Category Archives: Conferences

Live blogging web 2.0 expo – blackberry

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See table of contents for full list of web 2.0 expo posts

I was going to have Blackberry and IBM share a blog post but Blackberry had too much good content and deserves its own. I’m really excited about trying Ripple.

Live blogging note: when typing on your lap, it helps to have the angle/stand for the ipad. And as usual, i will fix typos/format from home

The BlackBerry Web Platform – Adam Stanley

  • Web app platform on BlackBerry changed a lot in last 2 years
  • Powered by webkit (finally gave up on blackberry browser engine and moved to open standard)
  • On blackberry 6+ (half of users are still on version 5)
  • Showed graph that Bold 4 times as fast as Torch
  • AliceJS – framework to add CSS based animations
  • “the great thing about web is that it is built on standards … As long as we follow those stamdards” – problem #1?
  • devblog.blackberry.com – has most announcements for developers
  • Off topic: noted use micropayments to buy apps (iphone and android too). Why can’t the newspaper do this? 5 cents per article?
  • Even 99 cents is a barier to entry. See if can give away part for free to get people to try
  • Don’t know or can’t say what percent of users are business users (vs those who can download apps)
  • Blackberry makes a tablet now (playbook) – supports flash (ipad giving in one day?)

Dev tips

  • Use feature detection over browser detection [when will this become universal?] – modernizr and has.js frameworks help
  • Viewport – use initial scale so can scale
  • Use addEvenListener rather than assigning to onclick so don’t wipe out extisting (or use jquery)

Blackberry webworks framework

  • for apps that have own icon on the device.
  • Write app in html 5
  • Webworks platform like an adapter from the html app to the java code actually running on the blackberry
  • Provide javascript apis so can call blackbeery specific parts – blackberry.invoke lets you do things like open the camera
  • Other choices : adobe air

Coding concerns

  • Need index.html ( app home screen) and config.xml (blackberry icon and the like)
  • That’s how launchers work. Point xml to url on web
  • Blackberry ripple emulator – said better than simulator because faster. Can see how app looks without fully running it [ i look forward to testing the coderanch mobile site with ripple]. Ripple is a chrome extention. Can run against local or internet content
  • Web inspector – profiling and debugging tool that comes with webkit. It needs to be opened up so can connect to it

Live blogging from web 2.0 expo – ignite

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Earlier in the year, Scott and I live blogged from the server side symposium. I’m going to try to do the same from here at web 2.0 expo. The big differences is I only paid for the keynotes. While I will go to some sponsored sessions i’ll only blog about those if there is non-commercial type content. The other big difference is that it is dark at the keynotes and I am typing on my lap. Will see how that goes.

As with last time, I am typing on my ipad and will edit for typos/add formattimg from my real computer later.

Anyway, tonight is Ignite. I’ve never tried live blogging at ignite. I have tweeted during it though so worst case is this blog post is a bunch of one liners. And if you’ve never attended an ignite you need to! 15 second slides for 5 minutes; what a pace.

I already learned something. I should have decided i was going to attempt live blogging at home and entered the speaker names and titles then.

—————————–

Alexis Ohanian – make the world suck less

  • Co founder of reddit – cool!
  • “not in the one percent” – current events anyone?
  • Slide with reddit guy with two others hipmunk (travel) and breadpig (geeky products using proceeds for good)
  • Forbes list will habe more geeks and builders in future
  • If everyone does a little thing…

Amy Herman – how picasso helps to solve a murder case

  • noticing detail in art helps train. As does changing perspective or talkingabout difficult things
  • Cool. The stuff people point out or is hard to notice

Caroline Drucker – how to get more women in tech in under a minute

  • If want to be respected, use word woman not girl. Huts making tech a better place.
  • Girl implies authority on behalf of speaker or reinforces old way
  • We are happy to be out of high school. Girl ends there
  • Avoid verbiage “I may not be an expert” diminishes you. Makes sound unconfident
  • Women engineer not geek girl
  • Cute pictures of little girls on slides
Note from me: *** really well said and no negatives in the talk impressive.  I use the term girl more than I should.  I need to train myself not to.  Caroline is completely right on this.

Corvidea Raven – how to unstale your cheerios

  • Microwaving doesnt help umless eat the second they come out
  • Water them. So the soggy bothers you more than the staleness
  • Dry clean them 🙂
  • 2 qts liquid nitrogen 🙂

David Phillips – los angeles survival kit

  • Culver city The ie 6 of la
  • Rich people throw out clothes in a year. Go get them
  • Save phone calls for when in car/traffic
  • Not an actor – professional auditioner

Emma Persky – how to win at karaoke

  • Traveling karaoke across country in ran
  • Matching a tune is singing; don’t need to sing well for karaoke
  • Feeling energy/ passion is how you win
  • Choose a song people knowsosense energy
  • Sing with friendat same time (not duet)
  • stick mic at someone else so they help
  • Dress up, props

Jack Aboutboul – let’s talk

  • Future : higher bandwidth communication. Holograms?
  • Showed past of communication evolving – smoke signal, carier pigeon.
  • Pigeon to web is a big jump
  • Community board is original “wall”
  • Punchcard – few characters. Like twitter
  • “are you living your life ir being distracted from it?”

Jonathan Levy – life of an infomercial before and after model

  • Entertaining story. What the title sounds like. More than I ever wanted to know about weightloss

Lucianne Walkowicz – explosions in the sky: the new era of time-domain astronomy

  • Cool chile is recording sky over 10 yrs. Like giant cosmic movie. Data will be public right away
  • Sky alert tells you when interesting eventhappening socan see
  • Sky inherently democratic – open to all to see
  • Lsst.org

Mark Malkoff – stretching boundaries, challenging societym testing limits

  • Will the apple store let me bring in a goat? (that video was hilarious)
Gags:
  • All starbucks stores look the same – visited all starbucks in manhattan in 24 hours
  • Turbulence is like being in a boat getting over a wave – lived on a plane for a month
  • NYers are nice! – had people cary him from southern tip of manhaattan. Went 9 miles
  • Mta buses are slow – beat 42nd street bus on kids big wheel. Won by 2 minutes
  • Crumbs cupcake kill abs in 5 days

Mark’s channel with videos – I really enjoyed the Big Wheel vs Bus one.

Matt Lemay – my new software company

  •  LOL. Loved the rip on lack of business model – it was hilarious when he got to the point. The software is a band. Music is software. And musicians are entrepreneurs
  • Problem to solve : “i don’t have enogh software”
  • $10 live software demo

Michelle broderick – how mayor mccheese built mcdonaldland into a hyper local community

  • Make odd mcdonalds characters look like a group
  • Community starter sets tone for most of time
  • Love the cat on a mac slide!
  • Cats with booze. Opening strong with the cat slides.
  • Want both ofline and offline connecttions for people in your community

Ron Goldin – workcation in the modern era

  • Finding ways to inject energy into work
  • Take a day – less work days per week to avoidlayoffs. But people liked it because got chores/distractions. Half of people dont even take their vacation days
  • Break the day – take break outside work or even go work outside to get more energy/ new ideas
  • Go away – work in different city/culture to get new ideas

Samhita Mukhopadhyay – outdated: 5 reasons dating is ruining your life

  • Dating is sifting thru people like resumes looking for right one
  • Sexist myths – This is a tech blog. Not posting this part. But it was good.

Sarah Feingold – the laws of ring pops

  • Hmm law school has a metal class?
  • Copyright – ip protection grounded in constitution. Like art on ring pop wrapper and the ring itself
  • Trademark – word phrase symbol or design. Like ring pop phrase itself. R = registered trademark
  • Patent for idea such ad”combined candy and ribg” and “ring having a metrics for candy”
  • and they threw out hundreds of ring pops to the audience!

Suraj Patel – the social media echo chamber

  • Politics and twitter. Hmm. I came here to getaway from politics
  • Social media reinforces our beliefs because follow people with similar beliefs
  • Cool tweet cloud graph
  • “everyone is entitled to own opinion but not own facts”
  • Leaving out which party he pointed out. But this is new your city so youcan guess. Where is the other party’s example? Ooh found one – far right and far left picked on at least in passing

Nick Crocker – floss the teeth you want to keep – how to change yourself

  • Little changes take months. Can’t just decide to change
  • First time people dying from too much food
  • Tech makes worse because shorter timefrom impulse to action
  • Tip make only one change for (21 days to habit)
  • do repetitively
  • Easier to ad behavior than remove one
  • Create trigger for new behavior
  • Change with a friend
  • Measure the change so know if on right track
  • Change environment – hard to change if old way all around
  • 10 points in 5 minutes is a lot

Tereza Nemessanyi – i digitized my mom

  • Putting off decisions makes stress which makes us make worse decisions
  • Eustress – make decision making a game
  • Better qus get better answers – must be a decision, close decision could go eithet way, it could happen to you, result matters
  • Site is community polling. Honestlynow.com

Amitguptaneedsyou.com – bone marrow info

Live Blogging with an iPad – part 2

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iPad with Keyboard and DockScott wrote about his iPad live blogging from The Server Side Java Symposium flurry of posts.  While I wrote a little bit about the iPad at the time, I too wish to reflect.  My perspective is a bit different since I operated almost exclusively with the touch screen keyboard.

My path to blogging

Since this was the first time I was live blogging from my iPad, I was learning as I went.  I encountered a few things that didn’t work over the course of a day and a half.

WordPress iPad App

I was excited to see there was an app for WordPress.  I tried this app at home and it was fine.  Turns out it was fine because I was typing everything in one setting.  Problems:

  1. Despite indications to the contrary you can only have one draft in the iPad app at a time.  This wouldn’t be so bad if they provide a warning when you try to create a new draft.  Instead they silently delete the first draft.  FAIL.  I lost a whole blog entry that way.  The website indicates you can have multiple drafts, but it didn’t work when I tried it.
  2. One of my blog entries posted twice.
  3. I learned of other even worse problems that I didn’t encounter first hand.  Scared me sufficiently to jump ship though.

The WordPress web page

I started out happily typing in the wordpress app.  Then I got to a screenful of content and no scroll bars appeared.  Using one finger to scroll scrolled the whole page and not the textarea.  (see below for solution) My blog posts tend to be long.  Since I didn’t know how to scroll, I deemed the web page approach unusable and looked for a better solution.

Notes

I spent a while typing my text in Notes and copy/pasting it into the WordPress app.  This worked ok, but I got frustrated typing HTML characters.

HTML Editor

I thought HTML editor would solve my problems with Notes because it would be less tedious to type “<“.  Turns out not so much.  While the “<” was on the main screen, the “/” was still not.  (Anyone know of an HTML editor that is easier to use.)  Granted this wouldn’t be a problem on a Bluetooth keyboard because then all the keys are on a keyboard.  More importantly, the editor didn’t wrap text making it hard to read what I wrote.

The WordPress web page – redux

I later learned that you can scroll in the textarea by using two fingers.  Once I figured out how to scroll, I stayed with the web page for my blogging.  I’m wondering if the two finger scroll is supposed to be something “everyone knows” ?

The Bluetooth keyboard

Scott lent me his Bluetooth keyboard to try out for blogging a session. Unsurprisingly, it feels like a real keyboard so I touch type faster and more accurately than on the iPad directly. It’s also really easy to configure. Scott paired it to my iPad right in front of me.

I wouldn’t buy one for two reasons:

  1. The point of an iPad is to have less to lug around. I can’t see myself carrying a metal keyboard.
  2. I wouldn’t use it often so it’s not worth it for me.

Why it is useful:

  1. HTML is so much easier to type on a real keyboard. To the point where I am still actively avoiding it when typing on the iPad.
  2. It’s great having arrow keys to move between lines. Turns out I didn’t miss that at all when I was typing on the iPad because then using my finger on the touch screen was convenient. With the iPad screen a good 6 inches from my hands, I revert to my “use the keyboard over the mouse for almost everything” habits.
  3. You get a full screen on the iPad since they keyboard isn’t using half of it. While this is cool, it turns out not to matter for me, because I’m watching the speaker and only looking at the screen rarely to see what the iPad has “auto-uncorrected” for me.

Basically, it’s not better enough to be worth it for my usage pattern.

An interesting side note: I forgot the part where you have to look for a few keys when you get a new keyboard like the “end” button.

Conclusion

I’m surprised how fast my iPad typing speed has gotten. I am able to touch type with all ten fingers at a “fast enough” speed. And I can often do so without looking at the keyboard. Unless I need a single quote of course. Then I need to look to find the special symbols button.

Also, turning off autocorrect helped as Scott noted.  This helps because the iPad un-corrects technical words. There are a lot of those at a conference. The downside is that turning off auto correct also turns off spellcheck. I could still use spellcheck.

All in all, it took a day, but I am able to blog on the iPad in a sustainable fashion.  Six thousand words later, I had fun doing this.

I got a tip yesterday to turn off auto correct.