Hank Luhring’s Blog

Our COO Douglas Christian has a Nokia N95 cell phone, and he mentioned to me the other day that it has a built in web server.  At first I thought he was telling me it could browse the web.  But no, the device has a web server built into it.  People on the internet can pull up web pages from his phone!

It is done through a site called mymobilesite.net.  The web address is something like username.mymobilesite.net.

Once you browse to the site, you get a menu listing items such has:

• Blog
• Camera
• Gallery
• Guestbook
• Contact me
• Presence
• Calendar

There is also a place to log in.  Douglas can log in and use the PC browser to send text messages through his phone.  If he’s sitting at his desk in front of his PC anyway, it is a lot easier typing a text message in with the PC keyboard then using the cell phone.

If you click on “Camera”, a screen comes up allowing you to instruct Douglas’ phone to take a picture.  I just did it, and it took a few seconds, and then a picture appeared, taken by Douglas’ phone!  But it was all black.  I walked down to his office, and his phone was in his pocket.

I clicked on “Gallery”, and there were 46 photos available for me (and any other stranger) to look at.  I saw some pictures of Harley-Davidson’s, so I knew I had the right phone.  Douglas likes Harleys. 

“Guestbook” allows you to type in a message that will be displayed to other visitors in the phone’s guestbook.

“Contact me” displays a screen that let’s you type in a message that will go to Douglas’ phone as a text message.  It can be up to 500 characters long.

“Presence” pulls up information about the phone such as whether a call is in progress, battery life, local time, calendar availability, and more.

“Calendar” pulled up an error!  I’ll paste it below.  In a way, the error message is proof that some amazing things are happening on that tiny device.  A web server on a cell phone.  What will things be like ten years from now?

Here’s the error when the phone tried to serve up calendar information.  It looks like it might have run out of memory.

Mod_python error: "PythonHandler index"  Traceback (most recent call last):

File "c:resourcemod_pythonapache.py", line 300, in HandlerDispatch

result = object(req)

File "E:/Data/Web server/htdocs/index.py", line 14, in handler     result = hrh.handler(req)

File "i:sombreroImplementationMWS_WebContentFrameworkHttpRequestHandler.py", line 115, in handler

File "i:sombreroImplementationMWS_WebContentWeb_ApplicationsCalendarCalendarController.py", line 2066, in get_content

File "i:sombreroImplementationMWS_WebContentWeb_ApplicationsCalendarCalendarController.py", line 1132, in _create_availability_view

File "i:sombreroImplementationMWS_WebContentWeb_ApplicationsCalendarCalendarController.py", line 627, in datePicker

File "c:resourcecalendar.py", line 102, in find_instances

return self._db.find_instances(start_date,end_date,unicode(search_string),self._create_filter(appointments,events,anniversaries,todos,reminders))

SymbianError: [Errno -4] KErrNoMemory

In a video introducing the Microsoft Live Mesh team, one thing that jumps out at you is all the whiteboards!

Of course every person’s office has at least one whiteboard.  In addition to that, there is a big conference room that has whiteboards on all the walls.  Actually, whiteboards are not hanging on the walls.  The walls are made of whiteboard material.

This is true in the halls of the building as well.  As you walk down the hall, you see the walls of the hall aren’t normal walls, they are whiteboard material.  There are all kinds of drawings, diagrams, flow charts, screen shots, etc up on the hall walls. 

Check out the video.  It’s interesting to meet the Live Mesh team, as well as see all the whiteboards.

Microsoft’s Live Mesh is a big initiative, and they’ve done several interesting videos about the technology.  There is a 36 minute interview with Ray Ozzie, who has taken Bill Gates’ place as Chief Software Architect.  Ray Ozzie talks in glowing terms about Live Mesh, mentioning that you can trace the DNA from Lotus Notes (which he designed) to Groove to Live Mesh.

During a video that introduces the Live Mesh team, one of the team leaders is asked what programming language was used.  He replied, with no hesitation, and a good bit of pride — “C#”.

We are in process of moving our IssueTrak product over to ASP.NET, and one of the decisions we faced early on was what programming language should we use — Visual Basic or C#? 

When we first developed IssueTrak, C# wasn’t available, so most of our development staff is more familiar with VB.  And Microsoft touts the fact that you can use either language in .NET development. so one possibility was to continue using VB.  But we decided to switch to C#. 

After watching this video, I’m even more confident that we made the right decision. 

The Wall Street Journal began a new column today called “Information Age”.  It starts out mentioning the impact of the telegraph in the mid-1800’s.  Back then the Times of London said the new technology had brought the US and England so close together that the telegraph “has half undone the Declaration of 1776″. This is an example of how new technology is often over-hyped in the beginning, and  underestimated in the long term. 

We’ve gone through the dot-com bubble.  We’re now at the stage where the internet is having profound effects, maybe more than we realize.  One implication is that “as information becomes accessible, individuals gain control”.

Today’s WSJ Information Age column is well worth reading, and I’m looking forward to future ones.

The March 2008 issue of Fast Company magazine has an article about the world’s 50 most innovative companies.  Google is listed as number one.  The cover features a picture of the CIO at Google, with this quote:  “Innovation is super fragile.  It’s very easy to kill.  We need a stubborn, rebellious attitude.”" — Google Chief Information Office, Douglas Merrill. Douglas Merrill is no longer with Google.  According to a New York Times article, he left recently to become president of digital at EMI Music. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal had an article about another Google defection, Sheryl Sandberg joining Facebook as chief operating officer.  She joined Google in 2001 and headed up the global online sales unit, growing it from four people to four thousand.  Before joining Google, she was Lawrence Summer’s chief of staff when he was Secretary of the Treasury. Robert Scoble, probably the world’s most famous tech blogger, has expressed a lot of excitement lately about a startup called FriendFeed.  He has a great video where he interviews the founders of FriendFeed at their location, which looks like a typical Silicon Valley startup.  The founders of FriendFeed are ex-Google people. I’m sure Google is going to continue to be outrageously successful, but it makes sense that as it grows and matures as a company, it will attract a different kind of employee.  The place is probably not as fun or exciting as it was in the early days, and those who joined then probably want to find new adventures where they can really make an impact.  How much difference can one person make in a 20,000 employee company, unless you’re in the top echelon? At IssueTrak, we’re still at the size where everyone knows their contributions make a difference.  As we add employees, we work hard to keep the small-company culture that makes this such a great place to work.

American Apparel Inc. was a private company for many years, and has recently gone public.

According to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal, the company has had to disclose various weaknesses in SEC filings, including:

“inadequate expertise in the application of U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.”

I agree, that probably qualifies as a “material weakness”!

This is the same company that Woody Allen sued because they used his photo in billboard ads without his permission.

Despite the problems with its accounting practices, American Apparel is doing some things right.  In 2003, it had three retails stores.  Today it has 187 stores in 15 countries.  Same-store sales were up 37.5% in the first quarter.

I saw a mention of the web server Apache on a Microsoft blog post.  It was not just a mention, it suggested using Apache (or IIS) to track down a problem in Silverlight development. It was surprising to me to see such a cavalier reference to Apache by a developer employed by Microsoft.  It’s another sign that Microsoft seems to want to coexist with other Internet technology, rather than conquer it.

The Microsoft fellow’s blog is at www.jeff.wilcox.name, and it says “Jeff is a Test Lead on the UI Frameworks and Services team at Microsoft, with interests in rich client applications, web development & design.”

It also says on the main page:

We’re hiring!

Hiring Software Development Engineers for test to focus on rich web and client apps - Silverlight and beyond - fun challenges to be the customer! Work on a team at Microsoft where everyone works with Macs & PCs.

Isn’t that interesting, working on a Microsoft team where everyone works with Macs and PCs!  Not PCs and Macs, but Macs and PCs!