UMPC and Tablet PC Application Contest

Develop and Win a UMPC

Handango is looking for fresh Tablet PC and Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) software content. Are you up for the development challenge? By converting your existing Pocket PC or smartphone applications or creating an entirely new title for Tablet PC and UMPC, you’ll be eligible to win one of three Ultra-Mobile PCs! Personal productivity, travel, fitness, medical, multimedia, and entertainment titles are all great fits for Handango's catalog. The contest runs from now until August 31. Start coding!

How to get started:

1. To begin development, please visit the Ultra-Mobile PC Development Quick Start Guide.
2. If you have questions, please visit the MSDN Mobile PC and Tablet PC Developer Center or e-mail mpcisv@microsoft.com.
3. For ways to optimize your UMPC applications for touch and ink, check out Microsoft Sudoku.
4. Test your application in the UMPC Display Emulator.
5. After completing your application and verifying that it’s compatible with Tablet PCs and Ultra-Mobile PCs, e-mail the Handango Tablet PC team to submit your titles.

The deadline for all entries is August 31, 2006.
 
Winners for top personal, media and entertainment, and multimedia and communications applications will be announced in September.

Please contact tabletpc@handango.com if you have questions or need additional details. We look forward to seeing your applications.

Web Site: http://www.impactevents.com/biztalkconference

Microsoft’s SOA & Business Process Conference is the event for our partners, customers and field personnel to get up to speed on new and updated solutions for Business Process Management (BPM), SOA and Workflow. Over 4 days, attendees will learn about the strategies and technologies that Microsoft is delivering over the next year, such as BizTalk Server, WinFX, and Office 2007. Three technical tracks will provide depth and detail into best practices for building BPM solutions, SOA guidance, and implementing BizTalk Server. A business development track will focus on the business value of BPM for both customers looking to optimize their processes and for partners looking to expand their practices. Whether you need to get up to speed, or are ready to dive deep, this is the event for technical training, networking, and business development for partners and customers interested in BPM, SOA, and Workflow.

Registration

Join Microsoft staff, valued partners, customers and industry thought leaders at the Microsoft Conference Center from October 3-6, 2006. Registration is $199.00, with an early bird discount price of$149.00 if you register by July 21st.

Agenda & Sessions

Each session, meeting, and program event at the Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference is designed to expand your knowledge of key emerging technologies, demonstrate proven strategies for implementing solution, explain Microsoft’s long-term strategy and roadmap, and add value to your organization’s integration and workflow solution portfolio.

Sponsors & Exhibitors

Over 20 Microsoft partners are expected to showcase their latest solutions and technologies demonstrating their newest innovations- allowing attendees to test-drive key technologies and receive one-on-one, informed answers to questions.
If you are interested in sponsorship, please contact Robert Bannerman at robann@microsoft.com.

Community & Networking

Beyond the structured sessions, the Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference will also provide many networking opportunities with people who share your professional interests.  We will be hosting several evening events to help encourage and foster community-building activities between partners, customers, and Microsoft employees.  Throughout the year be sure to check out the community sites to access the most current information.

Instructor Lead Training

Conference sponsor and BizTalk Server training partner, Quicklearn, is offering a series of classes before and after the conference for the convenience of attendees. Furthermore Quicklearn is providing a 35% discount for conference attendees. Use the links below to find out about the specific classes and to register. Make sure to include the discount Registration code: ‘BPI06’ when you register for one of these classes.

9/25-9/29 (5-days) – BizTalk Server 2006 Deep Dive
9/30-10/2 (3-days) – BizTalk Server 2006 - Service Oriented Architectures (SOA)
10/9-10/13 (5-days) – Double Header - Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) & Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

Web Site: http://www.impactevents.com/biztalkconference

After nine years of being an award-winning Web authoring tool, FrontPage will be discontinued in late 2006. We will continue to serve the diverse needs of our existing FrontPage customers with the introduction of two brand-new application building and Web authoring tools using the latest technologies: Office SharePoint Designer 2007 for the enterprise information workers and Expression Web for the professional Web designer. Link >>

INETA has recently launched a new program to let the community help with their great program. If you are a business or just interested in helping out a good cause then send them an email!

(from the INETA NORAM website:)

On June 1st INETA North America launched an extensive new Sponsorship Program aimed at raising funds to expand and improve services for our members. Over the past six months the INETA NorAm Sponsorship Team, led by Sponsorship Director Pat Tormey, has designed a great program with many options for sponsorship at a variety of levels. In the four years since our founding, INETA has grown tremendously and to deliver programs and services to our members requires substantial funding and volunteer time. During the past year the INETA NorAm Board of Directors has targeted key areas for expansion and growth to better serve our members. As part of that strategic analysis it became evident we needed to establish a substantial and diverse sponsor base.

The new Sponsorship Program consists of four main levels of sponsorship (Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze) and a wide range of services from which a custom sponsorship program is designed for each sponsor. The services available to sponsors focus on INETA's key strength of providing the opportunity to reach a targeted audience of software developers focused on Microsoft technologies. 

If you are interested in learning more about INETA sponsorship programs, please email marketing@ineta.org.

The Business Leadership Forum was quite an experience and is hard to summarize. IBM did a good job of organizing it and everyone there appreciated it and learned a lot -- I certainly did. As with most conferences, a lot of the value was in talking to people at breaks. Dinner at the Vatican is next to impossible to describe. It was the proverbial "you had to be there" thing. Here are some of the key insights delivered by Sam and his speakers and panelists during the conference...

• Innovation is essential and what the 21st century is all about
• Change is faster and more disruptive than ever
• Globalization is inevitable
• Ubiquitous connectivity is breaking down physical borders and creating connections between people, economies, organizations and governments in ways that were never thought possible
• Businesses need to cultivate their uniqueness
• Businesses need to encourage employees to be multi-disciplined, collaborative, and global
• Innovation that matters comes from seeing problems differently and adding value quicker than anyone else
• Constant reorganization is futile but leaders must look at a company’s structure strategically, consider which pieces need to shift and then unfold change bit by bit
• Technology plays a leading role in innovation, but it isn't the only factor
• What were once disruptive technologies now are commodities
• To innovate, CEO's don’t need to control all the resources or build within their own frameworks. They need to partner and collaborate
• Governments can help spur innovation among the private sector
• Governments must be more flexible to respond to today's business needs
• Restrictive governments try to defend and preserve what has been achieved in the past, but if they rely only on the strength of their past, they put progress in peril
• Governments need to open themselves to market and labor reforms to stay relevant and competitive in global markets
  
  Intro to Roman Rendezvous Stories
  Index to Roman Rendezvous stories

A long-running discussion related to web accessibility is whether it should be required by law or not. Some believe it is the only way of making organisations ensure that their websites can be used by everybody, while others argue that it should be up to each organisation to decide.

My opinion is that for the private sector the 'let everybody decide for themselves' argument may have some validity, but only some. Public sector websites, however, must be accessible to all, regardless of which browsing device they use or if they have a disability.

That's why I find it very interesting that on 12 June 2006, ministers of 34 European countries endorsed A pan-European drive to use information and communication technologies to help people to overcome economic, social, educational, territorial or disability-related disadvantages.

Two of the targets of this Riga Ministerial Declaration are to ensure that all public websites are accessible by 2010 and by 2007, make recommendations on accessibility standards and common approaches, which could become mandatory in public procurement by 2010.

Very interesting, and about time. There is a related memo (Information and communication technology for an inclusive society -- Frequently asked questions) that mentions WAI, so WCAG will probably be used or referenced in some way.

The full press release is available online: Internet for all: EU ministers commit to an inclusive and barrier-free information society.

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• Accessibility
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One of the many innovations Sam Palmisano has spearheaded at IBM is the idea of reaching out to "alumni". The first initiative was a few years ago when he started a semi-annual reception for executives and former executives of the company. That was just the beginning and now the idea of reaching out has been opened up big time. The number of past and present IBMers is probably close to a million people. Establishing communications with such a huge base can be nothing but a good thing for the company.

When I left engineering school and joined IBM in 1967, it was common to look for a job at a company and expect to stay there your entire career. Nobody thinks that way anymore. If you tell someone you were with a company for decades, they might ask "what's the matter, couldn't you find any other jobs?". Another change is in the old days if someone left the company they were considered a traitor and barred from coming back. Today, there are many executives that left the company at some point, got some experience at one or more other companies, and then brought that experience back into IBM.

The Internet has enabled everything to be connected to everything, so setting up a blog to "connect" past, present, (and maybe future) IBMers to each other and with the company seems like a very good idea. The The first step was the Google Group, the logical step two is the new Greater IBM blog. Over time other forms of web technology such as wikis, audio and video podcasts, instant messaging, and various mobile technologies will likely enter the mix.

The possibilities are endless -- collaboration on projects, personal networking for jobs and deals, referrals to and from IBM, and social networking for the fun of it. I look forward to being part of this as it evolves. Upon e-tirement in 2001 with nearly four decades at IBM, I don't really feel like I left anyway! Feel free to visit patrickWeb. There are a number of categories that I have been writing about for more than ten years. Things related to IBM are at this site, I am sure I will be writing about and linking to the Greater IBM blog as will others. Cross linking will increase the overall "connectedness". That's what the web is all about. I am really proud that IBM is taking the blogosphere so seriously.

Greater IBM Blog
Greater IBM on Google Groups
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• 

  That little mouthful is the full title of the latest book with my name on it. Published by Friends of Ed, it’s now gone to the printers and will be available sometime in July. I was extremely proud to be asked to contribute, as there are some real shining lights in the world of accessibility involved; how’s this for an awesome line up: Andrew Kirkpatrick, Christian Heilmann, Jim Thatcher, Cynthia Waddell, Michael R. Burks, Shawn Lawton Henry, Bruce Lawson, Mark Urban, Patrick H. Lauke and Gez Lemon (tech editing).

  As the subtitle implies, the book focusses on a web standards approach to accessibility, with chapters on HTML, Javascript and my chapter on CSS. But this is a practical book, and the web does not work on standards alone, so there are also excellent chapters on making Flash and PDF accessible, as well as details about assistive technologies. The issue of web accessibility in law and regulations is also of importance to many people. In my opinion this book covers these issues to the deepest, most pragmatic level I’ve yet seen. There was even time to squeeze in an appendix on PAS 78.

  Writing a chapter on ‘CSS for Accessible Web Pages’ was an interesting exercise in itself as it meant taking CSS in isolation. Some aspects are obvious – user style sheets for example. Others are less obvious such as discussion of highlighting areas of the page which have focus. I included a fairly deep discussion of image replacement techniques as these can be really problematic from an accessibility perspective. I also highlighted as many best practices as I could (for example including text colors with background colors) including a special section on zoom layouts.

  As you can tell I’m somewhat pleased with Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance and I’m really looking forward to seeing the final book. I know it will make a really useful addition to our shelves at Clearleft.

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The shuttle buses dropped us off and we walked a few hundred feet through a large courtyard to the Auditorium Parco della Musica. It is quite an impressive place and of the thousands of "auditoriums" in the world, only this one has the url of http://www.auditorium.com. The "city of music" lies outside of Rome's densely-packed historic center where such a facility could never have been built. Four hundred trees surround the beautiful buildings where 3,000 spectators can enjoy concerts of all kinds -- from classical to jazz and rock.

IBM hosted it's fourth Business Leadership Forum at "the auditorium" earlier this month, and it was attended by several hundred of "the world's leading thinkers from across business, industry, government and academia", representing more than 50 countries. The forum facilitated two days of discussion about innovation and the challenges facing businesses in the 21st century.

IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano kicked off the meeting by saying that innovation is not optional for the leading institutions of the world -- businesses, schools, hospitals, and governments. "The bottom line of all this is that innovation is really a 'must do' unless we want to live in an environment that's commoditized and not unique, not differentiated". Sam's point was that if organizations focus only on taking out costs, they will be doomed with very low profits if not extinction. Everyone agrees that Innovation starts at the top and Sam practices what he preaches -- not just by innovating in technologies (IBM turning out more patents year after year than any company in the world), but by innovating in strategies and business models. For example, it was Sam who led the charge to transform IBM from a hardware company to a hardware, software and services company. Especially the latter, when he acquired Price Waterhouse Consulting and smoothly integrated it into the IBM portfolio of services. He also led the sale of the PC business. Some people viewed it as simply a "sale" but in reality it was a highly innovative change to the IBM business model -- selling off a low margin business but retaining the services aspect of it and at the same time gaining a stronger foothold in the Chinese market opportunity.

Note: See BusinessWeek's story about The World's Most Innovative Companies.

Sam then introduced Lord Brown, group chief executive at bp. The company had more than $20billion in profits for 2005 and is moving to even bigger numbers in 2006. Lord Brown described many innovative aspects of the company but I was most impressed with how they are using computer simulation to continuously increase the amount of oil they are able to extract from their drillings. He also described ambitious goals to put the hydrocarbon pollutants that come out with the oil back into where the oil was extracted, thereby reducing global pollution.

At the end of day we all got back in the shuttles to head to the Vatican.


Intro to Roman Rendezvous Stories
Index to Roman Rendezvous stories

The single biggest item of feedback on the blog is everyone wanted to see more Agile posts from my personal day to day experience. I had written about the tools and technologies back in this post and several have inquired about Team System. We are using Visual Studio Team Software Architect Edition as our IDE. There are editions of VSTS Team Developer (8) and Team Test (2 for QA) on order. Although we are using VSTS/VS2005 as our IDE, that is as far as we are going right now. We still find that NUnit is vastly more flexible, agile and useful at this point than the unit test features in VSTS. We are using the Refactoring features in the C# edition all throughout the team except me, where I use the vastly superior Code Rush/Refactor! Pro. We are still using CruiseControl.NET as our CI environment and just returned to producing Click-Once published integrated builds (We have a Smart Client). We were using NANT as the build language but just this week switched to using the new CC.NET 1.0 MSBUILD task. We are now making MSBUILD as our standard build language throughout for future migration to TFS, as well as enjoying its power and flexibility. We are encountering more issues with VS2005 than I ever did in the long beta with IDE lock-ups and bizarre things although it tends to be more useful than VS2003.

In a bizarre Microsoft rendition of MSF-Agile and the VSTS Team Architect, that Architect product does NOT include the ability to write unit tests and the testing features that Team Test and Team Developer editions have!! I believe this is because Microsoft still does understand Agile and they still have these bizarre notions that Architects don't code (I have seen some of this in a mailing list that I belong to as an Architect MVP). As a full Architect on my team (I'm also the “Lead” now too), I practice Just-In-Time Architecture, Agile Modeling, and Agile Architect as well as Code is Model but I code every day just as much as any other member on my team. In fact, I pair every day and write code just as much as any member on the team. My whole team contributes to architecture, not just me, because I value each and every one of them in their ability to contribute. In that regard we use White-boards as our main “Architectural” tool. Not only is this better, but the Whitehorse designers don't do much for me yet as they do not support Indigo until the Orcas time-frame. I believe in Agile Modeling and that all such artifacts must be useful rather than just checking off some item on a checklist. In that regard, Code Is Model, and Whitehorse show promise as the SDM model allows the model to be the code and vise versa but we need Orcas-).

Not only are the testing facilities not available in Team Architect, but we are still finding that NUnit is far superior, more flexible and agile and run from our CC.NET build. At this point, we are still evaluating a TFS roll-out for Work Item Tracking and replacing Source Unsafe. We  are currently tracking work items on Flex Wiki. We are not seeing any benefits otherwise as our process is heavily XP rather than the “Agile” and using all the practices of it. This may change as we roll out a test TFS server someday. We are just finishing our 11th 3-week Iteration. The last two have been dramatically better in the team members adoption of Refactoring, TDD, Collective Code Ownership and especially their estimates. Our War Room has gotten a lot bigger and we now have 10 people sitting together. We are also getting better at our use of FIT and it's opening conversations between Business and Development.  I am also using Vista as my main dev machine but that's a whole another post-).      

Technology writer, Peter Svensson, wrote an interesting story called "Will video break the Internet?". From a technical point of view there are many factors to consider. If a large number of web "surfers" were using the Internet as their primary way to watch TV, there would be a problem. More capacity is clearly needed, especially as HD-TV becomes more prevalent. The pessimists -- and some telecommunications operators -- see rising fees to pay for the bandwidth expansion. Optimists know that various technologies such as multicasting, caching, digital video recorders, etc. are dramatically improving the Net's ability to deliver video content and in parallel the cost per unit of technology continues to decline. History would suggest the optimistic view is the right one.

During the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta there was a bomb blast. Native Atlanta ex-patriots living in Japan and Germany and other parts of the world wanted to get as much news coverage as possible about the status but had few choices (there were no blogs then). The Internet Technology team at IBM in Southbury, Connecticut was running a large web infrastructure for the Games at the time and one of the engineers, Andy Stanford-Clark, got the idea to "stream" a local Atlanta radio station over the Internet using an IBM technology called Bamba. It was a very successful project but only a handful of people could listen simultaneously due to the limitations of the technology and the Internet. Some people thought that if there were large numbers of listeners "audio would break the Internet". Today millions of people consider audio over the Net as commonplace. (Listening to crystal clear classical music from KUSC-FM in Los Angeles through my Sqeezebox as I write this). Based on the tens of millions of daily visitors to YouTube, it is clear that video has also become commonplace. Another leading indicator is what is happening on campus. A number of universities have decided to use the Internet to deliver cable TV to their dormitories.

One of the issues Mr. Svensson raised in his story is "net neutrality", a term that means different things to different people. The fear is that the really large telecommunications companies that provide parts of the "backbone" of the Internet may decide to not only raise fees but also to be discriminatory. In the extreme it would mean that Verizon would block access to Google because they made a deal with Yahoo! or visa versa. The telcos have never been successful in getting into the content business so a new angle for them might be to make deals with content providers that would make their video move through the Internet backbone at a higher priority in return for fees. These fears have gotten the attention of lawmakers who are now talking about legislation to insure net neutrality. Legislation is the worst possible way to address the issue.

What is really needed is more competition. In Japan, the Internet service available to consumers is significantly faster than in the U.S. and significantly less expensive. For example, Yahoo! Broadband offers 8 million bits per second for about $20 per month. Up to 100 million bits per second is available. What technical breakthrough have they had? None. The breakthrough was to separate the various infrastructure elements of Internet service and allow "Adam Smith's invisible hand" to go to work. More competition means higher speeds and lower prices. In the U.S. we have legions of lawyers and lobbyists at work doing their best to gain protections for themselves and to slow the spread of innovation such as municipal wireless and voice over IP. Will video break the Internet? No. The biggest threat to freedom of choice for content at competitive prices is a lack of competition.

Misguided or overly-prescriptive legislation can have unintended consequences. It can often fix one problem and create two new ones or add yet another layer of protectionism. Mike Nelson, former Director for Technology Policy at the Federal Communications Commission (and former colleague at IBM), says "a lack of competition which lets companies exert monopoly or duopoly power is probably the biggest damper on innovation". Not all legislation is bad. It is possible to use it to increase competition and decrease regulation, to fund e-government pilot projects, "connect the unconnected," or fund university education and research.


Other patrickWeb stories about Internet Technology
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How'd you like that for an opening title? Did it grab your attention? Hell, your reading this far so I guess it did. The book I'm focusing on here is Build Your Own .NET Language and Compiler and please, don't click the link and then go buy it. I don't care about the 50 cents worth of referral money I'll get if you do. I wouldn't even recommend the book if I got 50 bucks of referral money (well, money talks, so maybe I would).

The book starts out with the basics of parsing and regular expressions and all that jazz. But the extent of the code is a bunch of screen shots. We are writing a parser/compiler dang it, we aren't WYSIWYGing our way through life at this point, you have to show some real frigin code. What you end up with is a bunch of screen shots of many tools for writing a compiler, but not really the code, unless of course you go grab the CD and break through all of the code without a lick of explanation from the book. God I hope the code is well documented with comments, or you just bought an issue of Compiler's Illustrated and this isn't the Swimsuit edition. I'll include some of my own links at the bottom, where I give actual code for many of these processes.

OK, so you get to see a bunch of tools, and what do you get? Well, you get a bunch of half-assed tools (sorry for the language if your kid is reading my highly technical blog... In fact, if he/she is I could use some interns, must type 50+ WPM and be proficient at C, C++, or C#). A mathematical expression evaluator is the first. I think it is always the first. People always trivialize math. So make sure you look at all the pretty pictures and try to glean some wisdom from the text. I have a mathematical expression evaluator by the way, it's called calc.exe and from what I can tell it has shipped since 16-bit windows. He also makes an attempt at a regular expression workbench. You can't have enough of those (actually I'm not being sarcastic here, I always appreciate a new regex tool), but then he never writes anything or demonstrates compiler technology that uses regular expressions. Does he go into NFA/DFA technology? Well, he does talk about it for a few sentences. BNF format? Again a few sentences here and there. But wait, another tool is what you get and this time it is a picture of a drop-down menu with all sorts of really tantalizing names (convert from BNF to XML, display a BNF parse tree, display formatted docs, etc...). At this point use one of the pages to catch the drool coming off your lip, because that is as close as you'll get in this book to anything cool.

OK, so forget the tools. At some point he actually starts talking about real compiler technology. I think around chapter 7 maybe? I really should dig up the TOC on Amazon, but I'm only going to waste enough time on this book to finish this posting. Anyway, they start talking about the various parsing techniques. Recursive descent (RD), Top-Down, Bottom-Up... I think there are some other odd names they throw in there to mystify the reader. After reading all of the major compiler design books I shouldn't be mystified by something that could classify as a 4 Dummies book (unless it is something like Cross Dressing 4 Dummies, I could probably use that after my Halloween party)...  Anyway, they really don't do the entire process justice, and I think at some point some more tools are used, Yacc might be mentioned, and bam, back to the pictures.

At this point I want to identify the worst problem I found throughout the entire book. Apparently the author didn't have time to finish the code so they left a bunch of exercises for the reader. Nah, nah... You don't leave the compiler as an exercise in a book on how to write a compiler. You leave bits and pieces, but not the important stuff. Going through my Knuth books, I'm actually surprised when he leaves problems as exercises that require more know-how than what has been provided in the chapter. I don't mind exercises for the reader, but there is a limit people. Imagine getting back from Home Depot with a 300 page picture book on building a house, that had a bunch of pictures of completed homes, and some text offering that the building of the house will be left as an exercise for the reader. Doh!

At the end of the book, it is apparent I'm not going to get anything of use and then it starts talking about code generation. Oooh, something with some meat. In reality, they've been naming their nodes for the calculator in such a way that the name of the node was pretty much the name of the op code that was going to be called. They may have some Quick Basic implementation code spits as well, but I'm confused at this point (and mystified) because I've been thumbing this book for an hour. In reality the act of spitting IL is probably worth an entire book of it's own (oh wait it is Inside Microsoft .NET IL Assembler and you really should buy this one so I get 50 cents). That isn't fair because that book is actually how IL functions and not how to spit it. But I'd think one does precede the other since eventually your going to run out of node names to match to IL op-codes and when opComplexOperation isn't mirrored by OpCodes.ComplexOperation I just don't know what you'll do.

How fair of a review is this? Well, I've read actual compiler books, quite a few of them. I've implemented my own parsers and compilers many times for many different circumstances. I don't think it is a hard process and I think extending the process to a more general development audience is important. There should be a relatively accessible book on writing your own .NET languages, but this book is certainly not it. I'll keep looking around, I hear there is another book focused on .NET language generation and I'll have to search it out. Maybe an O'Reilly publication? Can you get an accurate review from something in about an hour's time? Well, I read fast, the words were quite large, most of the content was entirely familiar and only about 30% of the page material was text, so I'd hope so. Take this for what it is worth, but if I see any referral money for that book, I'll know someone is going to be laughing hysterically when they get that book in a 2-3 days from Amazon. PS: I didn't and won't buy the book. I spent a couple of hours at Borders today running through two books that caught my eye when I was really looking for a great .NET Localization book. I need to dig up Michael Kaplan, since I'm sure he has written something somewhere.

Lexer/Parser/Compiler  Code and articles for different types of parsers
Lexer, Parser, Compiler, Oh My!  Postings, with code, on even more lexer/parser stuff
ftp://ftp.cs.vu.nl/pub/dick/PTAPG/BookBody.pdf A more hard-core text on parser technologies