http://wonderaffect/index.php/site/index/ en eric@c11software.com Copyright 2009 2009-06-08T22:45:01-08:00 http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/source_of_the_nascar_joke/ http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/source_of_the_nascar_joke/#When:22:45:01Z In my earlier post about the NASCAR joke, I mentioned that a ‘colleague’ passed this joke on to me ... That colleague was actually Dan Fernandez (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Fernandez). Those were fun years - Dan sent that story around our group and it totally saved me, thanks again! As negotiated, 20% of all speaking engagement profits and a lifetime supply of pixie stix 2009-06-08T22:45:01-08:00 http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/new_project_converting_windows_forms_to_windows_presentation_foundation/ http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/new_project_converting_windows_forms_to_windows_presentation_foundation/#When:17:43:00Z Hey guys, We just started a fun new project that I wanted to tell you about. Windows Presentation Foundation is a framework from Microsoft for building really rich, dynamic applications. It has been out for a few years and it really powerful, but it is kind of intimidating. There are many, many new concepts, so it can be hard for developers who are used to Windows Forms to just pick it up. What we’re doing is an open-source project to create a tool that converts between these technologies. We've posted the project to CodePlex: http://wf2wpf.codeplex.com, please check it out if you get the chance. We are in the early stages of development, so please be patient, there are many cases we can't translate just yet. Thanks! Eric. 2009-04-24T17:43:00-08:00 http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/new_amazon_web_services_focused_site/ http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/new_amazon_web_services_focused_site/#When:21:03:00Z Hey guys, As you may know, I tend to use a lot of Amazon Web Service technology when building demonstrations. It really helps to be able to spawn computers quickly, have a lot of storage and/or send Internet-addressable messages. So, what I've done is consolidate the knowledge of AWS that we've built up over the last few years and started putting them on a new site: http://www.learnaws.com. If you have a chance, please do check it out. Thanks! Eric. 2009-02-24T21:03:00-08:00 http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/working_warriors/ http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/working_warriors/#When:18:00:00Z The Wounded Warrior Project is an organization that helps empower and honor wounded soldiers returning home from their duty. At WonderAffect, we are trying to help out by offering free, volunteer-driven computer programming classes. The folks over at the Wounded Warrior Project just graciously posted a notice on their site about this class. At this point, it is kind of an experiment. I've always enjoyed training, so I figured this might be an interesting way to help out. What I'm hoping to do is host a class or two a week for a handful of Wounded Warrior students. Hopefully, this training will open up a new career path for these veterans. Thanks! Eric. 2008-11-14T18:00:00-08:00 http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/the_way_we_build_demos/ http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/the_way_we_build_demos/#When:06:19:00Z Over the years, I’ve tried to refine the process by which I work with my clients to build their demonstrations. I put out a document describing this process at http://wonderaffect.com/wondermethod. If you have a chance, please have a look, I would love to get your feedback. 2008-11-12T06:19:00-08:00 http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/amazon_web_services_demonstration/ http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/amazon_web_services_demonstration/#When:20:06:00Z Kigen Motors” is the name of a fictional company that WonderAffect created as part of a demonstration for Amazon Web Services; the definitive cloud computing solution on the market today. Amazon Web Services (AWS) seems too good to be true. With AWS, you get unlimited computing power, unlimited storage, unlimited messaging and an Internet-sized database at your beck and call. And the best part is the price. You only pay for what you use. The cost can be as cheap as a thousandth of a penny for sending a message, or 10 cents for an hour of CPU time. But, those in the technology industry this can be a very difficult concept to understand and appreciate. What exactly does one do with unlimited computing power? And how does that help my business? That was the challenge that brought Amazon Web Services and WonderAffect together. There are numerous abstruse academic problems that lend themselves very well to Amazon Web Services, but WonderAffect wanted to tell a very simple, clear story with AWS that everyone in the technology industry could immediately appreciate. The story goes like this… A fictional company called ‘Kigen Motors’ wants to start a grassroots advertising campaign called ‘This is how I drive’. The idea behind this campaign is to have Kigen Motors customers submit videos of themselves driving Kigen Motors cars. These videos would be part of a mosaic on the Kigen Motors site. This scenario presents a few very interesting problems that are deftly solved by Amazon Web Services. First, the web site itself needs to be hosted somewhere. Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is ideal for this purpose. When combined with Amazon’s Elastic IP, you can literally have a scalable web server solution with a permanent IP façade in less than 10 minutes. Any kind of video taken by a digital camera or camcorder has to be first optimized for the web. This process is computationally very expensive and can take upwards of a minute for even a short video. With Amazon EC2, you can scale the amount of computing power with amount of incoming demand. As the demand increases, you simply add more computing power. As it subsides, you dial down the amount of computing power. All the while, you only pay for the computing power that you actually use. Any kind of media requires a lot of storage. With Amazon S3 and SimpleDB, you can have as much storage as you need – S3 provides the unstructured storage while SimpleDB provides structured, easily query-able data storage. The “Kigen Motors” demonstration is a great example of the type of work we really enjoy and excel at doing – helping companies connect their innovations with customers. Blogging 2008-11-05T20:06:00-08:00 http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/a_new_metric_for_software_development_wysot/ http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/a_new_metric_for_software_development_wysot/#When:17:29:00Z I came across this blog post today, and it made me think of perhaps what might be the most accurate metric of software development:  WYSOT (what your significant other thinks). The blog article that caught my eye was entitled "The smoothest end game ever… but why?" It is from the Rational Team Concert team blog; the opening paragraph is quoted below: "About a month ago, my wife, who has lived through 20 years of software deliveries with me at IBM, turned to me and asked “Aren’t you guys shipping Rational Team Concert real soon now? You don’t seem nearly stressed out enough - is it still happening?” I assured her that we were still shipping on time, but that, for some reason, this was the smoothest delivery I had ever experienced." Their WYSOT measure must be pretty good; if you can keep your significant other happy during a ship cycle and still ship on time, then your software development process must be pretty solid   2008-10-16T17:29:00-08:00 http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/great_ways_to_get_paid/ http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/great_ways_to_get_paid/#When:17:47:00Z 2008-10-01T17:47:00-08:00 http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/windows_server_coming_soon_for_amazon_ec2/ http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/windows_server_coming_soon_for_amazon_ec2/#When:17:31:00Z I’ve been fascinated with Amazon EC2 for a while now. As you probably know, it provides grid computing in a way that is accessible to everyone. There are no complicated agreements to sign, just swipe your credit card and pay per CPU-hour. Use as much as you want, just pay for what you use. Currently, Amazon EC2 offers Linux and Solaris images, but they just announced that they will be supporting Windows Server in the near future: (http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2008/10/01/amazon-ec2-running-windows-server-coming-soon/).   2008-10-01T17:31:00-08:00 http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/running_java_on_google_chrome/ http://wonderaffect.com/index.php/site/running_java_on_google_chrome/#When:17:50:00Z Just a quick post to share some information. If you are trying out the new Google Chrome browser, you’ll probably quickly notice that it does not support Java out of the box. The link below details how to do it:How To Run Java Applets Including Yahoo Games and Yahoo Chat in Google Chrome? Thanks! Eric   2008-09-04T17:50:00-08:00