I ran into an interesting problem yesterday. All I wanted to do was some simple tokenizing of a partial HTML document, an HTML fragment (it was article content from the website I work on) based on certain elements. At first it seemed like a really simple string manipulation thing, but quickly blew out of proportion into something crazy.
I’ve spent almost a full year with my LG Windows 7 smartphone now, so here is my look back on that year.
Recently, after an Apple Terms of Service change the Audible and Amazon Kindle apps had to update their apps removing links to their respective online stores. I’m assuming this is to force people to use the iTunes and iBooks stores instead. I think this is anti-competitive in its own right, but there is another problem I see for Apple here…
Apple has deliberately ruined the user experience for me on their devices! I can now buy books easier on other devices than I can on the iPad.
I do not feel compelled to use Apples stores instead because I already use these other services.
I wonder if this will ever cause people to stop using Apple products?
Doesn’t anyone else think it is odd that while there was a Windows XP Tablet Edition (in 2002 even), and even Vista had an on-screen keyboard, most people say Microsoft was late to the tablet party? I do.
Remember back in the days of the browser wars? We chose a browser and that was what defined our web experience. In the end Microsoft won with Internet Explorer. They had the desktop marketshare and IE was integrated into the OS to the point that it was (arguably) the fastest and easiest to use. Eventually sites were just built for IE only, or Netscape Navigator only. But a new browser war is forming. In these “modern times” the web browsers are integrated into the phone’s OS as IE was with Windows 95, and we pretty much live with them the way they are: Safari on iPhone, whatever is labeled “Browser” on the Android and BlackBerry, Internet Explorer on Windows Phone, etc.. But a new battle for browser market-share is forming with Opera and Mozilla drawing battle lines.
When a programmer is bored he sometimes over-engineers and under-designs a project. We adopt an attitude like “well, if I have to do this in VS2005 and .NET 2.0 I may as well implement a service-locator and message bus and use all that technology I wanted to learn.
Larry Wall truthfully said the best virtues for a programmer are laziness, impatience and hubris. Sometimes you ignore these virtues when you get bored, you start to do stuff you know you shouldn’t, and your laziness doesn’t balance your hubris.
My new virtue that I’m going to work hard on is, ironically, laziness. 
KISS is the new methodology for me to follow: Keep It Simple, Stupid for design, YAGNI: You Aren’t Gonna Need It for architecture.
So Microsoft released Windows Phone 7 last week. I’ve talked about the phone before. I was pretty disappointed with their ads though:
YouTube: Season of the Witch
I’m baffled. The way the ad looks to me someone was texting while driving and almost killed everyone in the commercial! And then everyone is too busy texting about it to notice each other…
It’s time for a phone to save us from our phones is the big take-away line. The problem I see with this ad is that it condemns all phones as causing accidents and distracting people.
Microsoft: people love using their phones! I do, even my lousy Storm. Phones are distracting because they’re good. Sell me a phone I want to use and does the things I need. In a way, I think that is what you’re saying, but I’m seeing something different.
I downloaded the latest Internet Explorer 9 beta this morning and ran it against html5test.com, and it scored 96 points out of 300. Chrome gets 231 points and even Firefox 3.6 gets 139 (4.0 beta gets 215).
I’m more than a little disappointed. It looks like Internet Explorer is going to continue the tradition of obsolescence and suckage.
Chrome has been my default browser for a long time, and I’m glad that it is! The new IE9 is fast, but that is probably because it doesn’t do anything yet.
Here is hoping that the IE9 team brings in more adoption before IE9 releases.
Yesterday I saw a preview of a Windows Phone 7 (WP7, or #WP7 on Twitter) when Joey deVilla and John Bristowe were in town for a one day coffee and code at a Second Cup in downtown Edmonton.
I’m not going to do a big preview of the phone, I didn’t get that kind of access. I tried out a demo phone running Windows Phone 7 software. Engadget did a great preview with lots of details. Is Windows 7 going to kill the iPhone? I really doubt it. Will it kill Android? I think its likely to take a lot of market from Android, but I’ll talk about that later.
I’m not interested in Apps. WP7 will have Twitter apps, and has Facebook integration built in. Probably a lot of the popular iPhone and Android software will eventually get ported over to WP7. As a web developer I am most interested in the web browsing experience, and it looked pretty good. Continue reading
I was probably the most skeptical person out the when Steve Jobs was making the announcement about his “magical” iPad. In this day and age you can’t take any salesman seriously when he uses that kind of language. But when I saw one in action surfing the Internet the other day I started to see the potential of the platform.
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