23 October 2006 in .Net, Code | Comments (3)

This long weekend I’ve been doing a fair bit of coding and catching up on some tech reading online in the domain of business objects, testing and WPF development. I managed to find my way to an article on The Code Project which discusses the use of interface I hadn’t heard of before – IDataErrorInfo and goes into some detail on how to write what I consider to be some rather clever validation code for your business objects.

The error information provided by an object implementing IDataErrorInfo is automatically picked up by controls that the object is bound to (for example, if the object has an error based on the data entered the control will automatically notify you about the error without you, the developer, having to explicitly wire it up). I won’t go into too much detail about IDataErrorInfo since it is covered in the article and has links to MSDN as well with more information.  

Paul’s article goes into further detail about implementing the business rules for validating business objects. The implementation discussed made a lot of sense and looked quite elegant, I will certainly be looking to follow this design with any business object design I’m doing in future.

Paul Stovell, the article author, has a great blog as well which he posts about WPF and some more interesting topics of .net.

Code Project Article: Delegates and Business Objects

 - JD

17 October 2006 in Business, Code | Comments (0)

So lately it’s been a bit try on new material around this place so I thought I’d write a bit about what I’ve been doing instead of tapping away at my keyboard lately. Actually, no, scratch that, I’ve still be at the keyboard a lot but recently I’ve been trying to read more. I’ve always enjoyed reading but in the last 18 months or so I’d only read a couple of books which was making me feel a bit guilty.

I virtually never read fiction, I don’t see the point as I read to learn something new. So here is a list of what I’m working my way through at the moment:

• Micro-ISV, From vision to reality
• Eric Sink on the business of software
• Software project survival guide
• A practical guide of feature-driven development
• Framework design guidelines
• Programming Visual C# 2005: The base class library
• The fingerprint of God

I’ll try and write a review of each of them as I complete them, I’ve already knocked off two of them so I’ll try and get that post up in the next few days.

As you can see, my primary interests in what I read is IT & business. The only odd one out is ‘The Fingerprint of God’ which is mostly about physics, a pet interest of mine. Are there any books you could recommend for me to add to my list?

- JD

3 October 2006 in Microsoft, Windows | Comments (3)

I’ve been playing with Vista for more than a year and finally upgraded to RC1 and am trying to use it as my full desktop replacement now (James is loving it so I thought I should make a real go at it too). So far these are my thoughts:

• The overall user experience is better which is great considering I’m still finding my way around it
• It picked up all the hardware in my machine and installed all the drivers. This is better than what XP or 2003 does for me which misses some things.
• Seem stable, I haven’t had a single crash yet and the number of reboots required is noticeably lower when first setting up the machine.
• Performance monitoring is greatly improved – I’m a sucker for stats
• IIS 7 is cool
• I keep finding neat little things all over the place, I love playing with new stuff

I could go on for quite a while and perhaps I will post again with anything cool I find – I’ve been avoiding this on earlier builds with the risk of features being dropped.

The only problem I have had so far is frustrating and keeps me going back to Windows 2003, I use an nVidia 6800 and my TV is only detected as being able to display at 30Hz interlaced mode (it can support 1024×768 @ 75Hz) so video looks awful. I can’t seem to find a work around yet which is annoying- I’ve even upgraded the graphics drivers only to find they offer almost no value at all (thanks nVidia ). If anyone else has this issue I’d be forever greatful – Google hasn’t been helpful so far either. However I don’t believe this is a Vista issue but more that nVidia need to get their act together.

All up though, I’m impressed with the quality of RC1 and would recomended it to anyone :)

 - JD

19 September 2006 in Blogging, Intergen | Comments (0)

Intergen recently had James Newton-King join the company. James maintains his own blog and is responsible for creating the JSON.Net library as well as several other components that he has available on his site.

So far James is known for being great cannon fodder for all the Halo guys at work

- JD

19 September 2006 in Blogging, Business | Comments (5)

Businesses have often been told they need to do more business online and how it enables them to get in touch with millions of eyeballs for a comparatively low cost. While this is very true and every business should look online it is important to contemplate other ways that the Internet can impact your business. I don’t write this piece to scare anybody but more to hit home how important great customer service is.

Recently a New Zealand gentleman and his family had a problem with a tourism operator. I’m not going to link because the issue has effectively been resolved now, but needless to say, he shared the problem on his blog.

Soon several people linked to this blog and commented on this issue themselves. Before long, when searching for this company name the pages about this issue and the poor service experienced became quite prominent in the search results – within the top 10 results. Given the number of people who now use the Internet as their primary information tool it has becoming more important than ever for businesses to pay attention to feedback they are receiving online.

I’m glad it has had a positive outcome but it does highlight that it is not only businesses that can leverage the Internet, but that customers can leverage the Internet, easily, when they want to share displeasure. It’s often said that an unsatisfied customer will tell ten times as many people about bad service than when they have good service. What happens when that customer has access to tens of thousands of people? Millions of people? Great customer service just became so much more important.

- JD

11 September 2006 in General, Intergen | Comments (8)

Recently I’ve had a spider around my desk at work – I come in each day and it’s built an even bigger web which is kind of interesting. Gabe has been having a chuckle all day about this photo he snapped claiming it’s proof I don’t get any action!

I couldn’t resist posting the picture though, either I’m too busy to action things or I’m not busy enough

Note that I’ve sharpened the label that says “To Action” on the tray to make it easier to see

- JD

11 September 2006 in Blogging, Tools | Comments (1)

Jeremy Norman has created a fantastic plug-in for Windows Live Writer for folks out there who use Box.net. Box.net is an online storage provider which is useful for people who don’t have their own servers with FTP or file upload capabilities. You can sign up for Box.net and get a free account which provides 1GB of space. There is a premium version of Box.net available for those who have higher requirements as well (perhaps the box.net guys should hook Jeremy up for free because of the publicity he’s generating? )

Jeremy has done a great job at making his plug-in as rich as possible with what the API for Box.net provides. More information about this plug-in can be found on the Windows Live Writer Plugins blog.

Download the plug-in here.

 - JD

8 September 2006 in Blogging, Intergen | Comments (0)

Nick Urry, a fellow employee of Intergen has started blogging also on the bluecog domain. He’s a bit of a crazy guy, in a good way, and is likely to post about technology, monkeys and chocolate. He’s kicked off with his thoughts on the WTF is Web2.0 debate. He’s still working on the look and feel of the site but he has a keen eye for good looking sites so I’m sure it will come up sparkly.

So stop over, leave a comment, and make Nick feel welcome.

Nick’s Blog

 - JD