How do you know that?

fishing for ideas

2011-02-19T07:36:00.002-05:00

I suspect that KM technologies are based on a series of assumptions about the users needs that have little to do with reality. Vendors and other persons with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo appear to be dictating the direction. It would be interesting to get a truly unbiased set of answers to the following questions:

How do we select the best technologies to make the knowledge worker more productive?

When a new person joins the firm what are his/her expectations for the technologies that we will provide?

Are the technologies that the firm offers better or worse then what they had in college?

Are they better or worse then what they have at home right now?

Does the technology offered by the firm appear out of date?

What are the best things about the firm's technology?

What are the things that don't work?

Is it easy to bypass the firm's security measures?

Some Questions

2011-01-07T20:46:00.002-05:00

I'm going to be argumentative here.

How good is a document management system if users prefer to share documents via email attachments rather than referencing the document in the system?

Why is anyone putting up with IT imposing restrictions without clearly proving how these restrictions will improve life?

Why is anyone tolerating a corporate information environment that is worse than the personal information environment available for FREE in the wild?

QR codes

2009-09-28T17:05:00.002-04:00

Finally getting through my stack of CIO magazine's. Although I monitor over 100 rss feeds in bloglines daily. There is still a place for paper in this world. I appreciate the fact CIO has moved to a smaller cheaper feelin paper. Hopefully that's not as harsh on the environment.

Anyway, happened across the early adopters column on QR codes. I'm thrilled to say I was completely unaware of this and very impressed with this approach to combining technolgy. I'm wondering if we are already using it in our records management environment, and what kind of security hurdles we would have to cross in order to use some variation thereof.

Open source cms

2008-12-05T13:43:00.003-05:00

I finally got around to listening to James Roberstson's excellent presentation Open Source WEB CMS Selection as usual, I am very impressed by the pragmatic approach he takes. I'd have to say the most compelling thoughts I'm left with our his observation of the deterioration of pricing for CMS software in general. I appreciate the way he immediately emphasizes that original cost is rarely the best indicator of the full project cost. I can personally attest to this reality.

Also his recommendation on selecting a cms approach with a sunset date in mind. This makes great sense and could probably be expanded for other classes of software. I think the KM space is just now seeing the first generation of software live past their easily maintainable stage into the cranky, buggy inflexible stage. Roberstson is wise to point out that anticipating this atrophy should be part of the decision.

Giving

2008-08-25T22:19:00.003-04:00

Kind of off the topic, but important. I've been doing my best to tell everyone I know about Heifer International. We are approaching the holiday season, file this away as the perfect gift.

LinkedIn - Competitive Intelligence

2008-08-14T13:54:00.002-04:00

Law.com makes a good point regarding the thought process that should go into a lawyer's use of linked in. I'm sure there will be information leaks at major firms in the near future and a series of legal confrontations shortly thereafter.

I would offer up that the participation of linked in ought to be addressed in firm policy. Security and business development ought to be seriously considered.

Collaboration presentation

2008-08-05T11:53:00.003-04:00

James Robertson was kind enough to post a recent presentation he did entitled Ten tips for succeeding at collaboration. I really appreciate his emphasis on the necessity to define a clear purpose for a collaboration to succeed.

I often explain this as 'the loop', the phenomena one experiences where you see the results of your input returning greater than the effort required. For example, a user agrees to share his/her contacts with a centralized CRM system and as a result is able to see who else in the firm has a relationship with that person.

polling

2008-07-01T16:22:00.002-04:00

Randomly I get a request for various functionality. It seems that the awareness of web 2.0 type functionality is sorely lacking behind the corporate veil.

A recent request was for a quick poll utility for an external facing web site. After a quick discussion of requirements and security I was happlily able to recommend a http://www.micropoll.com/ . This was a clear win and what I'm beginning to feel is going to be the future of information technology.

RSS reader in Outlook 2007

2008-05-28T08:51:00.002-04:00

I'm sure I'm way late to the party on this one. But I just tried using the RSS feature in outlook 2007 and I have to say that I'm not impressed.

I exported my feeds from bloglines into an opml xml file. Outlook imported the 189 feeds, but ignored the folder structure I had set up.

Next I noticed that outlook was treating the individual stories in the various feeds as mail messages. This may work for some, but I think the distinction between a public news story that I'm monitoring is fundamentally different from an email message addressed to me. This was enough for me to initiate removal of the feeds.

I also noticed that outlook was running extremely slowly at this point. Each of the feeds was being processed individually it seemed.

Final complaint, I couldn't highlight multiple feeds and delete them, I endeded up highligting each rss feed and deleting. Somewhat annoying.

This is the second time I tried using a client based news reader. Aside from the issues raised above, I think this is a case where the cloud is a better location for the functionality. More on this at a later date.

The Rosetta Stone ?

2008-04-02T10:29:00.002-04:00

I'd love to hear if others have encountered/addressed the issue of unversal entity identification successfully:

;;;;;
We want to use external data sources in conjunction with our internal data in order to have a richer understanding of our customers

We have our own numbering scheme to identify our customers. Most external data sources have their own identifying elements.

1) We must analyze the identifiers of the external data source and find the correct match in our own internal system.
2) We must store this relationship in a way that will allow us to re-use it
3) We must periodically review the relationship to make sure that the identifier retains its meaning (e.g. the company presented by the external data source is still the same as the one we are identifying internally)

The Hypothesis
1) An extensible data structure could be developed to store the mapping between internal and external business entity identifiers in such a way that the maintenance of these relationships would be most efficient.
2) This structure could be made available to the public so that customers of these data sources could pool resources to keep the COMMON mappings up to date. ‘Common’ refers to all data sources except the internal data identifiers.

Searching for advanced search

2008-01-21T16:33:00.001-05:00

Advancing Advanced Search - Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design Stephen Turbek offers a good summary of some of the problems with various design approaches. I would recommend this summary to anyone wrestling with the problems of precedence retrieval in the legal environment.

Of primary note is the fact that today's advanced search functionality is the realm of the fanatics - the obsessive and research librarians. I would concur that these are the constituents that drive our searching designs, and often paint the technology into the corner rather than hitting the sweet spot of wide usership.

What is 'Knowledge Management'?

2008-01-05T11:00:00.000-05:00

When asked what I do for a living, I tell people my title is Director of Knowledge Management. Often the response is something like the scene in Mel Books' History of the World Part 1 where Mel tells the vnemployement office that he is an unemployed stand up philosopher... Ohh a bullshit artist! she replies with recognition.

It's not that bad, and people do start to catch on when I discuss some of the concrete things I do to help capture information and make it available for use. But I think the label 'Knowledge Management' has been severely damaged by overselling. CRM, Document Management, Search, XML all are very worthy classes of software - but the reality of implementing and realizing true value are difficult.

I'll be looking back on some earlier posts in the next few weeks/months and see what insight can be gained....

From Worlds Best Movie Quotes

"occupation?"
"gladiator."
"did you kill last week?"
"no."
"did you try to kill last week?"
"yes."
"now listen, this is your last week of unemployment insurance. either you kill someone next week, or we're gonna have to change your status."
"occupation?"
"stand-up philosopher."
"what?"
"stand-up philosopher! i coalesce the vapors of the human experience and change it into a viable form."
"oh... a bullshit artist! did you bullshit last week?"...
-history of the world part I

Humility:::Leadership::: coincidence?

2007-12-21T23:14:00.000-05:00

Grechen over at the Happiness has a great post on humility or 'how not to be a bore'. Excellent advise/guidance on how to really benefit from working with other people.

2007-12-11T17:16:00.000-05:00

Just finished reading The Future of Management
by Gary Hamel

An interesting read. There are a lot of good thoughts in here, particularly noteworthy to me are the stress on alternative reporting structures and decision making structures. The discussions of Gore, Google and Whole foods were enjoyable, but not particularly shocking. Overall, I'd have to say that the ideas put forth were very familiar.

Hamel points out that many of the innovative management enhancements have come from 'non-traditional' managers. By this he means those of us who have not gone through the vetted business school manager factories. This fits my profile exactly (I have a degree in arts and letters). To me, the read was a exposure to a few new techniques, not a revelation of a new paradigm.

Congrats to Dave Winer

2007-04-01T10:42:00.000-04:00

Scripting News has its ten year anniversary today. This has been my ideal of what a web log should be. Always relevant, usually interesting. Dave always had something additive to say. Thank you Dave!

asp.net user control for date range

2007-03-13T21:47:00.000-04:00

To save someone a little time in the future, here's the asp.net user control code for a start date and end date control with validation:

<%@ Control Language="VB" AutoEventWireup="false" CodeFile="ucDateRange.ascx.vb" Inherits="ucDateRange" %>
Start Date:

End Date:
ID="valSummary" runat="server" />
Display="None" ErrorMessage="Start Date is required">
Display="None" ErrorMessage="End Date is required">
runat="server"
ControlToValidate="txtstartdate"
MaximumValue="1/1/2012"
MinimumValue="12/31/1988"
Type="Date"
Display="None"
ErrorMessage="The start date must be between 12/31/1988 and 1/1/2012">
runat="server"
ControlToValidate="txtEnddate"
MaximumValue="1/1/2012"
MinimumValue="12/31/1988"
Type="Date"
Display="None"
ErrorMessage="The end date must be between 12/31/1988 and 1/1/2012">
runat="server"
ControlToCompare="txtStartDate"
ControlToValidate="txtEndDate"
Display="None"
ErrorMessage="End Date must be after first date"
Operator="GreaterThan" Type="Date">

asp.net rss

2007-02-25T20:52:00.000-05:00

via my kiwi friends... This looks like a promising rss toolkit.

(Yes, it's been a while since I've posted here. But I've had a few other projects running which I'm sure would be visible to those who cared to nose around.)

Deep geek asp.net 2.0 portals

2006-05-05T14:38:00.000-04:00

Ok, way annoying... In asp.net using the new portal architecture. I've created a page with several web parts that consume a variable from one provider. I use the webPartManager control and create separate static connections. Everything works perfectly right out of the box. Make a change on the provider and it shows up in all the consumers... But wait..

Not that easy. As soon as you close one of the web parts and use the catalog manager to bring it back the connection is gone. I'm sure others are enjoying this little feature. Solution to follow (as soon as I come up with it).

Remember Me?

2006-04-13T22:52:00.000-04:00

Been a while...Been way busy.

I'm doing a re-write of my personal site here. Stay tuned for notes on the conversion and the resulting adventures of migrating from the asp.net community kit to a somewhat custom version of the asp.net 2.0 Personal Site.

Google again

2005-11-14T09:01:00.000-05:00

Wow! Google is going after the site usage market with

http://www.google.com/analytics/

. This looks very promising.

Windows Work Flow

2005-10-16T10:04:00.000-04:00

Biztalk has always been an intriguing, but daunting beast. Microsoft is bringing it closer into the main .net developer toolbox with windows workflow. Stephen Thomas has a great video with a basic sample. It's an excellent introduction.

Tech - Site management

2005-09-30T07:08:00.000-04:00

Here's the requirement: We have two servers servicing our external web site. One at our main location, another at our remote data center. We need to insure that they are completely in sync at all times. Files may only be moved via secure ftp.

I've done a lot of looking, and there doesn't' appear to be a simple way of doing this. The real kicker is that the servers are on two different networks.

I'm building a utility that will do the following:
1) Installed on each server will be a piece that scans the desired directories and builds an XML file containing all the directory names, files and file sizes
2) Ftp scripts will retrieve these from all servers
3) console utility will compare the XML files and create a list of directories to create/delete and a list of files to copy
4) rinse
5) repeat

I'll probably post it over on my other site. It seems generic enough that the world may be interested.

Protecting against Input Attack Vectors in ASP.NET

2005-09-07T21:41:00.000-04:00

It's always worth reviewing another set of articles regarding input validation for asp.net applications. SecureCoder.com by Anil John - Protecting against Input Attack Vectors in ASP.NET

Hey NY, let's give it back.

2005-09-05T08:30:00.000-04:00

I lived four blocks from the trade centers during 9/11. In the aftermath of the attack, the world poured in aid in various formats. It made it all made things easier to bare.

Certainly with the tsunami, and now with Katrina, I think it's time to return the generosity. Let's give as much as possible.

Personally we received some help from FEMA. We'll be giving that back to the Red Cross:

I hope all my neighbors will consider doing the same.

Portal framework for asp.net 2.0

2005-08-30T07:00:00.000-04:00

Introducing the "Web Part Framework" For Microsoft .NET Microsoft is introducing yet another approach to portal creation with the next release of .net and visual studio. Thom Robbins overview article lays out the basics. I've been meaning to replace our custom solution here at big law for some time now. My alternatives appeared to be sharepoint, sharepoint portal, dotnetNuke or a new custom solution. This new set of technologies appears to be worth exploring... More observations as they appear.

Reading: What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer

2005-08-28T08:48:00.000-04:00

I've picked up 'What the Dormouse Said' and I'm finding it fascinating. Markoff makes the events and personalities involved with early personal computing come to life. He really attempts to get at the question of 'how did they come up with that'. Very entertaining.

Carbon dating...

2005-08-26T21:51:00.000-04:00

Ordered a rio carbon the other day. It arrived from Amazon with in two days. On opening the package I was impressed by the finish and design of the product... Until I tried to adjust the volume... The volume wheel was broken straight from the packaging.

Amazon's on-line return processing was almost too easy. Within three minutes I had the pre-paid ups label printed. I later got an email that it would be a week before they can re-send the replacement... Arrghh!

I'm really hoping it will arrive before I take the flight to LA for PDC.

Visual Studio.Net: Cool Debugging Tricks

2005-08-14T22:49:00.000-04:00

There's always something new to learn. Here's a nice set of
Visual Studio.Net: Cool Debugging Tricks. If one of these hints is useful once a day, this is a valuable article.

Applications for Windows SharePoint Services

2005-08-06T07:49:00.000-04:00

Very much worth a look at. Applications for Windows SharePoint Services Several potential uses for these templates. I'd be interested in seeing how easy they are to extend/customize.

Development : A Case For and Against the Enterprise Library

2005-08-03T07:01:00.000-04:00

Nick presents a dialog re. MS's Enterprise library. Inside Workflow and EAI : A Case For and Against the Enterprise Library

We're using the library on our team. I'm happy to report that, once past the initial knowledge boot strap, our developers are doing well with the code. We do have an unfair head start. We standardized on the Microsoft Application Blocks when they first came out, so we're comfortable with the idea of re-using a series of pre-published blocks. The Enterprise Library is a natural progression.

How do you know when a felony is going to be committed?

2005-08-01T21:15:00.000-04:00

This is a flashy little article about a real world KM application: Wired News: PC Precisely Predicts Felony This is exactly the kind of thing we should keep in mind when exploring the application of technology for our knowledge workers. Extracting recognizable return on investment. A story like this will make it easier to explain to the rank and file cop the importance of capturing and recording detail about their observations on duty.

At big law, the anecdote could be used to emphasize the importance of being meticulous about metadata entry for all work product documents. Now all I have to do is publicize a few high profile felony convictions!

Software QA and Testing Resource Center - Home

2005-07-22T05:49:00.000-04:00

A good collection of material about Software QA and Testing Resources is pointed out by a MSDN blogger. Irony aside, thanks.

Styled Checkboxes

2005-07-14T20:08:00.000-04:00

For future reference, here's a really slick approach to Styled Checkboxes, via slashdot...

2005-07-03T09:47:00.000-04:00

Scott Mitchell shares some common sense in his approach to datareaders/datasets. ASP.NET.4GuysFromRolla.com: Why I Don't Use DataSets in My ASP.NET Applications

Microsoft TechEd 2005

2005-06-27T05:58:00.000-04:00

It looks like quite a few of the sessions from Microsoft TechEd 2005 are up and running. Nice turn around!

RSS + MS

2005-06-22T22:17:00.000-04:00

Dave clues us in to some announcements that MS will be making surrounding RSS. This has potential to be huge on both the development and KM fronts.

eTECHnews: Law Firm Extranets

2005-06-20T05:53:00.000-04:00

Bill Gratsch touches on some of the aspects of Law Firm Extranet success in his eTechNews article. I can second his point that traffic to an extranet doesn't necessary indicate success. Having resources "out there" for future use has proved extremely valuable to our lawyers, even if they are not being accessed on a daily basis.

Multi-row Editing in the ASP.NET DataGrid

2005-06-17T21:27:00.000-04:00

A good clean article on multi-row editing in the ASP.NET DataGrid. Thanks .net john!

The New Methodology

2005-06-16T05:03:00.000-04:00

The New Methodology a good Martin Fowler article on adaptive developement.

Ask TheServerSide: What Skills Should a .NET Architect Possess?

2005-06-14T22:54:00.000-04:00

This has been rattling around my head lately. Perhaps because I'm addressing some staffing issues. I'm seeing the title 'technical architect' bandied about and it's leaving me cold. It's pretty amazing seeing a resume from someone with four or five years development experience calling themselves an architect.

Microsoft is working on certification program for technical architects. Should be interesting. Of note is this great thread on TheServerSide.com a lot of thought is documented here. I was happy to see that a number of people mentioned that business sense and people skills should be of primary concern - backed up by superb technical knowledge (both wide and deep).

For pithy take away, I love the following:

"A good architect is just an experienced developer willing to take responsibility for their own mistakes."

The world is flat

2005-06-07T17:34:00.000-04:00

Just finished 'The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century' by Thomas L. Friedman. Two thumbs up here. Friedman takes a long detailed look at the major issues of globalization, outsourcing, in-sourcing, offshoring etc. If you're hands touch a computer keyboard on a regular basis this is a fascinating read.

There are many ideas that have stuck with me in this book. But Friedman brings it home that societies can be thought of as those that have dreams or memories. If the key drivers of a society are the pursuit/obsession with memories - trouble is brewing. Very thought provoking...

Playing with blocks

2005-05-31T06:20:00.000-04:00

David L's Blog : Don't be fooled by the blocks that I got! Is it in the air? Springtime - spring cleaning - re-evaluating attempts a unified application architecture.

I also spent some time playing with blocks over the weekend. I did not review the labs that David mentions here, but I did have reasonable success working with the configuration block. Yes, I plan on forcing them on my organization for future developments.

DDITWeb : Dealing with Support costs, Part 1 (posted by Avi)

2005-05-25T22:17:00.000-04:00

DDITWeb : Dealing with Support costs, Part 1 (posted by Avi) some good real world advise for the developement/operational impared.

Reading

2005-05-25T21:58:00.000-04:00

Just finished 'Blink'. Probably should be on the list for most KM people. Caldwell takes a long hard look at the question of how we know things. Some surprises.

It's worthwhile reading when you can find yourself repeatedly saying 'I never thought of it that way.' There's something humbling in being shown the things you are missing.

Essential .NET Library

2005-04-26T06:17:00.000-04:00

For those of you who occassionally ask how to get up to speed with .net. It's pretty simple, just read a few booksL Essential .NET Library .. Thanks for the post Brian

Microsoft Buys Groove Networks

2005-03-13T06:46:00.000-05:00

Microsoft Buys Groove Networks not a surprise. Groove cut over to MS development technologies a couple years ago. This is a natural. It's also nice to see that Ray Ozzie is being placed so highly in the MS echelon.

This is a big-up for KM in general. Both with the validation of Groove and the appreciation of Ray.

Hook up to your GPS with .NET

2005-02-21T09:28:00.000-05:00

An interesting overview on how to Hook up to your GPS with .NET. The author make's it sound trivial. It may be an interesting exercise for a snowey New York afternoon...

Community Server

2005-02-19T14:11:00.000-05:00

Community Server version 1.0 has just released. This is one to watch for anyone who has KM responsibilities and an affinity to a .net architecture.

Google

2005-02-15T19:37:00.000-05:00

The rumours are true. I discovered this morning that I had 50 Google mail invitations. Fool.com: Is Google Going for It? is reading this as a signal that the release date is near. I'd agree. This viral rollout has been fascinating.

Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Webcasts

2005-02-11T07:22:00.000-05:00

Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Webcasts Just a marker. Lots of new information to assimilate re IIS.

Development + Sarbanes Oxley = ?

2005-02-11T07:17:00.000-05:00

I'd be very willing to bet that most programmers, tech leads and many managers aren't that aware of Sarbanes Oxley. And if they are, they weren't aware of the impact on their day to day lives. Yes we need to be aware. Yes it has a real impact!Using branching in source control to meet Sarbanes-Oxley requirements

google maps

2005-02-10T23:22:00.000-05:00

Google maps :First impressions.. Very cool navigation. Simple, fast retrieval of maps + great movement around the map. May not stack up to the competition in terms of direction giving. But blows away the encarta's of the world for being uncluttered and focused.

If you want to dig deeper..

MSDN Webcasts Nuggets

2005-02-06T09:07:00.000-05:00

MSDN UK has come up with an attempt improve the delivery of information to developers. MSDN 'nuggets' are more condensed streaming technical presentations. This will be extremely useful for someone has to have a relatively deep level of understanding of a wide variety of development technologies.

Diagnostics and Logging In ASP.NET

2005-01-26T06:13:00.000-05:00

Scott gives us a very nice article Diagnostics and Logging In ASP.NET. It's straight forward, usable and well written. Recommended reading for all developers.

RSS Feeds for Search Results

2005-01-12T07:47:00.000-05:00

Dave Winer points to some experimentation with RSS Feeds for Search Results at Microsoft. Very cool stuff. Must play.

Bill + Gizmodo = What?

2005-01-07T16:26:00.000-05:00

Is it me? This interview with Bill Gates on Gizmodo is very bizarre. My take away is that Bill seems somewhat confused about blogging. I guess he hasn't seen the profit possibility and therefore isn't really getting the value/importance message. Very strange.

KM

2005-01-07T16:24:00.000-05:00

Been way busy on pre-release tasks for some CRM related initiative. Some very crucial de-duplication going on. No matter how much time you spend automating, there are some things that require the personal attention of the subject matter experts. And that's where we are... Tedious but necessary. We're lucky to have some very dedicated people on the project.

Crossroads Dispatches: Tsunami Help Campaign

2005-01-01T10:55:00.000-05:00

Evelyn was there. Kevin Sites was there. Incredible stuff. Give.

We spent the new years quietly, CNN had a halfway decent program on with images and narratives from survivors and aid workers. No talking heads. That was the best coverage I've seen so far.

The scale of this tragedy is so difficult to comprehend. I've been reading a lot of the blogger accounts. I'm proud that people are making their voice heard via the blogs. It's important. I've also checked in with some bulletin boards frequented by cruising sailors.

If I learned one thing from 9/11, there is no way that television news can present an accurate picture of what happened/is happening.

Tsunami > Oxfam International > donate

2004-12-28T22:07:00.000-05:00

Our hearts go out to all of with loved ones touched by the tsunami. Oxfam International is accepting donations on-line.

iPodder.net

2004-12-27T21:28:00.000-05:00

Downloaded iPodder.net here at home. I'd considered rolling my own .net iPod grabber. But I'm always up for letting someone else do the work. I had a couple awkward errors when adding feeds to my play list. This appears to be the only part of the application that needs some substantial work. Need to be able to take care of the usual CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete). One can always edit the XML file directly, but the rank and file won't know how to do this.

Peace

2004-12-25T01:24:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas everyone!

How do you know...That face?

2004-12-14T21:09:00.000-05:00

The three step process our brain uses to 'recognize' a face.
Apparently facial recognition takes three distinct areas of the brain to carry out the processes necessary to recognize someone:

One processes the physical features of the face, one decides whether or not the face is known, and a third retrieves information about that person, such as their name.

This is a great example of a common, unconscious process we carry out every day. Breaking the task into its constituent parts reveals a more complex relationship between specialized functions. Once I read about this study, I thought, 'A hah!', that's makes sense. The question is, how many KM problems can we approach, dissect and test in the same way resulting in the same 'A hah!'?

Design

2004-12-09T22:40:00.000-05:00

It had been a while since I've updated the template for this blog. This one's off the rack except for my buttons on the right and the google search script on the right. It's a good start, but I'm sure I'll do some tinkering.

Books

2004-12-04T10:23:00.000-05:00

I'm reading Code by Charles Petzold. This book is a lot of fun for someone who has been spending 99.9% of his time at the computer using higher level operating systems, languages etc. There's something soothing about his review of binary number theory. It's kind of like looking back over your family history and experiencing the pride you have in your grandparents and the life they lived.

MSN Blogs Censored

2004-12-03T07:46:00.000-05:00

Yes, Microsoft has introduced its blogging environment. But it's a training wheels environment. Boing Boing does a brief tour of the censorship one would have to put up with Boing Boing: MSN Spaces: seven dirty blogs This flies in the face of most blogging. I'm disappointed, but not surprised that MS chose to do this.

Reasons to be cheerful: Visual studio 2005 One-Click deployment

2004-12-02T22:33:00.000-05:00

Looks like visual studio 2005 is addressing one of the primary reasons I haven't been developing windows forms applications. This looks very promising. Visual Studio: Columns: Deploying Windows Forms Applications with ClickOnce

Records Mgmt

2004-12-01T07:10:00.000-05:00

A couple conversations in the last few days regarding a particular aspect of records management automation. Docs gives us a 'one button' solution to move messages from outlook to DM. This works. But there are complaints regarding speed. Compliance is poor.

A factor to the conversation is the fact that many of our people are storing an inordinate amount of email in public folders, bypassing the inbox purge policy we have in place.

Goal 1: Fix 'move to records' UI. I'm doing a little research into the Outlook coding model to see what we can do here.
Goal 2: Impose a purge policy on public folders. Seems like a no-brainer, but right now we don't have it.

Various

2004-11-29T22:22:00.000-05:00

Came across TestDriven.net. This looks like a good alternative to the .net version of nunit. Strong integration with visual studio.net is a big +.

This site is clearly DotNetNuke derivative. I'm seriously considering migrating my implementation of Microsoft's Community Starter kit (New Yorker) to DotNetNuke. More comments to follow.

Testing

2004-11-26T09:52:00.000-05:00

Hallmarks of a great tester. is right on target:

Is devious

Is curious

Is excited by bugs

Knows there are always more bugs
..

Multiple research threads are pointing to NUnit for .net testing. OO Performance also looks promising

Application Development

2004-11-24T21:18:00.000-05:00

Kintan gives us the following listing of resources:How to test like Leonardo da Vinci - Software Testing Resources. It's too tempting to focus on the business problems, processes and tools necessary to use technology to solve a business problem. Testing is a huge part of the process that I haven't put enough focus on in this blog. It's absolutely necessary to be have demonstrable consistent testing for any applications. This is a good starting point...

KM: aftermath

2004-11-21T09:14:00.000-05:00

Messaging has a leading role in the KM drama. In some cases, it's the entire cast. I wrestle often with the problem. 'How do we integrate email with our other knowledge asset.. documents, data warehouse etc.' aftermath looks like an interesting step in the write direction. The web site is a bit sparse on case histories. I'm particularly interested to know how well it scales.

KM Irony

2004-11-13T17:44:00.000-05:00

I just went up to KMWorld's site in search of an rss feed. Interestingly I found nothing. This is partly due to my recent additiction to BlogLines. I'm a huge fan of it's immediacy and web-centric design. More and more I'm trying to decentralize my knowledge assets. I find it incredibly useful to be able to check news in the morning, then later check in while at the office and see only the updates. Very useful.

MS Search

2004-11-11T06:35:00.000-05:00

There's a new WebLog from the Microsoft team developing Microsoft Search. The release could be extremely significant from the KM perspective. I'm thinking: Will it be different from Google? Will it be better? Why would I use MS instead/along with Google?

Five Thoughts About... - KM, Rushing the Technology Curve and Failing - - Darwin Archive - Darwin Online for Informed Executives

2004-11-10T21:59:00.000-05:00

Five Thoughts About... - KM, Rushing the Technology Curve and Failing - - Darwin Archive - Darwin Online for Informed Executives From CIO magazine, Jim Mcgee shares a few lessons learned from a failed initiative:

" ... I've become a lot more skeptical about top-down approaches to knowledge management. And I've become much more cautious about the importance of pushing the technology envelope. "

Yes, 'suck' is more likely to succeed than 'push'. When somebody needs something badly enough, they'll make you succeed. The trick is identifying needs and making realistic choices to fulfill them.

PBS Documentary tonight: Stop Trying to Persuade Us

2004-11-09T07:01:00.000-05:00

From Wired News: Stop Trying to Persuade Us. This looks like an interesting film. It examines the increase use of targeted marketing on our society.

That in itself is interesting, but I find it striking that the review and probably the demonstrate how dependent we are in very advanced technology. It's assumed that we can collect and parse data to identify the forty-something, golf playing home owner who likes re-runs of 'Friends'.

The bar for the minimum amount of business intelligence has been raised and will continue to be raised. This is a challenge to be welcomed by the KM community. At the same time we have to keep an eye on privacy issues, more thoughts as they come...

Collaboration

2004-11-05T16:32:00.000-05:00

Many of our departments have requested that we publish a calendar as part of their departmental intranet sites. This is fine, but I'd like them to re-use an exchange public calendar. This will allow the for them to integrate the group members daily calendar with the published calendar. We're exploring the soution proposed here on grubbsville.

Site design

2004-10-24T11:39:00.000-04:00

cre8d design :: clean clear cre8ive websites has a portfolio of outstanding designs. Nice work in the blog milieu.

Collective decision making

2004-10-15T06:40:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine is constantly re-working his firm's logo. Yesterday evening I received an email from LogoWorks requesting feedback on his latest versions. One link away and the application gave me a view of his latest options and the choice of ranking 1 two or 3. All very well executed.

Search

2004-10-10T01:14:00.000-04:00

I've spent the day with MS Indexing Services. I have to say that I'm very pleased with what you get included in the OS... A couple things to remember.

Indexing takes a substantial amount of time, even with today's hardware.... Plan accordingly

Indexing Service will create an abstract for you, how the hell they came up with the field name 'characterization' is beyond me. To do this you have select the 'generate' flag in the properties of your catalog.

Speaking of configuration, remember to associate the catalog with a web server on your machine or else the vpath will not be accessible.
I'm going to put together a quick article for my main site with my source code... There are examples out there, but I think a few of you may find my implementation useful.

Cool downloadPaint.NET

2004-10-03T10:31:00.000-04:00

Very useful software: Free download.Paint.NET

Design -Eyetrack III - What You Most Need to Know

2004-09-09T08:13:00.000-04:00

A must read for anyone considering page layout for the web. Eyetrack III - What You Most Need to Know

.net

2004-08-10T22:16:00.000-04:00

Don't know why I haven't seen this before. DotNetNuke - The Web of the Future > Home ( DNN 2.1.2 ) is a nice open source expansion of the .net IBuySpy portal. Pretty impressive looking.

Photography

2004-07-24T14:18:00.000-04:00

Lars has finally gotten his web site on line. He's an outstanding talent. Check him out!

KM

2004-07-22T06:27:00.000-04:00

Discovered Joe Firestone's All Life Is Problem Solving KM blog. Note to self: spend some time on this one. On first glance his thoughts appear to both deep and wide.

Type-ahead

2004-07-21T06:26:00.000-04:00

I came across a wonderfull javacript example by Danny Goodman. It does a great job of emulating type-ahead functionality in ie.

Cable devolution

2004-07-17T07:53:00.000-04:00

It's come up more than once lately. Andrea starts a rant how horrible the news networks are in the morning. Maybe it was the fact that all of the networks were droning on about Martha Stewart all morning, and ignoring that fact the 81 children were killed in a horrible fire in India, but it seems as though the cnns, foxes and msnbcs have just given up on delivering anything that could be called news.

I guess this follows the pattern set by MTV. Remember when MTV used to play music?

So here's the pattern:

start a cable network based on delivering in depth content on a particular topic
become wildly successful
change your format, dropping much of the original content
repeat until people forget what the first letter of your network acronym stands for

So what are my predictions

FTV - the food television network will become the indigestion and obesity network.
Fitness Television will become the guilt about not working out television network.
the upcoming Reality TV network will morph into the only real news channel.

Yahoo buys Oddpost

2004-07-10T08:51:00.000-04:00

Scripting News: 7/9/2004 Damn. I don't like the sound of this. Andrea has been using Oddpost for over a year and really likes it. I hope that Yahoo doesn't do anything stupid.

Hierarchical Data Binding in ASP.NET

2004-06-09T22:35:00.000-04:00

Hierarchical Data Binding in ASP.NET a good source... more for my future reference. Translates easily to vb.net.

... followup

2004-06-09T06:21:00.000-04:00

free rss feeds for ebay is gone. Boy that was quick.

ebay rss

2004-06-08T08:29:00.000-04:00

Ebay announced (sort-of) that they were going to be supporting rss today. Great! Currently they're supporting two feeds for system status.... awwww. But there is a company that will let you set up an rss feed on ebay custom search. Great! Unfortunately after setting up my rss feed (which looked fine) and then referencing it from bloglines, the feed displayed was someone else's search! awwww...

Technology can be such an emotional roller coaster....

asp.net under stress

2004-06-01T12:08:00.000-04:00

It's good to see anther sport site using asp.net. Check out to the Transat site. Very dynamic, probably ten days of heavy usage every four years. Let's see how it performs.
The Transat is a solo sailboat race across the Atlantic. It's held every four years, the most recent iteration started yesteday. Check out the photos on the site. Awesome.

run another application or batch file from VB.NET

2004-05-30T10:12:00.000-04:00

How can I run another application or batch file from my Visual Basic .NET code? Duncan Mackenzie shares a useful little code snippet. He follows up quickly with code to determine the difference between two dates. Thanks

Other incredible stuff

2004-05-28T17:37:00.000-04:00

Cardinal Law gets new post in Rome
I really don't understand how this right? Isn't this a promotion?

ASP.NET Popup Control

2004-05-02T21:27:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry, this is just too cool! The Code Project - ASP.NET Popup Control - ASP.NET I can't wait to find a reason to use it. Thanks Sonu for the heads up.

Gmail!

2004-05-01T08:36:00.000-04:00

I got my Gmail account today. At first glance it looks good. Faster than hotmail. 1 G of storage.... But let's see what happens when it fills up. christophers@gmail.com

flo's freeware - Notepad2

2004-05-01T08:16:00.000-04:00

Notepad2 is a replacement for the regular windows notepad.... I'm going to give it a try. I'll let you know. Thanks for the head's up Roy

Search...

2004-04-29T22:00:00.000-04:00

I've had a hate-hate relationship with Hummingbird recently. But, I have to say that they've risen to the occasion. They've resolved the 'deal breaker' issue we had with the search engine. The default installation does not index punctuation marks. This is death in the legal environment. I'm actually surprised more people haven't raised hell over it.

Anyway they've resolved the problem. We still have an issue with multiple parenthetic statements combined with the or keywords. We'd like to engine to parse like westlaw, but they need to do development work to do so....

.net - nested repeater

2004-04-26T07:02:00.000-04:00

Yes, there's actually useful stuff on Microsoft's site. 326338 - HOW TO: Display Hierarchical Data by Using Nested Repeater Controls and Visual Basic .NET is a very clean, quick example. There's a sister example for c# as well...

Toy: Hyundai HY-206 Small Pendant MP3 Player Review

2004-04-18T10:51:00.000-04:00

We purchased the Hyundai HY-206 about six weeks ago. It worked well for a couple weeks, but now we're having major problems keeping it running correctly. It garbles some of the sound, stops for no reason (goes dead - no apparent power). There's no way of telling how charged the battery is.
It's frustrating because the manual is barely intelligible. Also there's no support site or phone number.... I'm continuing to look.

asp.net Popup Date Picker

2004-04-14T07:01:00.000-04:00

15 Seconds : Creating a Popup Date Picker a very nice example. I converted the code to vb.net and it works extremely well.