Two new shows on The Podcast Network that I like.

The Personal Productivity Show. In the first show they talked about how they deal with common tools like Outlook and Mind Manager to organise their life. Some of the things they do I do as well, like copying e-mails into the Task list where it can be scheduled. I’d actually like to see the Task list overlayed onto the calendar.

The Cranky Middle Manager Show. This was interesting, the guest they had on talked about how you need to build and environment where innovative suggestions can flourish rather than creating and environment where things are automatically shot down. I can see many of a negative characteristics in the way I sometimes deal with people. Definately worth listening.

I’m a sucker for these things – how well traveled are you?

Your Travel Profile:

You Are Extremely Well Traveled in Australia (88%)

You Are Mostly Untraveled in Canada (20%)

You Are Mostly Untraveled in New Zealand (17%)

You Are Mostly Untraveled in the Western United States (16%)

You Are Mostly Untraveled in the Southern United States (15%)

You Are Untraveled in Africa (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Asia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Eastern Europe (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Latin America (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Scandinavia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Southern Europe (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Western Europe (0%)

You Are Untraveled in the Middle East (0%)

You Are Untraveled in the Midwestern United States (0%)

You Are Untraveled in the Northeastern United States (0%)

You Are Untraveled in the United Kingdom (0%)

How Well Traveled Are You?

Nick Wienholt on MSDev podcast with Dr. Pete.

Dr. Pete has posted up another Microsoft Developer podcast, this time he is talking to none other than Nick Wienholt! I caught up with Nick at the Sydney Deep .NET User Group last Thursday night and after the meeting a few of us headed down to the pub for a beer or two.

Nick was telling us that during the interview he didn’t have microphone on his laptop so the whole interview he was leaning forward over his laptop’s built in one. Its a funny old world

Softwaremaker – Amazing !!! This is done in Microsoft MS-Paint in 500 hours

This is truely amazing. I wonder what the technique is – clearly not left to right top to bottom. If I were going to do that I’d have to map out the main structural elements and then focus in areas of like colours because the colour pallete in MS Paint ain’t that flash without significant customisation.

The ISV, Microsoft and .NET

Michael and Bill have started a bit of a thread so I thought I would quickly chime in. I that ISV’s have always had to evaluate the offerings of their platform vendors and determine whether adopting that technology would expand or increase their market or damage their business in the transition.

The challenge is Microsoft’s to convince you to do the conversion. For ISV’s that have a significant investment in C/C++ code there may be no driver for them to convert, especially if they have a top notch code base, but I bet in many cases those ISV’s need to provide programmatic interfaces into their software and providing a .NET wrapper around their unmanaged APIs probably wins them more business than loses it.

There is also an important distinction to be made, Microsoft, in most cases is making core platform software, most other vendors are producing packages that run on top of that platform. The performance requirements tend to be a little bit different (there are always exceptions mind).

Red Tape

This post on Sudhur Parasuram’s blog made me laugh out loud – it does everytime I read it

Novell, Indigo and Microsoft IP

I just saw this article over on The Register, its about some IP issues that the Mono project (and by extension Novell) could have if they try to replicate Indigo. I’ve got to say that it really makes me laugh – for some reason it is assumed that just because Microsoft pushed the CLR (or a subset of it) through the various standards bodies that it means they are automatically going to open up other pieces of their IP.

If you are a software company your IP represents your crown jewels. Microsoft has put a significant amount of effort into Indigo and other parts of WinFX and to take all that design work and just hand it over seems crazy to me, especially when those same industry people are the same ones that put the boot in when they talk about the WinFX / Longhorn packaging and shipping changes.

If Miguel wants to play Indigo Architect then he should just take the job that Microsoft has been offering him for the last two to three years!

For Kids: Bitman’s Place

Scoble is involved with a neat little project to get kids into computers. Head over to his site to get an invitation, I logged in and if Bella was older I would definately let her loose on it. Great work!

Reflecting TextBox in Avalon

I really liked this effect that Nate Dunlap came up with in Avalon with XAML. Its a really simple example of the stunning UI experience that you can expect with future applications written on the Windows platform – and once you look at the code and see how elegant it is it gets even better!

Rory asks if the IT industry is picking up?

Yes, I think it is Rory. I get contacted fairly regularly too, actually an interesting characteristic of late is that some companies are actually looking for MVPs specifically! There were always jobs out there, even in the dot-bomb that never fully hit Australia, but the difference now is that its becoming a bit of a sellers market.

In general I think that business is starting to forget about the large investment/small payoff that we saw around 1999–2001 and are looking forward to their IT staff delivering greater efficiencies. All we have to do as an industry is live up to their expectations.

So – what have you done to make your organisation more efficient and/or more profitable today?