Daily Archives: April 14, 2004

Markus Egger on TabletPC and floating TIP vs. expando text boxes

Tablet

Markus has an editorial in Code Magazine with a lot of great points.

He addresses the “why do I want one“ question, starting off with “Tablet PCs have many uses, but it seems that only a few of them are obvious to developers. I think this may have to do with the fact that most developers have the luxury of sitting down at a desk when they work on their computer. At the very least we can set our notebooks on our lap. But this is not true for a wide range of professions!”

He then talks about some issues he sees as a developer. One caught my attention because I actually discussed it on Thursday with Arin Goldberg (Tablet PC SDK Architect) and some others on the team – an expandable input control. A big issue with a tablet data entry application is screen real estate. You want the input controls large enough for handwriting, yet that would make most forms never be able to fit on the screen. The new version of Lonestar (Tablet PC 2004) has a wonderful TIP that pops up where your data entry field is. Field by field. This is close to what Markus is asking for. But another idea – which is where I believe Markus and I were on the same track  – is to have the actual textbox itself expand when you get to it. Without even all of the bells and whistles of the TIP. Just the box which does the reco (oh, that’s how the cool kids say “recognition”).

The answer I got from Arin was that this has been accomplished in OneNote, which means it can be done. However it won’t be a control provided to us — it is up to us developers to create such a control.

Earthlink’s attempt to fight “phishing” email scams

Tools

A few months ago, I received a very cleverly disguised email “from Citibank” with a link to update my records. The link url looked very “safe” https:, even. And I have a Citibank account, but of course I know better. I looked at the source of the html to see what url is truly there and of course it was something totally different. It was the same day that CNN had an article on “phishing” scams, which this was. I sent the email (with the url etc) stripped out to family and friends along with the url of the CNN article warning them that this stuff looks SO valid, but not to be fooled. I also told them that a good practice was to copy and paste the urls’ into their browser rather than clicking on the links.

Now Earthlink is attempting (this has the same photo as the previous article and looks like you haven’t gotten a new page, but you have…) to help their customers by building a list of fraudulent websites. When the earthlink customer clicks on the link, if it is on “the list” – they will be redirected. I can’t see how this is working – maybe through Earthlink’s web based email or through their own email client application. Earthlink was getting 40,000 calls and emails a month about these emails. It will be interesting to see what they come up with and if it is successful.

Lora on Mass Marketing Tablet PC’s

Tablet

Reading Lora’s post on the TabletPC in the MASS marketplace, I realized that the answer to everyone’s “WHY TabletPC?” question is really “WHY NOT?!”.

Think about it. Lora points out that the TabletPC o/s is a superset of Windows XP. A tablet is a laptop with a LOT of other bells and whistles. Why can’t a tablet be the norm for “mobile pc” and eventually, the price gap between the two, already shrinking, may just close.

So like a true Vermonter before me once said in answer to the question “Why Fred Tuttle?” – I say – “Why Not?”

VTdotNET finally attracting IDX developers – and two MORE .NET jobs in Burlington

Jobs

first: .NET JOBS at IDX
Searching on the careers section of the website if you filter on Vermont and use keyword “.Net” there are two jobs there.

This is in addition to the two that I wrote about yesterday and four I wrote about a few days ago.

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IDX is a large company in Burlington and has a LOT of developers using Microsoft development tools – VB, C+. In the 2+ years that Vermont.NET has been around, we have had no IDX developers (save one C++ guy occasionally) at our meetings. The message I was getting when inquiring about this was a) they were not doing .NET yet and b) they were 9-5’ers.

I have been know to terrorize (not really) random strangers at parties when they tell me they are a VB developer working at IDX. “Why aren’t you people coming to our meetings???!“ I ask them.

I have heard that this year they were going to start to really get the developers there geared up for .NET with lots of in-house training.

Finally, two developers from IDX came to our meeting on Monday night. They were very happy with what they saw and said they would definitely be telling more people at IDX about the group. I was so happy to hear this. It has always seemed as though in the their minds, the user group added no value to what that company was doing and was very frustrating to me. I try so hard to let them know that we have some of the most well-known people in the industry speaking at almost every meeting. I have been trying to get the local business community to have an awareness of this group, which is so wonderful and making a big difference for many of us developers in the area. So maybe I am finally making some headway.

I really believe that our user group is an enormous resource in our business community but I just don’t know how to get the word out locally.  People all over the world know about Vermont.NET, but not very many in our own back yard. I see ads for .NET develpers in the local paper and wonder why nobody told me about them so I can share them with the .NET developers in the .NET user group. Oh well. Am I ranting? Sorry. Just venting and wondering wondering wondering…

Tablet PC’s for the single handed writers

Tablet

I had two great excuses to go into Bristol this morning which meant I called up my fellow programmer and friend Jean for a quick “bakery date” as well. While we sipped our coffee and nibbled on our treats (that’s a lie – I’m not quite that dainty!), I noticed the man sitting at the table next to me typing on his laptop with one hand. During the course of the time there, I wanted SO badly to ask him if he had ever seen a tabletpc. So when he got up to leave and it was very clear that he did not have use of his left arm, I finally chose helpful over polite and did ask him.

He explained that he had had a stroke 3 years ago and uses his laptop with ViaVoice and has tried Dragon. In an open space like the bakery, it is too hard to use the speech technologies because of the background noise. We chatted about the tablets for a while and he had heard of them but wasn’t very familiar. Oh, I wish I had had mine with me. But I confirmed that he could use it for email and for everything, that the speech was also built in and that the pricing is really comparable these days to a good laptop. Also that he can get something as small and lightweight as my Acer.

He was so very happy that I had asked and then explained to him about the tablets. I have sent him to www.tabletpctalk.com and a few other sites to learn more about the different models available, pricing, configurations and to talk further with other people like Chris de Herrera. Talking with someone who can REALLY benefit from a tablet pc is such a pleasure after being in a position of having to explain the benefits to people who don’t have such an obvious need for this technology.