NewsGator Inbox

CS IQ and Turing Machines

2008-07-22T09:26:41-06:00

Found a great post in Nick Bradbury's Link Blog this morning titled "Generative Models and Programming Talent" that talks about what makes a good programmer good. The basic argument is that a good programmer is one who can easily visualize the implicit and explicit relationships between things and understands the how changing the state of one effects the others. They (the author of the post and the author he quotes) call this "CS IQ". It's a great read.

It reminded me of one of my favorite classes in college, CS406 Computational Theory. It was the last CS class I took and also the one I did the best in. The part of it I enjoyed the most was building and exploring Turing Machines.

The reason why Turing Machines popped into my head while reading the article was this quote:

[Good] programmers are able to “play computer” in their head (sometimes requiring the aid of a scrap of paper). In other words, we have a model of exactly what the computer does when it executes each statement.

Writing out Turning Machines on paper was extremely easy for me - so much so that it really surprised me. Especially since a portion of the class just didn't get it, and I couldn't understand why. The article seems to explain this by saying that some people instinctively think this way while others don't. I'm not surprised that I do - I wouldn't have kept in this career if I hadn't - but now I kind of get why others had so many problems in that class.

It also gives me some good ideas for interview questions :-)

Poll: How do you use your news reader?

2008-06-26T16:28:31-06:00

How do you use your news reader? Do you leave it open all day? How much time do you spend reading news?

http://forum.newsgator.com/Forum22-1.aspx

ReadBurner adds NewsGator Clippings

2008-06-23T15:20:10-06:00

I've written about NewsGator Clippings before here and how they're a cool way to share the things you find interesting with the rest of the world. Today that got even better as ReadBurner has added support for NewsGator Clippings! Now things you clip in NewsGator Inbox, NewsGator Toolbar, NewsGator Go, FeedDemon and NetNewsWire can be added to ReadBurner as well.

To share your clippings from Inbox:

1. Share one of your clipping folders in Inbox (here's how) and copy the URL to your clipboard.
2. Browse over to www.readburner.com
3. Go to the "Add Feed" option on the right hand side of the ReadBurner menu bar, then select “NewsGator Clippings” and enter the URL of your clipping feed.

NewsGator Widgets in the Wild

2008-06-06T09:48:37-06:00

This morning I browsed over to one of the radio stations in town to listen to their live stream. I realized I hadn't been there in a while and never checked out the page for the new afternoon host. His page looked oddly familiar...

http://www.am760.net/pages/mario_solis-marich.html

Two NewsGator Editors Desk widgets! Pretty cool :-)

Do people just not like change?

2008-06-02T16:23:42-06:00

Denver NBC affiliate 9News updated their site over the weekend then ran a poll today asking what people thought. So far its not looking good:

Personally I like the updated look better than the old site, though it's not the greatest thing I've ever seen. But it makes me wonder if people don't like it simply because its laid out different and they can't glance in the same place for headlines, or if there's something else.

Either way I wish Gannet would update their RSS feeds. They have different content based on query string parameters, yet the name of each feed is always "KUSA - TV - " which is just annoying:

9News Local News: http://www.gannett-tv.com/tools/rss/?cid=222&sid=kusa&num=10
9News Business News: http://www.gannett-tv.com/tools/rss/?cid=75&sid=kusa&num=10

Outlook Development Tip - Preventing Multiple Events with Toolbar Buttons

2008-05-29T09:19:23-06:00

If you're hooking your toolbar to every Explorer that gets created in Outlook, you may run into an issue where the events that fire from your toolbar buttons will fire for every explorer that's open. So if I have a button that opens a new window, and I have three explorers open, clicking that button will open three windows.

Easy to fix - be sure to set the "Tag" property of the button to something unique. Using the buttons instance ID helps. Here's what I use in Inbox:

cmdBarButton.Tag = "cmdBarButton" + cmdBarButton.InstanceId.ToString();

Outlook Development Tip - Icons on Toolbar Buttons

2008-05-28T15:48:25-06:00

Adding icons to your Outlook toolbar not only makes it look better, but it also helps with usability since training your mind to recognize an icon is easier than looking for a word. Picking the right icon than becomes very important.

Microsoft Office has hundreds of icons built in that you can use on your toolbar. When you create the button, you simply give it the Face ID of the icon you want to use:

(Microsoft.Office.Core.CommandBarButton)cmdBarButton.FaceId = 984;

Finding the correct icon is easy using FaceID Browser (http://skp.mvps.org/faceid.htm) - it's a must have for any Office Add-in developer.

Sometimes though you may want to add an icon that isn't built into Office. This is where it gets a little trickier. In Outlook 2003 and higher all you need to do is set the "Picture" and "Mask" properties of the button as outlined in this MSDN article. For Outlook XP or 2000, you'll need copy your image to the clip board, than use the PasteFace() function.

Here's all the functions I use in Inbox to create custom toolbar icons:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Drawing;
using Outlook = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook;
using Office = Microsoft.Office.Core;
using stdole;

private void AddCustomIcon(string resourceName, Office.CommandBarButton btn)
{
try
{
    Assembly ng = Assembly.GetAssembly(m_nginbox.GetType());
    Stream str = ng.GetManifestResourceStream(resourceName);
    Bitmap bm = new Bitmap(str);

    if (IsOutlookXP())
    {
      btn.Picture = (IPictureDisp)AxHost2.GetIPictureDispFromPicture(bm);
      btn.Mask = (IPictureDisp)AxHost2.GetIPictureDispFromPicture(CreateMask(bm));
    }
    else
    {
      MakeBitmapTransparent(bm);
      SaveCurrentClipboard();
      Clipboard.SetDataObject(bm);
      btn.PasteFace();
      RestoreClipboard();
    }
}
catch (System.Exception ex)
{
}

private void SaveCurrentClipboard()
{
IDataObject clipboardCurrent = Clipboard.GetDataObject();
clipboardPreserve = new DataObject();
foreach (string format in clipboardCurrent.GetFormats(false))
clipboardPreserve.SetData(format, clipboardCurrent.GetData(format));

}

private void RestoreClipboard()
{
if (clipboardPreserve != null)
Clipboard.SetDataObject(clipboardPreserve, true);
}

private void MakeBitmapTransparent(Bitmap icon)
{
Color colorTransparent = icon.GetPixel(0, 0);
for (int x = icon.Width - 1; x >= 0; x--)
    for (int y = icon.Height - 1; y >= 0; y--)
      if (icon.GetPixel(x, y) == colorTransparent)
        icon.SetPixel(x, y,
                            Color.FromKnownColor(System.Drawing.KnownColor.Control));
}

private Bitmap CreateMask(Bitmap original)
{
Bitmap mask = new Bitmap(16, 16);
Color colorTransparent = original.GetPixel(0, 0);
for (int x = original.Width - 1; x >= 0; x--)
{
    for (int y = original.Height - 1; y >= 0; y--)
    {
      if (original.GetPixel(x, y) == colorTransparent)
        mask.SetPixel(x, y, System.Drawing.Color.White);
      else
        mask.SetPixel(x, y, System.Drawing.Color.Black);
    }
}
return mask;
}

public class AxHost2 : AxHost
{
public AxHost2() : base(null) { }
public new static IPictureDisp GetIPictureDispFromPicture(Image image)
{
return (IPictureDisp)AxHost.GetIPictureDispFromPicture(image);
}
}

Strongly Typed Languages

2008-05-21T10:28:17-06:00

One thing that I've never liked about JavaScript is that it's not a strongly typed programming language. I get the arguments around dynamic typing but I've never found the benefits to be anything substantial. Strong typing is also why I preferred Delphi over Visual Basic when I first started Windows programming.

Dare's post about implicit type declarations in C# 3.0 and refactoring tools that suggest using "var" in place of using a static types is troublesome. Readability is one thing, but the biggest benefit to me of strongly typed languages is the amount of runtime errors that can be prevented at compile time. I'd rather know that the property I'm trying to access on an object doesn't exists before I run code.

Dare's point about variable naming is also something that I think about often when writing code. MyObject.Name is my preferred way of writing as opposed to MyObject.MyObjectName - even though it may be a little more readable when I come back to the code later, the extra time and space to include type information in a property name isn't worth it.

This reminds me of when I first heard that versions of .Net will allow you to mix C# or VB directly into your SQL stored procedures. Yes, it may give less experienced programmers the ability to manipulate SQL results with languages they already know, but it discourages learning the proper use of the programming tools they have. You can hit a nail with a wrench, but a hammer works much better.

I also see now why people say they blog less when they start using twitter - I'm making an effort to change that.

Nick Bradbury asks - The Future of Feed Reading: What Do YOU Want?

2008-05-19T10:13:39-06:00

Nick Bradbury is asking his users an interesting question - "The Future of Feed Reading: What Do YOU Want?". Below is Nick's post. What kind of things do you want when it comes to RSS? Feel free to comment here or on Nick's post.

http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2008/05/the-future-of-f.html

Every now and then I'll see a blog post predicting the future of feed reading, and invariably it's written by someone who spends every waking moment reading their feeds. Which is fine, of course - we certainly want to know what power users expect from the future of RSS. But predictions from these folks are usually based on what they need from RSS, and their needs don't always match the needs of the majority.
Most people who use an RSS reader don't live in it. They use it to stay up-to-date with the latest news from the blogosphere, to keep tabs on what people they trust are talking about, or simply to kill some time between more important tasks.
This blog post is aimed towards these people - the ones who love their RSS reader, but don't feel withdrawal symptoms when they don't use it for a day.
What do you want from your RSS reader in the future? If you could change the future of feed reading to suit your needs, what would you want that future to look like?

Should I tell Microsoft about this problem?

2008-04-22T12:57:16-06:00

I'm sure they would love to know...