Dr. Neil's Notes

Developing for the Kinect

2012-01-15T09:26:00.002+11:00

In November I sat with Carl Franklin and explored some code to help you get started with Kinect development. Carl has broadcast this on DNRTV.
You can view it here http://www.dnrtv.com/default.aspx?showNum=208

Talk on Seamless computing

2011-11-29T22:22:00.005+11:00

This video was taken recently at a talk I gave, at a WiseTech Forum, on how we can build futuristic technologies today.

Creating Seamless Experiences, MSDN UK

2011-11-04T03:47:00.005+11:00

I met with the MSDN UK team recently to discuss the work we have been doing to create seamless computing experiences. Sara Allison has posted on the UK MSDN team blog about some of the topics we discussed.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ukmsdn/archive/2011/11/03/creating-seamless-experiences.aspx

This is the original video that has triggered this conversation.

Seamless Computing, bring the future to life.

2011-11-04T03:26:00.003+11:00

I am heading back to Sydney in a few days and some friends at WiseTech have asked me to come and spend an hour at UTS talking about Seamless Computing scenarios.
the details can be found here http://www.wisetechglobal.com/events.html
Hope to see you there.

In this session Dr. Neil Roodyn (http://www.roodyn.com) will discuss how scenarios, that a few years ago would have been science fiction, are now becoming achievable with the technology we use every day. Taking some small leaps and pulling together technology from different platforms, enables us and our clients to now achieve tasks that would have seemed to be magical a mere 5 years ago.

In this session you will learn how some key technologies are likely to become the core components of experiences that seamlessly connect devices, people and software together.

Hardly any agile left in Agile

2011-07-30T08:55:00.003+10:00

This is something has been nagging at my mind in the last couple of years. When I started getting interested in eXtreme Programming in 1998 it represented a step up from some of things I was already doing with software development teams. We were using techniques best classified as Rapid Application Development. First eXtreme Programming and then the Agile manifesto represented lightweight methods to get software shipped.
There are two important parts of that last statement:
1. lightweight methods
2. software shipped

The concept of doing the simplest thing to achieve a goal, is an important part of eXtreme Programming. Traveling light (or not carrying baggage from previous experiences) is an important part of being agile. One of the aspects of agile that I always found attractive was the objective of enabling the development team to deal with change in short time frames.
While it may not be fully apparent, from the behaviour of many software development teams, the objective of developing software is to ship a product, a finished piece of working software. This desire to find better ways to get software shipped is clearly not something everyone in the industry shares. that is why we have collections of rules that appear to do nothing than keep people in jobs. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that in certain situations we need 5 people analyzing the business rules in order to determine how to build software that manages a complex business process. The reality I often see is that the business process is not that complex and the reason the team has 5 business analysts is because the career path for developers in that company is to be promoted to a business analyst role.
I digress...
The reason for this post is to try and make you think about how the actions you are taking are really making you more agile (small 'a'). If your objective is to be able to handle change with as little pain as possible then following a hard set of inflexible rules is not going to help you too much.
Shipping software is a art that is not easy to teach by laying down a set of rules, in many ways it is much more like a creative activity than an engineering activity. Decisions have to be made that are not pure engineering decisions, they are not pure business decisions, nor are the decisions purely design oriented. It is a combination of all of these things and more.
Questions that need to be answered include; is the software aesthetically pleasing to the user, is the software functional, is the time right to release this to the market, etc..
There seems to be this constant flow of software with rules designed to help people become Agile, there are also more and more people professing to have the ultimate rule book for Agile software development.
In my opinion this is 90% bogus, the number of people that have a career telling other people how to ship software and have not actually shipped software in years (or ever!) amazes me.
If you want to be truly agile then drop as many tools as you can, learn to do more with less rules and restrictions, and most of all practice shipping software by actually shipping software!

Cloud and Client chat on CodeCast

2011-07-15T07:32:00.000+10:00

In this episode of CodeCast, Ken Levy interviews Dr. Neil Roodyn discussion the differences and scenarios around cloud and client computing. Topics includes applications running in the cloud, documents hosted in the cloud, and rich/smart clients that use the cloud as part of the solution, with more and more of a mixture of client and cloud within applications rather than one versus the other.

Another week of wonder

2011-04-09T10:27:00.002+10:00

The last few weeks have been action packed, and each week seems to have more than the last.
In the last month while in Sydney I have been to the Hotel, Hospitality and Design expo and the EduCause expo, both in Darling Harbour at the Sydney exhibition and convention center.

The nsquared team in Sydney has been working on optimizing the nsquared education pack for Windows 7 touch. This has been done on a range of devices; HP Touchsmart desktops, Tegatech TEGAV2 and the 3M 22 Inch touch screen.

The Managed Chatrooms website and service has been revamped and updated. Microsoft is among our customers of Managed Chatrooms, and our customers have stated using Managed Chatrooms for more events this month than ever before.

You may have noticed that Apple released a new product in March and the iPad app I wrote to help manage tasks on Exchange and SharePoint, ntask, has had an update to work better with Exchange 2003. Also on the iPad nsquared released coin swap, a game to teach children the value of money.

Enriched Customer Engagement at the Table

2011-03-28T20:03:00.004+11:00

The February issue of Cutter IT Journal published an article I wrote on the experiences nsquared had building a table top solution for Telstra.

Telstra bought Microsoft Surface units to run the nsquared business pack and some custom software that the nsquared team built specifically to engage the Telstra small business customers.

Depth vs. Breadth vs. Value

2011-03-23T08:11:00.004+11:00

After some recent conversations I thought I would jot down some thoughts on how different companies position their brands through the way they target their audience.
I have recently been involved in a number of conversations regarding breadth marketing, essentially this means going for more customers over a wider range of vertical markets. On the other hand depth marketing means targeting a small number of (often already known) customers and spending more time making sure they are incredibly happy with your product.
Given a limited amount of resources (every company in the world has its limits, just some are bigger limits than others) the breadth approach means a lower level of engagement per customer than a depth approach.
The question in my mind is how does the approach taken to marketing impact on the perceived value of the brand.
and can making the right choice of approach combined with a price point help a brand become more successful.
The question about perceived value seems like it might be a no-brainer. Yet the question might be better asked this way; in order to be successful does the marketing approach effect the perceived value or does the product value determine the marketing approach ?
Surely an approach that encourages a deeper level of customer engagement will increase the perceived value. Take for example the custom built super car industry. Here the customer is cherished and their hand is held through each step of making choices about the car, including fittings and extras. This is clearly a high value product and nearly always perceived as high value brand; you don’t go to Citroen in order to get a customer super car built, you go to Ferrari or Lamborghini. Yet we could flip this on its head and say that because this is such a high value product it dictates that the customers be given a better service. If you look at it this way it would then suggest that the higher the value of the product the deeper you would want your customer engagement. I also wonder if deciding to position your product for a breadth marketing campaign actually lowers the perceived value of your product. The more people that use your product the less exclusive they feel.
Some products are clearly well positioned for breadth-marketing examples include; soft drinks such as Coke or Pepsi, consumer electronics such as iPods or televisions, and mainstream movies such as Spiderman or Harry Potter. These are all low value products and have mass-market appeal, or so their producers would like us to believe.
Lets focus on technology for a moment and consider the entire experience, not just hardware and not just software, but the end-to-end experience. Clearly Apple has a lot of passion in this space, they have built a strong brand on the user experience of their products. Yet the Apple products are themselves not that expensive and are certainly targeting the mass-market space. Apple is clearly going for breadth marketing, and it seems to be working out pretty well for them. Microsoft has done well in this space with Xbox and recently incredibly well with Kinect, again a low value, consumer focused device with mass-market appeal.
So why all this pontificating?
Recently I have come across a few products that are clearly high value propositions, not targeting consumers but rather specific verticals and small numbers of clients (in the big scheme of things) and yet they are taking a breadth marketing approach. They are twittering like crazy, putting their products to be touched by consumers that will never be able to afford the products and trying to drive what appears to be a consumer facing marketing campaign for a non-consumer device. To me this seems like a mistake and yet maybe they will prove me wrong.
Time will tell.

The Hotel Room of the Future

2011-03-17T18:32:00.006+11:00

This week I have been at the Hotel Hospitality and Design Expo in Sydney. The nsquared team released the nsquared hospitality pack for Microsoft Surface. This includes three applications designed specifically for the hospitality industry, nsquared concierge, nsquared room service and nsquared tourist table. Each of these applications helps the hotel up-sell services that they offer directly or through affiliations.

News.com.au included an interview with me in their video about the hotel room of the future

VIDEO: Future visits

It is not cloud or client

2011-03-09T10:57:00.002+11:00

With so much discussion recently about moving your computing solution to the cloud as opposed to building a rich client application I thought I would make some observations.

Step back 30 years (1981) to the days when the mainframe was being positioned as a computing solution for business via thin client terminals. At the same time a new type of computer was starting to become popular, the personal computer. The personal computer was a low powered device by comparison to the mainframe, but it was all yours,.There was no sharing of resources or concerns of your personal and private data getting into the wrong person's hands. Microsoft made it their mission to put a computer on every desktop, it was a noble cause, a democratization of computing power. As personal computing power increased and with it the software for personal computers, the dream has become a reality. Now the modern day personal computer is often more powerful than many of the mainframe devices. The personal computer has also become so cheap as to be considered a disposable item by large companies. Place a large number of personal computers together and you can create an immensely powerful shared computing resource. In many ways, this stacking together of large numbers of computers provides more redundancy than a single large powerful computer. When a part of it fails it is really disposable and can be left as a dead component in the array of computers. The operating systems that these personal computers run is not considerably different from the operating system that runs the modern day laptop or the desktop computer.This has lead to a shift in the dynamics of the industry. The manufacturers of the personal computer operating system (let's face it, I am talking about Microsoft here in the main), is now the same company that is producing the operating system for the shared resource computing accessed through the modern day terminal (the browser). This now means the same company that has lead the charge to bring computers to the desk and into your hands is motivated to create large online shared resource centers, centers that run their operating system.

The interesting thing is that over the last 20 years Microsoft's Windows operating system has matured into a far superior server technology than client technology. Consider the Vista issues that clients reported and compare that to the lack of issues reported for Windows Server 2008. Windows Server 2008 is a really solid operating system and yet at its core is the same operating system as Windows Vista. It should not be surprising then that a company like Microsoft would play to its strengths and be motivated to sell more of its server operating systems. Windows 7 has done a lot to regain credibility for Microsoft as an operating system on the personal computer yet it is clear that market share is being lost to other products.

Many of these other products are no longer the traditional 'personal computer' and Steve Jobs in his announcement of the iPad2 referred to these computers as 'post PC' devices. Clearly your phone, slate computer or TV are not quite the same as your personal computer, yet these devices all harness the same (if not more) computing power as the personal computer of 5 years ago.

These post pc devices are often designed for richer media consumption such as movies, video chat, music and games. In order to optimize the experience for the consumer the software running on the devices is getting increasingly complex.

This clear movement to richer and richer experiences on client devices leads to a higher and higher consumption of bandwidth. At the same time greater levels of abstraction are being created by developers to simplify their lives. For example consider the heavy use of XML as a data transfer medium, XML is human readable and easy to debug, yet it increases the bits required to send the information compared to other methods software developers used when the available bandwidth was far more constrained. Couple this increased use of bandwidth with, what seems like, an insatiable appetite for richer experiences and we have a scenario where more power is being required on both the server and the client.

The cloud or shared computing resource is here. It has been here for a long time and will be here for a long time yet. Creating a new name for this massive shared computing resource may help with marketing it as the new thing, but ultimately it is nothing more than a huge online computing platform that is shared and scalable. I am sure I remember a salesman from IBM telling me this about the IBM offering in 1986!

The smartphone, tablet, tv and laptop will always provide a better experience when the application is written to target that device specifically. The web provides a lowest common denominator for interfaces that might be interesting for businesses that want to maximize their reach at the cost of user experience. The most enjoyable experiences will always come from applications designed to take advantage of the platform upon which they are running.

I think the argument of cloud vs client is not a real decision that needs to be made. To create an optimal user experience requires a rich client application. To make the experience seamless across the different devices in our pockets and on our desks requires shared storage that is reliable, scalable and can be accessed from (almost) anywhere. It is not about cloud or client, it is about cloud AND client.

Surface 2.0 chat on CodeCast

2011-02-15T09:38:00.002+11:00

I recently had a chat with Ken on CodeCast about Surface 2.0, Kinect and a bunch of other Microsoft technologies.

It has been difficult in the last few months to discuss what we have been working on and there are still areas that we cannot discuss. Yet the cover has been lifted on the surface 2.0 project and I am proud to have been involved in the new software development that the team at nsquared has been creating.

Grab your headphones and listen to this easy going chat between Ken and myself.

Mix'11 Sessions Proposed, please vote now

2011-01-31T09:43:00.006+11:00

Las Vegas will host Mix again this year, between April 12 and 14. As always I expect there will be a wide range of interests around Microsoft technologies represented at the event.
I proposed a total of nine talks for the event, sadly only three were accepted for the community voting. If you would like to attend any of these presentations please will you click on the link in the title and vote for them.

Wave, Touch, Pen, Speech, Mouse and Keyboard
In the last decade we have seen a variety of new interfaces popularized. With Microsoft Kinect you are the controller. There are screens that can see like Microsoft Surface. We have touch screens that can feel you and pen interfaces that provide rich digital inking capabilities. Speech technology to control an computer has existed for over a decade now. Yet we still are using the mouse and keyboard almost daily.In this session you will explore how the different input technologies can be applied to different categories of engagement. You will learn why the mouse and keyboard is here to stay and when you should take advantage of the other input technologies. This session will also provide you with some insight into how you can apply combinations of input to enhance your applications further.

How to build a great Microsoft Surface application
Microsoft Surface represents a new category in computing. Vision based screens enable unique interactions and they present fantastic opportunities for innovative software to be created. In this session you will learn what makes Microsoft Surface unique and how you can use that to build great software for Microsoft Surface. This session will cover the user interfaces and concepts that you need to apply in order to take advantage of the technology in MicrosoftSurface. With the imminent release of Microsoft Surface 2.0 this session will cover everything you need to build really amazing experiences for MicrosoftSurface.The company Dr.Neil works for has more applications certified for Microsoft surface than any other company in the world. This session will provide some insight into how they conjure up the magic that enables them to repeatedly build awesome Surface experiences.

Building Really Social Software
Technology can be both an inhibitor and an enabler of social engagement. This session presents a discussion on how technology can be used to enrich the dialogue between users. When you consider many forms of computing today you think of users staring into a screen and yet the most successful systems, such as twitter and Facebook, are really about how people converse with each other. In the last few years new categories of technology, such as Microsoft Surface and Kinect, have emerged that truly bring people together. This session will discuss the way these new technologies (and others) will change the way we can use technology to enhance human interactions.

Then with the other Surface MVPs we are proposing a discussion on all things relating to Natural User Interfaces.

The Microsoft Surface MVPs present: Natural User Interfaces, Today and Tomorrow; an interactive discussion and demonstration
Joshua Blake; Neil Roodyn; Dennis Vroegop; Rick Barraza; Bart Roozendaal; Josh Santangelo; Nicolas Calvi
The Natural User Interface (NUI) is a hot topic that generates a lot of excitement, but there are only a handful of companies doing real innovation with NUIs and most of the practical experience in the NUI style of design and development is limited to a small number of experts. The Microsoft Surface MVPs are a subset of these experts that have extensive real-world experience with Microsoft Surface and other NUI devices.This session is a panel featuring the Microsoft Surface MVPs and an unfiltered discussion with each other and the audience about the state of the art in NUI design and development. We will share our experiences and ideas, discuss what we think NUI will look like in the near future, and back up our statements with cutting-edge demonstrations prepared by the panelists involving combinations of Microsoft Surface 2.0, Kinect, and Windows Phone 7.

Please submit your vote for the sessions you would like to attend or hear. Remember many of the sessions get recorded and published online after the event.

The presentations that got rejected were:

Confuse me, lose me
Lets face it no one reads the manual anymore. Software should be so easy to use that the user can just walk up and start using it. So why is this not the case?
In this session Dr. Neil will discuss how interfaces can be built to enable users to get started with new technology and learn by using the system. A rich discussion of the pitfalls of complexity and how to simplify your user interface will allow you to leave this session with a set of tips to make your applications easier to use.
This session will provide an insight in to the thinking behind Natural User Interfaces as well as how to improve your Graphical User Interfaces.

Future Furniture
What will the furniture of the future look like? What functionality will it provide? This session provides you with a fun filled look into the way technology is being built into furniture and how furniture may look in our meeting rooms, our office and our homes in 10 years time.
Microsoft Surface has provided a glimpse into this future of furniture, where a table is no longer just an inert object but provides rich digital content. How else might our future change with new innovations that we expect to see emerge in the coming decade.

Look into my eyes
Face to face meetings provide the best way to really understand another person. Human interaction happens between people. Business transactions are agreements between people. It is easy to forget that everything we do in the software industry is still about people. In this session you will discover how technologies like Surface 2.0 can enrich the true social interactions between people. You will also learn why it is important for software developers to understand the nature of human engagement in order to build better

Now you’re speaking my language
Do you want to support multiple languages in your software? Can’t afford to pay for a translator to translate your software into every language? Microsoft Translator will help you support multiple languages in your application.
At Mix 09 Microsoft announced the release of the Microsoft Translator SDK. At Mix 10 Microsoft announced an update to the Microsoft Translator SDK include the Community Translation Framework. Come to this session to find out the new technology being released by the Microsoft Translator team.
Microsoft Translator is a team within Microsoft Research that focuses on natural language processing. The Microsoft Translator technology is used by Bing Translator, in Internet Explorer and in Office 2010.

So what exactly is technology anyway?
How are you reading this session abstract? Is it created with technology? Is the attendee badge you are wearing technology? One of the definitions of advanced technology is you will not notice it is there. It will blend into everyday life. With this concept in mind, Dr. Neil will discuss how we can move the technology we are building to the next level and become unnoticed by our users.
Come to this session to be awakened by the reality of what we are all creating in this world and learn how we can extend the reach of our technology into the everyday lives of our users.

If you would like to hear one of these presentations, please get in touch.

ntask, another win for the nsquared team

2011-01-18T22:17:00.004+11:00

Over the weekend a new iPad app became available in the Apple App store; ntask.

It is a gorgeous task management application that synchronizes with Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Sharepoint tasks lists. I have been using it while it has been developed and I am so pleased to see it has been selling like hotcakes now it is available in the App Store.
Earlier today when I checked it was the 32nd best selling business application in the app store! Congratulations to the nsquared team for another wonderful application.

Social networks, sharing and your personal information

2011-01-04T15:24:00.002+11:00

The latest wave of social media frenzy is about sharing your location and knowing where your friends are, or have just been.
This is something that I have discussed and presented on many times before. In fact in 2003 I presented proof of concept applications on the Microsoft smartphone platform ( then it was actually called Microsoft Smartphone) and the Microsoft Tablet PC platform. These applications enabled the user to post their current location to a blog or shared feed. I have used a number of variations of this to keep my 'Where was Dr. Neil' page updated.

In the last couple of years the rise in popularity of Facebook and Twitter have lead to an increase of related location sharing services. Services like foursquare or Facebook's own checkin system enable you to share your location with the world. This is great for those occasions where you want everyone to know where you are. These systems are mostly an all or nothing solution, either share with everyone or no one. So when you just want to let a couple of people know where you are located it's is back to the old text message or even resorting to call them.
It is for this reason we built Locus. Locus enables you share your location when you chose and with whoever you chose, including Facebook and Twitter.

I truly believe the pendulum will start to swing the other way now, with private personal information becoming more valuable. This value will start to be realized by the consumer and leveraged by the consumer to their own advantage.

When will you start to take more care of the information you share and who you share it with?

What is a table for?

2010-11-30T05:48:00.004+11:00

Let me ask you a question, what is a table for?
It may seem like a strange question yet it is not something we typically think about.
Furniture is taken for granted, in fact sometimes the word furniture is employed to mean the adornments in or on an object. You could say someone with lots of facial jewelry has 'furniture on their face' or, as I have heard it said, they have 'face furniture'
In our everyday lives we utilize furniture to enhance comfort and to perform functions, it is these functions that are worth exploring.
Think of all the things you do at a table. Eat food, work on your computer, layout a puzzle game, hold a meeting, and many more 'events' occur at a meeting. Consider which of those events take great advantage of the horizontal surface that is presented by the table. Playing puzzle game with friends, or holding a meeting at a table is something that clearly requires a horizontal platform. The horizontal nature of a table with multiple sides open and available for people to sit, presents the ideal place for holding a meeting. It enables eye to eye contact, allowing all participants to engage in a much fuller conversation. Such a large portion of communication between people is non-verbal and by facing the other parties around a table we can pick up on these subtleties. We can understand from proximity and quick glances of the eyes the nature of personal relationships between people.
Many technical solutions ignore the human interactions that are crucial for us to work together and create far shallower modes of engagement. Instant messenger, for example, provides a mode of communication between multiple parties, each siting at their own workstation. The nuances of passion, humor and disgust during the conversation can be hinted at with the use of emoticons. These provide a limited set of clues to hint towards the users feeling as they make a statement. The vocabulary of these is not just limiting but also deceptive. A person may want you to feel they are being jovial while really they are sad. You would only ever pick this up if you actually with the person. The telephone can provide a better medium for judging the mood of someone, through the tone of their voice and through other audio clues.
Yet nothing bis better than sitting at the table with someone for truly understanding their feelings and position on a topic. Most digital content is still presented using vertically oriented displays, yet these displays act as barriers to the optimum personal communication.
When working with the Tablet PC team at Microsoft in 2003- 2005 one thing became very clear, the slate form factor could radically change the dynamics of a meeting room. In a typical meeting at Microsoft people will bring their laptops and sit around a table, each staring into their own screen. This is incredibly anti social and detrimental to the level of engagement of the people in the room. In a meeting where each participant had a slate device the device did not act a barrier between the individuals at the table. Tabletop computing now has the opportunity to take this to the next level. By sharing the content directly on the tabletop the number of barriers is further reduced. A personal screen can present personal distractions during a meeting (email, IM, etc...), on a shared screen the focus can be on just the content desired.
Today I presented these concepts to a potential client showing the nsquared business pack for Microsoft Surface. It is clear that these applications can really change the dynamics of a meeting. Even as we were discussing the requirements of the project we were sketching out the ideas on nsquared thoughts. Tabletop computing should start to bring new ways of human engagement to our meeting rooms in the coming years and this will help us to work better together than many earlier technologies.

Measuring the success of your tabletop application

2010-11-17T06:07:00.002+11:00

Over the last 2 years I have been heavily involved in working with tabletop software, specifically software for Microsoft Surface. Having content displayed directly on the table top can radically change the interaction that occurs between the users sitting around the table. How we present the information on the table top will greatly impact on this interaction.

A number of researchers have spent considerable time and effort working on this challenge and recently at the ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2010 (http://www.its2010.org/) some of this research was presented. One of the more interesting (and arguably problematic) papers was presented by Tang, Pahud, Carpendale and Buxton; entitled VisTACO: Visualizing Tabletop Collaboration. The paper presents a way that researchers can scientifically understand the interactions of the users at a table. One of goals being to validate the design of a multi-user tabletop computer.

I say this can be problematic because while it is easy to track the user interaction on the table top, with software, this project (as described in the paper) attempts to solve a couple of other challenges; 1. does the interaction change if the people are not all physically sitting at the same table, 2. does the spatial position (configuration) of the users impact on the interaction models. The results are certainly useful but do they tell the whole story about the success of an interaction model?

From the work we have been doing in the real world with tabletop multi user deployments at nsquared there are other factors at play that are less easy to measure. The emotional connections that are made between people at a table during an interaction is often (maybe always?) more important than the actual physical interactions that have occurred. Creating an environment that encourages a rich and deep social engagement has been one of our goals at nsquared.

Our other goal at nsquared, which might be even harder to evaluate, is to enhance the intelligence of the people using the technology. More on this topic another day.

A quick glance back

2010-11-02T05:33:00.005+11:00

Today I was writing an email to a customer and I was explaining what the nsquared team has achieved in it's short lifetime, I thought I would share this with you because it is something to be proud of.

The nsquared team is a small and high specialized group of developers and designers based in Sydney. We do have people in the Uk, USA and Hong Kong, but most of the development happens out of our studio in Sydney. Our main mission is to make the world a better place through the intelligent application of technology. For this reason one of our core areas of focus has been education, where we believe so many of the world issues can be solved. A number of our team are ex-teachers and have a passion for teaching and helping people reach their potential.

We often see technology as something that hinders social engagement and this was one of the key attractions of Microsoft Surface. The table is a place of social engagement and adding digital content to the table should be used to enhance the conversation. The nsquared education pack has been the outcome of this work and you can find out more about this here http://nsquarededucationpack.com/

We also realized from the work we were doing that business meetings could be improved around a table, and drawing people's attention away from their personal computing devices to a shared screen would help increase the value of business interactions, this lead us to build the nsquared business pack, more information is here http://nsquaredbusinesspack.com/

We also have been busy exploring other touch and gesture based technologies, the most dominant being the Apple iOS set of devices, iPod, iPhone and iPad. We have been building apps for ourselves and third parties now for close to 2 years for these devices.You can explore all of our products on this page http://nsquaredsolutions.com/products/

As leaders in the field of Surface and NUI (natural user interface) development we wrote the first book on Surface development, http://nsquaredsolutions.com/surfacebook/

We are also the only company in the world with more than one application certified for Surface, in fact we have more applications certified for Surface than Microsoft does! http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en/us/Pages/Product/Applications.aspx

Through the work we have been doing we were awarded the contract, by Microsoft, to deliver all the Surface development training to new partners in Europe in 2009 and 2010.

Earlier this year I was awarded by Microsoft the first Microsoft Surface Most Valuable Professional award. https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=BD4DC19A-A1B7-49B4-90B2-EB41C67F980F

It is so great to achieved all of this and yet I feel we have only just started. We have so many great ideas and big goals for the technology we are working on. I am sure that his time next year we will have added some more fantastic achievements to this list.

Watch this space....

Certification For Microsoft Surface Applications

2010-10-18T11:58:00.003+11:00

Over that last 2 years the nsquared development team has been building Microsoft Surface applications. We are one of the most accomplished teams in the world at developing tabletop computing experiences. We wrote the book Developing for Microsoft Surface and have delivered all the global training to Microsoft Partners for Surface development. The certification of 10 of our applications now puts another achievement on our list to validate we are masters of our craft.

It is important that customers can differentiate between validated experts and those that claim to know what they are doing. Building software for table top interfaces such as Microsoft Surface is not a skill that can easily be adapted from desktop programming skills. This is not about the technology, this is about creating simple, easy to use, and engaging experiences. At nsquared we are bringing our expertise in this space to produce applications that owners of Microsoft Surface can purchase, download, and start using today. Having our applications certified for Microsoft Surface provides a level of assurance to our customers that we are delivering high quality software that will deliver a rich Surface experience.

My belief is that within 5 years we will see a proliferation of table top computing devices and at nsquared we plan to be at the forefront of this revolution.

Another codecast interview

2010-10-12T08:18:00.002+11:00

Last month when I was in Redmond I managed to catch up with my friend Ken Levy who drives the CodeCast podcast. We went for a great lunch at an indian restaurant and afterwards he set the ipod to record and we chatted about a number of topics, including Microsoft Surface, tablet devices, Microsoft Translator and the Messenger Connect SDK. All products I have been busy working with over the last couple years.

You can download the podcost from here.

Windows 7 Touch or Microsoft Surface

2010-07-13T09:56:00.004+10:00

I have received a number of questions around the topic of touch on Microsoft Surface and Windows 7.

I have seen a variety of feedback from client and developers along these lines:

Surface doesn't have a web browser, I must have a web browser
Surface is just Windows with touch

While the work I have done with After-Mouse and nsquared has led to a web browser control being built for Surface, typically a user trying to browse the internet is not looking for a multi-user, social, computing experience and Windows 7 is much more suited to provide a single user experience. Browsing the internet (the way we do today with modern browsers) is a single user experience, you cannot have two users clicking in the same browser at the same time and expect to get meaningful results. At best a browser can provide an experience for multiple users with a driver-passenger model of engagement. One person is the driver and is the only user interacting directly with the browser, the other participants are passengers, observing the interactions and potentially providing verbal guidance to the driver.

The questions to ask are:

What is the client trying to achieve?
What is their vision? A good place to start is to understand the usage scenarios they are hoping for.

If the objective is really to get multiple people engaged then Microsoft Surface provides a far superior solution. For a single user touch experience go for Windows 7.

You should also note that while the touch is getting better in Windows 7, the shell in Windows 7 is not designed to be 100% driven by touch, whereas the Microsoft Surface Shell is designed for touch from the ground up. With Windows 7, touch enhances the mouse and keyboard interactions. With Surface touch replaces the mouse and keyboard interactions.

Where will it end up ?

2010-06-04T10:46:00.003+10:00

I received a great question from one of my Surface students today.

They wanted to know if they can calculate where a ScatterViewItem is going to end up when it is flicked. Or the other way around, could you set an end point and set up the inertia processor to move an item to that location.

Lets say i have a ScatterViewItem on position point(30,130) and i want it to go to point(550,300).
How can I set the following:

// settings
inertiaProcessor.InitialOrigin = new Point(30,130);
inertiaProcessor.DesiredDeceleration = ?;
inertiaProcessor.InitialVelocity = ?;

// Restart Inertia
inertiaProcessor.Begin();

// Now please end up at: new Point(550,300);

Sadly there is no way to know this with precision. In theory you could use the physics formula to calculate this. The precision is not that accurate though so you would probably be a little off.

Remember one of the objectives of the ScatterView is to scatter things in an apparent random manner on the screen.

If you wanted to build an application where the exact location of movable items is important then a ScatterView control might not be the best option.

Another First: Surface MVP Award

2010-06-03T04:57:00.005+10:00

I like to be the first to work with a new technology and many of the folks at Microsoft know this. Over the years I have worked with the leading edge of Microsoft technologies, COM, Smartphone (now Windows Phone), Tablet PC, Virtual Earth (now Bing maps) and most recently Surface.

I have been delivering training to a number of Surface partners for the last 18 months, written a book on Surface development and formed a Surface development team in Sydney within nsquared .

Microsoft has recognized my contributions to the Microsoft Surface community and I am really pleased to receive the first ever MVP award for Microsoft Surface.

Interviewed by Tse:

2010-04-13T20:31:00.003+10:00

I was interviewed recently by Corwin Tse of TseDrive.com and the interview has now gone online.

Corwin asked some interesting questions about nsquared, Microsoft Surface and software development.

I hope you enjoy it.

Creation From Thought

2010-03-31T15:22:00.003+11:00

As pure as output can be

Virtual worlds to explore and see

Internal mechanics are hidden

Magic words unlock the forbidden

Fingers whir to weave the spell

Separates his layers for testing well

A wizard of the modern world

Sees fresh creation unfurled

Unwind, unlock, protect and store

Validate the ceiling

Validate the floor

Reload, refresh, enqueue and batch

Trying tricky patterns

Followed with a catch

On a stage of many switches

Removed of any glitches

Perfection tantalizing closer

Is this the million dollar grosser ?

Perception is everything

2010-03-20T13:08:00.005+11:00

Mix10 was a great event. There was plenty of activity around the new announcements, Windows Phone 7 Series, IE9, Microsoft Translator, Silverlight 4 and Blend 4.

It is interesting to watch how the masses now say it is all about Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 series and nothing else matters. Again and again I hear how touch is the new interface for everything. This perception is clearly not correct and yet it is the perception of developers coming away from an event like Mix.

There were also some missing players from the conversation. One of them close to my heart was Microsoft Surface. I think when a Microsoft Product Group with high profile decides not to attend a big Microsoft event such as Mix it sends the wrong message to the developers and the geek community. Engadget recently published this article, which almost predicts the end of Surface as a product.

This is clearly not the truth. I have been busy training partners over the last 15 months, and these partners are busy building solutions for real customers buying Surface units.

New products like Surface take a long time to roll out. This is not helped by the fact that most Surface applications are still failing to meet the basic criteria of what it takes to be a great Surface application. A very quick litmus test to determine if an application is a good Surface application can be achieved by deciding if the application does anything that cannot be done on a vertical touch screen. If an application would work just as well on a vertical touch screen then it does nothing to take advantage of running on a Surface unit and is therefore not a great Surface software citizen.

If developers and designers can evolve their thinking to understand what makes a great Surface application, I expect Surface solutions to get better and more companies to want to buy them. Until then it will be a long slow process before Surface proliferates into the world.

Do you speak my language?

2010-03-14T20:19:00.003+11:00

I am on my way now to Las Vegas for Mix. I will presenting a session on the new features of Microsoft Translator that will be announced on Monday PST.

The nsquared team in Sydney has been working long hours with the Microsoft Research team in Redmond on getting things ready for this launch.

There are so many great things about this new release, I look forward to telling you more shortly.

The session Do You Speak My Language? is at 2pm in the Lagoon H room. I hope to see you there.

Failing to protect a brand, Microsoft still doesn't get it

2010-03-04T09:09:00.005+11:00

It astounds me to watch a company that employs so many really intelligent people repeatedly make the same mistakes around something simple like branding.

The latest example is the Mobile 'Surface' project being undertaken by Microsoft Research. Make no mistake, I think this is awesome research and it is thinking and projects like this that will lead us into future generations of computer interaction. The issue lies with the use of the Surface brand. Microsoft has a product called Microsoft Surface, it is very clear that such a new and innovative product needs to have a clear and concise purpose and place in the market.

When Microsoft themselves allow research projects such as the Mobile "Surface" and SecondLight projects to use the Surface brand it dilutes the message of what a Microsoft surface actually is as a product.

To make matters worse, Microsoft released Microsoft Surface applications in the Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7. This pack contains a number of touch applications that have the Surface brand associated. This further dilutes the value proposition for Microsoft Surface as a brand.
To protect the brand Microsoft needs to ONLY use the Surface name for the Microsoft Surface product and nothing else.

Why do I care so much? Because I have invested a lot of energy in helping to promote, and teach people about Microsoft Surface, teaching Surface application development, writing a book on Microsoft Surface, and working with nsquared to build rich Surface applications.

Do you speak my language?

2010-03-02T00:23:00.003+11:00

If you have followed my activities over the last year you may have noticed that I am doing a fair bit of work with the Microsoft Translator team. I presented at Mix '09 on Exposing Web Content to a Global Audience.

For Mix '09 the nsquared technology studio in Sydney worked hard on producing getting started guides and documentation to help developers begin using the APIs.

then at TechEd in Berlin last year I worked with the Translator team to announce that the wdiget and APIs were moving from CTP to Beta.

Today the translator team announced that seven new languages have been added to the supported list, creating a grand total of 30 languages!

I will be at Mix again this year and talking about Microsoft Translator. If you are at Mix be sure to come along to find out about some new additions to the Translator and how you can build translation into your software using the same technology behind Bing Translator.

A new developer framework, .NOT

2010-02-12T01:06:00.005+11:00

I am so pleased to be able to tell you that .NET is a thing of the past and a new developer framework will shortly be launched called .NOT.

This new .NOT framework represents ground breaking abstraction technologies that removes the need for a software developer to do any work. According to feedback received from many software developers they really don't want to do any work at all, but they still want to get paid for it.

The .NOT framework allows this new bread of .NOT developers to simply sit in front of their computer and the code is generated for them. According to one developer, 'One of the fantastic things about the .NOT framework is that it generates exactly the code I would have written'. From playing around with the new .NOT framework it is clear this is the case, the code it generates is superbly scattered with memory leaks and unhandled exceptions, it is just like it was written by an overpaid .NET developer.

Other fantastic features of the .NOT framework include a built in delayed boot time, this enables even the simplest of applications to take at least 30 seconds to load. This delayed boot time features makes it look like your .NOT application must have taken a lot of work and involve a lot of code.

Then there is the .NOT presentation layer which is generated to look like the .NOT application layout was created by a drunk monkey. It is fabulous the way none of the window contents are aligned and the grotesque use of gaudy color is almost unbelievable.

I think my favorite feature is the .NOT installer technology, every .NOT application is compressed into a zip file along with a readme file explaining how to change 5 random registry entries, at least one of which is guaranteed to cause your computer to crash after a reboot.

Overall I can see this innovative .NOT framework being adopted by nearly every developer over the coming few years. I mean why write your own rubbish code if you can have it generated for you!

Bing Maps Silverlight Control

2009-12-14T14:37:00.004+11:00

This morning I upgraded the Where Was Dr. Neil and the Locus Activity Map web pages to use the released version of the Bing Maps Silverlight SDK.
The upgrade from the CTP took under an hour. There are some minor naming differences, for example the VirtualEarth namespace has been replaced by with a Maps namespace. It is now Microsoft.Maps.xxx which makes more sense.
I believe you only have a few more days to perform the upgrade, and then the CTP service will be shut down.
You will need an account key for each web site on which you host the Silverlight map control. You can get your key by creating an account on the Bing Maps Portal.
Then the key needs to be placed in the XAML when you add a Map to your Silverlight app.
The Silverlight interactive SDK is pretty handy to get you started once you have downloaded and installed the SDK.

World's First Surface Book Released

2009-12-04T07:43:00.001+11:00

I am pleased to announce the world's first Surface development book. Developing for Microsoft Surface has been created and compiled from the many training sessions I have delivered the world over, and focuses on crafting exceptional user experiences for Surface.

Guiding its readers on the complete journey from the initial unpacking of a Microsoft Surface unit, to the satisfying delivery of their first Surface application, Developing for Microsoft Surface deals mostly with the ideation of Surface application design. Along the way it is filled with plenty of hands on labs and practical exercises to help readers explore the adventure that is Microsoft Surface and hone their application development skills for this platform.

The book (rrp US $49.95) is available now in handy e-book format at the special introductory price of US $45.00. Click on the link below to get started now.

Flat plugs, sleek, simple, smart

2009-12-03T11:52:00.005+11:00

I have been to a few of hte RCA shows over the years, it looks like this year I missed out as one of the students showed off what has to be one of the best pieces of design I have seen in a while.
Find out more information here.

6 Steps to 7

2009-12-02T21:00:00.004+11:00

A recent acquisition the new 27" iMac presented me with a brief challenge when I went to install Windows 7 with Bootcamp; after the first stage of the install the screen remains blank.
A quick search on the internet presented a very concise solution on the UK PCPro site, thanks guys.

1. Run the Boot Camp Assistant in OS X as normal and create a partition when asked, then insert your Windows 7 disc to reboot and begin the process proper.

2. Windows 7 requires the NTFS file system, so once in the installer just select your new partition (labelled BOOTCAMP), click on Drive options (Advanced) and choose to format it. Then select the newly formatted partition and continue.

3. Windows 7 will begin installing, and once it gets almost to the bottom of its checklist, it’ll try to reboot. Now, if you leave it here, you’ll get so far and see the black screen. Any further attempts to reboot will bring you to the same dead end.

4. Instead, restart and press a key to boot from the Windows 7 disc when prompted. Rather than running the installation again, choose the little option at the bottom to Repair your computer. Decline any suggestions that pop up until you see a list of options with Command Prompt at the bottom. Choose that option.

5. At the Command Prompt, type DEL C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ATIKMDAG.SYS to delete the default ATI driver, then close the window and reboot.

6. This time, Windows should successfully initialise a more appropriate display driver, allowing you into the desktop. From here insert your OS X disc to install the relevant hardware drivers as you normally would, then run Windows update to clear up any leftovers.

The toll of too much, a life lesson.

2009-11-17T07:05:00.004+11:00

This year has been hectic. I have been flying around the world every month. Teaching Surface developers, working with partners in Europe, attending conferences and meetings in the USA and occasionally getting to Sydney to see my colleagues and family.
In the last 2 weeks I have been in Sydney, Singapore, London, Amsterdam, The Hague, Paris, Lyon, Berlin, London, Washington DC and Seattle. Right now I am supposed to be in Los Angeles for PDC but events on Saturday have slowed me down. I felt tired and jet-lagged on Saturday and so instead of going out into the mountains for a hike (which I often do when in Seattle) I stayed in and watched some tv. Towards the end of the day on Saturday I was still feeling rough but thought nothing of it until I came around lying on the floor with my head covered in blood. I had passed out.
Things were somewhat surreal and not good. My friend took me to the emergency ward and there I learned how to jump the queue, I passed out again. The doctors were great, they got onto getting my blood pressure and pulse (both very low) and taking an ECG, blood tests and head scan (all very good results).
The prognosis, severe dehydration, low potassium, and not enough rest. They pumped 2 liters of liquid into my system at the hospital and prescribed some potassium tablets.
I am now taking a couple of days out to rest before heading down to LA for PDC. I am not going to be running around much at the conference. I will be chilling out and networking this week, I hope to see a bunch of friends and catch up with folks. I will have my video camera with me so if you want to do a quick 5 minute video cast that would be great.

Make me want to lick your gear

2009-10-21T09:38:00.005+11:00

Once again Apple releases a new set of hardware that makes me salivate. Why is it that only Apple seems to get this so right most of the time?

I mean look at what Lenovo offers as their latest desktop solution.

Compare this with the latest offering from Apple,

It is not that the Lenovo solution is terrible, it looks pretty nice until you see what you can buy from Apple. Then check out the hardware specs, the screen sizes and resolutions. Then turn your focus to the attention to details, the new Apple mouse, the way the screen is made to go right to the very edge of the box, the slight taper in the stand so it appears to be thinner sitting on your desktop. Jon Ives and his team are totally rocking the world of computer design.
I would love to see some other competition in the desktop market place that pushes the boundaries of PC design and pushes the Apple team to newer heights!

Welcome back the Neil and Hugo show

2009-10-20T10:43:00.003+11:00

Hugo Ortega from Tegatech has agreed to join me in a new series of videos in the nsquared studio on touch and mobile computing. I really enjoyed making this first video and look forward to plenty more to come.

SyXPAC, Agile and time to change

2009-10-13T08:21:00.003+11:00

Last night at SyXPAC I gave a short talk (lightening talk) on the last 10 years of Agile. The point of the talk was to say that Agile has helped raise the issues to the forefront of peoples minds but it hasn't really solved anything,
In software development we have seen cycles of approximately 10 years. In 1968 was the first NATO Software Engineering Conference, one of the aims was to drive the adoption of the practically unknown term "software engineering". The title of software engineering was decided upon to be deliberately provocative and spark discussion. At the time it did this and from this methods were invented to attempt to create predictability in software development cycles.
In 1980 the first version of SSADM (Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method) was released and the 1980's saw a far more rigorous approach taken to software development. In 1982 Roger S. Pressman released the first edition of Software Engineering, A Practitioners Approach. This book become the bible for software development methods and teaching.
In 1991 James Martin first proposed RAD (Rapid Application Development) as an approach to delivering software using a more light weight and iterative process. Other great authors such as Steve McConnell and Jim McCarthy adopted these ideas in different degrees and help publicize this new approach. In 1999 eXtreme Programming was first publicized, along with Kent Beck's book on the topic. Following this the Agile Alliance was formed and a collection of other agile approaches have been proposed and introduced.
From 2001 forwards the term Agile was used as a buzzword to ensure that what ever changes were made could be signed off by the big boss. A number of Agile methodologies were pushed in to the market, SCRUM, Lean, MSF agile etc... some good, some bad. Mostly they all missed the point that XP was a set of dev tools not a methodology, philosophy or religion. In many ways the Agile alliance, although good in theory, didn't help with this.
Recently I have noticed a new issue with Agile practices and specifically some of the XP practices. There has evolved a breed of Agile coach that has a 'do what I say not what I do' approach. This is with a valid reason. Many of the practices that XP preaches are really like scales when learning music or mental exercises when training the brain. As a developer becomes more adept at them they become embedded into the psyche of the activity and the props become less necessary. To the point that some really experienced developer can move away from the practices and deliver even more amazing software without noticeably paying attention to the core practices.

As it approached the chasm, like all things, XP got watered down to become acceptable to the stakeholders that need to buy in. I don't think that this watering down of XP actually hurt that much initially, it enabled XP to get a foot in the door. It was then up to the developer to implement the solution. Here-in lies the issue. Fundamentally most developers do not have motivation to improve the state of the industry. They need to get their paycheck so they can eat, be clothed and have a roof for themselves and their families. The real passion for most developers is not business focussed. The real passion is technology for the sake of technology.
Yet through all of these changes, the software industry has not improved its reputation for delivery of poor quality, over budget, bug ridden software. Each shift has brought some new thinking and new tools to the tool box of the software development team, yet the basic principles remain the same.

Back to the Point; Agile helps but it hasnt really solved anything, it is time for a change and we embrace change, right ?

Are you looking for a challenge?

2009-10-07T15:43:00.006+11:00

IF

You want:
1. to work on some amazing new technologies,
2. the rare opportunity to really improve the world with the software you build
3. to engage with some of the smartest brains on the planet (our customers)
4. the challenge (every day) to do something better than anyone else

AND

You are prepared to commit to:
1. bringing your best to every project every day
2. demanding that your team mates bring their best to every project every day
3. producing outstanding software experiences that deliver more than our demanding customers expect
4. learning and improving every day

THEN

You will have the opportunity to :
1. engage with Microsoft Research, Microsoft Surface Product Group and the Microsoft Education Product Group
2. work with our leading global partners including Tricky Business and After-Mouse
3. develop with us
4. deliver greatness

NOTE:
You will be working with me. I am passionate about building great software. No ifs or buts: I am demanding. I want to be associated with excellence and will always ask for more. I believe in zero defect software that betters the lives of it users. I believe in crafting extraordinary software experiences. I believe in growing and learning. I bring my best to the team every day and expect you to do the same. If you’re still reading, chances are that you’re inspired and you should contact us to discuss the possibility of joining our team.

Send an email to jobs_at_ nsquaredsolutions.com

Another video in the learning and technology series

2009-10-06T08:36:00.005+11:00

Today another video in the nsquared series on Education and technology went live. I talked to Maridee about how cross-disciplinary education benefits students. We discussed how technologies such as Surface, Semblio, and MultiPoint can help create great learning experiences.

Less is More with nsquared

2009-08-25T14:16:00.002+10:00

Yesterday we had some fun in the nsquared office recording this video about how less is more...

Today we decided to release the 'more' version of this video, enjoy!

Microsoft Surface Shell

2009-08-10T05:14:00.001+10:00

Time for another nsquared Surface discussion. This time we talk about the Microsoft Surface Shell.
We explain the components of the shell and how Microsoft Surface applications can integrate with the shell.

Iceland; mountains, glaciers, deserts and forests

2009-08-03T06:28:00.004+10:00

Over the last week I have been trekking by foot in Iceland. Iceland is an amazing country on so many levels. The geography is simply stunning.
Here are a couple of movies I have put together from photos taken on the trek.

Surface Video Series

2009-07-14T12:59:00.003+10:00

This month I have started working on a series of videos with the team at nsquared on Microsoft Surface. We are discussing a number of the topics I cover in my Surface development training courses. You can see the whole series on YouTube.

Your child is ugly!

2009-06-18T09:13:00.004+10:00

I was recently asked what tools a team should have to support SCRUM.

As many big whiteboards as you can make space for in the developer area
Lots of whiteboard markers, never be in a position where it is hard to find a marker
Open communication channels.
A developer ego extraction utility ( this is the hardest tool to find IMO)
A developer passion insertion tool ( somewhat easier to come by)

4 is important, let me expand on this.

Software creation with passion becomes very personal, the creation is a child of the developer. Flaws found and pointed out in peoples children are often not taken well by the parents. Developers often take suggestions for improvement very personally because they see it as an attack on their ability.

The product created needs to be an output of the team. A team that works great together will deliver great software. Often the weakest part of a team is the team member with the biggest ego. If you find you have a team where certain members of the team are not performing as well as they could it be, you often find the ego of another team member blocking their growth. The team member that wants to be the hero in the team is commonly blocking the growth of others, as it helps them feel more important.

Microsoft Surface in the Spring

2009-05-23T04:31:00.006+10:00

You may remember in February I was in Munich delivering Surface Training. I was back in Munich again this week delivering more Surface Training and it is a very different place in the Spring. I think I was lucky as the weather was fantastic.
Here is a picture of the same train station that was covered in snow last time I was here.

This month Surface Service Pack 1 was released and so in addition to all the usual goodness in the Surface Training I now have a session dedicated to the features in Service Pack 1. The course outline looks like this:
The Surface Vision
The Architecture of Surface applications
Setting up a Surface device and the out of the box applications
Working with the Simulator
Integrating with the Surface Shell
Designing Surface experiences
Using the Surface Controls
What is new in Service Pack 1
Vision Recognition with Surface
End to end building a Surface application

---insert----

I received an email from someone telling me I was just teasing them and I should divulge what I cover that is new in Service Pack 1. These are some of things in Service Pack 1 that we cover in the training:

Richer feedback of touch input, the built in visualizations that now indicate when the Surface receives input
Object Routing, how to launch an application by placing a tagged object on the Surface
Single Application Mode, running only one application on the Surface and hiding the launcher and access points
Library container WPF controls, Library Bar and Library Stack. Discussion about what these are good for and how to use them
Element Menu WPF control, putting the GUI into NUI, why this control is useful and why it is not always a great idea. How to code this control.
Drag and Drop support, how to add drag and drop to your multi touch and (more importantly) multi user Surface application.

--- / insert ---

If you would like some help building amazing Surface applications please let me know. We are providing consulting and support services to help you bring out the magic in your Surface applications.

Technology information for those that do not care

2009-05-20T16:09:00.004+10:00

I recently reinstalled Vista on my laptop and I keep finding little things that I don't have installed. Today it was Windows Live Photo Gallery. I like Photo Gallery because of the photo stitching feature to create panoramic photos.

I went to the download page to get Photo Gallery I am confronted by this screen telling me about the scary technology being installed as part of this application. Why should a consumer care about this? Instead this space would be better used informing the user of some great things they could do with this application or a tip on how to get more out of the application.
Come on Microsoft you are not some little garage software start up anymore.

I am a switcher

2009-05-20T02:43:00.001+10:00

Time to confess.
OSX is my OS of choice.

I am fed up with windows that say (not responding) in the title bar. Microsoft Entourage supports multiple Exchange accounts and it works like a dream and fast, unlike Outlook.
When I close the lid of my MacBook Air it is asleep, when I lift the lid it is awake. No waiting, no messing around. Last month I spent 4 weeks on the road and I never rebooted my MacBook Air once.
I now have a second machine (Mac Book Pro) running Windows Vista 32 bit (the only platform supported for Surface dev) that I use for Windows dev and I hate having to use it. It feels like some prehistoric slowed down museum artifact.
If I had XAML dev tools on OSX I would probably give up with Windows altogether.
If Microsoft wants to win back customers like me it needs to:

Make Windows feel more responsive. Yes I have tried Win7 RC and no I am not happy, it is still slower than OSX (IMO)
Make Office run better on Windows than it does on OSX, IMO Office is currently better (faster, easier to use, more functional) on OSX than on Windows
Ensure Windows remembers the different monitors I have connected my machine to as a second monitor and restore the settings last used with that monitor.
Always, without fail, find an external monitor or projector and allow me to project to it without messing around for 15 mins in preferences and settings.
Ship a rich suite of applications (iLife) on Windows that work well with each other and do 80% of what a consumer wants to do with music, photos, email, and calendar.

Windows 7 feels like a big leap forward from Vista, for me it is not enough (yet).

Last night I slept in Eva Longoria's bed!

2009-05-16T15:38:00.003+10:00

Over the years I have stayed in a lot of hotels and often I wonder 'who else has slept in this bed'. Well apparently the bed I slept in last night was slept in by Eva Longoria the previous night. So while the attention grabbing headline may not mean what you think, it is kind of true.

I wonder who else I have shared a bed with over the years!

Definition of Smart

2009-04-23T11:29:00.005+10:00

Where Is Dr. Neil?

2009-04-08T22:40:00.003+10:00

This question is being asked so much at the moment I decided to recreate the Where Was Dr. Neil web page. As the Virtual Earth team removed support for the older (less than 3 years old!) version of Virtual Earth, the old site was broken and I have not had the energy to repair it.

In the last month I received more than a dozen emails asking where I am, so I decided to rebuild the page using the new Virtual Earth Silverlight control. the Virtual Earth Silverlight control was announced (again for the third year) at Mix09 last month. It took less than a couple of hours yesterday evening to put this page together.

One of the things that I have always seen as very important is the ability to customize the experience with the map. I feel that, while the Silverlight Virtual Earth control lacks some of the functionality I might like to see in a full GIS system, it does provide a great new opportunity to build rich mapping experiences.

You can now track me again here.

Open for Cloudy reasons

2009-04-01T05:31:00.005+11:00

The latest buzz in the Cloud computing blogosphere seems to be on the Open Cloud Manifesto. This is a strange document, which at its core seems to be based on the fact that a bunch of companies do not want to pay for the effort of others in order to gain their own business advantage.

Suggesting that all the software that supports cloud computing needs to be open source, leaves no room for a business that wants to innovate and capitalize on IP created to enhance the cloud computing effort.

It seems that IBM is one of the key players behind this manifesto. IBM has long been a strong proponent of Open Source as, for a consulting and services company, software is a cost in their business model. Reducing this cost to closer to zero is something they must strive for. As a software developer I like to get rewarded for the software I create and innovate.

Reading the manifesto it seems to be a very limiting concept; blocking innovation of new programming models, blocking innovation of new protocols and blocking the independent innovation of cloud technologies.

While I can see advantage in defining some standards for protocols I think we already this with W3. It is not clear to me what this manifesto adds to the cloud computing world.

Europe Surface Training Round Two

2009-03-31T01:21:00.005+11:00

I landed nice and early in London Heathrow this morning in order to finish the final setup for the Surface training in the UK this week. I am delivering two courses this week, each one is two days long and today (Monday) is setup day. I was so excited to get in early and have my reserved rental car actually ready and waiting for me, thank you National. I am so pleased I switched from Hertz, who have been useless the last few times; reserve a car online a week ahead and then wait an hour an half for the car to be ready.

Anyway having the car ready was nice, spending 2 and half hours sitting in (mostly) stationary traffic on the M4 was somewhat average. There was a BIG smash on the M4 motorway between London Heathrow and Reading, where I am delivering the training. I guess it was a good welcome back to the UK for me, a reminder of why I don't live here.

Finally I made it the Microsoft campus in the UK and was very pleased to discover the MTC team here are as efficient as ever and the room was mostly setup. The lab machines and Surface units were all waiting for me. I have loaded up the hands on labs and some new demo applications and now the room is ready for 4 days of intensive Surface training. Should be a lot of fun.

MIX'd up in the economy

2009-03-24T11:27:00.003+11:00

Coming way from MIX I have a nagging feeling that all these great new technical previews (CTPs) that Microsoft has released and announced will not get used as much as they might have in the past.

It is clear that the economy is in trouble, attendance at the MIX event seemed to be down and many of the attendees I spoke to told me that last year their company paid for the trip to the event and this year they had to fund it themselves. Some thought it was worth it, other attendees less so.

With the less stable economic situation software developers need to focus on creating software that they can sell. The CTPs announced and released do not have a license which would allow the software created to be sold or commercialized. I am sure that for special cases Microsoft will do one off deals, for the majority of developers this technology is useless until it ships with a license.

So what should Microsoft do? I think they need to keep the transparency and show case where they are going with the technology. It would be great if they could provide more solid ideas of timeframes in which the technologies will have a license, along with the pricing models.

In the mean time I expect most of the software developer community will focus on building solutions that they can actually sell and use for commercial benefit.

MVP Summit thoughts

2009-03-06T06:16:00.003+11:00

This week another MVP summit has started and finished. I spent time with various groups and got the chance to catch up with a number of old friends. For me there was a very different feel to this MVP summit. It is something that I have felt was coming for a while.
Many of the MVPs I spoke to felt that the product groups were not be open with them or telling the MVPs the whole story. Personally I think this is the right thing for the product groups to do. People are now awarded MVP status because they have blogs, twitter too much (more than not at all) and are generally loud mouths in the online world. If I had something secret I wouldn't share it with this group either. During the evenings when MVPs of different technology areas gathered I overheard many conversations between MVPs where they were sharing the things they had learned that day. The point of signing an NDA as an MVP seems most questionable. I would suggest that the MVPs really need to be reminded of the meaning of the NDA.
I have also been doing some _real_ work this week and having meetings with some of the Microsoft product groups. This is the first time that when a Microsoft employee asked if I was here for the MVP summit I cringed as if I felt I didn't want to be associated with the MVP group. MVP status used to be something I was proud of, something that helped differentiate me as a person that adds value. Now I feel that being an MVP associates me with a bunch of Microsoft fan-boys (and some girls) who want to be the first ones to break the news that Microsoft is releasing product XYZ. Of course there are still many MVPs who do the right thing, and understand the business value. Yet I do not get the impression that MVPs overall are perceived to be adding great business value, and in some cases are presenting a hindrance to the progress of Microsoft products.
This is a great challenge going forward and I really hope there are some folks within Microsoft thinking through how to address these issues.

NICTA/Microsoft Innovation Day

2009-02-22T19:05:00.003+11:00

I have only been back in Sydney a few days and I have crammed a lot of activities and catching up into a few days, including a short sail on the harbour, dinners and the obligatory run on the beach followed by a splash in the sea.
On Thursday, at the Microsoft Sydney office, was the NICTA and Microsoft Innovation Day. I was there with some of my friends from nsquared to present the work we have been doing to improve social learning activities. We have a stand with two touch screens; one running Windows 7 and one running Windows Vista highlighting some of the single touch, multi touch and multi mouse software we are building. We were also fortunate enough to have access to a Surface unit to demonstrate some of the educational software we have been prototyping for Microsoft Surface. It is always great to get a big crowd around your exhibits and we certainly had that, thanks for dropping by and the great questions and feedback.

Motivate me to YES

2009-02-19T09:25:00.003+11:00

I have been thinking about the reasons we end up saying 'no' to tasks, possibilities, options and opportunities. For me at all boils down to motivation. The motivation is nearly always in the form of energy; time, excitement, fun, money.
This is especially true when applied to software development. With enough energy you can achieve almost anything with software do you have the motivation to achieve those things?

If you find me saying 'no' it is because you are not motivating me to say 'yes'.

Microsoft Surface in the snow

2009-02-13T04:34:00.008+11:00

I am on the last leg of the European Microsoft Surface training tour. Delivering the first round of external Microsoft Surface training to partners. I am getting to enjoy learning to be a commuter in the different parts of the world. this morning I got the train to the Munich MTC. The train station this morning was interestingly quiet and serene.

Today we discussed the vision behind Surface and how to build better Surface applications, all the attendees get to build a Surface application in the two day course. the course outline looks like this:

The Surface Vision
The Architecture of Surface applications
Setting up a Surface device and the out of the box applications
Working with the Simulator
Integrating with the Surface Shell
Designing Surface experiences
Using the Surface Controls
Vision Recognition with Surface
End to end building a Surface application

We will be doing another set of Surface training in the coming months around Europe. If you would like some help building amazing Surface applications please let me know. We are providing some consulting and support services to help you bring out the magic in your Surface applications.

The Global Catastrophe

2009-02-09T00:57:00.003+11:00

There is no doubt we as a global population are in some serious trouble. The ecology of the planet is in jeopardy, the capitalist concept is proving to be fundamentally flawed and the foundations of our government systems seem to be broken.

This year I have been in Australia, Canada, the USA, Iceland, the UK and France. It is clear many people are going to be in way more trouble in the coming months than I think they realize. Many high streets have stores closing, or empty.

Yesterday I took a snowy walk down the Champs-Élysées, this is one of the worlds must see roads. The architecture is stunning. The walk from the Arc de Triomphe down to the Louvre down the tree lined avenue is designed to leave the pedestrian in awe.

It is with great disappointment then, that as I perambulated along the route I was in awe of the realization of Idiocracy. The tourists were not taking photos of the statues along the road, the architecture of the the magnificent attractions. Instead the real attraction is now the Gucci store and the Louis Vuitton store. With an attitude like this it is clear why we have so many global problems; the desire to own things that you don't need while ignoring the real magic of your surroundings.

Please think about your actions and pay attention to what you might normally consider as the background. Lastly, what are you doing to create real value to the world.

où est le Dr Neil

2009-02-05T01:15:00.003+11:00

cette semaine Dr Neil prestation formation Microsoft Surface à Paris.

Pardon my French, it is not as good as it used to be and I am sure this is a horrible translation, and yet here I am in Paris delivering the first round of development training for Microsoft Surface. This is the first time training has been provided to external Microsoft partners in Europe and I am extremely excited to have been chosen to deliver the training.
There are many aspects to building great Surface experiences for developers to get their heads around and nothing beats a deep dive hands on Surface training workshop.
I am really looking forward to see what the attendees end up building in the next few weeks.

Collaborate and learn

2009-01-18T08:28:00.004+11:00

It's been a busy two weeks for me, traveling from Sydney to Seattle last week and then from Seattle to London this week.
Last week I spent some time with the Surface team reviewing and testing the software I have been working on for social learning experiences. Eric Havir pulled me aside to record some of the work we have been doing.

and

Then this week I have been at BETT talking about collaborative and social learning with technologies such as Surface and MultiPoint.
There were some interesting innovations at BETT. It was great to see the table top computing solution from SMART. I am looking forward to building some software to run on the SMART Table.

Next stop, Iceland.....

Silverlight For Mobile at We-Dig

2009-01-09T07:55:00.003+11:00

Last night at WE-DIG Amit and Anand gave a great overview of the new Silverlight for Mobile bits Microsoft is currently working hard to ship.

To my surprise they also demonstrated this wonderful Real Estate application running on Silverlight for Mobile.
:)

2009, what will happen

2009-01-04T20:10:00.003+11:00

Happy New Year, welcome to the new year.

With 2008 already disappearing into the distance it's time to think about what will happen in this fresh new year.

No doubt the _recession_ is going to play a strong part of the activities this year. It will be used an excuse for getting rid of staff, not delivering on projects, and the general failing of all things that would have failed anyway.

I expect Apple will release a new iPhone that will solve all those little grumbles currently seen in the devices and software and this will leave no choice in the phone market. It is clear that none of the competing companies are even coming close to the iphone in terms of consumer _must have_ factor.

Microsoft will release more CTP and beta software than any sane person will know what to do with. some will be good, some will be awesome and some should have been taken and shot before being allowed out to fester in the open.

I expect that I will be travelling through more countries this year. I already have 6 countries on my itinerary to visit before the end of February, and yes some of them more than once.

Another year will pass where the software industry allows people to call themselves computer programmers when they have never programmed a computer in their lives. These fake abstract layer manipulators will continue to be overpaid and under deliver. Software will still, mostly, suck.

Microsoft Surface devices will start to be found in more and more locations in North America and western Europe. The rest of the world will wait impatiently.

Microsoft Outlook will crash. Microsoft Entourage will continue to run really well with multiple Exchange accounts. With some luck Microsoft will realize that they are software company and stop trying to drive up PC sales and start driving up sales of fantastic software.

nsquared will continue to grow and to hire great computer programmers. Yet, it is the knowledge that it is hard to do well that will keep nsquared looking for only the best of the best and driving the quality bar of software ever higher.

The year go so fast that before I know it, I will be writing the 2010 version of this blog post....

Be divine in 2009!

Live Services, Live Framework and Mesh

2008-12-11T19:41:00.003+11:00

This week James and I have been delivering training to help developers understand how to use Live Services now and start thinking about how they will use Live Services in the future.
James has been running around the world presenting the training over the last few weeks. It is interesting to compare how different cultures perceive the technologies and the opportunities the technologies bring.
One of the big lessons for me is just how little people know about what is available today to get started building applications that use the Live Services. Go to dev.live.com and find out about current Live Services and the APIs you can use to build really cool software using the technologies Microsoft is providing.
If you are doing software development you must also start to pay attention to the whole Microsoft Azure Services Platform. What Microsoft is doing here has the potential to create a serious step change in the way software is built and deployed.

Dr. Neil's Notes 51

2008-11-07T10:03:00.003+11:00

Welcome to a special edition of Dr. Neil's Notes, Show 51

A few weeks back, before PDC, Ken Levy hijacked the Dr. Neil's Notes lab, have a listen to what happened...

Happy Coding!

Day Three PDC Keynote: Microsoft Research Magic

2008-11-01T12:12:00.002+11:00

Welcome to the last keynote, and what a magical grand finale it was! The presentation opened with an appealing video demonstrating the history and relevance of the Microsoft Research Department. Rick Rashid, the longest serving MS executive, delivered a very natural performance both in the video and on stage. He knows what he is talking about and has a real passion for pure computer science.
Rick started by explaining the Microsoft Research Mission Statement, which is to:
• Expand the state of the art in each of the areas we do research
• Rapidly transfer innovative technologies into Microsoft products
• Ensure that MS products have a future
Rick’s history in the software business leaves no doubt that this is someone with passion for what he does and the output of this passion is seen in many products today. Rick worked on the Mach kernal, the underlying software that NeXT computers used in their NeXTStep operating system. This kernal still lives today in Apple’s OSX products and the iPhone OS.
Did you know that Microsoft Research contains 850 PhD researchers at their worldwide facilities? That is a larger faculty than even Carnegie Melon or Brown. Microsoft’s researchers have distinguished themselves among research staffs in the field of computer science. The size of the Microsoft Research Department is equivalent to creating a Berkley staff every year for 17 years. The largest facility is in Redmond, the second largest is in Beijing, China. Microsoft Research worldwide owns the largest Ph.D internship program in Computer Science in the world, and its researchers write between 10-30% of papers at academic conferences.
Some of the fundamental computer science research has lead to some brilliant output in the form of concurrency runtimes and the Microsoft Distributed Software Services. This work will have impacts on fundamental software engineering and system design in the coming years.
As MS Research looks forward to 2020 they are doing more work on provable systems, to validate properties of large scale programs. The Vista driver verifier technology came from this research, we should expect more in the way of deterministic validation from this group. This is fantastic as it means we will be marching ever closer to truly bug free solutions. An example of the work being done is the solutions discovered to Church’s theorem to determine what can be recursively computed.
Microsoft Research is doing much of work to reduce energy consumption. While good for the environment, it is clear there is a business driver here to help reduce the massive cost of running hugely scaled data centers.
Presenter Feng Zhao spoke about research in sensor networks and how it can help people understand energy use as it pertains to human activities. We can improve energy efficiency - computing devices that consume a lot of power. For some time in software we have been asking questions like how much memory will your app use? and what is the CPU utilization? The next big question is how much energy does your software use?
Feng introduced a device that showed how sensor energy technology could be used to monitor and manage the cooling of machine rooms. Before the start of the convention, crews attached eight rows of sensors to the ceiling of the convention hall. Using a MS Virtual Earth map on the screen behind him, Feng centered the map in bird’s eye view on the location of the auditorium and a heat map displayed showing the relative temperature of the room in different areas throughout the day. At this time, 10,000 sensors are being placed in rack rooms in MS datacenters – perhaps to scale down some of the costs associated with running them, but whatever the case may be this is exciting stuff.
Who would have thought a software company could contribute to modern healthcare? MS uses computer science theory to tackle problems in the medical world in a dramatic new way. MSR is working towards designing medicine for a person and their genetics - the near future may hold mapping of the entire human genome for $1000 a person. Using this technology it will even be possible to create custom medicine for a person’s genetic makeup.
Right now, MS is working with scientists from Harvard and Oxford to apply SPAM hunting technology to the hunt for and killing of the HIV virus in the human body. HIV does not mutate at random, and bits of HIV serve as decoys making it an extremely difficult disease to tackle. MS is using computational analysis of HIV and computer science theory to innovatively attack problems in the medical world. Watch as this monolithic giant truly makes a positive difference in the lives of individuals and communities.
More fascinating contributions of MSR come in the field of education. Here in Washington State, the Center for Collaborative Computing at the University of Washington is just one of the many combined scholastic facilities around the world. At the Center for Personal Robotics at Georgia Tech, students receive a personal robot to program throughout their graduate career; fun and educational at the same time.
The World wide Telescope Equinox Beta links all the data from the great telescopes around the world to provide a 24/7 experience of the night sky. Even amateurs are finding things that professionals didn’t see using the 21 giga parsecs of visual data available in this amazing program.
MS programs empower children by teaching them to program. Matthew McLaurin, Principal Program Manager at MSR, presented Boku, a system that works like a game and allows children to program on their own. Programming is now a fundamental life skill.
Last on the agenda, Rick presented Steve Hodges and Shahram Izadi, who demonstrated Secondlight, an interaction beyond Surface using an infrared multi view display and pass through projection to bring the Surface interface out of the display. Words cannot describe the experience as shown on the video that was presented - this is the real magic in computing. When things appear to be beyond the achievable we know we are close to a new breakthrough in this field.
For those of you who love research as much as I do, you must see this exciting and compelling presentation by Rick Rishad, Senior Vice President of Microsoft Research and other members of the Microsoft team. Watch it here.

Why I hate the Web

2008-10-31T02:23:00.001+11:00

I live a life of frustration, always waiting for web pages to load and refresh, it is all so slow.

The Web Browser provides the state of the art in dumb terminals with slow performance and lack of responsiveness. I have a machine with a 64 bit bus, more memory than I would know what to do with and I am constrained to spend nearly half my life interacting through this most unbearably restrictive interface of rendered markup languages and remote procedure calls over shared networks to overloaded time sliced servers.

Computing has not come very far in my opinion.

What can we do about this?

Build smarter client applications that are connected to the cloud, but understand how to take advantage of the computing power in my hands. Please build your software to be network aware, power managed and very fast.

Day Two PDC Keynote - Rock and Roll to the Epic Saga of Misunderstanding

2008-10-29T13:42:00.001+11:00

(cross post from nsquared blog)

The initial pump and excitement was certainly there this morning as opposed to yesterday’s slightly lackluster performance.

It should not be surprising that Windows 7 gets the rock star treatment on stage. It is the bus that drives the cash to Microsoft's front door every day.

Ray's introduction to the session was a perfect pull back and setting to the scene. Explaining the history of Windows, positioning the PC, the phone and web platforms from Microsoft's perspective was perfect. This is the theatre you need in a keynote, and the scene was set for Steven Sinofsky to get on stage and start showcasing Windows 7 and the features being improved.

It is clear that a lot of work has gone into the user experience for the client, and there is an understanding that Windows is now (and has for a long time been) a consumer operating system not just a business operating system.

Windows 7 is about much more than the user experience. The core technologies have had some great improvements at a power management and networking device management level. Goals for Windows 7 have been around performance and responsiveness; Windows 7 now supports 256 processors, boots faster, uses less memory and reduces the power consumption on the device.

Today all attendees get a copy of the win7 pre-beta (milestone M3 ) build. Beta will be delivered early CY 09.

This is where the keynote should have ended but Microsoft VPs rather appreciate long-winded tales, so it must have made sense to them to continue telling stories. Feedback for anyone putting together a presentation - tell one story, create a beginning, middle and an end. Perhaps learn from theatre and movie makers – please keep it short and simple next time, folks.

The next story was presented by the great Scott Guthrie. The new features in WPF, .NET 4 and VS 2010 were briefly covered by Scott, and the developer focused audience loves the fact that now more average developers can write code. Again a democratization of software development continues, allowing more mediocre software to be built and shipped. You have to hand it to Microsoft for enabling software development to be done by unexceptional members of the world’s population; leading to even more rubbish software in the world. Personally I think this may be great, it will allow the people that really know what a computer is doing to build fantastic software that will really differentiate from the rest.

Two hours in and the Day Two PDC keynote kept going and the audience got restless, the exodus started from the keynote room as David Treadwell came on stage to disclose information on how to build software using the Live Services. David discussed the concept of the internet as a bridge to allow users to see the same data and share data between users and devices. Mesh is now a key component of Live Services, mesh is the experience built on top of Live Services. The Live Services is now a platform for S+S, making it easy for developers to build applications that utilize the Live Services via the Live Framework.

Live Operating Environment is akin to the CLR in .NET. A set of open, consistent interfaces are provided in the Live Framework. Live Framework comes with a set of API kits including a .NET API kit making it easy for .NET developers to build Live Services enabled applications. Now your applications can tap into the user data, devices and social relationships.

Windows Azure - the old new blue thing

2008-10-28T04:56:00.000+11:00

This morning Microsoft announced windows Azure, a new platform for web computing development and deployment.
There will be plenty of technical details of Windows Azure out there so I am going to focus on the question: Is it really new?
Time sliced shared server solutions have been around since almost the beginning of electronic computing.
What seems to be really new is the democratization of this process to the masses. This is where Microsoft plays a strong game. Taking what was high cost and hard for most people and providing it to the masses of developers and smaller businesses.
This is good in many ways. It will act as a vehicle for new business growth and drive some interesting new applications. At the same time because it will be open to the masses it will be something that will attract a lot of _average_ software too. The market will determine the value.

Two Regional Directors and one brain

2008-08-30T16:22:00.003+10:00

On one of the rare occasions that Adam Cogan and I are in the same place the PDC brain arrived. We had to take pictures of this momentous occasion.

CXC Global and nsquared partnership announcement

2008-08-29T06:36:00.001+10:00

Hot off the press....

A new partnership between two dynamic and growing Australian businesses is expected to yield combined revenues of AU$200m within the next 10 years.
nsquared solutions and CXC Global have worked together for many years on solving the challenges faced by today’s IT and software businesses.
CXC Global provides innovative solutions to logistics and human resources challenges and has helped businesses work smarter with their global contractors and employees. nsquared’s goals have been focused on the technical challenges faced by software businesses to overcome the hurdles of delivering high quality solutions to tight time frames.
CXC Global will provide its full backing to the nsquared services project teams as an internal administration, payroll and management service, whilst nsquared will be providing the leading edge technology and applications behind the CXC online products and services.
Ingrid Webber, CEO of CXC Australasia Pty Ltd, said being world leader in Contractor Management Services was an ongoing challenge that could only be maintained by deploying the world’s ‘best practice’ solutions.
“Working with nsquared ensures that CXC will have a huge technology advantage over any potential competitors,” she said.
Dr. Neil Roodyn, Director of nsquared and a Regional Director for Microsoft Australia, feels the partnership will help both companies grow through better value add for their clients.
“This new relationship allows both companies to focus more energy on bringing value to clients while supporting each other to increase the energy each company is able to focus on their core business. By joining forces, both companies expect to accelerate their growth to achieve the significant targets they have set for the next five to 10 years. .”
nsquared solutions delivers leading edge software in a way that helps identify the most value up front and deliver on it. The nsquared development team utilises a responsive approach to deliver solutions to meet the most pressing needs first and then works through the value chain to always remain focused on what adds the most value now.
CXC Global provides salary packaging, accounting, payroll and administration services to the global contract market and has built a solid reputation for honesty and integrity with a commitment to friendly, efficient and prompt service. CXC Global has offices in Australia, New Zealand, UK, Ireland, USA, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore and South Africa with affiliations around Europe.

Who do you know?

2008-08-14T21:07:00.003+10:00

In the third video in the nsquared mini-series on Windows Live Tools for Visual Studio James McCutcheon shows you how to add the Windws Live Contacts control to your site.
James provides some ideas on how you might use the contacts to control to allow your website to access the contacts of the users on your site.

Windows Live Tools for Visual Studio 2008, the Virtual Earth control

2008-08-02T10:07:00.002+10:00

Nick Randolph has posted the second in our mini-series of videos showing how easy it is to get started with the new Windows Live Tools for Visual Studio.
This is so cool, adding a map to your ASP.NET web site is now so easy, even Visual Basic programmers can do it! ;)

Windows Live Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio CTP3 Shipped

2008-07-29T21:59:00.005+10:00

The Windows Live™ Tools for Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 are a set of control add-ins to make incorporating Windows Live services into your Web application easier with Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer Express 2008.
What does this mean?
It means if you build websites with Visual Studio and you like to drag and drop controls on to your web form and then add some code behind you can now use a number of Windows Live services in a very simple way.
To demonstrate I have created a short video showing how simple it is to add the Silverlight Streaming Media Player control to your ASP.NET website.

As one of the developers working on the architecture and code behind these tools I would love to hear your feedback.

Already Hiring...

2008-07-16T15:44:00.004+10:00

Many of you may have wondered why I have been so quite on my blog in the last few months. Along with all my usual travels and presentations I have been working with Nick Randolph and James McCutcheon on a new company enterprise called nsquared solutions. While we are not quite ready to tell you all about nsquared yet, you can probably guess it will involve some mobile development projects.
We already have a number of interesting projects on board and are working on our first range of products, and right now we need some help. We have a couple of opportunities for the right developers to come on board at this early stage and help us deliver projects and ship the first set of products.
We are looking for the following, if you are interested then please get directly in touch.

A WPF .NET Developer
The job will be developing a mixture of .NET business logic development with Windows Presentation Foundation UI development. The projects are for leading edge as yet unreleased products.

Required Skills:
At least three years of commercial experience in C#,.NET, XML
Some experience and understanding of WPF
Strong knowledge of Object Oriented methodologies.
Able to handle pressure and work with minimum supervision
Positive, pro-active and flexible attitude, keen to learn and grow
Strong interpersonal/communication skills.

Desirable skills:
Experience developing in the .NET 3.0 and 3.5 framework
Experience using SQL Server 2005
MCSD or MCAD certified.

An ASP.NET Developer
The job will be developing a mixture of webservices and ASP.NET and AJAX applications for a Web 2.0 project.

Required Skills:
At least three years of commercial experience in C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, XML
Strong knowledge of Object Oriented methodologies.
Able to handle pressure and work with minimum supervision
Positive, pro-active and flexible attitude, keen to learn and grow
Strong interpersonal/communication skills.

Desirable skills:
Experience developing in the .NET 2.0 framework
Experience using SQL Server 2005
MCSD or MCAD certified.

nsquared solutions provides a comfortable Sydney based work place, with the benefits of working with, and learning from, leaders in the field of software development. Founded by Microsoft Regional Director Dr. Neil Roodyn and Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals Nick Randolph and James McCutcheon, nsquared delivers high value leading edge solutions to global customers. Working with nsquared provides an opportunity to work overseas, if desired. Many of the nsquared clients are based in the USA and we have offices in the Seattle area.

Integrating Virtual Earth into Your Partner Solution Offerings

2008-07-15T21:14:00.004+10:00

Do you have customers that rely on location based information? At the Australian Microsoft Partner Conference I will show you how your customers can track assets, find their customers more easily, manage mobile work forces and ensure their customers find them before heading to a competitor. Learn how to combine your expertise and Microsoft’s mapping technology to integrate location services into your customers’ business solutions and applications.

The event blurb...
At the Virtual Earth sessions at the Australia Partner Conference pre days Microsoft Regional Director Dr Neil will be demonstrating a Windows Mobile application that uses GPS to log tracks and plot them on Virtual Earth. By attending the session you will get a chance to win a Palm Treo SmartPhone enabling you to put into practice what you learn on the day!

If you cannot make it to the Partner Conference there are 3 events around Australia the week before the conference.
Sydney July 29th
Melbourne July 31st
Brisbane August 1st
You can register here

I will be at the Sydney and Melbourne events, come and meet me there.

TechEd Panel: Windows Mobile Application Development

2008-07-09T20:40:00.004+10:00

At TechEd in Orlando last month a few of the Windows Mobile presenters discussed development for mobile devices in a panel session. You can view the recorded session here.

The panel consists of Andy Wigley, myself, Maarten Struys, and Paul Yao.

You can also see other panel sessions and recordings from TechEd online

TechEd Australia, the mobile story

2008-06-21T03:11:00.002+10:00

September seems like a long way off, but before you know it it will be here and so will TechEd Australia.
I (and other great community members) have been working with the guys down under to help shape the look and feel of TechEd for you to learn about mobile development.
Don Kerr has posted the current thinking for the sessions, what do you think?

Silverlight Mobile with John L Scott Real Estate

2008-06-12T02:29:00.004+10:00

Some of the recent work I have been doing with Silverlight Mobile is showcased in an interview with John L. Scott on Channel 10.
This project has been done with a pre-release version of Silverlight Mobile and uses Virtual Earth maps to display real estate property near you on your Windows Mobile phone.
Credit is due to Tricky Business for the slick and clean user interface design.

PDC 2008, will you be there?

2008-06-11T10:55:00.004+10:00

I have just registered for PDC 2008. It should be awesome. It sounds like a heap of new technology platforms will be discussed and explored at this event. As the web site says "Wanna be where the action is?" then you better get registered for this event.

Software Quality is not optional

2008-06-07T09:42:00.005+10:00

The last day of TechEd and I did two panel sessions. The topic of the first panel session was software quality.
The panel had an awesome line up including; Billy Hollis, Jeffrey Palermoand David Platt.
In this panel were people I respect, they are smart, have worked in the industry for a while and know their areas well.
Then I discover some panel members (called Billy and David) are happy to accept that software will be built with defects, they do not believe that the software they write is likely to be defect free.
This makes me wonder what hope the industry has as a whole.
The software you produce is an output of your goals. Aim high to achieve high targets. Aim for zero defect software, do everything in your power to build zero defect software and the chances are you can get there.
If you start with the belief that this software will have defects when you are finished building it, then your chances of delivering zero defect software are already lower.

C++ and COM, the way to program Windows

2008-06-06T05:39:00.004+10:00

I presented a session this morning at TechEd on building applications that work with Windows Vista Sync Center. Sync Center exposes COM interfaces and requires your application to expose COM interfaces.
This is easy, this is Windows software development like it has been for at least 10 years. It is well defined, well known and well supported.
Hearing developers complain about having to use C++ and do COM development today made me realise that the .NET developer generation is missing out on so many areas of the Windows development opportunities.
My advice, go and learn C++ and COM, it is how many of the Windows Vista features are exposed to developers and with good reason.
If you are not prepared to learn how to program your computer then you should question why you are in the software development business.

SideShow for Windows Mobile

2008-06-04T11:06:00.004+10:00

It seems like the SideShow team is really getting things together now. This week Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile is shipping as a developer preview. this lets you use your Windows Mobile device as a Windows Vista SideShow display.
I have shown this in various demo situations over the last couple of years and now you can get your hands on the technology and start building for it using the new Managed APIs.

Also be sure to check out the SideShow gadget development contest NVidia is running.

Lunch with Bill Gates

2008-06-04T04:12:00.005+10:00

Half way into day one of TechEd 2008 and 15 of the top community folks (Regional Directors, MVPs etc) were invited to an Influencer Roundtable lunch with Bill Gates.
Bill is such a switched on person, the whole room spent most of the lunch listening to Bill's words of wisdom. Bill thinks big and acts big, I like this man.
The first half of the lunch conversation was around education and the things that can be done to improve education both globally and in the USA. Interesting stuff. I think that once Bill puts more energy into the foundation we will see amazing things happen.
Each of the attendees also was presented an award for our achievements.

Virtually back in Vienna

2008-06-03T13:08:00.003+10:00

Vienna in Austria now has really sweet 3D buildings available in Virtual Earth. I was just there speaking at the MIX Essentials event 2 weeks ago. Now I can virtually visit Vienna any time I like.

Awesome!

TechEd 2008 Day 0

2008-06-03T12:16:00.003+10:00

It's only the end of day 0?
Wow, its been a fun packed day already, with lots of the familiar faces in the community engaging in conversations about all things good, bad and beautiful in the world of software development.
I could hardly walk 10 yards today without meeting someone who I knew or knew me, or even better both :)
It's always good to finally meet people I have had email conversations with and put faces to names.
I helped to get a bunch of demos running today that will be shown on the show floor at the product booths. If you are at TechEd you should certainly swing by and have a look at some of the cool product demos.
I am already getting a good feeling about the event splitting so IT Pro and Developers have their own events. This week is the developer week (no surprises) and I am getting good vibes about this. Developers connecting with developers and knowing that nearly everyone else is a developer will make the meal time conversations easier.
If you are at TechEd then come and find me and say hello.
I will be often found in and around the Windows Mobile booth space.

SideShow managed API is shipped!

2008-05-30T17:52:00.003+10:00

It seems to have taken a while, the Managed API for SideShow has left the beta phase and shipped.
I was working on SideShow before Vista shipped with the team that built this awesome axillary display technology. All the code I wrote was native C++ against the native SideShow APIs. Now the large number of .NET programmers can access SideShow technology from the comfort of the abstraction layer.

Windows Mobile Unit Tests setting the time

2008-05-11T10:59:00.004+10:00

As if you didn't know, I am a fan of TDD (Test Driven Development). I try to work in a TDD manner as much as possible.
Unit testing for Windows Mobile applications has always been somewhat challenging. Visual Studio 2008 (professional and above) allows me to work in a TDD manner as I build software for the Windows Mobile platform.
I have been working on some software that needs the time to be changed as part of the tests. This might not be as simple as you think, but it's not hard as long as you know to set the local time not the system time on the device.

private SYSTEMTIME SetDateTime(DateTime dateTime)
{
SYSTEMTIME st = new SYSTEMTIME();
st.year = (short)dateTime.Year;
st.month = (short)dateTime.Month;
st.day = (short)dateTime.Day;
st.hour = (short)dateTime.Hour;
st.minute = (short)dateTime.Minute;
st.second = (short)dateTime.Second;
st.milliseconds = (short)dateTime.Millisecond;

return st;
}

public struct SYSTEMTIME
{
public short year;
public short month;
public short dayOfWeek;
public short day;
public short hour;
public short minute;
public short second;
public short milliseconds;
}

[DllImport("coredll.dll", SetLastError=true)]
static extern bool SetLocalTime(ref SYSTEMTIME time);

[TestMethod()]
public void HourIsOne()
{
DateTime savedDT = DateTime.Now;
SYSTEMTIME sysTime = SetDateTime(savedDT);
sysTime.hour = 1;

bool setSuccess = SetLocalTime(ref sysTime);
Assert.IsTrue(setSuccess, "Failed to SetLocalTime");
Assert.AreEqual(1, DateTime.Now.Hour,
"Hour should be 1 after setting it");

sysTime = SetDateTime(savedDT);
SetLocalTime(ref sysTime);
}

Local Feedback Loops

2008-05-09T08:14:00.004+10:00

I had a wonderful beach side meeting and lunch with Andrew Coates yesterday and we talked through a number of ideas. Mostly about TechEd Australia as that is Andrew's focus right now.
We brainstormed ideas around how to get people talking more at the event rather than make it a series of push sessions.
I find I rarely attend a session at conferences any more as I can watch them all online afterwards. The real value of a conference is meeting people and talking to them. Creating feedback loops for thought processes. Sometimes just listening in to other people talking can be enlightening too.
We brainstormed some ideas around having the first session after the keynote being a panel for each track. The panel would introduce the speakers on that track and start the conversation around the track topics. Andrew has blogged about it.
I hear complaints about there not being enough content at TechEd and comparing TechEd Australia to TechEd USA, which does have a lot more content and a much higher attendance. I don't think this is a good argument. You are allowed to go to both! TechEd USA is an awesome event and worth going to. TechEd Australia is different, it is a local event, smaller in nature and allows the local community to engage with each other. I don't believe TechEd Australia should just be a mini version of TechEd USA. That is a waste of time, the world is a small place and Australians are mostly capable of getting on an airplane to fly to TechEd USA if they want to. TechEd Australia has an opportunity to do something different and better for the local community. I believe the same is true for all events that run locally in a region.
I am hoping for lots of good conversations at TechEd Australia that have local relevance.

New Windows Mobile Dev Blog

2008-05-07T17:18:00.003+10:00

Amit Chopra from the Windows Mobile developer tools team at Microsoft has set up a new Windows Mobile developer blog.
He has kicked off with a post about the the great line up of sessions at TechEd in Orlando next month.
I'll be doing a session on Windows Vista sync center and some chalk talks.
I'm looking forward to catching up with the mobile developers there.

SWMUG Thrives

2008-05-07T08:52:00.003+10:00

Another night, another Sydney user group.
Along with my old surf beach buddy, Hugo 'UberTablet', I headed down to the Microsoft offices in North Ryde to catch up with old friends at the Sydney Windows Mobile User Group or SWMUG. I was impressed by the turnout. Some excellent presentations and of course the obligatory dribbling over new and as yet unreleased technology.

SyXPAC lives!

2008-05-06T10:02:00.005+10:00

Last night I headed down towards Darling Harbour to the regular SyXPAC meeting.
I started Sydney's eXtreme Programming Activity Club at the end of 2001 as a way to spread the knowledge about eXtreme Programming. Initially a monthly meeting, it has gone through many phases. The hardcore SyXPAC members meet weekly on Monday evenings, drink, eat and discuss software development.
At last nights meeting we discussed how SyXPAC can enter a new phase and become interesting to new people interested in finding out more about agile development and learning to build better software.
It sounds like there will be monthly SyXPAC events focused around presentations, discussions and debates. If you have topics you are interested in then you should get involved and put a request in the SyXPAC blog or on the Yahoo! group.

Expression Web used to build the site?

2008-05-03T00:52:00.001+10:00

I wonder if Expression Web was used to build the Microsoft Expression site?

Do you realise how much time we invested in. . ..?

2008-05-02T05:45:00.002+10:00

Imagine you are at the bar of your local pub. You would like to order some food & drinks.
You catch the eye of the barman who nods to indicate he has seen you and then stands still, as if deep in thought.
The barman looks at the floor, then looks at you, then focuses his attention on the glasses, and bottles behind the bar.
After about 10 minutes of this he slowly walks over to you.
I expect you are pretty frustrated by now.
Slowly and carefully the barman pulls out a pad and pencil from under the bar. He asks you what you would like, you ask for 2 pies & 2 pints of your favorite, he slowly and carefully writes this down. The barman then turns the pad around and asks you to check your order. You review it, it appears correct and you tell him it's good. He then asks you to sign it, in order to confirm you agree.
Astonished, you sign it.
The barman asks you to take a seat, "your food & drinks will be with you within 2 hours" he informs you.
what?
"and that will be $6,500 please"
" WHAT?!?!" you scream out loud
"well look how much time I am putting into this, and I spent 3 years at university studying bar service"

It seems strange to me that people believe that because they invested more time into a project it is worth more. Surely it is more valuable to get great results sooner?
The most value should be given to results that are delivered fast and provide what is needed.

Reconnect through someone else

2008-04-30T03:47:00.003+10:00

Sometimes the strangest things happen.
I received an email last week (when email still worked) from a friend in Cuppertino(can you guess where they work?) with a link to this article in SD Times.
It's a great piece by Larry O'Brien about the difference in abilities between developers. A more positive and thought through article than my rant Most programmers shouldn't write code.
Because of that article I was prompted to get back in touch with Larry and have a chat about a bunch of things going on in the tech world at the moment.
So thanks to one friend I am now back in touch with another friend and they don't even know each other. What a strange and wonderful world.

Yes my email is still broken.

MIX Essentials Austria and Denmark

2008-04-28T22:27:00.004+10:00

Since announcing that I will not be presenting at ReMix Australia I have been asked to present Windows Live developer sessions at Mix Essentials in Austria and Copenhagen.
Looking forward to getting back to both of these cities at the end of May.
If you are going to be at either of these events feel free to drop me a note and we can meet up.

Mail hijacked

2008-04-27T01:58:00.005+10:00

It looks like my email address has been hijacked. I have 472 messages in my inbox and they all seem to be returned mail.
I expect this means that my email will now be blacklisted and emails I send might not get through.
If you receive spam from my address, I am sorry, blame the spamhead that just hijacked my email.
Is this the beginning of the end of email?
Is email just a broken protocol now?
How much longer will it be before we give up with email?

Not at ReMix Australia

2008-04-26T01:04:00.003+10:00

I have had a few emails asking if I will have time to meet at ReMix Australia this year. the answer is NO. The reason I can't meet is I will not be there.
I was going to do a session on Silverlight for Windows Mobile, I have been working on a proof of concept with Tricky Business and the Redmond team that I would have loved to show and talk about but it is not ready. Silverlight for Mobile is not ready and the proof of concept is not ready.
Silverlight for Mobile is currently a closed beta for a select few. I do not want to present, at the end of the day, on a technology that you cannot start playing with now (or very soon).
I am sorry if you were hoping to see me there, I am sure some of the local speakers will do a good job of keeping you entertained.

DevConnections and Live Mesh

2008-04-25T00:04:00.004+10:00

After a successful few days in Orlando at DevConnections I am back in London.
At DevConnections I presented sessions on Windows Live (Silverlight Streaming and Data Portability) and Windows Mobile (Sync Center, Gadgets and windows Live apps for Windows Mobile). After Tuesday nights announcement of Live Mesh, I assumed that many of the attendees would be asking questions.
To my surprise most of them didn't know about it, and many didn't care. Why not? Because it is not of relevance to them, or so they believe. I think what we see with Live Mesh might be the start of something exciting, something I have spoken about for some time. I shouldn't have to print out driving directions from my home PC to take them in the car, the car should 'sync' with my home PC and know what I have been searching for on my home or work PC. It is the same story with my phone.
In my session at DevConnections on Windows Vista gadgets that speak to my mobile phone, I talk about building applications that know I am at my PC and so display content on the PC screen not on the phone. One of my biggest annoyances is still the fact that all my devices that sync with Exchange fire off reminders. I am now sitting at a hot desk I am using for a few days while in London. I have my laptop, tablet, UK phone and US phone on the desk. When a calendar reminder is raised all my devices insist on ringing bells. Why?
The keyboard of my laptop is being used and I am logged in, the other devices should detect this and only 1 reminder should be displayed on the device I am currently working with. I am hoping that Live Mesh makes these scenarios easier to deliver against.

Those who do and those who blog

2008-01-16T07:36:00.000+11:00

Tricky tells me there are those who do and those who blog.
In the last few months I have been doing.
I am going to continue doing for a while....