Tag: linkedin

Categories
Product Reviews

Flipboard for iPad, Personal Techmeme

Last week Flipboard informed me that their iPad app was ready for me to use (I have had it since day one, but their servers were overwhelmed).

The premise is that it takes your Twitter and Facebook feeds and creates personal “magazines”. It has other aggregated/curated content from around the web as well. I don’t know what the exact algorithm for figuring out what to show me is, but it seems to do ok. Right now I see it as another quick way to scan through things.

What I think would be an awesome edition, if it could handle it, is syncing my Google Reader. I want a personal “cloud” or personal “techmeme” – filter and find and combine like items. I thought maybe “The Early Edition” for iPad would do that, but it croaked on my 300 some feeds.

Some day there will be an app that does it 🙂


Categories
Business Intelligence

App Store Pivot Viewer – ZoomAppy

Good ideas are hard to stop from happening. After dorking around with Pivot Viewer, I was thinking of things I could “pivot”, and the iTunes App Store was one of them. No real API though, there are some out there that have created APIs, or you could scrape the web, etc but nothing solid.

Looks like someone took that idea and ran with it, called ZoomAppy (http://zoomappy.com/). RIght now it looks like it is just the app store, but they have more in store.

I agree that Pivot Viewer is “Business Intelligence”, but it is a different way of thinking. Where in traditional BI, you think of looking at metric/measures like sales/inventory, etc. With PivotViewer, you are looking at “objects” and filtering them based on properties. Teams, Bikes, Apps, Cars, People. Also PivotViewer doesn’t give you any type of aggregations besides counts, so it is limited in that regard.

What else would be a good candidate for Pivot Viewer?


Categories
Geeky/Programming

The New Hipster: Going Appless

Love the iPhone, really do. But I am pretty hardcode when it comes to apps and loading things and making it “work” hard. Every once in a while some rogue app goes off the wall and starts draining battery like crazy. Usually the only thing to do is restore phone. I have had to do this, and a few other people I know have see it as well. I don’t blame the iPhone, I blame the apps. Just like windows mobile, the apps were the problem 🙂

Anyways, this time, instead of restoring my phone from backup, I just let it stay “clean”. I decided to not install any apps for as long as I can. It has been 24 hours, so that says something 🙂

But what I am doing is going back to the iPhone roots, back to 2007. Web apps. Steve Jobs himself says it is their “other”, open, unrestricted platform they support, so let’s see what it can offer.

Facebook? touch.facebook.com
Twitter? m.twitter.com
Flickr? m.flickr.com
YouTube (the HTML5 version is better than the native app!) m.youtube.com
FourSquare/Gowalla? check.in
Reeder/Google Reader? google’s mobile formatted reader site works.
Other apps? openappmkt.com
IM? meebo has a pretty good web app.

Just like regular hipsters, that drink PBR, and lose the flavor and other added benefits of drinking a less “hip” beer, you have to give some things up.. such as..

Push Notifications – not sure yet if this is a good or bad thing to give up. The current implementation just seems to annoy anyways

Background/Streaming music (Pandora/Last.fm, etc) – I did find dance.fm has a HTML5 version or something that streams directly from a web page, so I could almost say others might follow suit. I also have iPod on the device so not to worried, I don’t listen to a helluva lot of music anyways.

What else? Not sure yet, we will see how long I last. One thing I can say, there are some games that are web apps that are pretty cool, but don’t come close to the native games … yet.

Of course I will probably start installing some apps eventually, and after a while I will be back to my old app going ways 🙂

Categories
Geeky/Programming Product Reviews

Tool of the Day: Sysinternals ProcMon

Funny how you might not EVER use a given tool, and some days you might end up using it twice. Sysinternals Procmon was that tool today.

It is the successor from old utils from Sysinternals – Filemon and Regmon.

What does it do? It monitors all processes and services and watches what they are doing on your system. File, Registry, etc, etc. Open/Close, Read/Write, what user, status, etc. You can filter and pause and find out pretty much anything going on in windows.

So early in the day, running into a website issue, not loading in IIS. No idea what is going on. Fire up Procmon and filter to the website directory on disk. Lo and behold, the site is trying to impersonate a user, and that user doesn’t have permissions. The site still didn’t work, and if I would have dug a bit more with Procmon, would have found that the user impersonating on the site also needed rights to the ASP.NET Temporary files, but after seeing the impersonation and the site still not working, I guessed it didn’t have rights to the temp folder.

Things like the scenario above I have seen people waste a support call with Microsoft with.

Second thing today. Trying to install a extension to SSRS. The installer isn’t even seeing that SSRS is installed, yet it clearly is and functioning correctly on the box. Some how the installer must be reading something or looking somewhere and not finding something. Procmon to the rescue. Fire it up, watch msiexec.exe. Seeing registry reads, it finds the SSRS instance names, then looks to a registry area with that instance name and tries to find more details. Was failing on finding the details because there was no reg keys in the second location (for whatever reason). But there was info in the first location, the same info it was looking for. I exported it out, changed the reg path of the keys, and imported. Re-ran setup and it found the instance this time and I could install the extension.

Without Procmon would have been flying blind or just guessing randomly on what to do. Could have been hours on tech support with a company, or again, a support call with Microsoft.

Procmon saved the day. Check it out and try to use where applicable in your day to day troubleshooting.

Categories
Business Intelligence

Blaming the Waitress

Most people have probably done this at least once in their lives.. You go to a restaurant and order a meal. The waitress is nice, comes over, gets your drinks, takes your order, checks up on you, refills, what not, brings out the meal, and woah, something is wrong, it is cold, bad, just something. But what do you end up doing? Getting mad and blaming the waitress. You might not give her any tip at the end of the meal, because you are mad about the mishap with the food.

But then you start to think about it, and you look back and realize that hey, it wasn’t the waitress who caused the issue, it was probably the cooks! But you are already driving home and don’t really do anything about it.

People like to cast blame, even that might not be the right phrase, but people like to *call out* the group on the front lines (note: in most cases. For instance in the military campaigns, when one side loses, people blame the generals and commanders, etc, not the privates on the front lines, and rightfully so).

In Business Intelligence, you are usually the “front line” to the business when it comes to reporting information and data. One of the roles of BI is to “deliver information to the business”. But then what happens when something is wrong with that information? People immediately blame the Business Intelligence group. It just seems to be human nature, just like blaming the waitress.

Now, don’t get me wrong, sometimes the problem might reside with the waitress, and then you would call her out on things, but you need to realize, your tip just doesn’t go to her. It gets split between her, the cook, the bus boys, the greeters, etc.

I hate playing any part of the “blame game”, but sometimes people should think through what they are actually “blaming” and make sure it just isn’t calling out the front lines because that is what is easiest.

I’m not sure that Business Intelligence will ever fully get around taking most of the up front hits when something goes wrong with data, or with a reporting server, or with anything that might be outside of its control, but what Business Intelligence groups should strive for is to be accountable for things within its control, such as finding problems before the business does, handling data integrity issues with ease, making ETL’s more fault tolerant, getting and handling server alerts for jobs and processes that it is in charge of, etc, etc.

Just try to remember the next time your food is cold at the restaurant, try not to blame the waitress 🙂


Categories
Agile

Agile: Sprint Planning Meeting

The “other” meeting in Agile/Scrum. The Sprint Planning. You already have your “daily standups” or scrums going, but you need to actually *plan* your sprints. Before you start doing agile, you need to have an initial sprint planning. Call this pre-agile process sprint Sprint Zero or Sprint 0, or whatever, but it is going to be different than the sprint plannings after it. Why? Well, first let’s look into the planning pieces.

Now, you can split parts of these up into different meetings, but I like to keep them all together.

1. Retrospective – 15-20 minutes where you go around the room and ask each person. What went good this sprint, what went bad? Places to improve, places to keep things as is, what did you learn, etc, etc.

2. Review/Demo – 1 hour to 2 hours of going through all the stories you have completed in the previous sprint, reviewing with the “business” or the rest of the team, or product owner, etc. People can ask questions, and just getting all eyes on things helps to maybe find something subtle that someone else might have missed, etc.

3. Planning – This is the meat and potatoes section of your Spring Planning Meeting. Here is where you score all your stories that you have to score for the next sprint, or stories that are unscored in the backlog. This section of the meeting could last 2, 3, 4-6 hours depending on how many stories you have

So why would Sprint Zero be different? Well because you are just starting agile, you don’t have a Retrospective or a Review, you just do planning. (A more in depth post on just the “Planning” section is forthcoming)

Once you have scored all your stories, you are ready to go. After you go through your sprint, and you are nearing the end, you want to have another Sprint Planning Meeting, to plan out the next sprint. You do this type of “sprint”-ly iteration.. well, forever, or as long as your project is going to last.

I have found that holding sprint planning meetings starting early in the morning are better than the afternoon, just because people are more alert.

Also, having a good remote viewing option, such as Goto Meeting is going to make any remote do’ers happy.

Having some food and snacks for the team always is good too. A larger room where it isn’t as cramped is going to be good. Stuffing everyone into a smaller room for 6+ hours could lead to some crabbines, as well as just sweatiness 🙂

Of course, the Scrum Master is going to facilitate the meeting, but you might have one person or multiple do’ers drive the review/demo.


Categories
Geeky/Programming

Development Need #1 – Multiple Monitors

What’s one of the first things that developers want/need/can’t live without? Multiple Monitors. In most cases this starts of with 2 or Dual monitors, but this should be a standard. More monitors means more screen real estate which means you can more things up in front of you which means you can get more done. 15-25% more done, easily.

So, something that simple, a 200-400 dollar investment, can make your developers more productive, you should make dang sure every one has dual monitors, same size, for sure. Using a laptop screen and a monitor doesn’t count as dual monitors. Having a 15 inch and 21 inch is a mess. Two 19’s or 21’s or even better, higher inch screens is going to make developers happy, it is going to make them more productive, and it isn’t going to break the bank.

Not even anymore in development, but just all over a company, people should have two monitors. From the receptionist to the CEO. Just makes sense.


Categories
Geeky/Programming Product Reviews

Living Virtually: Running your Dev Process on Virtual Machines

Virtual Machines have been around for years. VMWare and Microsoft have been the main competitors for a while, both offering somewhat similar products. Parallels for Mac is another, and Virtual Box for pretty much everything. I have used them all. When it comes right down to it, VMWare, to me, is ahead of the rest, so I am going to focus on that. Heck, I did a P2V (Physical to Virtual) on my girlfriends wacked out laptop and that is working great, 2 months later 🙂

What is a typical scenario for most people? They go buy a machine, set it up, use it. It works great. It crashes or gets hosed. They lose most if not everything, spend a week redoing the machine and start the process over. This goes on for a few years, then they get a new machine, and start the cycle over

But…

What if you thought “virtually”? So, you go buy (or build) your beefy development machine. But then didn’t install anything but Windows Updates (of course), and VMWare Workstation. Now granted your want your physical box to have 8, 12, or 16 GB of RAM, and loads of fast disk space, but yeah, just need to have a beefy machine.

Now, you set up your actual dev machine as a virtual machine, you give it 8 GB of RAM. You install the OS, and take a snapshot (In VMWare). You install VS2010, take a snapshot. You install SQL Server 2008 R2 Dev, snapshot. You install each browser you need to test with, snapshot, snapshot, snapshot. You get the idea.

Now, if something is totally wacked, you can revert to a snapshot. You can even have multiple paths of snapshots, this type of thing is very VERY cool if you get it going correctly.

You can also just grab the entire VM hard disk and settings and copy off to your trusty 2 TB USB drive or whatever and you can do this once a week and you have a complete backup of your dev machine.

You can then set up another VM, say, “Web Server” or whatever you desire, give it 2 GB or whatever it needs to run, do the same thing. You can have both running, and do your testing. You can create a separate SQL Machine for testing. Try to set up your environment as you would for your development. If you need an Active Directory? Set that up, set up 3 VM’s or whatever, you don’t need to have them all running all the time. You need Exchange? Or SharePoint? Same thing. You have a Technet or MSDN Subscription, right? No? Go get one NOW.

What is even better then best, is that 3 years later, when you get an even better machine, you know what? You just install VMWorkstation, and copy or locate your VM’s and you are set. No resetting things up, etc, etc. It just works.

You want to create a smaller dev VM for holiday travel? Take it on USB, use Mom’s PC with VMWare Player and give your VM 1 GB of RAM. You just need enough to get by on. No laptop needed, just bring up your USB. You get the idea.. you can do pretty much anything you’d like.

If a salesperson came up to you and said “I have a way for you to configure multiple environments, multiple computers, setups, and have ways to revert back to things you did while configuring, and take backups of everything easily, etc, etc” How much would you pay? $1k? $5k? More?

How about roughly $200, for VMWare Workstation (if you already have Technet/MSDN – which you would have already). I’m sold.

If you really want to get complicated, you can set up VM Farms, and run VMWare Servers, and have multiple VM’s going and easily accessible. But using VMWorkstation to start is good enough, and good enough is fine 🙂


Categories
Agile

Agile: Roles – Scrum Master

Funny title, of course. Everyone with no idea about Agile/Scrum always laughs when they hear the title. Scrum Master (or is it Scrummaster?) – What is that? What a goofy title?

Yeah, but it is what it is. You are probably trying to run some kind of Agile/Scrum process, and you need then a Scrum Master 🙂

But what does a Scrum Master do? Well a lot of it might depend on your process and team but here are a few things (there are probably a hundred more)..

  • Facilitate the Daily Standup/Scrum
    Each day when you meet for your 15 minute standup, the Scrum Master should make things start on time, and keep flowing, and make sure people are answering the 3 questions (What I do today? yesterday? What is in my way?). The Scrum Master should cut off people from going long, make sure things get tabled or moved to a hallway discussion instead of taking of everyones time.
  • Make sure the Burndown/Velocity is being tracked
    The charts! Of course, someone needs to make sure the metrics are being tracked and also displayed. Now depending on your team, it might just mean .. well, nothing but making sure do’ers are updating their burndown correctly. You might have virtual charts. But in some teams, you might need to print the charts for the board, or you might even need to add the burndown yourself depending on your process/system. Keeping track of these metrics is key. You want to keep people informed of your progress every day (at least for the burndown – I like to track velocity as a bullet chart for the sprint and update each day as well).
  • Get all the Stories Ready for Planning
    In some teams, the scrum master might be the only person doing this, in others there may be a group of analysts, etc. But the Scrum Master should be sure to have the stories ready for planning, to score and discuss. Your team probably has a backlog of bugs, features, enhancements, technical debt, and it should be prioritized, but the Scrum Master should be where the buck stops to make sure everything is in order for planning.
  • Facilitate Sprint Planning
    Just like facilitating the daily scrums, the Scrum Master should facilitate the “Sprintly” Sprint Planning meetings. Review, Retrospective, Scoring. Keeping things moving, being an observer but not really a decision maker – that is for the team to do.
  • Be the “Blocker” From Outside Distractions
    Once you start doing Agile, things change, sometimes they have to change dramatically. If your team of do’ers is 3rd level support, or even 1st level support, they are going to need a buffer or blocker from outside distractions. People wanting things now! and support calls and walk ups, and everything else you can think of. The Scrum Master should and needs to learn how to say “No” to everyone when needed. “No, we can’t do that now, but we can look at doing it next Sprint” or.. “No, we can’t look at this right away, but if we get ahead, we can pull it in.. maybe”, or “No, we (just flat out) aren’t doing this”
  • Work with Product Owner on Story Prioritization
    The Scrum Master needs to work with the Product Owner (another Role for another blog post) to get the stories in order, and prioritized. This should happen sometime a few days or week before the Sprint Planning so things can get organized without being rushed.
  • Drive the Process, Improve the Process
    As with everyone involved, the Scrum Master should try to improve the process along the way. There are always way to do things differently which might lead to things running smoother. Change the day of the planning? Print cards? Auto burndown? etc, etc. The Scrum Master should work with the team and Product Owner to help continuously improve the entire process, and the Scrum Master should be the driver of the current process. People have questions on the process? They should ask the Scrum Master.

As you can see, those are just a few of the things the Scrum Master needs to do to help the Agile/Scrum process along. Many times, teams don’t have someone that will take the bull by the horns and drive the process, step up to the role. Other times it is just apparent who the person should be, and in others, it is a well defined role.

The Scrum Master’s role is very important in the process, as much as the do’ers and the Product Owner and others..But they should be the ones that *own* the Agile process and help move things forward.


Categories
Product Reviews

Hulu+ ? Right now, not worth it

According to Gizmodo, Hulu+ Invites are Now Arriving.. Well, I got mine on July 16th. And I have already cancelled it. It isn’t worth 10 dollars a month, at least not a this point. Why?

Well, first off, your queue and shows on regular Hulu aren’t in Hulu+, so you can’t watch them on the iPad and iPhone, WTF?

Also, the shows they have archives for are mostly stupid one offs that no one watched when they were out the first time.

Hopefully once more shows sync up to the Hulu+ model and are on the main “Hulu” and + edition, I will look at going back to it.