I saw code that looked like this today:

class Class1 {
  static void Foo(object @this) {
    Console.WriteLine(@this);
  }

  static void Main(string[] args) {
    Foo(“hi”);
  }
}

It freaked me out, but it’s completely legal and kinda cool…

I was chatting with Mike in Australia today and we pulled up Skype as we usually do, ’cuz it just works, e.g. no connection problems, no echo/feedback problems, etc. However, we couldn’t get video4skype to work, so we tried switching over to MSN Messenger 7. The video worked just fine from MM7, but the audio was terrible, exhibiting volume, echo and feedback problems. So, we used a hybrid, i.e. MM7 for video and Skype for audio, which worked just fine.

This hybrid model is prevalent in my communications recently:

• queued messaging: email for text and files, vmail for nuance
• text chat: MSN Messenger 7 or Communicator, depending on whether the person is an employee or not
• video chat: MM7 or Communicator
• audio chat: phone, Skype, MM7 or Communicator
• person-to-person app sharing: MM7, Communicator
• group app sharing: LiveMeeting

Would it be too much to ask that one app do all of this well? Do I really need 6 different apps?

I was chatting today with a friend that complained that he didn’t get any deep technical knowledge from a conference talk. I said that he had unreasonable expectations; the most he could expect from a good conference was the following:

• Networking opportunities (hard for geeks; often works via friend-of-a-friend in bars and restaurants, but only if you have at least one friend and s/he has at least two)
• “Info triggers,” i.e. if you attend a 90 minute talk on MSMQ and you’re having or are about to have a problem that MSMQ solves well, the talk should a) let you know that MSMQ provides a good solution and b) where to go for more info
• Entertainment (and that’s only the good conferences)

In general, every talk should be structured like so:

• Name the thing
• What’s the thing good for
• A demo of the major use(s) of the thing
• Here’s where to go for more info
• Any questions?
• Please remember to tip your waitress

That’s why I really love the idea of groktalks. If you attend 3 groktalks instead of 1 regular talk, the chances of you finding an info trigger are 3x, while still keeping your networking and entertainment chances even.

See IanG, my Avalon book co-author in crime, talk with Ted Neward about WinForms, Avalon and .NET. Nicely done.

I’ve been doing a lot of remote collaborative communications over the last decade. Email, IM and phone calls literally enable me to be an effective remote employee (along with my wit and charm : ). However, to take it to the next level as MS Communicator, MSN Messenger and Skype get real a/v conferencing and app-sharing features (that actually works through VPN and firewalls), every computer needs some extra equipment.

Most modern laptops come with built-in mics, but very few come with built-in cameras. Why should I have to use a strap-on webcam when the camera lens could be built right into the LCD screen? Plus, the mics and software really needs decent noise cancellation (MSN7 and Skype do this well, but not all apps do).

Still, I’ve got my phone, so I can live w/o audio and once I’ve already met someone, video is just a novelty, especially when compared with the power of app-sharing (it’s like you’re sitting right next to someone!).

The thing that I really need that I’m missing is for my computer, and everyone’s computer that I’m conferencing with, to have a stylus attached to their screen. The “let’s just sketch something on the white board” is really the last remote collaboration frontier ’til we get some kind of fancy “virtual presence” stuff going.

I don’t mean that every computer needs to be a Tablet PC. Frankly, I’m not very productive on a computer that doesn’t have a keyboard. But, I want to be able to sketch something right on my computer screen like a tablet can and instantly share it as I do so. Plus, and here’s the rub, I want everyone else to have a stylus, too. If they don’t, they’ll turn to the white board and I’m out of luck across the great divide.

As soon as corps hire bloggers as part of their marketing budget, they’ve missed the point completely. Marketing and PR folks are chiefly concerned with only saying the good things about their own products and (the good ones anyway) nothing at all about the competitor’s products.

Blogs are about the whole truth, which is why are the best corp bloggers are constantly in fear of losing their jobs.

Does anyone see a disconnect here?!?

Here’s a question for folks. Right now, the 1st edition of the WinForms book has several footnotes like the following that include URLs:

“The ntcopyres.exe tool can be obtained from http://www.codeguru.com/cpp_mfc/rsrc-simple.html.”

Unfortunately, unlike the browser you’re using now, while we can underline an URL in a book, we can’t do anything useful with you “click” it, which forces you to type it. Since the URL above is by no means the longest in the book (MS likes to put GUIDs in theirs), I’d prefer not to put that burden on the reader if I don’t have to. With the invention of shrinkster, I don’t have to:

“The ntcopyres.exe tool can be obtained from http://shrinkster.com/452.”

The problem with this, of course, is that I don’t really know if shrinkster is going to be around forever or if I want to tie my book to a single external resource that I can’t control. The idea I had this morning was to use both, which increases the size of the URL in print but gives the reader a shortcut and doesn’t hold me hostage to shrinkster*:

“The ntcopyres.exe tool can be obtained from http://www.codeguru.com/cpp_mfc/rsrc-simple.html (shrinker.com/452).”

What do people think?

*Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big shrinkster fan, else I wouldn’t be dropping their links into my books at all.