I’ve been futzing with the site and I’ve got more to do, so unexpected things may happen. Last weekend I screwed with the RSS generator and that caused a bunch of folks to see RSS entries again. This weekend I’m moving more of my static content into the database, so you may see a bunch of old stuff pop up.

Feel free to drop me a line if you see anything you think needs fixing. Thanks for your patience.

The following is a preprint of an article for the NDC Magazine to be published in Apri.

 

It had been a long, hard week at work. I had my feet up when a friend called and popped the question: “Do you know how to build web sites?”

 

That was about a month ago and, after swearing to her that I spent my days helping other people build their web sites, so I should oughta know a thing or two about how to build one for her. After some very gentle requirements gathering (you don’t want a bad customer experience with a friend!), I set about designing and building bestcakebites.com, a real-world e-commerce site.

 

 

She didn’t need a ton of features, just some standard stuff:

·        Built on a technology I already knew so I could have the control I needed.

·        Listing a dozen or so products with pictures and descriptions.

·        A shopping cart along with, ideally, an account system so folks could check their order status or reorder easily.

·        Shipping, handling and tax calculation.

·        Taking payment.

·        Sending email notifications of successful orders to both the customer and the proprietor.

 

As it turns out, there are a bunch of ways to skin this particular cat, but because I was a busy fellow with a more-than-full-time job and a book I’m supposed to be writing, instead of falling prey to my engineering instinct to write my own website from scratch, I decided to see what was out there.

 

As it turns out, there’s quite a few e-commerce web site solutions in the world, several of them recommended by PayPal, as well as one that PayPal itself provides, if you don’t mind sending shoppers to their web site. And if fact, I did. Requirement #1 was that I needed complete control over the code and the look and feel of the site. I didn’t want to configure somebody else’s web site and risk going off of her chosen domain name or not being able to tweak that one little thing that meant the difference between #succeed and #fail. (Friend customers are so picky!)

 

The e-commerce solution I picked was the one I found on http://asp.net (I am a Microsoft employee after all): nopCommerce. It’s an open source solution based on ASP.NET and CSS, which meant that I had complete control when it wasn’t perfect (control I used a few times). It was far more than full-featured enough, including not only a product database, a shopping cart, shipping calculation and payment support, but also categories and manufacturers, blogs, news and forums, which I turned off to keep the web site simple (and to keep the administration cost low). Unexpected features that we ended up liking included product variants (lemon cake bites in sets of 8, 16 and 24 made up three variants, each with their own price, but sharing a description), product reviews, ratings and site-wide search.

 

The real beauty of nopCommerce, and the thing that has been the biggest boon, was that the whole thing is data-driven from SQL Server. To get started, I ran the template web site that was provided, it detected that it had no database from which to work and created and configured the initial database for me, complete with sample data. Further, not only was it all data-driven based on the products, orders and customers the way you’d expect, but also on the settings for the web site behavior itself.

 

For example, to get shipping working, I chose from a number of built-in shipping mechanisms, e.g. free, flat rate, UPS, UPSP, FedEx, etc., and plugged in my shipper information (like the user name and password from my free usps.com shipping calculation web service account)

 

With this configuration in place, the next order the site took, it used that shipper, pulling in the shipping information from the set of size and weight measurements on the ordered products (from the database), calling the web service as it was configured (also from the database) to pull in the set of shipping options from that shipper, e.g. Express Mail, Priority Mail, etc., augmenting the shipping prices with the per product handling changes, and letting the user pick the one they wanted. All I had to do was use the administration console, tag each product with size information and tell nopCommerce that I’d like USPS today, please.

 

Everything worked this way, including tax calculation, payment options (we chose PayPal Direct and Express so that folks with a credit card never left our site whereas folks with PayPal logged into their account on the familiar paypal.com), localization, whether to enable blogs, news, forums, etc. Most of the time when I wanted to make a change, it was just a matter of flipping the right switch in the database and not touching the code at all.

 

As one extreme example of where the data-driven nature really came through was on the order numbers generated by the site. During testing, I noticed that our order numbers were monotonically increasing from 1. Having ordered from a competitor’s site, their order number was only 103, clearly showing off what amateurs they were (and the order itself took a month to arrive after two pestering emails, so it was clear how amateur they really were). I didn’t want us to appear like newbies in our order-confirmation emails (which nopCommerce also generated for us), so I found the Nop_Order table, and used SQL to increase the identity column seed, which it was clear was the origin of the order number: 

DBCC CHECKIDENT (Nop_Order, RESEED, 10047)

From then on, every time an order came through, we protected experience simply because of the order number, which I changed without touching a line of code. If helping you “fake it ’til you make it” isn’t enough reason to love a data-driven solution, I don’t know what is!

In my previous list of WP7 user requests, I piled all of my user hopes and dreams for my new WP7 phone (delivery date: who the hell knows) onto the universe as a way to make good things happen. And all that’s fine, but I’m not just a user; like most of my readers, I’m also a developer and have a need to control my phone with code. I have a long list of applications I want to write and an even longer list of applications I want other developers to write for me.

 

Today at 1:30p is the first public presentations of how to do WP7 programming, so to affect the future, I have to get my feature requests for the Windows Phone 7 Series development environment posted now!

 

·        I want the legendary Microsoft tools for code editing, UI design, debugging, deployment, version control, add-ins, project management, etc. Please just let me install the “Windows Phone 7 Series SDK” and have Dev10 light up with new project and project item templates et al.

·        I definitely want to be able to write C#. Since Charlie’s mentioned Silverlight, it seems like I’ll be able to do just that.

·        I want to be able to mark a program as useful for background processing, e.g. I’m writing Pandora, and let that trigger a question for the user as to whether to allow it or not, ideally with a message like “Pandora would like to continue to run in the background using XX% of your battery. Is that OK?”

·        For most apps that would like to appear as if they’re running in the background, I want to register a bit of code to run when its own cloud-based notifications comes in, e.g. an new IM or sports score.

·        I want to be able to access data from built-in apps, e.g. contacts, appointments, etc.

·        Obvious things:

o   Notification when the user switches orientation

o   Access to the compass, GPS, network, camera, mic, etc.

o   Access to the network using TCP, HTTP, Atom, AtomPub and OData.

o   Low and high-level access to gestures

o   A nice set of build-in standard controls, including simple things like text box and more complicated things like map and route

o   Integration with existing apps, e.g. the ability to launch the map app from my own app at a specific location or to a specific route.

o   Ability to create custom controls/do custom drawing.

o   Serialization so I can keep user data between sessions. Notifications when my app is being whacked.

o   App-selected keyboards for specific tasks, e.g. entering a URL.

 

That doesn’t seem like a very big list. I must be missing something. : )

My dear friend Craig Andera posted an implementation of a function that descends into a directory in a “lazy” manner, i.e. you get the first descendant back right away and not after all descendants have been calculated. His implementation was in Clojure, a Lisp variant that runs on the Java VM:

(import [java.io File])

(defn dir-descendants [dir]
  (let [children (.listFiles (File. dir))]
    (lazy-cat
     (map (memfn getPath) (filter (memfn isFile) children))
     (mapcat dir-descendants
      (map (memfn getPath) (filter (memfn isDirectory) children))))))

Craig was happy with this function because, even though it was a “mind-bender to write,” it’s easy to read and because C# “would almost certainly be at least somewhat more verbose.”

Taking this as a challenge, I rewrote this program in C#, maintaining the laziness:

using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace ConsoleApplication1 {
    class Program {
        static IEnumerable GetDirectoryDecendants(string path) {
            foreach (var file in Directory.GetFiles(path)) { yield return file; }
            foreach (var directory in Directory.GetDirectories(path)) {
                foreach (var file in GetDirectoryDecendants(directory)) { yield return file; }
            }
        }
    }
}

The key hit here is the use of “yield return” which lets me return elements of an IEnumerable as I calculate them. This took me 5 minutes to write, my mind is straight and I find it fairly easy to read. I’ll let you decide on the relative verbosity of each implementation.

When I first moved from the combination of a dumb phone and a separate music player, I had modest requirements: phone calls, MP3 playback, calendar notifications, contact management, email, camera and solitaire. Even asking for only these seven things, my first smart phone was as life changing as my first laptop. I could do a great deal of my work while out and about, allowing me to have a much more productive work/personal life balance.

 

When I was first married, the word “love” didn’t seem big enough for what I felt for my bride. These days, the word “phone” doesn’t seem nearly big enough for the pocket-sized mobile device that I’m never without, like my wallet and my keys. Further, I expect my phone to replace my wallet and keys any day now, along with the Walkman, DVD player, TV, radio, book shelf, notepads, calculator, compass, alarm clock, wall calendar, newspaper, encyclopedia, dictionary, GameBoy, carpenter’s level, laptop, navigation device and landline it’s already replaced.

 

Now that I’ve been through several smart phones, including my favorites, the T-Mobile Dash and the iPhone 3G, I have a much longer, incomplete list of what I want from my Windows Phone 7 Series (and I know it’s incomplete because after I post this list, someone is going to remind me what vital things I missed : ).

 

·        A calculator. It’s surprising how useful this is, including the scientific features.

·        A battery that lasts at least 24 hours while I’m using Bluetooth, 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, music and my apps. Oh, and please let me charge the thing with a standard connector (USB!) and let me use my phone while it’s recharging.

·        An easy, high-quality way to run the music through my car stereo. The Sells Brothers and I like to jam!

·        An easy way to switch back and forth to airplane mode. Or even better, can you make it so the device isn’t an FAA threat during takeoff and landing so I can stop reading the stupid magazine in the seat pocket in front of me for 5 minutes at the beginning and ending of my flights?

·        Great auto-correct on my hard or soft keyboard entry. This is really the only way that allows my big fingers and the lack of tactile feedback to even work with a phone keyboard.

·        Copy-paste: I can’t live w/o it anymore. Also, please include pasting into my phone during calls so I can stop memorizing 9-digit conference call IDs.

·        I’d really love intelligent integration of music, i.e. keep it playing when I switch apps and not just the built-in Zune player, but 3^rd party music apps, too (aka Pandora). Also, let me pause, next, previous while my phone is locked or I’m in another app. Finally, make sure to stop music when I get a call and start it back up again when my call is over. I love that.

·        Full (!) calendar support:

o   Sync’ing with Exchange and not Exchange.

o   Recognition of phone numbers and addresses in my calendar appointments with links to dial/get directions.

o   Reply All to an appointment so that I can let folks know I’m running late.

o   Snooze on my meeting reminders (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve forgotten my meeting after the one and only 15 minute reminder).

o   Show my appointments on my home page instead of making me dig into some app.

·        Please provide a responsive UI, even if I haven’t rebooted in a week. Ideally I’d never have to reboot at all.

·        Wireless sync’ing to my PC. My house is bathed in Wi-Fi; why make me connect a wire?

·        Tethering so I can use my phone as a network connection for my PC. I’m paying for unlimited data — let me use it! And ideally make that wireless, too.

·        Turn-by-turn directions! This won’t be ready until I go off course and I hear “recalculating” from my phone piped through my car stereo with Pandora playing in the background.

·        There definitely needs to be an “app store” for phone apps, but also there needs to be a way to install apps from other sources without hacking my phone. Also, please let me install them on my SD card so I can take advantage of the extra memory.

·        Let me install extra memory!

·        Let me replace the battery! Batteries go bad over time and they need to be replaced on the go.

·        I need a great audio book listening experience (bookmarks!) and a great ebook reading experience (formats!).

·        I’d like some phone-wide search, including the ability to see where the result came from. I never want the email-only Contact from the list of everyone that I’ve ever received an email from — I want the real contact info that I’ve got cached on my phone.

·        Full contact lookup, both personal and corporate (Exchange).

·        Good camera (and flash): the one on my phone is the only one I ever use, as it’s the one I always have with me.

·        Bluetooth and voice dialing for hands free operation (required by state law in both Washington and Oregon, where I spend most of my time). Also, I’d love the same integration with my Jawbone that I have with my iPhone, i.e. volume control and battery indicator.

·        Apps I can’t live without:

o   Evernote: I’m willing to move my data into OneNote so long as I can sync between the web, my phone and my PC.

o   Social networking clients: IM, Twitter, an RSS/ATOM Feed Reader, YouTube and Facebook.

o   Converter for currency, distance, volume, etc.

o   A Compass.

o   A Flashlight. I have used the ambient life from my phone to get myself out of the forest in pitch blackness. Without it, I’m sure I would’ve been hacked to pieces by Jason or Michael Meyers.

o   TripIt, Movies, OpenTable, UrbanSpoon, Mint: I use these all the time.

o   Shazam: Before this app, I used to record snippets of songs and email them to my son would be charge me $.50/ea. to find the title and artist so I could grab them for my phone. Shazam has cut out the middle man and represents ~100% of the music I purchase these days.

o   Skype or some other good way to use my phone to do IP Telephony (or even IP Video Conferencing)

o   Tetris! I guess there are other casual games in the world, but that’s mine.

 

Because the WP7 hasn’t shipped yet, I can pile all of my hopes and dreams on it and, like everyone else not on the WP7 team, I have very little idea of whether my hopes will be fulfilled, but that doesn’t stop me from dreaming. So now it’s your turn — what did I miss? : )

 

P.S. I know that lots of phones have a subset of these features and I’m sure someone will tell me that, with the correct config, I can make their favorite phone do all these things. I know that’s going to happen because whenever I complain about a missing feature in the Visual Studio editor, some emacs guy says, “Oh, you can do that with Alt+Shift+Left Elbow in my editor!” I don’t care about what your phone can do. No phone’s UI has stirred me like the WP7’s UI. That’s the one I want to use, so that’s the phone I’m going to bang on ’til my incomplete list is complete.

Here’s how the Deep Fried guys describe episode 45: “At PDC 2009, ‘Oslo’ was renamed to SQL Modeling and it left a lot of developers scratching their heads. What better way to sort it all out than to talk with someone deep into the stack. We sat down with Lars Corneliussen to see how this is all going to turn out and it what it means for developers. Definitely an interesting show as it paints a different picture about where things are going with ‘M’, ‘M’ Grammar, SQL modeling, Entity Framework, Quadrant and so on.” Check it out!

An update of the SQL Server Modeling CTP (November 2009) that’s compatible with Visual Studio 2010 RC has been released on the Microsoft Download Center. This release is strictly an updated version of the original November 2009 CTP release to support Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 RC. It contains no other fixes outside of those required to work with the new RC. Enjoy!

When I was but a wee lad, I learned that when it came to my computer, I was often going to be waiting on something, whether it was the CPU, the IO or the memory. Now that I’m all grown up and spending a great deal of time on handheld mobile devices, I’ve discovered a whole new thing I’m waiting on: charging the battery.

In the bad old days of DOS, I spent a disturbing amount of time working on my autoexec.bat and config.sys files to optimize the loading of drivers and TSRs (DOS programs that run in the background for you whippersnappers). Now, instead of optimizing for memory usage on my PC,  I spend my time optimizing for power consumption on my phone, e.g. turning off 3G and Bluetooth when I don’t need them, turning down the polling frequency on my SMTP mail accounts and spreading power adapters everywhere in my world where I sit for more than 5 minutes. The single most important feature on my phone is that’s it’s on and the way power is managed on my iPhone means that this is often not the case. Sometimes I pine for my Windows Mobile Dash for just that reason; it ran for days instead of hours.

And as bad as this power situation is, it would be even worse if my phone ran more than one app at a time. I don’t worry about random apps from the AppStore using too much memory or crashing; I worry about them eating my battery and killing my iPhone in the middle of a route to somewhere I’ve never been. By not allowing background apps to run, Apple is trying to do the right thing but (although my battery life still sucks). I don’t have personal experience with Google phones, but since they do allow background apps to run, I have to imagine battery life is an even bigger problem.

So, when I see people lobbying for background apps on the new Windows Phone 7 Series, all I can say is, you don’t want it. What you want is for work to go on in the background for you without the cost in power.

Oh, I want to listen to my MP3s or Pandora while I answer my email like everyone else, but I don’t want every financial/IM/email/social/sports app I download sucking down my battery life because it feels itself to be more important than everything else on my phone. I want those apps to notify me when something I care about happens but I don’t want the processing to discover such events to happen on my phone - I want the processing to happen in the cloud.

You may recall my piece about how important storage in the cloud is for moble devices. Let’s let somebody else scale and manage the storage so we can leverage it. In the same way, we want to leverage CPU and power in the cloud, saving local resources for cool graphics, twitch games and streaming my “Pink” channel.

Of course, if we’re going to push the processing to the cloud, I’m going to need an efficient and easy way to write my WP7 apps to be notified so I can do the actual processing that needs to happen on the phone. And that all needs to happen while I’m navigating and playing my bad girls party mix.

I’m saving my WP7 phone battery for important things after all.