Future Development

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Next Steps

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Google have for a while had their Gears offering, which I haven’t used - being Mac bound without Firefox installed (that’s a whole different story) - for many of their offerings; extending Gears so it could work with services such as GMail or Apps would be a great play to make. For me - regularly on the move, but wanting to using my mobile time, when I have a laptop in front of me, to catch up with knowledge would be great. If I could seemlessly integrate such an offering so I can cache GR, Mail and Apps on my MBP I could gain so much more productive time, whilst travelling. So, as far as I am concerned this offering can’t come round quick enough.

I do resent the fact that at the moment to take advantage of new technology I am being bullied into adopting Firefox as my browser of choice, but am coming to realise that I have little opportunity - or voice - to do anything about it. Apart from the aforementioned applications though I’m not too sure what else I would like to see made available in an offline world that isn’t already there. Any ideas? Please let me know in the comments.

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Portwise is great at what it does. However, I am not impressed that to use it successfully on a Mac requires I install Firefox. This goes against the grain of every bit of software development I have been involved with. As a - former - developer I always built software that did not make demands on the user having specific software installed on their machine. You can never guarantee that software will be there, that it will be configured correctly or the user is in an environment where it is acceptable for that software to be installed.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great product, but it really grates that I have to install Firefox to be able to use it. Got any thoughts on this? Do you agree/disagree? Let me know in the comments.

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obviously, I spent too much

I’ve just gone to the site and wa-hay, they’ve got a great new look. I’m not kidding, this looks really good. Whilst I’ve never had any problems with the old look, this is much more contemporary and has more of the 21C era feel about it. Who knows, I might even wind up spending more money there because of it - but then, that’s the general idea.

What do you think? Like the new look? Let me know in the comments

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For me, my question is, what about my existing themes? Are they going to continue to work without modification? If they are, then I welcome the upgrade; if they don’t upgrading will have to wait until I have time to look into it. As always, I’m keen to embrace change and progress, but I’m not prepared to compromise uptime for the sake of something which users/viewers will see little benefit of.

The reality is to upgrade will require me cloning my current environment and testing the upgrade against that, before I consider going anywhere near my live environment. That’s all very straight forward and certainly doesn’t stop me going ahead, but as always it is time I need to plan in. I’ll certainly be keen to see the roadmap for when this version will be released. I’ll then be able to plan when to make the upgrade.

What do you think of the new look and the new features? Anything in there which inspires you? Let me know in the comments

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Over the last few hours I’ve been challenged to run my RSS feeds via Feedburner and my response continues to be: Why? What added benefit does it give me? What do I gain from it? What does it give my subscribers? As of now I still haven’t had a de-facto answer that in any way persuades me to make the jump. As always, I’m open to change, I’m willing to give things a try, but I must understand why? I’m not willing to change just for the sake of it - besides anything else, making the move without commitment simply undermines any perceived value this blog might have as well as probably confusing any readership I have acquired

I guess there are two inter-connected perceptions at play here. Firstly, all my RSS feeds come from URL’s I own and control and are sat within the blog site URL. This gives me the sense of my infrastructure being complete and cohesive. (This is not a sense of completeness in a “need to hug my blog” kind of way, but more in a professional, consistent and controllable way.) Secondly, it really makes no difference for me to know if 10, 20 or 4000 people are informed of new entries on the blog, although I’ll admit to a certain amount of idle curiosity - but I’m sure that’s pure vanity. Knowing no-one reads this blog would not deter me from writing it, but neither would it provide cause for me to stop. What does matter is “who” is actually “reading” it.

It’s that age-old conundrum: quality versus quantity. I’ve done the quantity type blog - and closed that about 18 months ago after 3.5 years of writing - this blog is about quality. “Tipping point” science states done well quality will ultimately deliver quantity and it’s this science that makes markonthenet.com a bit experimental. I’m using SEO, personal/professional contacts and experience to try and get the right people to read this blog, so you could say it does have a bit of an agenda built into it, but it isn’t an agenda built around volume.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to know how many people are subscribing to your feed, but that gives you no indication of who is reading your content. There is a feel-good factor as the total number of subscribers gradually rises, but the reality is I have more confidence in my web server log files to tell me who is reading my content and what else they might have found to be of interest, which in turn will lead me to develop this blog in the right direction.

To put this in perspective, let me be a little more analytical of my own GR habits. I have over 500 feeds I now follow through GR. Of those, only 20 or so are guaranteed to have my eyes view every article they publish. I only commit (to myself) to view the others if something specific arises and/or I have to time to kill (which is rare). If each of the publishers to whom I subscribe used Feedburner to deliver their feeds all 500 would see a registration of me being updated on their feed - though they have no idea who I am, where I am from, what my interests are or what brought me to them in the first place. Are they each to know they’ve only got a less than (all things being equal) 4% chance I’ll read their posts? And that list of 500 continues to grow on a regular basis.

In talking this “Feedburner” proposition through on paper I am coming to the conclusion that for a piece of work which I am aiming to be built around quality Feedburner is not the means by which to measure its success. Feedburner is too high-level and whilst the numbers of subscribers is a true reflection, it doesn’t really give me a feel for what subscribers are reading. To this end Feedburner delivers the vanity tools, but my aim is to accrue an audience more focussed on four vertical sectors as opposed to a wide horizontal sweep of one or two sectors.

So to answer the questions I originally posed when asked to consider Feedburner I have to say I believe my decision to stay where I am is wholly right for this particular blog. Feedburner won’t actually offer me any benefits - it may even lead me in the wrong direction of developing this blog. As far as I can tell it also won’t help the readership I have acquired. For the time being I’ll be sticking with RSS feeds being hosted here on the blog URL.

If you agree or disagree I’d be really pleased to hear what you have to say in the comments.

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This was my life for a whole year before we started working on Google Calendar Sync, a 2-way synching application between Google Calendar and the calendar in Microsoft Outlook.

This could be great. I say “Could be“, because I have seen a similar product from Google which sync’s my Blackberry with my Google Calendar. On the face of it it seemed great, but it didn’t really work properly, so I very quickly stopped using it. Issues with not syncing stuff that had already been sync’d with Outlook and/or recurring appointments and/or appointments that had already been created.

So, with some trepadation I will give this service a go, but I will be putting it through its paces, before I fully commit to it. Right now my setup is as follows:

• In the office: Microsoft Outlook
• At Home: iMac, therefore iCal
• At Home/On the road: MacBook Pro: iMac, therefore iCal
• Mobile: Blackberry

Currently, I use Blackberry Desktop Manager to sync my Blackberry (BB) with my Outlook. I use CompanionLink to sync Outlook to Google Calendars. I have tried SpanningSync to sync my Google Calendar with the Mac’s in my life, but that all went very smelly very quickly, so I soon stopped that. Right now I don’t use iCal at all, so the Blackberry calendar is really my out of office solution, which is not my preferred choice - I’d much rather have all calendars in sync with one another

Update: The company I work for has provided me with W2K on my desktop. No guessing, but do you think Gogle Calendar Sync works with anything other than Windows XP or Vista? That’s a little frustrating!

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From the footage I saw I really started to get a grasp of what the night sky is like and how deep it is. It’s never been something to really set the fire within me alight, but I do have a few friends for which astronomy is a passion, so I can see what this software - or at least the pictures - might mean to them. Clearly the work, dedication, persistence, research and collaboration which has gone into the development of this application is both huge and to be admired as an example of inter-corporation teamwork. This has resulted in an application apparently able to seamlessly overlay differing types of images of the same area of space and brings a whole new dimension to what I am seeing when I look out at the sky at night.

I suppose it’s all about context really. For me, the night sky is something I’ve always taken for granted, with the realisation it’s pretty difficult to get any more close-up to the sky than I am, without specialised equipment. Therefore it’s always been difficult to see the relationship between what I view as being a star (with the naked eye) and whole galaxies, which are crystal clear with the aide of specialist photography - back to the specialist equipment again! World Wide Telescope makes this relationship and therefore the context of what I am seeing abundantly clear, in a way I could never have imagined without seeing it in demonstration; it’s way ahead of Google Sky (and I’m a big Google fan).

There can be no doubt I will dabble with this software when it is released, but this will probably be with friends who are more easily able to guide me around what I am seeing, what I can relate to and what is fascinating. However, the notion of “tours” (I guess in the same way as Google provides tours within Google Earth) might be the kick-start needed to fire-up the interest of many.

I’m not afraid of technology and I’m certainly not afraid of maths. I may not understand it all, but I do know when I’ve been up-close with astronomers in the past it has been too scientific for my understanding. (Hats off to Curtis Wong and Jonathan Fay in the video for making it all sound straight forward). This is where the context gets lost and where I start to loose interest. However, when I am told about things I can relate to I become more interested and drawn into the subject matter. A great example of this was given in the video: “All gold was created at the time of big-bang”. Wow, now I’m interested, I’m intrigued and I’d like to find out more about how people know that.

I’d also like to know more about how this software was developed; there are some interesting snippets of information about the “theoretical” issues of developing such an application - problems with a square looking like a square at the equator, but at the poles looking wholly different. For that matter, there is the issue of how you provide photographs at the poles. This is all really fascinating and starts to show how this kind of development is words-apart from “business application” development. This field of application development really does require the theory be thought out, proto-typed and tested thoroughly, before being considered for inclusion in any final product. I can think of a few people who could do with being forced to work like this for a while!

What also must not be lost is the history and work which went into making this software possible. Here we go with the context thing again, but there is a very personal story to how this software came about. I wonder, will it be apparent at the launch of the software? It should be, because it is clear the current development team and an awful lot of astronomers have one man to be thankful for: Jim Gray. I’m not going to pay homage or reverence to Jim, because I’m in no place to do so, but when World Wide telescope is finally released there are a awful lot of people who are going to have to.

“Context” really is the key. As with most things in life - and more so with space, I need to be able to relate the abstract theories to something I feel I have a hold of. As far as space is concerned and the night sky I think World Wide Telescope might just give me the context I didn’t know I was looking for, to get a better understanding of what is out there. This application plays to a niche market, but Robert is right in his notion on the impact it could have.

I for one look forward to getting my hands on it. I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on Word Wide Telescope or context for understanding in the comments.

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Anyway, this aside, it was a great game. I do however, have a question. What exactly is being displayed on the 2 Macbook’s and 1 MacBook Pro the Welsh Management team use? Granted, today’s commentary team eluded to it being related to information coming in from spotters around the ground. But, what information is it exactly? And how is the information transformed into meaningful data for management to make decisions?

I can understand how data gathered in the first-half might enable decisions to be made as the first-half draws to a close. I can see how those might then be aired during the half-time period and put into action during the second-half. But during the second half, how do those fluid instructions get revised and passed to the team on the field to put into action?

Out of curiosity I’d really like to know what the architecture/infrastructure, hardware/software schema is to make all this work. What information do the spotters look for? How do they capture the information? How do they relay information to the machines with the management team? How secure is the connection? Can it be infiltrated? Is it a two-way conversation between management and the spotters? Are the spotters just watching the Welsh team? How many spotters are there? Do they stay in the same seat throughout the game? What about away games; how does the spotter/seating arrangement work then? Who makes the decision about what is good information and what is bad? Is this automated or manual? If it’s manual, why is this system better than a traditional walkie-talkie arrangement?

Back in the days when I worked on F1Circle, I remember the information was starting to become available about how teams such as McLaren, Ferrari and Jordan were able to capture real-time information fed back from the cars. These were Java developed applications (presumably, because of the Sun Microsystems relationship) which meant questions could be asked, from the pit lane, of the onboard computers, transmitted to the car, answered, transmitted back to the pit-lane (and onward to Woking), run through pre-analysis software and made available to the pit-wall/engineers within a 4 second window. Now, for an engineering based sport - running at in excess of 170mph I can see the immediate benefit this technology can provide. Right now I’m not entirely sure I can see the benefit when it comes to Rugby.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d be happy to be proven wrong and at this stage my cynicism is probably based on ignorance rather than anything else. Let’s not forget at heart I am a technologist and I live my life by growing accustomed to change. 

I’d really like to see the software which is used. Is it commercially available? Was it developed by the WRU? Why on a Mac? Or, is it Java based and they choose to use Mac’s? Is it more than the spotter information coming through?

Presumably, like an F1 car it might (at least theoretically) be possible to read information from sensors attached to players about heart-rate, lung-capacity etc…. thereby being able to accurately assess a players current physical and/or fitness state? If this information is not currently being used, when it does start being used it would give an unfair advantage  to the first team to use it - at least until the others caught up? Will/would this ever happen? I think it might and I think it might happen within a year or three.

Can you tell me any more or let me see anything more about this. This kind of software could be fascinating. Infact, the more I think about the implications of the last paragraph the more I can see the expansion of this technology into other fields of sport. 

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View OmniFocus Beginners Video

On a slightly different note, if you haven’t played around with OmniFocus yet, I whole heartedly recommend it. I was first switched on to it by Merlin and have to say I find it a really useful, intuitive product to use.

I do occasionally struggle in that I also use OmniOutliner and occassionally realise - albeit too late - that I should have used the other tool to complete my task. However, because it’s all being done on a Mac it’s not really a problem - it all just somehow works together ;-) 

Of course, if you’re a keen GTD’er then the whole experience will be reasonably familiar to you from the get-go. I have to say I haven’t fully committed to this product - as much as I’d like to - because I use a PC in the office and for the last 4 years I’ve driven my GTD practice using a Moleskine with pen and paper and so am still struggling to come to terms with the possibility of “going digital” at GTD. 

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