Review: The Big Moo

First, let me traingulate you on my feelings for similar books.  “Who Moved My Cheese” – hated it.  I thought it was puerile and condescending, but I’m not a person who has change issues either.  “Good to Great” – excellent book, and I’ve used the advice in my business dealings.  “Everything I Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten”– not a big fan of the entire book, but some of the chapters were though provoking (haven’t seen it in many, many years though).

The Big Moo is the brainchild of Seth Godin, but credited to “The Group of 33”.  It’s not written in traditional chapters, but rather short vignettes—written sound bites, if you will—in some cases, possibly originally scrawled on a napkin at a bar and later transcribed verbatim.  Perfect bathroom reading.  Not being in formal chapters means I can’t do my usual chapter-by-chapter technical overview, so look for a short review here.

Some of the vignettes are the “what if” type of philosophy like you got in your freshman dorm after a lot of beer from people you barely knew.  The ones I found the most interesting covered actual situations, such as Rockport shoes or the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Some made me think, some inspired me, and some were just plain dumb (and I don’t mean in the good way as talked about in the sketch entitled “The Power of Dumb Ideas”, which was a good vignette).  Thankfully, there were more of the interesting or thought-proviking ones.  It doesn’t matter which stories did what, because I think everyone will take something different away from the book.  Perhaps my opinion of some of the dumb ones would be different if I weren’t on the loo, but rather in a place in my life where they would inspire me.  This isn’t a book that changed my life, but it is one I’ll keep around and flip through from time to time.

Readers are encouraged to share the book with their coworkers to try and inspire them to be remarkable.  Assuming you have coworkers who can be inspired to be remarkable, this book could really be a good thing.  Everyone will take something different from the book, and that makes for good conversation at the coffee pot or over lunch.  In my experience, good communication on anything is the basis for a cohesive group, and those are the groups that become remarkable ones.  Reading this book isn’t going to help you turn anything into something remarkable single-handedly.  But look around, and if you have a few coworkers you think can help you overcome stagnation, definately share this with them.  Make sure to read it first yourself. 

 

Now playing: The Clarks – Mercury

Crystal Reports Pop-ups and XP SP2

If you haven’t read the article “CodeSnip: Opening Crystal Reports in a New Window in ASP.NET” (http://aspalliance.com/525), do that before you read this.  I received this comment recently:


When I tried this, it was blocked by Windows XP SP2. When I said to temporary allow blocked items, it stated it had to refresh, and then nothing happen.  I got the original page back, not the new page containing the report.

Any suggestions.


My first suggestion is to make sure there are no other pop-up blockers installed and running.  Many antivirus programs install pop-up blockers (sometimes called “ad blockers”), and every search engine toolbar I know of also includes a pop-up blocker.  I use this codesnip in an application I wrote and support; on one support call, we found four pop-up blockers installed (XP SP2, McAfee, Google and Yahoo toolbars).

I also suggest permanently allowing pop-ups from the site you’re working on–add your site to the “allowed sites” list (Tools >> Popup Blocker>> Popup Blocker Settings, then enter the URL of your site).  This will always allow pop-ups from the site in question, and will make debugging easier.

If you are exporting to PDF, XLS, etc. in this window, there are a couple of other settings you may need to adjust.  Go to Tools >> Internet Options >>Security, and choose the zone your website is in (Internet or Local Intranet), and click “Custom Level”.  Scroll down about 1/3 of the way, to the Downloads section, and Enable both “Automatic prompting for file downloads” and “File download”.  In my case, I’ve had to adjust these settings for both zones, since I develop and test in Local Intranet, but deploy to Internet.

I have yet to have a problem after doing all of these things.  You may need to close and restart IE to get all the settings to take effect.


 


Now playing: Marc Broussard – Home

January BADNUG Meeting – Excel XML Writer and nHibernate

New Location!


Communifax has graciously offered to host us in their conference room.  They’re located just a minute or two down 228 from BC3; find directions at http://www.communifax.com/company/directions.aspx.  Thank you Communifax!


Tool of the Month (“use one, don’t be one”): Excel XML Writer


It’s a safe bet more business decisions are made in Excel worksheets than in all the boardrooms and golf courses in the world, combined.  If you spend any time at all querying data from ERP systems or data warehouses, and think there has to be a better way than VSTO, you’ll want to see this free library in action.  Rich Dudley will make your life a little better.


Main Presentation: nHibernate


We’ll all feel like hibernating come late January, but no time for naps yet.  nHibernate is an “object persistence library for relational databases”.  Basically that means you can use nHibernate to keep database stuff in memory, and get at it very easily, to build more scalable ASP.NET applications.  Eric Kepes will show us how.  We’d write a better description, but we don’t fully understand it ourselves.


Full details at http://badnug.org/Events/tabid/54/ctl/Details/Mid/370/ItemID/13/selecteddate/1%2F26%2F2006/Default.aspx.

Rock the Launch

The launch videos asked if we were ready to be rocked, and I know one person who was totally rocked by The Launch.

A little background: one of my consulting clients wants to upgrade their website, with multiple branding based on URL used to access the site.  At my suggestion, they waited on the upgrade until the .NET 2.0 was launched, since I felt the versatility of Master Pages and other new additions would make our lives a tremendous amount easier.  They didn’t want to buy new software, so I told them to register for the “Best Of” event in Pittsburgh, which was held Thursday (12/1), and they’d get a copy of VS 2005 for free.  Their guy attended both the SQL Server and VS sessions, and the MS Events folks can claim “Mission Accomplished” with at least one person.

At the SQL Server 2005 session, my client saw for the first time SQL Server Integration Services and Reporting Services.  The company uses an old Oracle-based ERP system that doesn’t provide much in the way of business intelligence, which hurts their competitiveness in today’s environment.  All morning, visions of a new data warehouse with a reporting front end danced through my client’s mind.  Knowing they just added a new Windows 2003 file server, I suggested they look into Windows Sharepoint Services as an intranet, and explained a little of the integration with reporting services and WSS.

Once he saw Master Pages in action, he felt my recommendation to take advantage of technology was very sound, and wondered when could we get started.

My client walked away from one day’s events with a whole new outlook on how to make use of his company’s data, and the tools to provide a proof-of-concept to the decision makers.  He was rocked.

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Now playing: Povertyneck Hillbillies – One Night In New Orleans

Downloadsquad: “We love Microsoft’s recent openness.”

Naked Conversations covered it in depth, and now Downloadsquad’s Ten Things We Love About Microsoft includes Microsoft embracing employee blogging:



So many Microsoft employees write blogs. Whether it is an astute marketing ploy or not is yet to be determined, but hearing from the likes of Omar Shahine and Chris Pratley is a good thing. The spread of blogging throughout Microsoft has added a humanizing quality to the company that you can’t imagine coming from other tech behemoths like IBM or (especially) Apple.


Besides humanizing, the information in these blogs will be a huge driver of another entry on the list: Microsoft’s wealth-creation machine.

RSS Bandit Update Released

The latest update of my favorite RSS aggregator—RSS Bandit—has been released.  Find the full announcement at http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=4e452051-706b-4464-92b8-52221fca8077.  Notable new features include:

  • NNTP Newsgroups (no more Outlook Express!)
  • Synchronization with NewsGator Online.  The synchronization features are what make RSS Bandit my favorite aggregator, since I read posts from home and at work.  With a free Newsgator Online account, now I even have a web-based aggregation and sync.
  • Atom 1.0 support

Tag Those Posts About KB Articles, Methods and Properties

Scott Swigart started this off with his post about undocumentation; Jeff Atwood picked that up and suggested Wikis in his post, which has generated some follow-up comments.  I dislike wikis, mainly because the community which is supposed to contribute is generally too busy or apathetic to do so, and that makes them next to useless.  Take, for instance, the dasBlog Wiki, in particluar http://wiki.shahine.com/default.aspx/DasBlog/ReleaseNotesOnePointSeven.html.  It’s not to say that Omar and Scott aren’t putting out a great app–they are, and it’s truly wonderful.  But the release notes are a minor version behind.  Most wikis-as-software-documentation that I’ve seen usually end up like this.


Rather than Wikis, or moderated comments, or whatever, I think we could already use the tools we have at hand–our blogs.  All Microsoft would need to do is add an RSS filter similar to Memeorandum or Blogniscient to the bottom of a KB article or method documentation, and interested parties could easiliy see any additional comments, examples, etc. in the blogosphere.


On our end, tag your posts.  You can find some tagging information at http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html.  Basically, a tag is a link with rel=”tag” added to it.  I suggest making the HREF link back to the KB article or MSDN documentation page, and using the KB article ID or the full namespace declaration as the tag’s text.


Think about it–if you have a namespace or particluar method you need to follow, you could set up a search at Blogdigger, and subscribe to the RSS results.  There’s probably an MS Live gadget in the future as well.  Finding relevant commentary would be significantly easier for newbies, and presentation or results could be finely tuned by advanced users.

McAfee Installs Its Own Adware

Last night my McAfee was updated, as it does automatically every day or so.  One of the updates was to teh Security Center itself, which required a reboot.  After the reboot, a toast popped up, looking for all the world just like the ones when McAfee catches a virus in my e-mail.  But this one was an offer for the full security suite for 20% off, one week only.  I don’t think so.  I patch and install updates specifically to keep crap like that from showing up on my machine, and I’m less than happy that McAfee thinks they can use their presence on my machine to interrupt my work with their own ads.  Looks like it’s about time to investigate Panda, Trend Micro or AVG.

Microsoft and MP3 Players

An article in the WSJ yesterday looked at Microsoft’s new focus on hardware with the introduction of the Xbox 360.  Some speculation of a Microsoft MP3 player (which I giuess would technically be a WMA player) was also mentioned, as the quest for an iPod killer continues.


I’m not sure MS should get into the iPod killing biz.  Let Rio, Dell, etc. duke that out, because I doubt a single device will do it.  Apple’s hit on something with its design, which appeals to a lot of people.  The other players are different in some areas by necessity–size, capacity, controls, and the appeal is to a smaller crowd not happy with the iPod features.  What Microsoft could/should do, is get all the different manufacturers together, and get everyone to standardize on a single connection.  That’s the true key to unseating the iPod.


For the past several generations of iPods, Apple has used the same “dock connector”.  Millions upon millions of iPods all connect to computers, car audio systems, FM transmitters, chargers, portable stereos, etc. using the same connection.  For the other players in the market, everyone has a different connector.  My car charger will work with my 15GB 3G iPod just the same as my wife’s Nano.  With iPods, reaching a small percentage of users means sales of several hundred thousand to a few million units; for everyone else, a few thousand tops.  If I’m Griffin or Pioneer, I’m pretty much going to ignore everyone but iPods, since that’s where the sales are.  But if Rio, Dell, etc. all had the same interface, accessory makers could market to all of them at once, and build the “not iPod” community as well.  BMW has an iPod connector, and Honda and others are working on them as well.  Imagine what that says to people looking at the devices–tremendous support across industries for the iPod, zilch for the others.  I spend a lot of time in my car, and my next one will have an iPod connector.  The others don’t stand a chance without standardization.


Microsoft did a great job with hardware standardization in the PC world.  How about the audio player world?  After that, get on the cell phone manufacturers.