The main reason it has been a challenge is that some of this data that we’re encrypting needs to be decrypted and searched through for reports. We have already decided on using SQL Server Reporting Services (which I haven’t worked with before) to handle these reports, however there was the question of decrypting these fields through SQL Server. Luckily we should be able to create CLR User-Defined functions to handle this.

I have also spent some time cleaning up the solution. This particular project has been going on for the past year and a half (or so) and has had quite a few hands touching it. I went ahead and organized the projects in the solution and fixed the dependency problems that everyone had been just dealing with for the past year or so. I think taking care of these issues will make my life a lot easier in the long run.

I found another program called Devo that solves this problem.  Well, sort of… I’ll get to that later.  It’s a Firefox extension that gives you basically the exact same UI (you press Shift+X or set the trigger command to whatever you want it to be instead of it always being Shift+Space) and allows you to search google, yahoo, flickr, wikipedia along with several other sites.  There are also a few other cool features like annotating a site through SharedCopy.  Those are all cool, but what I think really makes this stand out is that it allows you to create your own commands.

So, back to the contextual problem; I still see it here.  These commands are only available when Firefox is open.  What if you boot up your computer and you want to immediately do a google search, without having to open Firefox?  What if you want to use that same UI to do something in another application, like notepad, iTunes, or internet explorer?  I think that ultimately Enso solves the entire contextual problem because it’s a small program you download and install on your computer.  This makes it computer-wide, so you can use it within any application you want to.

As for the features that Enso packs, it has all the web searches you could ask for.  There are media controls to control your music (which Devo also has, however you must have the FoxyTunes Firefox plugin).  There’s the spellcheck command which will do a spellcheck on any text you have highlighted, and since this is computer-wide it brings spellcheck to every application on your computer, which is pretty damn cool if you ask me.  There’s also the launcher commands which, if I’m remembering correctly, crawls your computer for applications to run and adds them to the launcher so to open the calculator you can type, “open calculator” or “open calc” since the auto-complete will fill in the rest.

I really like these command based UI’s that allow users to do what they want to do quickly, without losing focus of the task at hand or having to reach for the mouse, keeping the UI pretty (not like a command shell), and keeping the commands easily readable by humans.  I think that once more and more people start using these, they’ll realize how helpful these tools can actually be.

On July 7th they entered “public beta” (aka you can use it now and it’s going to be an ongoing project that will never actually have a real release, much like every other web 2.0 site.)  Looking at their updates on the main page it seems like they’re coming out with new features for it somewhat regularly.

When you come across a PodiPodi enabled site, you can hold shift and press space. You’ll then be presented with a text box in the top left corner of the page that looks similar to this:

Empty PodiPodi command box.

You can then type a command into the box and hit enter, in this case I’m searching Flickr for the term “nature”:

Searching Flickr for nature through PodiPodi

After this, hitting enter will execute the command and the results will be displayed in the middle of the screen:

PodiPodi Flickr Results for the search term 'nature'

The features currently supported include:

• calculate (calculates a simple mathematical expression)
• find (finds text on the site)
• flickr (searches flickr)
• google (searches google)
• google images (search google images)
• open (opens a section of the site)
• send comment (sends a comment to the web master)
• twitter (gets the 20 most recent updates for a twitter account)
• yahoo (searches yahoo)
• yahoo images (searches yahoo images)
• youtube (searches youtube)

If you’re looking for a quick way to “integrate” your site with all of these different services and also add a few neat (read somewhat useless) features to your site, this offers that, along with a very nice and unique user interface.

And as always, DreamHost made the entire upgrade process a simple one-click step.

For those of you that haven’t heard, apple has released their SDK. This means that the development tools are available to easily create applications for the iPhone, with apple’s blessing. After I saw some of the applications that were created, I was pretty much hooked.

I decided to start looking into getting the SDK, then realized that it was only available to those running OSX. So, I looked into virtualization options for running OSX on a PC. I didn’t really find a whole lot. Sure, there’s VMWare, Virtual PC, etc; however I couldn’t find anywhere where these solutions supported OSX specifically. I looked into it a little more and found out that there is a clause in OSX’s EULA that states it’s not to be run in a virtualized environment. After finding this out, I decided to go ahead and just get a new Mac.

So, I’m now typing this up on my new Mac Mini (the cheapest Mac they had at the apple store). Apple also has a program called one to one, where you can schedule appointments to go in and learn how to use your Mac. The email they sent me states, “learn how to do everything you ever wanted on a Mac–with your trainer beside you every step of the way”, so I plan to take advantage of that and try to get them to teach me the basics of XCode. I’ve installed the SDK and I am now exploring, trying to figure out just what you have to do to create an application for the iPhone. From what I’ve found so far, there’s not a whole lot to it.

1. You have to learn Objective-C, which if you know any other programming language, really isn’t a big deal. From what I can tell, it’s very much like C with some syntax changes.
2. If you want to hook up your application to run directly on the iPhone, as shown in the roadmap, you’ll need to sign up for the beta and fork over $99. As I understand it now, they’ve only accepted a very select few people to start the beta, but will expand it to more people once it gets rolling. It sounds to me like apple’s getting their partners in early so they can have a little jump start, but what do I know, I’m just an infrequent blogger.
3. You need to be able to go in and make positioning, size, color, etc changes to the UI in the code. From what I’ve seen so far, the Interface Builder isn’t working for iPhone apps yet. Unless anyone can show me otherwise, I’m going to be doing these things by hand for awhile.

Coming from a C# (Visual Studio) background it is quite different. But I almost feel as though I’m getting back to my computer science roots. New things to explore and fiddle with.

That’s really it, I haven’t run into a whole lot, however I’ve only really created a Hello World program, which I basically copied from an example on apple’s site. I’ll be sure to keep my blog updated with things I encounter and create.

It uses information found from the Music Genome Project to hone in and figure out exactly what you want to hear. Very cool.

Trip also showed me something called Digg. This is a cool news site that shows you popular stories from across the internet. It’s pretty cool, too.

The quarter is almost over, thank god. I’ll be happy to get back home for Christmas and hang out with all my old friends that’ll be there, unlike last time I came home when they were all gone at school, lol.

As far as school goes, I got put into the advanced C# class. I decided to setup a wiki for people to reference if they get stuck or something. You can check it out here. “WTF” has become the slogan for the advanced C# class. Currently we’re creating our own Integer data type. We have to overload all the operators and everything. Can you say, “WTF?”

Related: The Daily WTF

Most computer users have no idea how to install or even uninstall software. Trying to fix something foreign such as the registry is like reading Greek in Latin.

Then again, those who have downloaded the Netscape browser are not your ordinary users; They are on the cutting edge, the cusp. They are also the real minority.

According to figures from w3schools.com which is a site frequented by the Browser elite, Netscape is not even a pimple on a mole. For them, the real browser battle is between Microsoft IE and Firefox. Microsoft makes up 65% of use while Firefox is now up to 25%.

That is a big WOW and it doesn’t take a degree in foreign archaic languages to understand the significance.

Last May, according to the wschools.com users, Microsoft IE was booming at 82%. It has dropped 17% in a year. This is the case despite the fact that virtually every computer has IE as the default browser. This means that people are walking with their fingers. Netscape still has a chance to pick up steam. Once it gets rid of some of the bugs and the bad press, it might start to inch its way up and might cut into both Firefox and Microsoft. Still, the average user is going to continue using what comes easiest and the geeks will play with the browser that has the buzz and the stability.

You can see that due to Internet Explorer instabilities and those trying to poke holes in it, there is room for change. The browser war is far from being over. Much will depend upon the satisfaction of Apple, the maturation of AOL and competing technologies that want to be the window to the Internet world, even if their name in Latin, Greek or even English is not Windows.

(Source: BayouBuzz)

Personally I use Firefox and I love it.