I can’t remember where I saw this, but the truth of it really struck me.
Jun
11
2009
Three Ways to Manage a Project
I’m an avid read of Seth Godin’s blog and most of his posts really hit a nerve for me. But this morning, reading his post titled Direct and Useful Project Feedback, I started thinking about how I run and get involved in projects and it echoed back to my post about personal motivation and innovation. I can’t work in the sort of environment he describes in scenario #1 wherein the team just does what it’s told. And I totally agree that there is quite a bit of difference between #2 and #3. Building a “great product” nearly always yields a product that you can be proud of (though maybe not a product that you “love”). But the inverse clearly isn’t always true. Good insight as always…
Jun
10
2009
HOWTO: Export IIS7 Configuration to Another Webserver
IIS7 has this great new feature called Shared Configuration. Except that it has a tendency to do horrible things which usually result in all the websites and application pools being removed from your server and your production website starting to serve 503 Service Unavailable errors.
For an innexplicable reason, Microsoft decided to kill the Export function from IIS7 in favor of this new feature. But for those of us who don’t trust technology, we like to do things manually and to get a repeatable result that doesn’t update automatically when we least expect it. Yes, I am the sort of person who wonders why the default Windows Update on servers is to Install and Reboot Automatically at 2am…
In any case, in a simple 3 step process you too can export and import your Internet Information Server 7 websites and app pools. Continue reading
Jun
5
2009
Motivation and Innovation
I have done nothing truly innovative in the first 155 days of 2009.
This is what I have come to recognize as the cause of my current state of discontent. I have been doing a lot of self-reflection lately, which of course only happens when I have too much time for self-reflection. My preference is to occupy myself with exciting (read: cutting edge, innovative) projects rather than silly introspection.
Now, it’s true that I have done several things this year with which I’m quite satisfied. I’ve started making some good friends here in LA as the two-year anniversary of my moving west has come and gone. We added the Atlanta Braves as yet another flagship Photocore client. I was involved in launching a free career assessment aimed at helping young people understand themselves and find their ideal job (more about that later). But none of these satisfy my basal thirst for innovation.
Dec
22
2006
What _is_ Photocore?
According to my USPTO trademark application, Photocore is “Computer software for organizing, archiving, viewing and distributing images and photographs over a network”. I think that pretty much sums it up.
Photocore will be available for limited licensing at the beginning of 2007.
Right now I have two showcase sites, both with very similar layouts at the moment.
- theGooley.com – my personal photo website
- USPresswire.com (login required) – a wire agency using Photocore to ingest, broadcast and distribute images to clients
If you’re serious about wanting to see how Photocore looks with >100 photographers, >100k images and >2.5M bits of metadata, send me an email and I can give you a demo login to the site.
Now, a little history after the jump…
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Dec
13
2006
GCalendarSync v0.2 Release + Source
What is GCalendarSync? Go to the project page…
Download installer cab | source
If you just want to use it on your mobile, hit that binary cab link from pocket IE and it will install for you. No, I didn’t sign my assemblies (i don’t have a real certificate), so be prepared to click through some warnings. You’ll need the .NET 2.0 Compact Framework installed for this app and you can get it from Microsoft here.
I have been using it for a day now with no issues but all the usual disclaimers apply. Use it at your own risk. I’m releasing this under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License. Share it and Remix it, but let me know what you’re doing with it so we can enjoy it too.
Oops… It just came to my attention that there’s already something out there called GCalSync. Wow it’s a small world. That app is *shiver* in java, so I need a new name for this app! Suggestions please :-)
More detailed release notes after the jump…
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Dec
13
2006
GCalendarSync v0.1 Screenshots
GCalendarSync allows you to import events from one or more of your Google Calendars directly to your Windows Mobile PDA or Smartphone over the air using GPRS, without docking or using Outlook or the desktop computer in any way. Release + Source is coming later today. Coming in a couple days is the reverse-sync feature so that you can make changes to your google calendar directly on the Smartphone and changes will sync back up to Google.
I’m not quite ready to release it this second, so here are some screenshots of the process of using the app. Like all Windows Mobile apps, after you close it it can still run in the background, so that allows it to run scheduled imports. Basically every minute it hits a timer interval and checks to see if it should import again (default time between imports is 60 minutes). Right now it is more of an Import than a “Sync” tool. But in the next release I will should have two-way syncro going so that you can make changes right on your phone and have those changes sent back up to Google…
And now, the screenshots (after the jump)
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Dec
13
2006
The Inspiration: Mobile Secretary
Yesterday I was doing my morning blog reading and stumbled upon a posting at downloadsquad.com which pointed to an old app created by Brian Cross (one of the Windows Mobile Team bloggers). He called it The Mobile Secretary and it essentially allowed you to automagically send SMS messages to someone whose call you just missed.
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