I kissed Google goodbye more than a year ago and haven’t looked back. I think once people start using Bing, they’re going to do the same.

Answer Suggestions for IE8

IE8 is awesome, so go get it. Live Search has these things called Instant Answers where it can respond with succinct answers to your question, rather than just web pages that may have the answer. Good examples are weather and numeric conversions—you just want to know the answers, not necessarily follow links to find it.

You get normal search suggestions of course, but the cool thing is that the display of the instant answers is built right into IE8. You can type into the search box and have the answers returned right in the drop down as you type. Here are some samples:

Weather: Solve math equations:

There are a whole lot more kinds of answers. Maybe someday I’ll detail them.

Live Search Suggestions for Firefox

Firefox users haven’t been left out either. While there isn’t a full instant answers integration, Firefox does support search suggestions. You can download the plugin from the Firefox plugin directory.

Live Search for Windows Mobile

This is something I think really needs more publicity. I have a Samsung Saga i770, which I love. One of the first things I put on it was Live Search Mobile.

First of all, this thing has had speech recognition built-in since way before Google’s similar tools.

It can easily find directions, gas prices, movies, traffics, maps, local businesses (by categories), and general web info. I use this app all the time.

There is custom software you can install for both Windows Mobile and Blackberry. It will work on the web for any other mobile phone that can get on the Internet.

And, by the way, it supports auto-suggest as well.

On your phone, you can go to wls.live.com to get it.

Related links:

• Instant Answers in your IE8 Search box [Live Search blog]
• Live Search autosuggestions come to Firefox [Live Search blog]
• Live Search Mobile site

Here’s a brief run-down of my initial experience with it.

Installation

There is no installation file—everything is packaged into a zip. After running, I was greeted by a project selection screen, in which I created a new project and added some assemblies.

Analysis

Once you have all the assemblies you want to analyze selected, you can run the analysis, which generates both an HTML report with graphics, and an interactive report that you can use to drill down into almost any detail of your code. Indeed, it’s almost overwhelming the amount of detail present in this tool.

One graph you see almost immediately is Abstractness Vs. Instability.

This is a good high-level overview of your entire project at the assembly level. Basically, what this means is that assemblies that are too abstract and unstable are potentially useless and should be culled, while assemblies that are concrete and stable can be hard to maintain. Instability is defined in the help docs in terms of coupling (internal and external), while abstractness is the ratio of abstract types to total types in an assembly.

This is followed by the dependency graph:

After these graphics come lots of reports that dig into your code for all sorts of conditions.

For example, the first one in my report was “Quick summary of methods to refactor".” That seems pretty vague, until you learn how they determine this. All the reports in NDepend are built off of a SQL-like query language called CQL (Code Query Language). The syntax for this is extremely easy. The query and result for this report are:

With very little work on my part, I instantly have a checklist of items I need to look at to improve code quality and maintainability.

There are tons of other reports: methods that are too complex, methods that are poorly commented, have too many parameters, to many local variables, or classes with too many methods, etc. And of course, you can create your own (which I demonstrate below).

Interactive Visualization

All of these reports are put into the HTML report. But as I said, you can use the interactive visualizer to drill down further into your code.

The first thing you’re likely to see is a group of boxes looking like this:

These boxes show the relative sizes of your code from the assembly level down to the methods. Holding the mouse over a box will bring up more information about the method. You can also change the metric you’re measuring by—say to cyclomatic complexity.

Another view, perhaps the most useful of all is the CQL Queries view. In this, you can see the results from all of hundreds of code queries, as well as create your own. For instance, I can see all the types with poor cohesion in my codebase:

In this view, the CQL queries are selected in the bottom-right, and the results show up on the left. The metrics view highlights the affected methods.

Creating a query

Early in the development of my project, I named quite a few classes starting with a LB prefix. I’ve changed some of them, but I think there are still a few lying around and I want to change them as well. So I’ll create CQL query to return all the types that begin with “LB.”

   1: // <Name>Types beginning with LB</Name>

   2: WARN IF Count > 0 IN SELECT TYPES WHERE 

   3:  NameLike "LB" AND     

   4:  !IsGeneratedByCompiler AND 

   5:  !IsInFrameworkAssembly     

That’s it! You can see the results to the right. It’s ridiculously easy to create your own queries to examine nearly any aspect of your code. And that’s if the hundreds of included queries don’t do it for you. In many ways, the queries are similar to the analysis FxCop does, but I think CQL seems generally more powerful (while lacking some of the cool things FxCop has).

VS and Reflector Add-ins

NDepend has a couple of extras that enable integration of Visual Studio (2005 and 2008) and NDepend and Reflector. When you right-click on an item in VS, you will have some additional options available:

Clicking on the submenu gives you options to directly run queries in NDepend. Very cool stuff.

Summary and where to get more info

If you are at all interested in code metrics, and how good your code is behaving, how maintainable it is, you need this tool. It’s now going to be a standard part of my toolbox for evaluating the quality of my code and what parts need attention.

If you’re using NDepend for personal and non-commercial reasons, you can download it for free. It doesn’t have all the features, but it has more than enough. Professional use does require a license.

One of the things I was particularly impressed with was the amount of help content available. There are tons of tutorials for every part of the program.

I’m going to keep playing with this and I’m sure I’ll mention some more things as I discover them. For now, NDepend is very cool—it’s actually fun to play with, and it gives you good information for what to work on.

Links:

• NDepend homepage
• NDepend metrics explanation

I just read all about Google Chrome, their new open-source browser, in the comic they put out. No download link at this time, but I’m sure it’s coming. My initial thoughts:

The Good

• The JavaScript changes seems to make sense. The better garbage collector and speed improvements can’t hurt.
• The free API to download lists of malware or phishing sites is pretty nice.

The Meh

• UI changes. Making each tab its own browser entity and putting controls in each tab? That’s it? So what!
• Some of the search enhancements are interesting, but I don’t think that anyone will care that much in the end.
• Showing most popular pages…meh
• Unclear on the plugin model. Will they have their own? Will they run ActiveX (they imply yes). How about Firefox plugin compatibility? All we need is yet another API for writing plugins.

The Ugly

• A new process for each tab? Are you serious? I understand that it’s (maybe)the only way to completely isolate web pages from each other, but given how many pages some people have running, that means an extra 50 processes on the system. That’s a lot of resources. I know their idea was to consider each web page an application, and of course each desktop application is its own process, but I don’t think we actually treat most web pages like applications. We create new browser tabs and switch pages with wild abandon. Most web sites are NOT applications–they’re reference. They’re just books open to 50 pages at once. (Was process isolation really a problem that needed solving? I almost NEVER have runaway tabs in IE7)
• Proprietary JavaScript hooks. Sure, it’s open source, but they’re still building things into their version of JavaScript that only work with their browser.

This Means War

• First front: SilverLight. Gears seems to be a direct assault on the concept of .Net and SilverLight. The technology and scope are different now, but I think ultimately they’re going after the same target: having the rich-client experience in your browser on multiple OSes/browsers.
• Second front: Firefox: the only people who are going to download Chrome or even understand what it is are the people who use Firefox. If Chrome succeeds, it will be at Firefox’s detriment. Thanks for playing.

Overall, I felt a big “meh” after reading the comic. While many of the ideas are interesting, overall, I don’t see a compelling reason to switch. I’ll try it out when it becomes available, and my opinions will probably change on some things, but Google is going to have to do a lot more to overthrow IE. Maybe their purpose really is to just throw ideas out there and see what sticks, what gets integrated into competing products, etc. We’ll just have to see what happens next. It’s going to be a fun couple of years!

(P.S. Also, please everyone, especially media, start mocking Chrome for it’s “p%%n mode” just liked you mocked IE.)

The GeoEye-1 satellite will be the highest quality commercial satellite out there when it launches next week. I am a little sad I’ll miss the launch party (my last day is the 2nd of September), but the date is what it is.

I was going to enter a large-scale creation of my own, but sadly ran out of time with dealing with new job, moving, etc. I’m still going to go, though.

When: Saturday, August 30, 2008 – Sunday, August 31, 2008 11am – 4pm

Where: Sheraton Premier at Tysons Corner

More info: BrickFair Website

Pictures of the 2006 event: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?q=brickfest+2006&stype=dfc

Be there AND be square…

You can find the photos on flickr.

AND I love the Discovery Channel  commercial.

Fairfax City runs a division called Volunteer Fairfax that provides volunteers for numerous events through the year. They also organize team-building service activities for your company, up to thousands of people.

Volunteer Fairfax runs a specific program called Volunteers for Change. This program provides hundreds of weekend and evening volunteer opportunities, organized over the web. It’s perfect for people who can’t commit to regular hours every week or month, but want to do something when they can.

Events from their sample calendar:

• Dinner prep at Ronald McDonald house
• Bowling with the mentally/physically disabled
• Bag groceries
• Thrift store sorting
• Tutoring
• theater ushers
• special city events
• medical supply sorting

How it works:

1. Attend an orientation at their building in the Fairfax County Court Complex
2. Fill out some simple paperwork, sign a release
3. Wait a day for your info to be added to their system
4. Log into the web-site, find an event you can do, and sign up online.

Enter SyncMyCal. It’s easy, it’s cheap (only $25), and you can try for free. I rarely have duplicated events, and I don’t have to think about it ever–it just WORKS.

How it works: SyncMyCal synchronizes an Outlook calendar with a Google calendar. First I created a Google calendar, then I set up SyncMyCal on both work and home computers. I set the home computer to take priority in conflicts, but at work I set the Google calendar to take priority over Outlook–this way there’s a hierarchy of priority that helps to prevent unresolvable conflicts and duplicates.

I bought it days before Google released their Outlook sync tool, but SyncMyCal can do a lot more and I don’t regret the purchase one bit.

The latest version also syncs contacts, but I haven’t used that yet.

Geek Softworks

It uses WordPress, but it’s not a blog–it’s for the software I write. So far, only a few products are up, including DiskSlicer (a new version!), Windows Media Top 10 Plugin, and Word Count for Windows Live Writer.

I also setup forums for those projects. The site is still pretty small, but it’s functional and it will grow.

Thanks for looking!

This is the closest I’ve come to signing up:

(BlueJeansCable.com)

(via digg)

One issue I didn’t really see addressed in the comments on the post is the overall issue of mail safety. People need to consider the seriousness of stealing mail. There’s a reason the fines for it are so severe. A reliable and trusted mail system is the foundation of a good portion of our society and its communications mechanisms.

Having lived overseas, and having had many family members live all over the world, I can personally testify to the need for a secure mail system. There are countries I would not mail a package to–it would just be a waste of money. The security of our system *HAS* to be enforced harshly or people will lose faith in it and it becomes a system of corruption and scamming. This kid got off lucky. If he were older or there were stronger evidence he were stealing more valuable items, or he were being less discriminating in what he stole, I think he could have gotten a far worse punishment.

Frank Kelly wrote up a good summary of some items. They’re simple, easy to understand, easy to follow, even for non-programmers.

In fact, I’m sending this link out to everyone in my group here at work.

Technorati Tags: testing,programming,bug reporting

 Goodreads.com also looked nice, and it almost won. bookwormr.com, the one I originally found was just too immature at this point. I’m also wondering what features are going to set it apart from the pack, especially when there are so many well-established sites that do the same thing.

Meanwhile, if you want to read some books that will definitely NOT make you smarter, check out 5 Books that can actually make you stupider.

Visit my Shelfari page.

To explain:

I’ve got 3 large books on my nightstand at the moment:

• Scotland: The Story of a Nation – Magnus Magnusson – Much of my heritage is Scottish, and I got intensely interested in Scottish history during our trip to Edinburgh last year.
• Code Complete – Steve McConnell – I’ve read this before, but it’s a good book to review every year or so and pick up new tips.
• The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales – there are many variations on this book. I have a very old, out-of-print edition. I read a few of these a week–they’re mostly quite short.

Those are all fairly large books and I’ve been working on them simultaneously. Meanwhile, I keep getting book recommendations from various places (blogs, podcasts, family). It’s to the point where if I don’t write them down, I’ll forget. I’ve sort-of kept track of books I want to read on my shelf, in an Outlook note, in e-mails to myself, but I was in need of a central repository for this.

So I stumbled upon bookwormr, which is (almost) exactly what I want.

It’s still in its infancy stages, but I think it shows great promise. And it is usable now, despite some rough edges. The owner seems very amenable to suggestions via the blog.

How it works:

• Search for books (it uses Amazon as its database)
• Add them to one of your three lists (already read, reading, want to read)
• You can tag, review, and rate the books.
• See what others are reading.

The author also has a wordpress plug-in and a Facebook app to go along with it. I’m going to try out both.

Features I’d like to see:

• Easier way to add multiple books at a time
• Ability to sort lists according to a ranking system of my own (the author is planning on adding the ability to sort on author, title, book rating overall)

Update: here’s my bookwormr profile.

Technorati Tags: bookwormr,reading list,social network

I have to admit that the thought of such a device is appealing. I have tried reading e-books on my PDA and BlackBerry occasionally, but other than a quick read now and then, it’s too painful–the screen was too small.

But the Kindle…this might work out. I’m seriously considering getting one.

With the news that Amazon is buying Audible, the story gets more interesting. Personally, I haven’t gotten much into audio books, but I know people who do and love them.

I have no idea if or how Amazon will integrate Audible into the Kindle’s experience, but I have a feature request. For a killer feature:

Sell the audio version of a book at a discount (or free, or + $1)when someone buys the e-book format (or vice-versa). Then, synchronize the bookmarks between the two formats. That way, I can plug the Kindle into my car’s stereo on the way home to listen to my current selection, and at night I can pull it out and continue reading from where the audio left off.

That’s my prediction for a killer app. My wife and I do a LOT of reading (we JUST ordered our first TV, and it’s only for NetFlix, and we will not be hooking it up for any broadcast or cable). I think someday soon we’ll both have our own Kindle–it would save a lot of bookshelf space.

Technorati Tags: amazon,kindle,audible,books