Exchange Hosting

A couple years ago I picked up a  Samsung  i730 smartphone, and to unleash its potential to replace my RIM pager I ended up grabbing a domain and exchange hosting.

As typical I grabbed the domain from Godaddy.com  and directed it to DSLExtreme.com's DNS servers so they could provide me with an exchange account.

This has worked like a champ for quite some time, however DSLExtreme charges $9.95/month for the exchange hosting.  Not to bad, but seems a bit expensive for the level of usage I get out of it.

I tried moving to Google Apps a few weeks ago without full success - every thing moved over just by creating CNAME pointers via GoDaddy's "Total DNS Control" tool.  Big props to Google for very good directions specific to GoDaddy in their help section (don't forget the "." on the end of the MX records!). 

I like this approach because doing granular MX records it leaves the rest of the domain at my control (should I want to host a website on the domain or any subdomains).

Biggest problem with Google Apps was sending and receiving messages from Windows Mobile.  The pop access works, however I had to search a bit to keep the messages in my inbox for more than one "send and receive".  Then once that was working the conversation threading feature caused significant cluttering of my inbox (on Windows Mobile).  Additionally polling for POP access impacts the battery life noticeably.

Last week I took a little time to review this setup one more time.  This time I utilized a hybrid approach between Google Apps and also added exchange hosting.  I ended up utilizing mail2web's personal exchange hosting for ActiveSync push to WindowsMobile.  mail2web's personal exchange hosting costs $1.99/month

In Google Apps I created a forwarding rule to forward all mail to me@mydomain, and in mail2web I set my reply-to address to me@mydomain.

This is working very well, however I still need to automate the syncing of calendar and contacts back up to google.

The FWA: Favourite Website Awards

The Favorite Website Awards is very intresting site - it has quite a list of web sites that do the web differently - most  to great effect.

It is disappointing that most of the sites rely on flash for the snazzy interface (which they could have done in AJAX).

There are some very rich web applications here showcasing some impressive creativity.

 

Check it out here.

Culture at Google

I found this excellent article where a new Microsoft hire is interviewed.  However this isn't a new hire to Microsoft - but rather a former Microsoftie that ended up working for Google, and now is coming back to Microsoft.

Most interesting to me is the discussion points here about developer productivity.  The best part is the discussion of how Google does tech support:  there is a "tech stop" on each floor where anyone can go to get a technical problem solved or swap hardware.  They use a system to track what hardware you are allowed to request (based on role) and what you have checked out.  The convenience and co-location apparently makes for a very productive situation.

Additionally the interviewee claims that quite/private space is crucial to development and that Google has that wrong - this is interesting to here as I have strongly believed in private workspaces for a long time.

The article also covers the Google "20% of time on personal projects", and organizational structure (which sounds broken to me). 

http://no2google.wordpress.com/2007/06/24/life-at-google-the-microsoftie-perspective/

Microsoft Gatineau aka Microsoft adCenter

Pictures of Microsofts up and coming adCenter (think competitor to Google Analytics for most intents and purposes) have been leaked.  You can find them here.

Microsoft's Ian Thomas (who works in Microsoft's Digital Advertising Solutions group) responds on his blog here.

Its very interesting to see that Microsoft is going beyond standard web analytics capabilities and is going so far to blend in other data sources such as Microsoft Passport registration information.  This allows the analytics to show trending on metrics previously unavailable to a site.  For example if the user has logged into any Microsoft service (hotmail, MSN, MSDN, etc..) and then hits a site running MS adCenter analytics, the site will be able to see demographic data such as gender breakdown.  This applies even on data points not collected by the site, even for people that haven't registered with the site.

 

Its uncertain what the privacy issues are to this approach - I'm sure legally Microsoft is permitted to do this based on the user agreements for passport, however is it ethical?

I actually think it is - the data is kept at the aggregate level so its giving web site operators key data without being able to identify any user.  However if they want to target to this data they will need to collect the data point from user.

Early indicators of Rich Internet Application Performance

Intresting testing going on in the rich internet application space.

Follow the link to check out "bubblemark" - a test (with source code) for Silverlight, JavaFX, and Adobe AIR.

Here's the preliminary test results

JavaFX — 14 fps
Firefox + Silverlight (JavaScript) — 56 fps
Firefox + Flex — 62 fps
Adobe AIR — 62 fps
Firefox + Silverlight (CLR) — 99 fps

 

Pretty impressive that silverlight on CLR far outperforms the others.

 

Found via "the Universal Desktop".

Is Software Development Engineering?

I've heard the arguments before - usually arguments against treating software development as engineering.

I found this post thought provoking and informative:

http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2007/06/28/software-engineering-ignorance-part-ii.aspx

Some interesting things from this article include:

• The information available in bridge engineering is often as unknown as in software development
• example:  when the Brooklyn Bridge was defined the properties of steel cables weren't well understood so a safety factor of four was used
• Vince Porcelli points out that the cables were manufactured right down the road in Trenton, NJ
• Differences in developer productivity also exist in engineering disciplines as well as all professions
• example: the 80/20 rule (20% do all the work) does apply to Software Development, but also to football quarterbacks!

Engineering isn't about aligning and designing perfect information.  Engineering is about defining existing information, and planning for variation.  To me its very important to treat software development as engineering in order to plan for the variation in projects.

Only when there are multiple projects of extremely high level of consistency should we move from an engineering paradigm to a manufacturing paradigm.

Brian's Blog

Brian Whaley is a coworker of mine that I have recently been able to get blogging. He's really gotten into it and has created a fantastic resource for search engine optimization (legitimate stuff) and some web analytics.

You definitely should check it out: http://brianwhaley.spaces.live.com/blog/