Comparing POC vs Prototype

I was recently in the middle of a conversation, when suddenly a giggle from a colleague silenced me and made me think if I said something wrong. Probing, I figured out that the term “POC” seems to sound strange to some. Even though I clearly knew when & why I used this term whenever I wanted, I thought it would be really helpful to distinguish between the term “POC” against the similars like “Prototype” and “Pilot” and when & why such exercises should be carried out.

I came across just the explanation I was looking for thanks to Seth @ Content Here!

http://blog.contenthere.net/2007/03/poc-prototype-or-pilot-when-and-why.html

Mesh Up with Live Mesh

Being a keen Logmein user, I have pulled off so many moments which otherwise would have ended up in chaos. From Stockholm, showing my wife how to create a playlist of her favourite songs in my home-PC, re-installing the drivers of the webcam which suddenly stopped working in the middle of a chat with my family. The list can be quite long.

But when I saw a demo of Microsoft’s Live mesh, boy oh boy, this I’m sure looks a serious threat to my logmein usage. I just signed up through Microsoft Connect to do a tech preview of Live Mesh, which is still U.S only. Waiting for an invitation.

Its amazing to be able to have uptodate sync’d files/folders across all computers you use and to be access them from anywhere through the web. It also has a great sense of security giving more control over what is shared even upto individual user levels.

Here’s more info at www.mesh.com

And the video…

Wasting Time……

This thought actually hit me when I was on Wela’s Blog. It surely proves to be a total waste of time.

To start with, I was just thinking about my daily routine and one of the top 5 first things I do in a given day includes taking a stroll down facebook before starting work. My wife has also hinted so many times that I eat up quality time by being on facebook. Well, in some sense, facebook is awesome. It keeps all those people whom you’d otherwise bump into, only in years (or even decades) connected to you. Apart from that we also see a whole load of them throwing cows at each other, poking, stalking other’s lifestyles, playing various absurd games, adding photos and tagging, viewing others’ friend’s & photos, searching for friends who have never used a computer before, adding people as friends even if you have only seen them just once in your life. Its altogether a social kick I would say and we end up doing all these for hours at the cost of other official work.

Not that its all bad. But coming to think of the heaps of time that is being wasted is pathetic. I know in my case and also from people around me both at work and outside…. that easily at least 1~2 hours of productive work time is wasted on Facebook, Hi5 and other social networking sites. Its funny when the staff in turn tell their bosses that the time estimated/allocated is not enough to complete assignments. Despite the need to attend to various other personal commitments doing working hours, they also now expect the company to allocate time for them to hang out on Facebook. LOL!

Loads of companies have already done it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest will also very soon deal with this trying to curb this damage to company resources, by blocking these sites and making it a company policy just like banning porn. So facebook will also very soon join the Banned Bandwagon in offices, who pay their employees to be effecient and not idle. Just like any other benefit, even Facebook if misused can become a pain to an organization.

Some nice articles that I was reading on this topic. I like the one which introduces a new feature in Facebook. “The SLAP”.. just like poking, the company can SLAP you on facebook when you get caught wasting time. LOL!

http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/09/is-facebook-a-waste-of-time/
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23414075-details/Facebook’s+a+waste+of+time++-++get+used+to+it/article.do
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article2155515.ece

ASP.NET Enhancements in VS2008 and FX3.5

If I’m to quickly tell someone about whats new for ASP.NET, in Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5,………………. I wont be able to do it that fast.

To be precise and fast I would rather ask that person to read Soma’s blog entry that talks about it.

http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2007/09/08/asp-net-enhancements-in-vs2008-and-net-fx3-5.aspx

All I can say fast is, that we are in for a treat!

Facebook everywhere. Here’s FDT for .NET

Long time no write…. ha…  So, everyone’s hyped up about Facebook, the latest craze in Cyber World.

As you might already know, Codeplex has a Facebook Developer Toolkit project running which might be of interest for all .NET (VB + C#) developers out there. This contains .NET wrappers for the FB API.

Wanna try it out? Here’s something exciting I found at coding4fun. An Outlook Facebook addin.

Team SARA wins Imagine Cup Sri Lanka 2007. Off to Korea!

Another gala Sri Lankan Imagine Cup Finals just ended a while ago at the Galadari Hotel where the University of Moratuwa proudly celebrated the victory of one of their teams the Software design category and will now start to prepare to make it to Seoul Korea to attend the World Finals of the Imagine Cup 2007 from August 5 ~ 11, while the team ‘TEAR’ (from the University of Colombo) won for in the short film category for their “little girl” movie.

The team ‘SARA’ (from the Faculty of Information Technology @ UoM) won for their application “ISECED” and this ultimately happened to be the team that I mentored. Well, I felt really good to see them win and I recalled those instances they had alarm bells ringing in their heads 🙂 Nevertheless they put up a great effort to achieve this success and I’m sure they’ll need to put in much more from now, along with quite some brushing up of their presentation if they are to make a good mark in Korea.

So the great challenge has just begun for this team and *wink* I have already requested them to take a nice break and then meet up to get ready to face the next level.

Congratulations Team Sara!

Winds of Change: Time for some Sharepoint!

So it seems like some winds are coming in from a different direction towards me and I will gradually have to change the sails accordingly to keep up with it. Anyway this entry comes after quite some time away from the blog-o-sphere.

Lots of interesting stuff taking place at the meantime, like Sri Lanka losing to the Aussies in the World Cup. But the most interesting one, is that I just got through 70-630 : Configuring MOSS 2007 (with every little effort) after a 5 day bootcamp covering WSS 3.0 and MOSS2007 (**wink** some of the terms, even my wife will have to put up from now on….) and I guess I will be a MCTS on MOSS2007 configuration. Next Target: MOSS2007 Application Development (70-542)

Well, one thing I like in Sharepoint is that it supports some of the very things we try to implement in practical life to work with corporate information, just out of the box, in a very straight-forward way and with very little sweat. Mind you, the demand is very high cos the future of this empire of information collaboration looks very promising.

I know what you’re thinking…. No way… ASP.NET is and will always be the back-bone of Sharepoint Development. So I’m yet not ready to give up on it. And this is definitely not the right time to do that with some of the cool stuff like WPF, Silverlight, ASP.NET AJAX, Orcas & the Expression Suite taking its VIP seats in the arena. Then what about WCF and WF? … Well ….. I’m just another happy UI Guy!

Pro C# 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform

One of the most comprehensive books on .NET (in C# of course) that I’ve read in the recent past is “Pro C# 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform” the 3rd Edition from APRESS. Theres no doubt that it is equally a great tool to both the toddler taking the 1st .NET steps and also the season .NET developer.

Even though the book was quite heavy (with over 1000 pages, LOL!) , I bet it was more incentive than attending a .NET class paying a lot more.

Well I cant wait to check out Andrew’s follow up of this book, the 4th Edition, “Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform”, which is sure to catch a lot more of the excitement .NET3.5 has to offer.

Sri Lanka cruises into the Cricket World Cup 2007 Finals

Well its 3.16 a.m. now. And Sri Lanka finally did it, crusin splendidly into the Finals of the Cricket World Cup 2007.

It wasn’t that easy as one anticipated to break that final partnership of that New Zealand innings. But nevertheless it worked out like butter on a hot sunny day. Am I sounding like Ranjith Fernando? No way!

Well done boys. Next is most probably to beat the crap out of the Aussies at the Final.

Welcome…. WPF/e is now Silverlight

Oh Yes. After some time surfacing as what it was called “WPF/e” [e for Everywhere], its now officially renamed, “Silverlight”

Silverlight is the cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences on the Web. It surely supports Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer running on the Mac or on Windows.

Remember F.l.a.s.h? he hee….  I’ll tell you this will be greater!

You will need to get to know some WPF stuff for this. And using the Express Studio (Design & Blend) you are sure to design that super user experience Silverlight has to offer. Its all part of the .NET 3.0 generation.

Get to the Silverlight (formerly WPF/E) Dev Centre to start looking at it right now.