added a few new features I wanted, and my only complaint is just me whining--I want spell check on the first menu I click when I post.
The immediacy of the BlackBerry has been a key driver for me in using Twitter more, and I'll probably start trying to expand my circle of followees.
The Facebook app for BlackBerry is pretty good as well, but I went through a period of Facebook burnout after the wedding and I'm just now getting back into it. As with Twitter I think the smaller and more immediate interface helps. I'm less likely to use a lot of the Facebook hosted apps since I'm not into the fun and games aspect of Facebook, but notifications and communication with friends is likely to increase.
Technorati Tags: social, web2.0, twitter, facebook, blackberry, twitterberry, usability, software
]]>"We live in a certification society."
So said a sociology professor a few years back.
One advantage of being a blogger who sometimes posts reviews is being approached to do reviews of software or books. When I was asked to consider doing a review of a certification exam preparation tool, I had to give the issue of certification some thought before accepting the request.
My early work in mainframe systems software and later in C, PASCAL, and Smalltalk was what I would call "certification agnostic." Those technologies either developed before the rise of niche certification or had small enough developer communities that there was no real market interest in certification. Because of this, certification is something I pretty much ignored.
In the software development subset of IT we call ourselves software engineers, but unlike other engineering professionals we have no state or national standards for what it means to be an engineer, nor do we have any formal continuing education requirements. This lack of real standards made it easy to ignore certification, and as I noticed more and more space in bookstore computer sections taken up by certification preparation materials, I would think "ho hum" and go looking for meatier books.
Most people I know in the development ranks of IT seem to feel the same way I do, but there's clearly a market for the materials, and when I do web based research that lands me on various blogs or forums, I notice that many of the useful posts I find are by people who have a variety of initials in their sigs and bios.
After I was asked to consider doing a review, I checked around on LinkedIn and a few job boards and spotted some references to certification. It seems clear that certification could be used as a filter by employers, or at least by HR departments that don't know Java Beans from lima beans, or VB.NET from fishnet stockings.
I was still unsure of the real value of certification, and I wondered if certification really measured anything useful. The review request presented an opportunity for me to do some firsthand investigation, so I accepted the chance to do this review.
I'll be finishing the review and posting it sometime in the coming week, but after spending some time with the exam preparation software and looking at the types of questions asked, I have decided that certification can be used as a tool to evaluate someone's knowledge and skill levels.
Note that I said "a tool" not "the only tool" or "the best tool."
I decided to try out the preparation software for an area I know something about: M70-306 Developing and Implementing Windows-based Applications with Microsoft VB .NET and Microsoft VS .NET. This exam is an optional exam for multiple Microsoft certifications, including the Microsoft Certified Application Developer credential.
As I dug into the exam prep, I discovered something that didn't surprise me: there are many areas of VB.NET development that I rightly feel I'm an expert in. I also discovered something that didn't surprise me, but did disappoint me: there are many areas of VB.NET development that I don't really know much about.
Did this mean I was stupid or deficient? No. As I move into different parts of the .NET Framework, I am able to learn the new areas readily. What the exam prep was revealing is something I suspect is pretty common in the industry: in the areas I get to work in, I have plenty of depth of knowledge, but insufficient breadth of knowledge.
This is why I believe that certification adds value and is worth pursuing: passing one or more of the exams for a credential shows that a developer has taken the time to learn things outside his comfort zone and that he should be able to work comfortably in any area of a particular technology.
Hiring managers still need to look at experience and other factors when evaluating an applicant, but credentials should enter into the decision making process. I wouldn't rule an applicant out if he didn't have credentials, and I wouldn't hire someone just because he did have credentials, but if all other things are equal, credentialing would tip the scales.
Technorati Tags: programming, certification, technology, education, credentialing, standards
]]>I'm sure I've mentioned Burn Notice before. The first season is playing on Thursday nights and I'm enjoying getting back into the series. Worth your time if you like a little rough fun :)
Speaking of rough and fun, Gabrielle Anwar's character Fiona Genanne is a hoot. Anwar isn't the sort of actress I normally find attractive, but she's got something special going with this character.
Now I just have to wait until July to find out more about the folks who burned Michael :)
Tags: Burn Notice, Reviews, tv
]]>I've got a few nits that just keep happening with the various CodeRush and DX bits of the whole DevExpress suite. It's still useful software, but it and I are still negotiating on behavior.
Most of the above seems related to my keyboarding style versus DevExpress and I'm trying to adapt, but after a few weeks there is still too much noise going on in the experience. The tools are cool, but there's a definite need for some QA and polish, IMO.
Technorati Tags: software, devexpress, coderush, refactor!, visualstudio, programming
]]>Late last week I hit a need to write some code using logic I hadn't even thought of in probably 20 years. I'm writing a differator for some structured XML data and I need to do a match-merge operation on named elements in a collection. Back in the days when sequential file processing was the norm for batch operations (disk files were often logically viewed as tape files) this was old hat and I never even had to think about how to do it. Then VSAM, ISAM, and assorted database engines led to random access, and even when we would sort an input transaction file we were likely not to bother trying to read a master file sequentially if most records would be skipped.
Anyway, the logic to do this isn't at all difficult, but the last time I wrote such code from scratch I was using assembly language on DOS/VSE. This time around it's VB.NET against an XML DOM with ordered collections of nodes.
Technorati Tags: programming, software, algorithms
]]>The NY Times has an interesting article on BlackBerry's quest to fend off the iPhone. The opinion of the author and several analysts seems to lean toward BlackBerry stumbling and losing to Apple:
Since the iPhone went on sale last summer, amid long lines of shoppers and media adulation, the contours of the smartphone market have begun to shift rapidly toward consumers. An industry once characterized by brain-numbing acronyms and droning discussions about enterprise security is now defined by buzz around handset design, video games and mobile social networks.
That means R.I.M., which has historically viewed big corporations and wireless carriers as its bedrock customers, needs to alter its DNA in a hurry. While business is booming in Waterloo, analysts are raising an important question about R.I.M.'s future: Can a company that defined mobile e-mail for a generation of thumb-jockeys with bad posture also dominate the new consumer market for smartphones?
"Thumb-jockeys with bad posture" is that what I am now?
But more seriously, Apple has sold a lot of iPhones and the consumer market is where the new action seems to be, in spite of Apple's trying to make inroads with the enterprise market by licensing Microsoft technology for email on the iPhone.
The article goes on to discuss some work RIM is doing to create more consumer oriented phones, and I like the competition--it means better phones are on the way--but I think Apple still has one big hurdle to overcome: as long as I'm limited to one service provider choice for the iPhone, and it's a service provider I don't like, I'm just not going to look at the iPhone. If RIM can get newer and better BlackBerries in the hands of upgraders at other service providers, they may be able to hold on to their market share.
Technorati Tags: apple, blackberry, rim, smart-phone, iphone
Moans and groans and the sound of shuffling feet are today's sounds. Too much walking and stooping and bending over to pick up trash at yesterday's clean up event left me tired but satisfied yesterday, but today I am moving very very slowly.
Yet another reminder that I need to be in better shape.
]]>Pardon any updates that show up in RSS to some old posts, I updated them to correct the capitalization of BlackBerry. As Smalltalkers know, getting capitalization of names right is just good manners, and BlackBerry is what I see on the various RIM sites.
]]>I'm a long time licensed user of NetNewsWire, and stuck with it when it was acquired by NewsGator. I had tried some online web based news readers but never got into them, and until I got my BlackBerry, I had no real reason to look at any other RSS news reader.
There is a large subset of my RSS subscriptions that are low priority and great to read in little snatches of time here and there, so I decided to see if there was a news reader for the BlackBerry. It turns out there are multiple options. I decided to try NewsGator Go! since it was free and from the same outfit that supplies my excellent Mac based reader.
I set up NewNewsWire to sync feeds with the NewsGator site, and downloaded and installed NewsGator Go! on my BlackBerry. I now have seamless synching between all three readers--Mac, BlackBerry, and Web--and I'm considering looking at their PC based news reader.
In terms of usability, NewsGator Go! feels like BlackBerry application. Menus work as expected and it is easy to navigate. The tree view of feeds and folders is clear, article abstracts are readable, and I can dive into an article that I want to read or access links with just a couple of clicks from my BlackBerry.
If there's something I want to save for later, I can easily clip the article and it is moved to the clippings folder for future reference on either my BlackBerry or NetNewsWire.
It appears possible to set up feeds on the Mac and PC that do not sync with the central service, but I haven't investigated that feature yet.
My only complaint with NewsGator Go! is that the folder level count of unread articles doesn't update to reflect articles I've read in a predictable manner during a reading session.
If I was assigning a letter grade, I'd have to give NewsGator Go! a solid 'A'.
Tags: Blackberry, NewsGator, Reviews, NewsGator Go!, software
]]>Last week it was the ice cream truck and this week it's general street noise. It's kinda like Neil Diamond's Beautiful Noise:
What a beautiful noise
Comin' up from the park
It's the song of the kids
And it plays until dark
Yesterday was our first really warm and clear Friday of the season, and the park by the rec center was full of people. I had the windows open all over the house and I could hear kids, radios, people having spontaneous parties on their porches, and other happy sounds of the city as people get out after a long winter.
I know suburbanites might not enjoy such sounds, or maybe even find them annoying, but it's a good part of life here and it rarely disturbs me.
Today is Corryville Cleanup day and I'll be heading out in about an hour to help with the annual neighborhood beautification project. I'll be up on Bellevue with some neighbors. We're going to get rained on, but it doesn't look too bad.
Tags: Cincinnati, Corryville, urban life
]]>My friend and former coworker Peter Suk liked to say that, and it's so true.
So many bugs we see in our own code and in other code are caused by dangling state. Niklaus Wirth's Algorithms+Data Structures = Programs should note that Programs + State = Observed Behavior. I'm dealing with weird bugs in other people's software (OPS). In each case, there must be some bit of sticky state, perhaps for a premature optimization, that I can't see from my side of the interface which causes the bugs.
Frustrating.
We should optimize no code before its time.
We should cache no state before it's needed.
Technorati Tags: programming, bugs, optimization, quotes
]]>While I initially found the build in web browser on the BlackBerry a bit cramped\, I've grown to like it. Some sites work better than others (Cincinnati.com works very poorly) and navigation is easy once you get used to the idea of not having tabbed browsing.
A few people mentioned Opera Mini, so I thought I'd give it a try. The quality of the software seems fine to me, very stable and reasonably fast, but I just didn't like the way it worked. If I wanted a window on a desktop view of the browser, I could do that with an iPhone or there's a desktop view in the RIM browser.
I may be missing something here, but I found it unenjoyable on my BlackBerry and after multiple usage attempts I've removed it. It feels wrong for this form factor.
Technorati Tags: blackberry, software, opera, browsers