"Dear Santa, I want a better blogging tool."

That's been my instant messenger name (riccaetano@hotmail.com) for the last few days. I've had a few people asking "So what are you using?". It's Syndirella. But don't get me wrong, it's not a bad tool. I really like Syndirella but it's not what I think RSS aggregators could be. Here's a few thoughts:

Most readers use a tree as a focus point. I think this works well in the typical programmer's mind but it adds little value to the information being display. What I'm envisioning is a newspaper. I would love to open up my aggregator and the first thing I see is a newspaper like front page customized by me. I might have 3 or 4 sections: .NET, Programming, News, Life. One the front page I would have blurps from different RSS sources with links to the full post. The page would represent today's news and I would be able to check the progress of my page in real time (people post at different times).

With that in mind, I would like to see the aggregator archive each day's news in a way where I could flip back through time. I may not remember who posted something but I could remember when. All this information should be neatly stored on my hard drive.

A very important feature would be blogging from my aggregator. Most do not have it, but I think it's a key feature to contributing to blog feedback cycles. Also I would like to see this app built as an full blow Windows app. I don't want my user interaction restricted by primitive HTML controls.

I would love to take the time to build this vision. Problem is I'm buried with "work" work. I guess it's a good time to bounce ideas of other people. I would love to hear your comments.

wireless is cool

I'm blogging while riding as a passenger on a golf car. pretty cool...

california bloggers

Sean Slavin responded to my help request on DDE. Cool thing is we works at WonderWare. Over IM chat he's been helping me with hooking up thier WonderWare software to .NET. I was just amazed that through blogging I was able to get in contact with the most qualified person on earth to help with my problem.

I'm thinking we should all hook up sometime. A while back Scoble posted a note about camping in Yosemite. I still think that would be a blast. Any one interested?

wifeblog

"Well, it happened as I knew it would. Peer pressure is a wonderful thing. Rebecca is now among the blogging masses. Head over and say hi. I need to fix up the CSS a bit for her and get rid of that nasty MovableType default style. Hmm, tonight's project maybe, inbetween burping and diaper changing sessions." [slavin]

Haha...too cool! I offered to help my wife get setup with a blog but she wasn't interested. She says all she needs the 'Net for is shopping and email.

InfoPath / NAnt link

I forgot to post the link to the NAnt build file document: http://www.stronglytyped.com/documents/nantbuildfile.xsn

Using an InfoPath document to create a NAnt file

To learn more about InfoPath I attempted to create a document that generates a NAnt build file. I first started by building a schema which only includes a couple of tasks (csc and exec). I then imported it into InfoPath and created the document. This was a repetitive cycle. I had to edit the schema outside of InfoPath and then rebuild the document from it. But eventually I got it to work:



and the end result:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

<?mso-infoPathSolution solutionVersion="1.0.0.13" 

	productVersion="11.0.4920" PIVersion="0.9.0.0" 

	href="http://www.stronglytyped.com/documents/nantbuildfile.xsn" 

	language="en-us" ?>

<?mso-application progid="InfoPath.Document"?>

<project name="Hello World Example" default="release" 

	builddir=".\build" 

	xmlns:ns1="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2003/myXSD/2003-03-31T23:33:23">

	<property name="description" value="test build file"></property>

	<target name="release" depends="">

		<csc target="exe" output="helloworld.exe" debug="False">

			<sources>

				<includes name="helloworld.cs"></includes>

				<includes name="helloworld_helper.cs"></includes>

			</sources>

		</csc>

		<exec program="helloworld.exe" 

			commandline="" basedir="." 

			workingdir="">

		</exec>

	</target>

</project>

This could be handy but I still ask myself "What is this tool really for?". I guess it could have a million different uses but I want to know what MS is envisioning.

InfoPath tip...

I'm working on a more complicated InfoPath document. It's a secret for now...just in case it doesn't work out.
I'm finding that when building InfoPath documents it best to have your XML Schema upfront. You can build something close within InfoPath but it's quite limited.

InfoPath Goodness!

I had an InfoPath moment.

I felt so excited about it I had to write a little something: A Better XML "Data" Editor

More about Prevalence

Joshua writes about the delusions between "prevalence" and database systems.

"...in terms of functionality, Query Processing, Storage and Indexing are rarely things that a programmer can implement better than the professionals. Most of the innovation in terms of "persistence" layers revolves around the Data Access layer, and the fundamentals of the rest of the storage stack remain relevant."

That's a great point. I decided to add the prevalence layer to my application mainly for the following 2 reasons:

- The record count is small. In my case less than a dozen. My queries are only hash table lookups.
- It was far easier to write the business logic using classes rather than tables/stored procedures

I don't think it's quite fair to compare the two systems in most respects. They are each best suited for areas that lightly overlap. In this case both are not a hammer.