Oliver’s Tower

I’ve been learning a ton about ASP.Net and its newest version 3.5 which contains some extremely handy feautures including some seriously awesome Ajax integration.  Needless to say my head has been stuck in tutorials, videos and example code for the past week.  Briefly I’m going to run down some of the features that I have found of particular interest.

I’m really glad that Microsoft has jumped on board with this and has put all the chips in so to speak.  With built in functionality for Ajax applications it makes ASP.Net a real contender in the space.  And with the Ajax control toolkit being a community project it makes it a real viable option to take and use Microsoft technology even for those that see Microsoft as the closed source behemoth it still partially is, albeit slowly lumbering in the general direction of community openness.  Now on to the features.

• Code Behind for js files (I saw this in 2.0, but haven’t seen it in 3.5… sure its still there just need to relocate it… All in all a really neat feature and something that a C# dev can understand)
• Extenders for ASP.Net controls (This is so very very cool and something that makes it really powerful)
• Update Panels (allowing you to drop in what you need to ajaxify it, and you know everything it should affect)
• JavaScript IntelliSense (Not fantastic but definitely invaluable)

So, what else is there?  Leave a comment telling me what I should be looking at and where.  Or, if you have an interesting thing for me to learn about send an e-mail my way: charlie.oliver {at} gmail {dot} com.

I’ve been attending activities in the social media scene here in Utah ever since the first Social Media Dev Garage held at Twelve Horses that hosted Jeff Barr who discussed Amazon Web Services,  and I’ve been hooked ever since.  From what I have seen of the technology community here in Utah not many are doing the sort of fresh and innovative work that Bungee Labs are doing down in Orem, Utah.  The tool that they are working on is an endeavor that could shake up the developer community in a big way.  That tool is called Bungee Connect.

First off they are hosting the IDE on their servers which allows you to work from any machine without having to install thousands of dollars worth of software.  Secondly, they are providing the hosting for your application, which can be a pretty worrisome thing for a developer to have another company host their application without them being able to access the files themselves.  Fortunately they mentioned that later on down the road they will be providing you with a bevy of hosting options so I don’t think this fear will be well founded for at least very much longer.  But I think the real trick with Bungee’s software is going to be the amount of ajax that is going on in the background that you really don’t have to worry about, and Bungee’s flatened MVC architecture that abstracts things out so each section can communicate quickly and effectively.  I don’t have much in the way of media to show you from them but they were exceptional hosts who took the time to sit with us and walk us through setting up our own application that was able to take advantage of some of the shared code base that one of them had been working on (Brad Hintze took and wrapped the Twitter API into an importable class allowing us to call the API without having to mess with the XML return)  But in the way of media I highy recommend Jesse Stay’s video on Bungee Connect.

I sincerely feel as if I am beating a dead horse here and probably preaching to the choir in regards to the usefulness of the social networking tool known as Twitter.  But after seeing this article in regards to how a UC Berkeley student was able to notify his fellow students of his arrest and them in turn notifying the proper authorities to help him get out I don’t think I can say it enough. Oh, did I mention?  The guy was in Egypt.  Being arrested for taking photographs of a noisy demonstration.  And those authorities his friends notified?  Oh little groups like the embassy in Egypt and UC Berkeley itself to which they were able to provide legal counsel to get him sprung.

The ease of use for what was referred to in the article as a ‘wire service’ was probably pretty incomprehensible just a decade ago.  In addition to that it has much more real implications locally, today I found out about a meetup with a few locals and someone from Seattle that was in town just to sit and lunch and discuss whatever we felt like discussing.  This has particular interest to me because I am legitimately thinking of moving to Seattle or Portland or San Francisco (Live in one of those cities? Follow me on Twitter!).  And I just made friends with someone who lives in one of those cities.  When using networks like Twitter you’ve got to go above and beyond, you’ve got to think of the possibilities of how it can affect you on a day to day basis and how it can affect you in times of crisis.  So, I challenge you;  If you haven’t signed up for Twitter yet, then do so.  If you have already friend me up and then proceed to friend up someone in another city… You never know when they may come to yours or vice versa.

I was just checking out ReadWriteWeb’s post on Social Media Evangelists and realized that I myself am a part of these individuals.  No, I don’t have the title at a company nor do I have specific credits to back it up (besides the social networks you can connect with me on on the right of the screen) but what I do have are friends.  These people are more and more becoming involved in social networks and they are not using them to their full potential or haven’t found the niche network they enjoy most.  I see my own role in my circle of friends to help push them towards networks that will benefit them and to help realize them to their full potential.

 The other day I was having a conversation with a few friends regarding Facebook applications and how annoying they can be but I was able to bring a few applications that are actually beneficial!  Applications like Takes all Types! (a way to connect blood types & organizations that use that date) and Linking Universe (an app that helps professionals see the value of their network) are just a few examples!  Or the other day when I was hanging out with a few friends and my cell phone kept going off and I was texting, everyone immediately assumed I was texting a girl but alas it was Twitter and I was able to go into a diatribe about how useful Twitter can be for your professional life and how beneficial the building of a network can be.  

Would I relish the opportunity to do this sort of work on a day to day basis professionally like Robert Scoble? Most certainly!  But for now I’ll work on learning the various API’s while Twittering my heart out!  And if you haven’t noticed I’ve been on a bit of a network binge and have asked around 10 new friends on both LinkedIn and Facebook.  If I don’t have you on one of the networks listed on the sidebar, all I can ask is what are you waiting for!

So, by my very nature I’m a little sarcastic.  Perhaps the better way of putting it would be that I have a much more dry sense of humor.  Witty retorts and clever jabs are a means of expression for me.  The question of this post is whether or not sarcasm and other forms of dry humor communicate well over text, more specifically over 140 characters on Twitter.  The challenge has always been there while using text.  How many times has an instant message or e-mail been ill received due to some clever remark tossed in as a bit of funny to lighten the day when really all it accomplished was to raise the ire of those it was directed towards?  More often than I can count before I send a message I am rereading it and trying to determine double entendres and those words that might sear or cut the flesh of another.  So, the recommendation in this regard is to take care in the words used and only use the choicest of phrase that may cause a giggle on the other end, but beware such hilarity is not for the faint of heart.

The second difficulty with using a medium such as Twitter is the complications that could arise due to a lack of response.  No one feels the need to use “lol” except under the most exceptional of circumstances or under the guise of a most polite of response.  The medium doesn’t hold up well to this sort of twitty banter, in fact it has been known to collapse due to it.  There are always those around that will not quite get it until it is pointed out to them.  All I can say to that is there is nothing to be done.  If they can’t get it off the bat, and it has to be explained to them, then they will never find it funny.  You can only respond with kindness and prepare for the backlash of those folk who just don’t get it and probably never will.

Ideally with such limited amounts of characters as one has on Twitter I would recommend all of the usual inserts that can be made but of course you’ll need to shorten them i.e. drop the dashes in smilies, when using tags drop the vowels etc.  The other thing that I believe will be wholly necessary is a decent vocabulary, gain it through any means necessary i.e. reading more frequently, reading the notecards from your SAT’s, and stealing dictionaries from little old ladies. Wow, almost 450 words… Am I a windbag or what?  Please comment and relay how you feel about dry humor in these times of decreased character counts.

Had the pleasure of attending the first ever PodcampSLC today, it was a blast! The event occured last Saturday the 15th of March. I met some really great people and had some fairly in depth discussions on podcasting. Everything from how to do a proper phone interview to the deeper stuff like monetization and marketing in this Web 2.0/Social media world. First off I’d like to thank Thom Allen of CouchCast and Brad Baldwin of Rocky Mountain Voices for putting on an awesome event! For the first one ever it went pretty smooth, except for that not being able to leave the building after 2 o’clock else you would get locked out part… That was a bit of a downer. So I’ll go ahead and recap some of the discussion that we had right here.

First off, it seems that doing a phone interview should require a landline for the person that you are interviewing. Evidently this is not only to avoid the risk of the call dropping but also to increase call quality and/or prevent interviewee from calling you while going southbound on the I-15 in a convertible. While I agree with this suggestion in principle there will most definitely come a time where the landline will not be an option. Nowadays its entirely plausible to encounter a handful of people in a day that just do not have one. I encounter that person fairly early when I look in the mirror. So, all in all a good rule of thumb but sometimes it just isn’t going to cut it. My preference would be Skype, but thats because most who I would interview would have this medium available to them.

The other thing that I wanted to bring up in regards to PodcampSLC was the last session that I attended which discussed in it what seemed to be the business aspect of podcasting, it hit this note quite hard and it was very interesting and we even had someone from Podango to speak on this. This session, while interesting and comprehensive could have lent itself much more to promoting a podcast and building your podcast rather than seeking out new monetization methods. Although this probably is due to my focus in communities at the moment. I think that we didn’t get the chance to hit this topic due to time constraints (and it was a long day as it was) but fortunately I came across (via Scoble & Calacanis’ twitters) a video by Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibraryTV which explained everything that would have needed to have been covered. Here’s a link. Watch it, learn it, live it.

Check out the photo’s I took at the PodcampSLC on Flickr!

Wanted to make a brief mention of the new podcast that I have launched title the SMS Podcast.  The idea is to focus on news in the social media space.  Head over to SMSPodcast on wordpress to check it out.  Feel free to leave feedback anywhere you know I’ll be (Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, this blog, or the SMS Blog).

Thanks!

• Remember that law suit that viacom logged against google? Yeah, they’re not going to get jack.  Judge ordered no punitive damages  Serves’em right.
• The main text editor that ships with Mac OSX adds junk to your text if you’re trying to code with it don’t bother.  TextWrangler from BareBones Software was the free alternative I chose to use.  TextMate is $62 and BBEdit is $125, too rich when I don’t need the extra features just yet.
• Leo Laporte’s show The Lab was cancelled by Rogers in Canada.  Swing by TwiT.tv and sign up to donate.
• Sarah Lacy was actually instructed to conduct the interview as she did.  I guess she was told by SXSW’s coordinators to: Not take q & a from the audience, put more of a business bent to the conversation, and to wear a shorter skirt.  Iffy on that last one.

One of the blogging ideas that I’ve been toying with has been to share with the audience (that’d be you) the different things that I am learning of late. Mostly this will be a showcase of interesting things I’ve found on the net or personal experiences I’ve had of late.

• Geeks political affiliations can have very productive outcomes. (See the draft lessig project)

• Delphi 8 is the worst IDE/language combination I’ve encountered thus far. (I’d rather code in COBOL, which yes despite my age I have done)

• Pownce announced a revision of their API.

• Jason Alba made it into the NY Times for his written works, Congrats Jason!

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to attend CodeAway with some of my fellow Utah Geeks, the second of such events that I have been able to attend.  If you have yet to attend such an event I strongly recommend it, not only was it excellent for meeting a bunch of great individuals and perhaps getting some work done but also a little practice with Rock Band.  This week at the CodeAway we went into a tangent regarding politics…  You’re still there?  Good.  So we went on to a tangent regarding politics, this one due to the attendance of M. David Peterson who does development work for Lawrence Lessig who as you may know recently is considering a run for Congress.  Now, you may be wondering what that has to do with Utah or any place else for that matter.  And that’s what I’m now going to tell you about.  One of Lessig’s goals in running for Congress is to begin a movement just like he did with Creative Commons, this one targeted squarely at those in Congress and their, for lack of a better term, shortsightedness when it comes to campaign financing.  Lessig would like to make available to those in Congress a simple notice that they can use to say that they refuse to take money from special interest groups and so on.

The fantastic thing about this is, that he doesn’t even have to win.  With the amount of money that’s being poured into elections this year making it the most expensive in history, and with multiple candidates standing up and saying that they will not take money from special interest groups its the perfect time for someone to stand up and give them a simple way of saying that they can not be bought in any way shape or form.  This very well could be the extra nudge that is necessary to get the ball rolling on something above and beyond that of campaign finance reform but indeed a veritable upheaval in the politics of the United States.

Head over to see the video Lessig posted on Lessig08.