http://github.com/nanek/redmine_windowsauth

This CloudCamp was ran by Dave Nielsen.  There were over 200 people at my count, with standing room only at the beginning of the event.  I had my concerns with how effective the event would be based on its format with such a diverse and large audience.  However it was quite successful.  The audience members varied widely, from cloud vendors and consultants to government employees with no knowledge of the cloud and to those with existing or future cloud projects.

The event started with lightning talks, followed by a panel from the audience with questions from the crowd, followed by two audience lead break out sessions, ending with a wrap-up over drinks.

The best part about the event was that it was able to live up to the definition of an unconference.  Instead of going to a typical conference and hearing long presentations from just a few people, we were all able to participate, share experiences and learn from each other.  I look forward to attending the next CloudCamp and other unconference events.

Things that are working fairly well:

• Foursquare API access.
• JSON.NET is used to parse the JSON responses.
• sqlite is used for caching http responses.
• OAuth is used for authentication to foursquare.
• GPS lookup.

Things that don’t work and have proved difficult to implement:

• Responsiveness.  At times the app stops responding and overall feels too slow for normal use.
• Cell ID lookup.  This is important as GPS often does not work indoors.  It appears access to this API may be protected on most phones.
• Good looking user interface.  Plus dealing with different phone resolutions, orientations, and sizes makes it a little more complicated.

Things that would be interesting to implement but require a solid base application:

• Map integration
• Integration with other API’s such as Yelp

You can find the source at http://foursquare.codeplex.com along with a CAB for installation on your phone if you want to try it out.  Look under the planned download section.  It works ok on my HTC Touch Pro.  If you are interested in contributing to this effort, let me know.  I’m debating spending more time on making this work better or building a HTML5 based mobile web application.

The book tells the compelling history of how corporations have defined and controlled the world since their inception.  It might make you rethink some basic assumptions we have about how society has evolved the way that it has.  One example used in the book is the concept of having a large suburban home while working in the city, being constructed by car companies to create a market and the need for cars.  He ends the book with a call to action, specifically mentioning creating local currencies and using Community Supported Agriculture.  I’ve considered trying a CSA that would deliver to Arlington, but I don’t really cook that much.  He also mentions Kiva.org which I use and enjoy.

Do you use a CSA?

I’m sure I missed a bunch.  What do you recommend?

You might be hoping for someone to invent a great new technology that will stop climate change.  Unfortunately, in reality it is really up to you to solve it.  Take a look at 10 Solutions for Climate Change.  We don’t need to invent new technology to stop climate change.  Instead, we just need to change ourselves.

I’m looking forward to our next series of lightning talk presentations tomorrow. I will be presenting on Cloud Computing in the Government.

My Dell Latitude D630 recently started blue screening and crashing when playing videos.  It got annoying pretty quickly, so I updated the BIOS and device drivers in the hopes that would resolve the issue.  This week it got a lot worst, in fact it would not even boot properly at times, instead just displaying lines.  A temporary fix was to remove the battery and power cord, hold the on button for 30 seconds, and replace the battery.  Not exactly sure what that did, but worked for at least one more boot.

Unfortunately after some searching, it looks like the GPU has failed due to a common overheating issue with this model.  The fix is to update the BIOS before it fails.  After it fails it requires a hardware replacement.  More information at http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2008/07/25/nvidia-gpu-update-for-dell-laptop-owners.aspx

Since I recently started writing a lot more .NET based applications I have come across two useful tools for assisting in providing application security.  Even if you are careful to validate all application inputs, it is still useful to validate your work using these tools.

Anti-XSS – a library that can help sanitize inputs to help protect from cross site scripting attacks.
CAT.NET – a Visual Studio plugin that will do code analysis to help identity cross site scripting and SQL injection vulnerabilities.

It is a good idea to set up security scans has part of your project build steps with a continuous integration server.