imason

Social Software: Not a Fire and Forget Solution

Matthew Eggertson — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:35:00 GMT

"Web 2.0 " has been swirling around for a few years now, and like many other buzz words companies are trying to figure out how they can make this latest internet fad work for them.

While there are many reasons why online communities and social software fail, one of the most common missteps is treating these as fire and forget solutions. That a social software project can be launched, and without any additional effort, you will have a thriving user base of a few thousand happy active users in no time. The two major areas where most attempts fall short, which need to be addressed and planned for in advance are; Participation and Moderation

Many companies put communities and other forms of social software out there to support their brand, or as a place for their loyal customers to congregate, talk and celebrate. But these initiatives lack any strategy to maintain a regular presence on their own community, which is ultimately self defeating. Not only will this create the feeling of neglect and abandonment among users, they are not given any compelling reason to participate in the community over some other external, more engaging and better populated community.

Moderation is the other area where most communities fall short. Most communities come with the user agreements that allows the company to wash their hands of all legal responsibility for the content that is posted there by the public. Inevitably undesired content will still be posted, and there will be individuals who enjoy provoking other members; not only will this impact how the public perceive the company and brand, but how such disruptions are handled will have just as big an impact on perception. Additionally, moderation alone does not count as participation, the intent and purpose are distinctly different.

What most companies fail to realize is the difference between social software and traditional online projects. Where "Web 1.0" solutions could be pushed out the door, left alone until changes are required, successful social software requires perpetual involvement beyond launch. The initial planning stages should take participation and moderation into account, not only from a technical implementation stand point, but how to be actively involved once its launched.

A guided missile is no better than a fire and forget missile if no one is directing it. But if it is built with the right controls, a plan on how to operate, and the people in place in the guide it, social software can be used to greatly impact anyone's business if they are willing to commit the time and resources to steer it.

Mo update from Freddie Mercury

Boyan Tsolov — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:31:00 GMT

Seeing how Steve is doing a good job of advertising his mo, I thought I would do the same... to keep the competition alive!

Here is how my mo is measuring up:

Does it look vaguely familiar?

Celebrating alumni success

Vicki Thomson — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:59:00 GMT

We are always so sad to see members of our imason team move on to new opportunities but it is a reality that people make choices to pursue different challenges and career goals and sometimes those are outside of imason. We do hope that they move on to their new opportunities having gained some additional expertise and an appreciation for the great company we are building at imason. (And quite honestly, we want them to will miss us too!)

Our core purpose "To Revel in Dramatically Impacting Our Customers, Our Company and Each Other" extends beyond the 'boundaries' of our physical office space and our day to day work life so we celebrate with and congratulate our Alumni. I will try to highlight some of the Alumni activities in by blog as I learn about them.

Recently our beloved Director of Delivery, Rob Vretenar, left imason and he has started a new challenge at St. Joseph's Media. (Of course that was after he had a great summer with his family!) Here is the recent announcement for Rob's new role. We wish him every success and look forward to crossing paths with him frequently.

"Robert Vretenar has joined St. Joseph Media as Web technology director. In his most recent role as director of technology delivery at Internet consulting firm Imason, he managed a team of 26 consultants that served Canadian media companies such as Torstar and MTV."

http://www.mastheadonline.com/news/2008/20081105827.shtml
http://www.stjoseph.com/index.asp

Movember Continues

Stephen Kearns — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:18:14 GMT

Update on the Mo - it's filling out nicely :-)

Microsoft's Silverlight vs Adobe's Flash: November 2008 Update

Scott Howlett — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:48:44 GMT

A lot has happened over the past couple of weeks in the ongoing fight between Microsoft's Silverlight and Adobe's Flash. We're seeing uptake in interest in the Toronto and Canadian markets for Silverlight-based solutions (including Silverlight with Sharepoint and Silverlight for Mobile) because the experience is just that much better.

First, we received, for the first time ever, penetration statistics (aka adoption rates) from Microsoft for Silverlight. Scott Guthrie (Corporate Vice President, .Net Developer Division), who is the guy when it comes to Silverlight, recently posted that Silverlight is installed on 25%+ of PCs.

Second, Guthrie showcased a whole bunch of Silverlight apps including NetFlix and Blockbuster and another whack of stuff around HD video which is just plain cool - check out www.smoothhd.com. Note to readers - I'm not honestly sure who does HD better but the Silverlight HD at this site is stunning.

I was able to confirm, via a few customers who use Omniture, that this 25% claim is accurate. This puts them still well-behind Flash, which is often promoted as the 'most installed software in the world'. It consistently has penetration north of 95%. Still, I'm impressed with what Microsoft's been able to do with Silverlight downloads but it really has to get in the range of Flash (say 80%+) for the mainstream to give it a serious look. Silverlight penetration remains a serious concern for consumer-facing properties.

There were also some sizable announcements this week from Adobe, out of their Adobe Max conference.

First, came word, that Major League Baseball had dropped Silverlight in favor of Flash. I see this as a big blow to Microsoft - MLB seemed to be a flagship customer and was onstage at Mix (Microsoft's Web conference) in Vegas in 2007 when Silverlight was announced. The demo of MLB at Mix was amazing!

Second, came the news the the NY Times was launching an AIR-based reader (AIR is a technology that lets Flash run outside a browser). This was a shocker to me, because the existing NY Time Reader was a flagship win for Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) technology which is sort-of a big-brother to Silverlight. I had heard as well that work was underway to make the existing reader Silverlight-based, which would then allow the reader to work cross-platform (i.e. on a Mac).

In the end, I'm impressed with what both Microsoft and Adobe are doing. With this degree of competition, the enterprise (the people who pay to have these apps created) will win because the platform (Flash or Silverlight) is getting better faster through competition. Consumer will also win, because they'll get more and better applications and experiences. Stay tuned - I think this one is just getting going.

For previous posts on this topic see - Microsoft's Silverlight vs Adobe's Flash - Which is better?.

Books: Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the future of a Continent (1 of 3)

Scott Howlett — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:46:33 GMT

Every now and again, if you're open to it and you read enough, you get that great experience of having your eyes pried wide open, your ignorance exposed, your mind spun. Tar Sands by Andrew Nikiforuk provided such an experience.

Tar Sands is likely one-sided, and I must seek out opposing viewpoints. For now, I'm committed to three posts.

For now, I can only point you at Nikiforuk's Declaration of a Political Emergency. And to quote something so profound, it has not left me since I read it weeks ago:

"As Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis wrote, greed is a form of pride, and 'Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.'" - Nikiforuk, p56

VSTS – Reportable Attribute?

Stephen Kearns — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:05:21 GMT

When defining custom fields for Work Items in TFS, I kept running across this “reportable” attribute and was curious so I looked it up – kinda neat…

Summary: Data from work item fields that have the “reportable” attribute will be exported to the data warehouse and can be included in reports.

Three Options for this Attribute (copied from MSDN):

Dimension
Use the dimension type only for Integer, Double, String, or DateTime fields. The data in this field enters the relational warehouse database and the cube as an attribute of the Work Item dimension so that the data can be used to filter reports. Use this for fields that have lists of valid values. Work Item Type and State are good examples of a dimension.
Detail
Use the detail type only for Integer, Double, String, or DateTime fields. The data in this field is moved into the relational warehouse database in the Work Item History and Current Work Item tables, but not into the cube. This is a good choice for unrestricted text fields because it lets you use them in reports, but avoids making the cube significantly larger. Any reports that you build using these fields, however, will have to use the relational database instead of the cube. Summary, a string field that summarizes the work item, is a good example of a field that should be a detail when it is reported.
Measure
Use the measure type only for Integer and Double fields. Measures are the numeric values in your reports. Each measure will appear in both the Current Work Item measure group and

My Source: Google >> Steve Lock’s blog post [1] >> MSDN [2]

[1] http://geekswithblogs.net/slock/archive/2007/07/18/114006.aspx

[2] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms194942(VS.80).aspx

Restaurants – Chipotle

Stephen Kearns — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:25:34 GMT

OH MY GOODNESS – I have a secret passion, and it is Burritos – during my stint living in the US, by far, the most amazing burrito I’ve had was at the chain called Chipotle (full disclosure: owned by the evil empire, McDonalds) The location at Grand Central in NYC is jammed out the door every day with the lunch crowd. Don’t want to set expectations beyond reach, but if you enjoy burritos, you have to check out their first Canadian location in Dundas Square.

http://www.toronto.com/restaurants/listing/624705

http://www.chipotle.com

Books: At Vimy Ridge

Scott Howlett — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:55:00 GMT

Steve started the "Books" tag with the short review of Break all the Rules. So, I thought I'd continue the theme. It's long been one of my favorite interview questions - "So, what have you read lately?". It's very telling, I find. One time, I was interviewing a guy for a intermediate .Net developer role. He was not that engaged until I asked him this question at which point he positively exploded about his interest in German literature; I think he was working on a Masters in the area. That completely changed the interview in such a positive way...

Anyway, one of my younger kids brought home "At Vimy Ridge: Canada's Greatest World War I Victory" from school. It was a good chance to brush up on my Canadian WWI history. It's written for younger readers :), so I was able to get through it in one night.

Some interesting facts (more detail here):

Vimy Ridge is in France (I'm just sayin'....)
Some 100,000+ Canadian troops fought in the Battle for Vimy Ridge in April 1917. 3, 598 were killed.
The defeat at Vimy was a critical blow to the Germans on the Western front
In total, Canada lost 60,661 soldiers in WWI.
Over 700,000 Canadians served out of a population of 8,000,000 -> That's almost 1 in 10. Wow!
The Canadian effort at Vimy and WWI is seen as a key part of our nationhood, leading to the Statute of Westminster in 1931 which gave Canada control of its foreign policy (now that, I didn't know)

The Canadian effort at Vimy is remembered at the Vimy Ridge Memorial in France, on "Hill 145" which is the high point of Vimy Ridge at 145 metres. It looks to be a spectacular memorial (note to self - do not go to France again, and not visit the memorial)

Now I didn't get through the whole book with my child, but I was asked the most troubling question "What do you get when you win a war?" (zeesh!), and more pragmatically "What's longer, a battle or a war?".

This is a proud part of Canadian history - I'm glad my child's library trip in primary school gave me occasion to be reminded.

Are you with us or Against us?

Jim Schwartz — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:40:00 GMT

At imason, we generally enjoy conversations about a wide variety of topics, whether it be at the water cooler, on an e-mail alias, over lunch, or conversations at our desks. Our Co-CEO, Scott Howlett even hosted some lunch election roundtables where we discussed the issues of the Canadian election, dissected each party's stance on the issues, and heard each other's opinion on whether their platforms would be effective. They were very stimulating conversations.

As readers of my Urban Country blog know, I'm very passionate about Politics and the Environment, so it was a treat for me to have in depth discussions about these things at work where we generally don't engage in these sort of topics.

One topic that has come up a few times over the last few weeks is the conversation about divisive politics. In the United States political system, there is a lot of "us vs. them" or "you're with us or you're against us" or "Republicans vs. Democrats" or "Red States vs. Blue States" or "Capitalist vs. Communist", and the list goes on.

A more recent conversation led to the question of "Agile" vs. "Not Agile" when it comes to project methodologies. At imason, we have our own project methodology, and we try to employ components of other methodologies where we think it will help to improve our process. The way we see it, Agile isn't binary. A methodology can become more agile or less agile simply by tweaking the approach.

I had a great opportunity this spring/summer to work with some very talented developers from ThoughtWorks out in Calgary. They were on the more "Extreme" side of Agile software methodologies (Literally, they use the Extreme Programming (XP) approach developed by Kent Beck). Like any software development methodology, Extreme programming has its advantages and disadvantages. The purpose of this article isn't to delve into such an analysis, but to point out some of the neat aspects of their methodologies that I've taken with me back to Toronto.

First of all, I'm a huge advocate of automated builds and continuous integration. I've been pushing this on all of the projects I've worked on and NAnt has helped us achieve great things in the world of automated deployment. Secondly I am a big fan of the disciplined approach to project management (Mostly from the Scrum methodology), including set daily standup meetings, timeboxing, story cards and story boards.

But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Agile approach that I've taken away is incorporating "fun" into your project discipline. Some examples include bringing in a box of doughnuts if you break the build, doing pushups if you're late for a meeting, or hanging a rubber chicken around your neck.

At imason, we work hard to dramatically impact our customers and ourselves, and if you can have fun while you're working hard, that's the most important way to achieve success. To me, success isn't measured by what kind of car you drive or how big your house is; it's about spending your day with people you enjoy being around, and doing work that gives you satisfaction. It's about waking up in the morning and not dreading going into work.

Influencers: Rick Segal

Scott Howlett — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:46:55 GMT

Through a few different routes, I'm one degree away from Rick Segal. Segal was at Microsoft and I know a few folks who know him. He was also at Chapters, and back in the days he was there everyone in the Microsoft partner community wanted a gig at Chapters. He also did a stint at MicroForum, but we won't mention that.

He's currently a partner a JLA Ventures, which is perhaps where our connection is closest. JLA Ventures was part of the VC behind www.grocerygateway.com, which was imason's first big .com customer. Although I never worked with Segal, I did work with one of the other partners at JLA.

In any event, I follow Segal's blog "Doing the Voodo VCs do in Canada". He's got some amazing insight into the market and he sees a lot of proposals. Rick is part of the group that is managing the BlackBerry Partners Fund, which isn't a surprise because Jim Balsillie is on the board for JLA, so he must be seeing some pretty cool mobile stuff. If you want to get into the mind of a VC (something that you should only do after consulting with your doctor), then you should really check out Segal's blog.

Some recent posts that I thought were really insightful or just plain funny:

Jimi King and the Power of Social Media - on how everyday things are being done around social media
NYC Today & Observations - on how much you can learn by watching everyday people use technology
Why I Love Capitalism - on Joe The Plumber Gear popping up right after McCain (or was it Obama?) uttered those words...

Anyway, check out Segal here - funny, insightful and frequent.

Web 2.0: Use in unintended ways - Google is better than the CDC in monitoring the flu

Scott Howlett — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:12:05 GMT

A long long time ago (OK, it was February 2006) I wrote about Web 2.0 in a post called Thoughts on Ajax/Atlas - 9: My $0.02 on Web 2.0. What was fascinating to me -- and lots of others -- about Web 2.0 was the interesting ways that people were driving value out of their data. I spoke with a lot of customers in 2006 about Web 2.0; I emphasized that it was really important to figure out how and what unique data their proposed application would capture. I reminded them that the genius of Amazon wasn't just a great online retail experience (something other eventually copied), but how they mined their data to provide a differentiated experience (the Amazon ratings and recommendations still can't be beat to this day). And Google wasn't just a great search algorithm (which it was and still is) but it was also about how they mined their search data.

Even with that though, I was totally blown away by GoogleFlu. Basically, they've taken their search data and used it to monitor the progression of the flu through the United States. You can read about how it works here including a great animated graph that shows how their monitoring is about 2 weeks ahead of the Center for Disease Control (CDC). It's really amazing that there's such a strong correlation between people search for 'flu' on the web, and the actual rates of flu infection in the community [note, the algorithm to make the correlation is likely much more sophisticated].

Wow! Now that's Web 2.0. And it's a little bit scary... :) What else are they watching????

By the way, this little tidbit was brought to me by TED (see TED - One of my favorite sites out there). Google.org is headed by Larry Brilliant who was a 2006 TED Prize winner...

Movember - Game On

Stephen Kearns — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:05:43 GMT

With a strong award-winning tradition last year, this week was about building a base...

(think world's itchiest sweater wrapped around your face & neck)

And now, for this year's Movember, I give you... The Forked Mo

Stay tuned for updates. :-)

Influencers: Jane Fulton Suri

Scott Howlett — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:28:28 GMT

I had a chance to see Jane Fulton Suri speak about a year ago at the Rotman School of Business. I was really really impressed. She was speaking about "thoughtless acts", a topic she had explored over some 20 years and published a picture-book on called -- not surprisingly -- thoughtless acts. You can get on Amazon (at imason, you'll find it on our bookshelf). There's even a website - www.thoughtlessacts.com.

I was really inspired after her talk, and the book is really awesome too - it's not what you're thinking. Suri doesn't catalog the litany of bad things that people do; rather this is an walk through all the millions of things that people do to meet their needs without thinking. Most of it appears trivial in the extreme - resting a shopping cart against a pole so it doesn't roll away; using a squared railing to rest a coffee cup; using the book you're reading on the beach to shade your eyes from the sun.

What can we learn from this? Tons! What I took away from this is the realization that humans are amazingly adaptive and very innovative in their use of the physical world. If it suits our needs, we'll 'misuse' nearly anything! There's so much for the Interactive Design people that we have at imason to learn from people like Suri who cut their teeth in the Industrial Design world.

What I'd love to know, and what I'm thinking about is "how do we allow the same 'misuse' in software?"

Solving InfoPath "schema validation found non-data type" errors for xsi:nil fields

Boyan Tsolov — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:36:00 GMT

If you try to programaticaly set/remove values of fields in InfoPath, you might have come across the following error message:
"Schema validation found non-data type errors"

A number of blogs and MSDN articles describe what to do in this case. They work for setting values, however I could not find how to clear values.

Dooke's SharePoint Place has a great post about it, in fact this post solved my problem with a small change on my part
http://www.sharepointblogs.com/dooke/default.aspx
The InfoPath team blog also talks about it, with similar code
http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2006/11/28/the-xsi-nil-attribute.aspx
The Microsoft Support page is also useful
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826998

The problem

Values that are non-string (DateTime, Time, Date, Boolean, Whole Number, Decimal) cannot be blank (Empty String). If a value is set to the emptry string you will get the error above, because the empty string is considered a string and you are trying to set it to a field that is non-string. When one of these non-string fields is blank, it has an attribute "xsi:nil" that is set to "true". As soon as you type a value in this field in InfoPath the attribute is cleared.

The solution

Therefore, if you are trying to set values programatically you need to clear the "xsi:nil" attribute, or set it to "false". And if you are clearing the value of such a field, then you need to place the "xsi:nil" attribute back in, or set it to "true".

Other blogs on the internet say that clearing the value and setting the xsi:nil attribute to true is very simple, however the snippets of code they offer do not work.

This is because a nil field looks like so: <my:value />
After you type something, it looks like so: <my:value>123</my:value>
If you try and add the nil attribute in <my:value></my:value> you will get the "Schema validation found non-data type errors" error when you load the form.

The solution is to follow the steps below, depending on what you need to do with your field.

Editing a non-string field:

If you are going to try and programatically edit a field that is non-string, then you have to remove its "nil" attribute
Now you can change its value

Code (as on all other blogs and articles, this piece was taken from http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2006/11/28/the-xsi-nil-attribute.aspx):

//Create a Navigator object for the main data source

XPathNavigator xn = this.MainDataSource.CreateNavigator();

//Create a navigator object for the field (node)

//where we want to set the current date value

XPathNavigator xnfield1 = xn.SelectSingleNode("/my:myFields/my:field1", this.NamespaceManager);

//Check if the "nil" attribute exists on this node

DeleteNil(xnfield1);

//Create a new dateTime object for the current date

DateTime curDate = new DateTime(DateTime.Today.Year, DateTime.Today.Month, DateTime.Today.Day);

//Set the value of field1 to the current date in the

//correct format: yyyy-mm-dd

xnfield1.SetValue(curDate.GetDateTimeFormats().GetValue(5).ToString());

public void DeleteNil(XPathNavigator node)
{

if (node.MoveToAttribute("nil", http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance))
node.DeleteSelf();

}

Clearing a non-string field:

If you are going to programatically erase the value of a non-string field, then you have to re-construct the XML node to what InfoPath expects and add the "nil" attribute. This code is slightly different from dooke's Sharepoint place blog.

Code (slight change from dooke's code):

public static void InsertNil(XPathNavigator node)

{

if (!node.MoveToAttribute("nil", "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"))

{

string result = string.Empty;

int endIndex = node.OuterXml.IndexOf(">");

result = node.OuterXml.Substring(0, endIndex) + " xsi:nil=\"true\" />";

node.OuterXml = result;

}

This code will reconstruct the <my:value>123</my:value> to <my:value xsi:nil="true" /> which will clear the field.

In my particular case, I wanted to clear the field, no matter what it was (string or non-string):

private void ClearAllFields()

{

XPathNavigator node = xNav.SelectSingleNode(xPath, xNameSpace);

if (node == null)

return;

try

{

// try this as a Date, Integer, Boolean node, set the nil value

InsertNil(node);

}

catch

{

// if it is a string, the nil value won't work, so just set it to empty

node.SetValue(string.Empty);

}

public static void InsertNil(XPathNavigator node)

{

if (!node.MoveToAttribute("nil", "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"))

{

string result = string.Empty;

int endIndex = node.OuterXml.IndexOf(">");

result = node.OuterXml.Substring(0, endIndex) + " xsi:nil=\"true\" />";

node.OuterXml = result;

}

Books: First Break All the Rules

Stephen Kearns — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:37:00 GMT

Authors: Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman

This is a book that I read a number years ago on what makes the difference between good managers and great managers, base on mountains of data gathered by Gallup Organization. In a recent convo I was reminded about it so I've dug it out to summarize one of the interesting parts.

Measuring the Strength of the Workplace:

According to the book "Measuring the strength of a workplace can be simplified to twelve questions. These 12 don't capture _everything_, but they do capture most & most important..." (pg28)

Do I know what is expected of me at work?
Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day (Scott/Jeff: Unique ability? :-))
In the last seven days, have I received recognition or priase for doing good work?
Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
At work, do my opinions seem to count?
Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
Are my co-workers committed do doing quality work?
Do I have a best freind at work?
In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

There's more valuable info, but I recommend grabbing the book and skimming through it. :-)

imaniacs win 20 - 15 and go above .500

Boyan Tsolov — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 03:44:00 GMT

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

A number of imason-ites are playing 5-a-side floor hockey in a local Toronto League.
After 7 games and last night's win, the imaniacs are above .500 at 4 wins and 3 losses. Last night we played our best game of all. We beat the second place team “OPSEU Blues” 20 – 15!

Everybody delivered their best game:

Salma and Jacqui in offence continued their endless goal streaks
Alex and Kimi were unbeatable in defence, their nickname shall become “the imaniac filtration system”, letting through 1 ball in every 50
Cosmin, our goalie, continued with his consistent A-game
Chris sniper-ed plenty of shots past their goalie nicknamed “The Wall”
Steve accounted for half the goals with his nuclear-warhead-rocket-shots
Rez followed suit and did not let their goalie rest
Paul (Steve’s cousin) contributed to making sure “The Wall” was getting plastered with the ball every 5 seconds

Next week, we'll bring the record to 5-3!!

Obama: A more perfect union

Scott Howlett — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:13:00 GMT

It's been on my list for a while to watch Obama's speech following the words of his pastor, Pastor Wright. The speech was made in March, 2008. Although I had read by Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope this speech was on my list and has been now for about 6 months... Given that it's election day and all, I sat down this morning to give it a watch... I was not disappointed.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Next up for me is the speech for the 2004 Democratic National Convention... This has been on my list now for about 4 years...

(Please visit the site to view this media)

The Grouse Grind

Scott Howlett — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:52:59 GMT

So, I was out in Seattle last week and was travelling through Vancouver. I decided to stay a day in Vancouver; in part to spend some time with a friend, in part to avoid the red eye, and in part to do the Grouse Grind which had been on my todo list since my wife did it back in the early 2000s.

What is the Grouse Grind, you ask? It's a 'hike' up Grouse Mountain in North Vancouver (about a 15 minute drive from downtown). I write 'hike' because this isn't the type of hike you might be imagining - it's 2.9km long, but covers an elevation gain of 2,800 feet. This is a few hundred feet more than the elevation gain at Mt. Tremblant.

I did the hike on a reasonably warm (10 C) and dry day. I wore my usual running gear and brought nothing more than a bottle of water and a change of shirt for the top (the top was pretty cold and windy, so I'm glad I had a dry shirt). My time was around 65 or 70 minutes, which I was pretty happy with. This was a pretty gruelling hike, and you see almost nothing along the way - but the view from top of N. Van and Vancouver is pretty stellar.

This was an amazing adventure - I highly recommend it if you enjoy this sort of thing. Take the gondola down for $5, and save your knees!

Influencers: www.TED.com - One of my favorite sites out there

Scott Howlett — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:12:00 GMT

Do you ever visit TED?

If you don't, you should. It has one of the best collections of short talks by some of the most recognized names in science, business and politics.

I recently watched Michael Shermer's talk "Why people believe strange things". The whole 13 minute talk is entertaining but the last 5 minutes or so is pure genius, including a dissection of the Zepplin lyrics played backwards...

It's so relevant to me and the business of imason - when it comes to technology, there is so much misinformation and preconceptions; our job is to untangle this web and move forward based on science and to keep the notions of business value front and center... this is what imason is all about.

PDC 2008 – Day 2 – Windows 7 Announced

Stephen Kearns — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:36:21 GMT

Windows 7 Announcement – These were a few of the interesting features that jumped out at me…

Redesigned task bar: mouse-over thumbnails and progressive popups of larger thumbnails; individual IE tabs are shown as separate thumbnails; you can now drag&drop reorder apps in the task bar
Jump Lists: these appear in different parts of the UI, but one specific example was on the new task bar. If you had Word on the task bar, right click to get your “most recently used” list of documents.
Windows Explorer: use of libraries – used to consolidate content.
Search: integrated highlighting in search results
Home networking: new level of simplified home networking – the “home group” - Win7 PCs will find each other automatically as well automatically provide access to peripherals in the home group like printers. Smart enough to automatically switch between home printer and work printer
Gadgets can be anywhere on the desktop (no longer stuck to sidebar)
System tray – notifications area - user can now control what appears in sys tray - ability to specify how notifications will be provide or suppress icons & notifications all together