Scott Cate's WebLog

NBC Silverlight Install End User Experience

I fired up my iMac this morning and ran over to www.NBCOlympics.com full of excitement to see the video experience that I've heard Microsoft and NBC talking about for the past few months.

I've never installed Silverlight on a Mac before, and I was intentionally not installing anything, so I could get a feel for the end user experience.

At the last minute, I decided to do a lazy mans recording with my Sony pocket cam, just pointed at the screen, so the clarity isn't that great, but you get the idea, and the experience I was trying to capture.

Check out the video, which I've uploaded to my Flickr account. The whole process was less than 90 seconds, which is great, because Flickr video maximum time in 90 seconds. Lucky me.

Once the vide player / Silverlight engine was installed, I was amazed at the clarity of the streaming video. it's amazing. In fact the streaming video footage, it better quality than the commercials I saw, which were all pretty grainy. Probably due to the way they were originally encoded.

I'm excited to watch the Olympics online this year, because I'll get to watch what I want, when I want, with much MUCH more coverage. I won't be locked into what scheduled in TV guide.

I wonder if the Archives will stay online after the Olympics are over?

iPhone Community Feedback on UserVoice.com

A few days ago, I created a UserVoice.com website for iPhone to keep track of bugs, features, and application ideas that I have specific to the iPhone. I really want love my iPhone, but currently am having a really hard time with it.

Others have started using the site as well, and it's created quite a few questions inside my daily community.

Will Apple see these?

If they do, will Apple care, or do they already know all this?

To me, not having quick dial by name is so frustrating, and tops my list. With my Samsung BlackJackII, I use the keypad and just start dialing a name, and the matches are shown in a list to choose from. Dialing by name couldn't be faster. J-A, and I already have all the phone numbers for Jamie that I need. Fast and Easy.

With iPhone, you first have to click home, then phone, then contacts, then get your tiny finger into the search bar, then start typing. Man, I could have been done with my phone call already. And making calls while driving is much MUCH more difficult. Interestingly enough, not a lot of people agree with me :( as you can see by the list on the top right, "dial by name" is one of the features that I think is most lacking, but it only has one vote, and the vote is mine.

So this got me thinking. Why don't people agree with me? Maybe they do, but I put a bad title on it. Maybe it should be "Dial by name from they number/alpha phone keypad, so I don't crash my car". Maybe I need to market and campaign for users to vote on Dial By Name and this will get Apple's attention. Maybe not enough people have visited http://iPhone.UserVoice.com account to get an accurate count of what people think. Or, maybe my 2400 contacts and I are a minority, and this isn't really a big deal to the iPhone population.

Is it cool for an End User to start their own support site, for a product that they want to make better?

The thing that makes UserVoice.com so great is the voting. You don't need an account to vote, you can do it anonymously. You can also add suggestions, bugs, and feature requests without an account. There are features you may want to sign up for (free) like email notifications if others comment on your item, or the item get's fixed.

TechEd Orlando :: Compiler Tricks

Here is the download project for my Compiler Tricks talk at TechEd Orlando, 2008.

The talk focuses on what the C# 3.x compiler does with new syntax, and how you can use most of the 3.x syntax, when targeting a 2.0 build. This doesn't mean you can use the 3.x code samples with Visual Studio 2005, because you need the 3.x compiler to actually compile the syntax targeted to a 2.0 build.

This single slide pretty much sums up what the talk focuses on, and the downloadable project is pretty simple to walk through as well.

[Click here or the the slide image to download ScottCateCompilerTricks.zip ]

San Diego ASP.NET SIG User Group

Here is the code sample I used last night to show off and talk about the ASP.NET AJAX Functionality that is built into ASP.NET 3.5.

This project has been built over the years with samples that I've created for conferences, and users groups around the world.

If you were in San Diego for the user group, or are just interested in checking out tons of examples, this is a small 2.5 meg download. The project has been upgraded to use Visual Studio 2008. A Visual Studio 2005 example of (not all but most of) this code is available on CodePlex.com/ScottCateAjax.

One thing about the setup, is (as you can see in the below image) the site navigation, uses the IE Search Toolbar. I really should update this, but as it stands, you have to enable the search bar ins most IE instances. Check out Tools|Options|Advanced, and then make sure "Enable websites to use the search pane*" is checked.

[ Click here or the image to download http://www.Scottcate.com/AJAX2008.zip (2.5Meg) ]

Running Baby Smash Offline

Last night Cameron and I posted about BabySmash, and how much fun we were having with it. This morning I was trying to show some folks the app, but I was offline.

Knowing how the technology works, I was able to find the local storage, and still run the last version of the program. I thought this may be helpful for others to see, so I screen cast it, while I was opening the file to show.

The file structure will be different for XP vs. Vista (this is Vista) but somewhere in your profile you'll find Apps\2.0\ .......

Enjoy the 90 second screen cast.

I was in a hurry to post this, so I didn't do the pan/zoom but I think it's good enough to get the point across.

Cameron loves BabySmash!

My son Cameron is 2.5 years old, and loves to play on the keyboard. He knows his alphabet, and numbers, both written and in sign language. Sitting in front of the computer for him is very exciting because he watches mommy and daddy play with the letter toy quite a bit.

Last week (maybe two weeks ago) Scott Hanselman started a fun project called BabySmash, that simply plays a sound and displays a character or shape on the screen when a key is pressed on the keyboard. if the keystroke is a letter or number, then the corresponding character is display, along with a sound bite. Other keys show random shapes. All display figures change background, border colors, and screen location, so repeatedly pressing the letter "C" produces a nice effect.

I'm sure there is a wish list of features for this application, but al the things I could think of were for me, not Cameron - and the app is written for Cameron - who really enjoys it.

Here is a 90 Second video showing Cameron and BabySmash.

Working with Fiddler on LocalHost

Developing ASP.NET AJAX (or any AJAX really) is tremendously easier if you can watch the traffic going across the wire. There are a lot of ways to accomplish this, but I think Fiddler is the most popular Windows application for ASP.NET developers. Sure there is Firebug, and probably a million others, but this post is about Fiddler).

Over the last few years, I've had a hard time getting Fiddler to work on local host. Actually until recently, it's just never worked.

Rumors online said to use http://127.0.0.1, instead of http://localhost and it'll work. Maybe for you, but not for me.

Then last month while speaking at Orlando ASPConnections, I was demoing some AJAX calls on stage, and an audience member told me that Fiddler will work on 127.0.0.1 with a trailing . on the IP address. So the address ends up like ...

• http://127.0.0.1. (Notice that extra out of place looking final period)

Or

• http://127.0.0.1.:45154 (Notice that extra out of place looking final period)

With a port number (if you're on Cassini).

Fiddler picks up this traffic and you're back in control of sniffing your own traffic.

Hope this helps others that didn't know the little nugget.

Screen Calls on your Cell Phone

This is not a paid advertisement. I'm just a happy customer.

Wow - this is great. I'm really busy, and shouldn't be spending time writing this, but it's just to cool to not pass along. As you probably know, cell phone service does not offer caller ID. If you think you have caller ID, what you really have is "Address Book Lookup".

When I call your cell from my office, and I'm not already in your phone book, you just see (480) 424-6952 on your screen, and have no idea who it is. If you're on a land line, you'll also see "myKB.com, Inc." on the screen.

I'm not into caller ID to know the difference, but I'm sure there is some technological short coming to why the name portion of caller ID is not included on cellular service.

Enter CallWave.com

CallWave is a replacement for your voice mail system, that I've written about before. It's an amazing service that emails your voice mail, as MP3 attachments. They also text you a dictated version of the voice mail, which they call a "Gist". The SMS text is never accurate to the word, but you can always get the idea of the voice mail - as well as the gist of the message - hence the name.

In the Email, and the SMS, the name portion of the caller ID is included as well, which is a nice feature.

And now - something that I've never been able to do before is possible because of CallWave.com.

Call Screening.

What do I do with these unknown number and blocked number calls? I send them to my CallWave.com voice mail. The CallWave server, speed dials me back, and while the caller is listening to my "Please leave me a message" - I have time to answer the call back from CallWave.

Then I hear the message you're leaving, while you're leaving it, and if I press 1 at anytime, we're connected.

HOW COOL IS THAT?

Here's the down side. CallWave.com is no longer free - but with all this functionality I'm still a big fan.

TechEd Parties :: GeekFest Tuesday June 3, 2008

If you're joining me at TechEd - register for this party on Tuesday, June 3rd. It'll be fun to hang out - and get to know some new folks.

Here's all you need to know.

1. cheap pizza
2. cheap bear
3. cheap laughs

Register.

Do it!

You know you want to.

http://geekfest.thenextseven.com 

See you there!

Presenting with Visual Studio 2008

I just got out of a meeting with the famous Sara "tip of the day" Ford. These are always great meetings, because you're guaranteed to leave knowing more about Visual Studio than when you arrive.

Today I leave with this presentation tip; which I would know had I read her blog daily instead of just skimming it pretending I already know all the tips :)

Sara does a great job explain the how (with images) so I'll simply add two pointers to her blog.

Adjust the Tooltip Size, so the audience can see what's in that

little tiny tooltip box

when you're on stage.

Thank you Sara!

Quick Access to Projector Settings (Mobility Center)

In vista - when you want to hook up a projector, there are several ways to get it going. If you're lucky, you might just plug it into your DVI or VGA output, and Vista will as what you want to do with the display output, and you can choose to share the screen, or extend your display onto the projector.

I'm not sure why, but for me this works about 80% of the time. Other times, nothing happens, and I have to find the mobility center. To do this - I would open the Control Panel, and use the search option at the top right, typing in the word projector - will find the Windows Mobility Center

Easy - but not the fastest way possible.

I just found today there is a keyboard shortcut to open Window Mobility Center

[WINDOW]+X - Open Mobility Center

Flickr Has Video, my test for short ScreenCasts

I'm sure you've all seen by now that flickr supports video. I've been wanting this for a long time, and when my friend Tim Heuer sent me a Text message with the news, I was very excited.

After playing with this for a while, one of the things that I like, is that the video can be sized. Maybe other video services have this, but I haven't seen it. In fairness, I haven't used YouTube, or any other video hosting service at length.

For recording screens (which I'm trying to do more of), I wanted to be able to do a short little Camtasia screen cast(is it "screencast" or "screen cast") test, and see what it's outcome is. This video was recorded at the size of my browser window, which happened to be 912X820 at the time. I was hoping that the original dimensions of the video would be kept, but when asking for the player code, the "actual" size was registered at 499 wide. Maybe this means that the video is re-encoded on upload, so that it's max height and potentially max width are 500? Just a guess.

On the first go-round, I just encoded the video, and it was too small to read when playing back. Then I used the Camtasia tools for pan / zoom, and the video is now watchable, where I can get a quick point across. Although this video has no point, the pan/zoom work nicely.

One concern is that the video/screen cast is limited to 90 seconds in length - which could be viewed as a positive. I'll have to be a little creative to get my point across in 90 seconds - maybe that's better for everyone :)

Test Screen Cast with pan/zoom

Personal Goal -- Do more ScreenCasts

Today, I ran across the Developer Express ASP.NET blog, where they have several screen casts about using their grid products with LINQ. I love screen casts. You can really tell a story, and show so much more than you could with just words and pictures. And the best part is, the right screen cast can highlight a feature in just a few minutes.

Seeing this makes me a little jealous. We've created so many screen casts and video products for other companies, but like more companies, we've not used our own goodness for our own products.

Anyway - my point of this post is simple to the software/support blogging community.

Please follow DevExpress and do more screen casts, they're good for everyone.

How do you protect your small gadgets

Have you ever lost your cell phone? Camera? Other pocket sized gadgets that can easily cost $500 or more? What about the other side, have you ever found a gadget, only to be helpless and not know how to return it?

Phones are a little easier due to phone books, last calls, caller id, etc. This has happened several times in my presence, most recently at Sea World. Find a phone, press redial and as it turns out, the phone owner and the last person called were together, and within a few minutes the phone was returned.

BUT ... what about your camera? If you know me, you know we recently had a baby girl, and you also know that I'm a **very** amateur photographer. My photos (all 15K plus on flickr) are all about capturing the moment, rather than getting the picture right. Disk space is so cheap, cameras are so small, and moments pass to fast, for me to worry about getting just the perfect photo. I'd much rather have 50 decent (even some not so decent) pictures to capture the moment, than one or two perfect pictures. ok ok back to the story.

Something you probably do not know is that we lost our camera with all of the first pictures of baby Courtney. These were the Day 0 pictures of baby Courtney, and capturing many memories of all the friends/family that visited us in the hospital that day. Just weird! How do you lose a camera in a hospital room? It was here a minute ago - I just took pictures of Grandma. Where did it go?

We finally ended up hoping that it fell into a bag (there were lots of those around) and someone accidentally took it home. What else could have happened? We'll wait a few days and someone will call with it. Waiting ... Waiting ... Waiting ... No Call. Four days go by, and we're now home from the hospital. What are we left to do? Give up? Call lost and found at the hospital - yeah right. They're like - umm, what does your camera look like? and I answer - it's a small silver Sony. Very descriptive right - but what else am I to say? Nothing.

Then two weeks later, I decide to call back just so I can sleep better at night. Jaw dropping news! They have my camera, and I identified the pictures on it. When baby Courtney was born, I snapped a picture of the clock in the delivery room, and that was the identifying photo. Who turned it in, how, when, where, why, will all go unanswered - but for some reason it was finally turned in and we were very happy.

Anyway ... this is an awful long non-technical story to talk about, what could have just been answer by looking at the photo. They say that a picture is worth a 1000 words, and they're right. By just looking at the photo you might say - why would anyone disgrace their camera like that - and now you have the answer :) If I ever lose it again, it's be mush easier to return.

Empty Inbox - Using Getting Things Done and gMail @Labels

All over the web people are raving about their success with Getting Things Done (or GTD). I read this article about using gMail labels for GTD, and I copied the idea. It's working really well, and I wanted to pass it along, so that others might take advantage of it as well.

The idea is simple. The inbox is for receiving, not for storage. When something comes into your inbox, you either ...

• Do it if it takes less than two minutes (no procrastinating here)
• File it, to be done at the appropriate time

The latter is very important, and requires discipline. If something could take 10 minutes, you might be tempted to side track and just do it, after all - what's 10 minutes? Well in developer time, that could easily turn into hours. So you need to finish the task at hand. Which is simply clear the inbox.

When I delegate an email, I flag it with @Waiting (it being the sent mail) - so I can easily follow up with tasks assigned to others, to make sure the "Getting" in GTD are really happening when I'm counting on others.

The other thing I like about the GTD filing system, is the rolling calendar months. When you have an email that pertains to something that will happen later this year, you simply flag it with that month. Then at the beginning of each month, you transition all the monthly items into actions, and change the month label to next year.  You see in the screen shot that Jan/Feb/Mar are in 2009, and the rest of the year is in 2008, because Q1 has already rolled to 2009. I use YYYY Mmm format, so that they sort nicely.

I'm not using the exact GTD terminology, because I wanted to see the (XX) marked "unread" counts next to each label. The labels in gMail are sorted alphabetically - so from top to bottom, I conveniently came up with words that are in alpha order that make sense, and are very mnemonic. This is why @Action isn't used, but instead @Needs, simply because @Action would come before my @ASAP, which would be backwards.

As the links article talks about - i prefix the gMail labels with @ simply so they show at the top of the list of labels.

Lastly, the color labels are nice, but meaningless. Well I guess they serve a purpose when you do a search. The results that match your search criteria - will show the label - and that might draw more attention to the search result. As it is, when I "click" the label @ASAP - I see a list of all the @ASAP messages, and gMail is smart enough not to waste the screen real estate and restate the obvious. I do like the darker solid colors when they do appear (as aforementioned in search results) because then it's white font over a dark background, where conversely if you choose a light color, it's a dark font over a white background, which just doesn't stand out as much. I would like it more if gMail would let me pick my own colors, rather than from a limited color palette - buy hey - you can't have everything!