Our CEO sent out an e-mail that included this great post on the value of using GoBinder. It’s a blog post by one of our users who really likes the virtual printer, and the annotation and search capabilities.
Good to see feedback from someone really using the product!
Things are starting to heat up here at Agilix Labs as the GoBinder SDK
is now reaching good Alpha stages. I just installed the first cut
of the GoBinder SDK (build 931) on my Virtual PC Windows XP machine …
and it’s up and running!
The core functionality is there and working, and we even have the first
sample “File System Sync Provider” in place to test with. I’m now
beginning the process of writing my own plug-ins … as a test of the
new platform, and my own skills! 🙂
It’s cool to see things coming along nicely, and we’ll soon have some
developer forums in place for the SDK. I’m also going to be
looking for some developers who want to join an “early release” program
and beta test our SDK. We’re looking for .NET developers who want
to create some cool plug-ins for our product launch later this
year. If you are interested, send me an e-mail: scott.lemon
[at] agilix.com
Some friends of mine have created a very cool new start-up called
Firepoll. It’s like combining Instant Messaging with Surveys
… and you get paid for it! Well … if you have the right
identity.
What they created is a small IM-like service that you install on your
machine. You then register with their server, and they ask you a
lot of identity/profile information. All of this is stored at
their server. Companies interested in doing market research can
then visit the Firepoll web site and subscribe to do “Instant
Surveys”. Through a web page they select all of the attributes of
the target market that they are interested in surveying, and in
real-time they can see how many of “those” people are currently
on-line. They can then design their survey through their browser,
and select which “rewards” they are offering for completed surveys.
Lastly, they indicate how many survey results they want and when they
post the survey it is sent – instantly – to all of the on-line
community members who match the profile that was defined. As soon
as enough people have replied, the survey is closed.
As a user of Firepoll, I have it running on my machine all of the
time. When a survey is created, where I match the demographic
profile requested, I get a small pop-up message on my machine.
When I click the message my browser is launched directly to the survey,
and the first question is “Which reward do you want?” I can get
things like MP3 music, $1 to my PayPal account, discount coupons,
etc. I then proceed to answer the survey questions, and then post
my results. I get an e-mail with my reward notification in
minutes. The entire process is a clean and simple experience.
To me, this is a facinating solution for a number of reasons …
combining many facets of the Internet into one powerful solution that
really leverages the power of distributed networks. On top of
that, I can leverage my identity – or the one that I define and create
– to actually generate money.
It’s a cool product … I’d love to hear feedback from others on what they think of it!
Ok … so the TabletPCBuzz post about getting Apple software to run on
a Tablet were false … the author has no real evidence to prove
it. Bummer.
On the other hand I *did* get OpenDarwin running on Virtual PC 2004 …
that is the same kernel and libraries that forms the base for
OS-X. I even got a better window manager working this
morning. So at least *some* Apple software is runnable on a
Tablet PC!
Well … that sure didn’t take too long! Here it is that I’m just
blogged about the fact that I can’t imagine that it’s too long before
Apple has a Tablet PC … and wham! It’s done! (Ok … sort
of!) One of my co-workers came across this post today … one of
the Tablet PC hackers out there got OS-X working on a Toshiba Tablet
PC. This whole Intel migration might just occur pretty quickly!
Installing Apple OS X operating system on a Tablet PC
Apple’s Developer Transition Kit offers information, sample code, software,
and hardware developers need to build Universal Binary applications to run on
Macs using Intel processors. As expected, people are also trying to install OS X
on Intel platform computers that they already own.Charles Alexander installed OS X on his Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC. The
system runs. The digitizer functions. He’s run into issues with screen rotation,
networking, USB, etc. He writes on TabletPCBuzz.com,
“But with apple’s inkwell (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/inkwell/) this thing is
really showing potential.”I admit, I’m curious about this and would like to see this working. The
install process appears to be fairly complicated – certainly not an average
Apple or PC user experience for people. Nevertheless, a curiosity. [What is New]
As we continue to make progress on our next version of GoBinder at
Agilix Labs, I am continuing to look at all of the potential plug-ins that
might be attractive to students, and our customer base in
general. One area that I am anxious to explore is Peer to Peer
solutions. I am already looking at the Microsoft Peer to Peer SDK,
and have an initial project that we are going to complete. Once
we have our first P2P plug-in, I want to create the next. Phil,
as usual, has given me an idea of where to look next!
I’ve been interested in distributed back-up systems for some time.
For example, I’d love to see a P2P client given to BYU students that
allows them to commit a percentage of their disk to a distributed
back-up system in exchange for that much storage on the overall system.
Rather than the University having to commit capital to a back-up system
for students files, excess direct-attached disk and software would
solve the problem.I’ve also be enamored with erasure codes
for reliability. Using erasure codes would allow the distributed
back-up network to provide reliable storage in the face of a certain
percentage of nodes going down, leaving the network for some reason,
and so forth.A couple of students in my Middleware class this semester picked
this theme up and did some further exploration. There were a couple of
items that caught my eye.
- PStore
is a secure P2P storage solution from some researchers at MIT. Overall,
the feature set seems quite nice, but the code is not available and it
doesn’t incorporate erasure codes as fas as I know.- DIBS is a similar idea written in python that does use erasure codes. The UI is something only a geek could love.
Apart from being genuinely useful in a campus environment where
its difficult to provide effective back-up solutions for even critical
files, this is an excellent example of a P2P network beyond mere “file
sharing” which has grown to have negative connotations. I’d love to see
the headline “BYU Embraces P2P Technology.”
I just found an interesting post on my Tablet PC blog that gave me cause for this blog post:
Well, MAC IS BETTER THAN WINDOWS YOU PERSON!!
Hmmm … I’m not sure that I have anything against a Mac. In
fact, I don’t believe that it will be long before Apple also ships a
Tablet PC. People ought to understand that the Tablet PC is not
necessarily about the operating system … it’s about a collection of
capabilities and an ergonomic design!
What I have found is that the Tablet PC is really about a design which
allows for easy use of a computer as a “tablet”, coupled with software
capabilities that allow for stylus-based annotation and writing.
As I am watching the various vendors who are now introducing Tablet PC
systems – like IBM/Lenovo – I can only imagine that we are going to
watch more vendors jump onboard. When Dell jumps in … it’s a
proven market.
One of my questions to my friends at Novell is why there isn’t more
Linux effort to support the standard Tablet PC platforms … and maybe
there is. I just haven’t found too much yet. Along this
same line of thinking, I really do think that it is just a matter of
time before Apple jumps in with their own Tablet Mac … or something
like that. It’s not about the operating system folks …
Years ago (wow … almost 10 years ago!) I was experimenting with voice and video over IP using products like WebPhone, CU-SeeMe, and NetMeeting.
It was a blast … and all using 14.4kbps dial-up modems! This is
what really drove me to upgrade modems through the 28.8kbps, and then
to the 56kbps modems. All of these products seemed to fizzle
during the Tech Boom, and also went away during the Tech Crash.
Sometime during the last year I installed an early copy of Skype
and was impressed … it was pretty raw, IMHO, but it was on the right
track. Well … as of a couple of months ago I upgraded and have
been continuing to track the progress. Skype is now looking
really good … I am thoroughly impressed.
What really got me over the edge was using Skype with work. At
Agilix Labs we are dealing with Universities that are all over the planet,
and I found that many of the schools from Asia are requesting all
“conference calls” to be done using Skype. I had a call last week
that was over one hour and forty-five minutes long … with two people
in Singapore, one in California, and two of us in Utah. It was
clear, and free. I have now added Skype as a permanent service on
my desktop!
At Agilix Labs where I am working, we are about to introduce the second
generation of our GoBinder product. GoBinder is a “digital
notebook” or “digital planner”. It provides a variety of contact
management and binder/organizer functionality. Our second
generation is a major rewrite of the product as we are moving
completely to a “plug-in” architecture. With these changes we
will open up GoBinder to unlimited extensions and possibilities.
Now Agilix, and any developer, can create new tabs (or pages) within
GoBinder that will provide new functionality. In fact, all of the
existing GoBinder functionality has been rewritten as plug-ins … so
GoBinder itself is truly becoming like an empty binder, providing the
basic structure to load and run plug-ins which provide all of the
end-user value. I am really looking forward to the completion of
this version as it will open GoBinder as a true platform for
educational, business, and entertainment plug-ins.
While reading on-line I came across this great article by one of the
members of the Eclipse project. It is about plug-in
architectures and many of the issues that have to be dealt with.
It’s a great primer for anyone wanting to learn more about software
plug-ins and plug-in architectures.
Well … I held off my purchasing choices until the new HP Tablet PC
shipped. It’s now shipping and two of the folks here at Agilix Labs
have bought them … and really like them. If course now
IBM/Lenovo is about to ship one also …
I’m thinking that I still like the HP … but then I haven’t done my
homework on the IGM/Lenovo unit yet. The one thing that might
sway my choice is screen resolution. I’ve found that I have grown
to really enjoy the higher resolution of my Dell latop.
I know this … if I choose the HP on Monday I’ll have it in my hands before the week end!