Here is the list of books in the queue

1. Sencha Touch in Action by Jesus Garcia and Anthony DeMoss

2. Node.js in Action by Mike Cantelon and TJ Holowaychuk

3. HTML5: Up and Running by Mark Pilgrim

4. Programming Razor by Jess Chadwick

5. jQuery Mobile: Up and Running by Maximiliano Firtman

6. Pragmatic guide to Sass by Hampton Catlin and Michael Lintorn Catlin

7. CoffeeScript Accelerated Javascript Development by Tervor Burnham

8. Meaningful Use and Beyond A Guide to IT Staff in Health Care by Fred Trotter and David Uhlman

9. The Way of Shadows (The Night Angel Trilogy) by Brent Weeks

10. Wired by Douglas E. Richards

11. The Frozen Sky by Jeff Carlson

WOW! not sure how I am going to find time to read them all.

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,400 times in 2010. That’s about 6 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 6 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 57 posts. There were 9 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 1mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was October 18th with 106 views. The most popular post that day was 5:01 Developer.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were sterling.codeplex.com, davybrion.com, twitter.com, silverlightshow.net, and reddit.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for stylecop vb.net, stylecop for vb.net, stylecop vb, vs2008 trial upgrade, and upgrade vs 2008 trial.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

5:01 Developer August 2007
13 comments

Using the Sterling database in your Windows Phone 7 App November 2010
2 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

Upgrading trial version of VS2008 to licensed version February 2008
2 comments

Opening an iPhone 3G – Be Extra Careful January 2010
1 comment

It takes guts to do Agile scrum March 2010
3 comments

The main reading entry screen displays a quick snapshot of four most recent entries. Double-tap the graph to display a full-screen version of the graph which also allows you to view historical readings.

HealthCaddy uses the CTP version of Telerik Windows Phone 7 date and time picker controls. Data is stored to the phone’s isolated storage via the excellent Sterling database engine. And, like discountCalc, HealthCaddy also uses MVVMLight framework to achieve UI and business logic separation.

Here are a few screen shots of the app.

I had to cut out certain features of the app to hit the December 31st 2010 deadline. I intend to implement these ASAP. I am also awaiting the release of version 1 of Telerik controls and the Sterling database engine. These updates will be rolled into the next point release.

I have also setup a UserVoice forum to solicit feature suggestions for future implementations. Post your feature requests here and cast your votes.

From idea to marketplace, developing for the Windows Phone 7 has been a breeze. Granted it is a very simple app, but I wanted to get the experience of inception to marketplace. Overall, I am extremely happy with the experience. I bought a Mac Mini to develop iPhone apps but never got enough hang of Objective-C to create an app. It’s not that Objective-C is hard but I found it difficult to find time to become knowledgeable enough to create an app. The fact that I use Silverlight in my day job helped me build this app quickly. Creating the art work and getting it just right too some time.

I would like to thank the following people for extending their help during the development of this app. Without these bright folks’ support I could not have published this app.

1. Dele – My cohort at work. Extremely fortunate to be working with such a talented individual. Having successfully published his app (Easy Diary), Dele, helped me get unstuck several times and offered invaluable review comments

2. Joel, Microsoft MVP (Mobile) – Without Joel lending me one of his several Windows Phone 7 devices I could not have tested my app on an actual device. Probably would have had to wing it and risk rejection. Testing on a device is invaluable and for this I am indebted to Joel.

3. Laurent Bugnion, Microsoft MVP (Silverlight) creator if MVVMLight, a Model-View-View-Model framework for WPF, Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 applications. Enjoyed working with MVVMLight. A big thank you to Laurent for trying to help me with what I assumed was a MVVMLight framework but. It actually turned out to be one of the Telerik DLLs.

If you have a Windows Phone 7, please check discountCalc out. All feedback welcome.

But then I hit a roadblock. No matter what, I could not get my app to talk to my SQLite database. I could not get rid of the “Unable to open database file” exception. So, I gave up and resumed my search. This time, search revealed Sterling, an Isolated Storage database for Windows Phone 7 with LINQ support created by Jeremy Likness. Perfect.

The codeplex home of Sterling has everything you need to start using this excellent storage solution for your Windows Phone 7 app. Source, sample code, documentation (MS Word and PDF formats). You get everything. However, I did run into a few hiccups and hopefully my findings below will help you get past any blocks. This is not a replacement for the excellent documentation for Sterling. I am filling a few gaps that will help those not familiar with Silverlight and/or Windows Phone 7 get Sterling setup quickly.

Here’s how you do it.

1. Download the latest Sterling changeset (69384 as of this writing) from here and extract the zip file to a folder of your choice

2. The following folders will be extracted

3. The src folder contains the following sub-folders

4. The SterlingSln folder contains the following

5. The SterlingSln folder also contains the following Visual Studio 2010 solutions

The Windows Phone 7 sample app that demonstrates the use of the Sterling engine is WindowsPhoneSterlingSln.sln. In my opinion, this solution file should be renamed as WindowsPhoneSterlingSampleSln.

6. Now that we have an idea of what we get in our download, it’s time to use the engine in your project. You can either build Wintellect.Sterling.WindowsPhone.csproj and reference the generated DLL in your Phone app or add Wintellect.Sterling.WindowsPhone.csproj to your Windows Phone solution and opt for Project reference.

7. Peruse the Quick start sections in the documentation to understand how to use Sterling. The “Using Sterling” section outlines the required steps.

And here is where I stumbled.

The sample code following the “Using Sterling” section shows a service class that can be created in your app to ease the use of Sterling. The caption states that the code is from the Sterling Phone example project. However, if you search WindowsPhoneSterling.csproj or WindowsPhoneSterlingSln.sln, you won’t find the service class. A sample service class (SterlingService.cs) is included in SterlingExample.csproj. But that project is a classic Silverlight project and not a Windows Phone 7 project. I was confused. If you look in the WindowsPhoneSterling.csproj sample project, Sterling engine usage code is in App.xaml.cs file. The code in App.xaml.cs follows the steps outlined in the “Using Sterling” section from the documentation. And yet, the sample code that follows service class, for example, code in “Saving your class” section, references the DatabaseService class.

So, after spending a couple of head-scratching moments this is what I comprehended.

The Sterling engine can be setup in your Windows Phone project in two ways

1. Follow the steps outlined in “Using Sterling” section from the documentation and sprinkle code in the various Application service methods (activating the engine in the Application_Launching event handler, deactivating the engine in the Application_Deactivated and Application_Closing event handlers, etc)

or

2. Create a service class that performs the activation, database registration, deactivation and disposal.

Personally I like option 2. Much cleaner code and I don’t have to monkey with various Application service event handlers. Also, I don’t have to declare a public property in the App class to allow access to the current instance of the database. The service class exposes a static property named “Current” using which you can access the current database instance.

Once you create your service class (complete implementation sample can be found in the documentation for Sterling), you invoke it in your App.xaml. Here is the code that you need to add to your App.xaml

1. Add the namespace declaration

xmlns:yourTag="clr-namespace:ServiceClassNamespace"

Replace “yourTag” above with whatever fancies you and “ServiceClassNamespace” with the namespace of your service class

2. Add the service declaration markup to the <Application.ApplicationLifetimeObjects> node in your App.xaml file like so

<yourTag:YourDatabaseService />

When your Windows Phone app starts up, the methods (StartService, Starting) on your service class will be invoked auto-magically. Likewise, when the app is deactivated or shut down, the appropriate methods (Exiting, Exited) will be invoked again. As long as you follow the conventions,

So, there you have it. Hopefully this has been useful. The Sterling database engine is a fantastic Isolated storage solution for your Windows Phone App. Very few moving parts and dead easy to use. Jeremy Linkess has done a very good job of creating an ingeniously simple solution.

As I started to listen to the first story (Sara J Chipps) in the first episode, disappointment started to set it. The composition was so poor, the music fade ins and outs were so jarring, it was unbelievable. Story telling stopped at odd points, Rob’s voice came in. It was utter confusion. I did not expect this from Rob. I just couldn’t believe that Rob had done such a poor job. Without quality a podcast will die soon. Rob is a respected software developer and anything from him is guaranteed instant audience. I didn’t want the podcast to fail, because the idea is a great one. I wanted to stop and forget about the podcast.

I persisted. And, I was rewarded. By the time the second story was about a minute in, the quality had improved so greatly, I had to rewind and listen to the first story again just to be sure. I have not listened to the latest updates and cleanups. By the end of the second story, everything was different. The story cuts were apt, the background music just right and, Rob’s voice started to sound like Ira’s.

Starting with episode 2, one can be forgiven if they think This Developer’s Life was actually put together by NPR and Ira is actually voicing it. All the irritations of the first story in episode one are gone. The song selection is superb, greatly matches the story and the story telling stops are the right spot.

Rob, thanks for putting together such an excellent podcast. Love the idea and the stories you bring to life.

It’s only fitting that just like NPR is listener supported, we make This Developer’s Life listener supported too and send it our contributions. Who’s in?

What is unique about twittag.me?

Well, you can certainly create all kinds of tags at Microsoft’s tag website, but you need to create a Windows Live account. If you would like to check out the power of Microsoft Tags, create a Windows Live account and play with it. But, if you are not too keen on creating a live account, twittag.me will get the job done fast and easy. twittag.me creates one type of tag. A tag that browses to your twitter page.

Enjoy.

All feedback welcome.

In my opinion,  agile scrum does not work. Having made that provocative statement, let me qualify it. Agile does not work if the team practicing it does not have guts. You need passionate, self-motivated people to make agile a success.  Else, all you are doing is going fast nowhere and telling stories. Scott Hanselman‘s team is an example of a team that can successfully do agile.

Here are some of the tenets of running an Agile team

1. An agile team may not have a team lead
In theory this is good. If everyone is equally motivated and smart, you dont need a task assigner or team leader. The team understands the needs and just gets it done. Team members look at the scrum board, pull tasks, swarm around blocks and keep moving the stones up the pyramids. Great things are accomplished by great teams. However, there are only so many good people. The minute you put more than 2 mediocre people, you bring in politics.  People start finding all kinds of excuses to why something cannot or could not be done. For mediocre people only sticks work.

2. Every team member is accountable to the team. Everyone is empowered.
Again, a great idea. If everyone is honest, no one will feel threatened. Smart people treat one another with respect. To use the cliche, with empowerment comes responsibility. Most agile teams start out to have daily stand-up meetings. However these meetings pretty soon devolve into status meetings which waste everyone’s time. Everyone shows up. Blurts out what they did yesterday, what they might do today and there never is any block. None whatsoever. No one questions anything. Just get it over with. When it’s everyones responsibility to be accountable and call out, it becomes no one’s responsibility. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. This is why you need gutsy team members. Team members who have the guts to call out others and team  members who have the guts to take critisism.

3. An agile process will weed out weak players because process shines the light on such players
For this to really work, you need honest, motivated people. Put together a bunch of mediocre people, and you will get what you  measure. Everyone will start working toward satisfying the measurements. The manager uses a magic formula to deem that a team of 5 people can deliver X number of story points. Weak teams will tell stories that magically add up to X. Writing a Hello World program will magically get an “8″ and you add 8 more such story points, you already exceed X. Now you are looking awesome. Because mediocre team players are good at playing politics, everyone scratches everyone’s back. Dissenting voices will be frowned upon and soon those disenting will become demotivated and maybe more on. Everyone wins.

4. 5-6 is the ideal number for the team size
This one size fits all teams in a large project is not fair. Some team members work well and some don’t. Human dynamics and interactions are complex expecially when survival is at stake as is the case with mediocre team members. So for some teams, 3 may be the optimal size where as 6 may work better with another. Teams are supposed to be dynamic in constitution but that will work only if we have a bunch of top-notch folks

So, do you have the guts to do agile? I hope so. And, good luck.

Installing and using the crappy AT&T Navigator busted the speaker on my iPhone. My iPhone is on permanent mute, vibrate only mode. Can’t hear a thing from the speakers. No phone rings, no marimba tune. I managed to find a repair store in Atlanta which wants to charge $100. It’s still cheaper than the other options and no, I did not get the AppleCare. I know, hindsight. However, the store has not returned my call since November. I found the replacement dock connecter+speaker assembly on Amazon.com for $19. Next step was to replace the broken part. Haven’t found time to do it yet, because, if I completely damage the phone I need time to run to the AT&T store and get the cheapest phone so I don’t miss any calls.

Here are the tools you will need to open the iPhone. Some guides suggest using a flat screwdriver to pry open the top, after removing the bottom screen.

I do not recommend doing that, because the potential of you damaging the phone is very high. The cheap plastic suction cup can be found at any Home Depot or Lowes. Get the one shown in the picture. The hook comes in handy pulling the lid open and the suction is good enough. A thin gasket lines the glass cover of the iPhone and using a knife or any other tool to pry open the lid will damage the gasket. 

Also recommend keeping a magnet handy as the screws are tiny and you don’t to lose any. The magnet will come on handy if you drop any screw. Another tip, take pictures of each step so you can use it was a guide to help you put the device back together. Yet another tip, backup your iPhone before attempting to open it. Better safe than be sorry.

The picture on the right, borrowed from iFixIt.Com should the iPhone open. One thing to note is there is no connector connecting the top to the bottom like the one I found in my iPhone.

The picture on the left is the dock assembly. The connector shown is attached to the top of the iPhone where the arrow points to in the picture on the right. The very first time you try to open your iPhone 3G using the suction cup, you will find that a little extra pull is required. Don’t just yank the top. You will need a couple of tries before you can successfully dislodge the top, but knowing that there is connector will help you be extra careful.

Good luck.

However, I think there is opportunity here for Android to completely blindside Apple and make Android devices indispensable. Google can do that, not by courting consumers, but by collaborating with makers of complex software systems like HMSes (Hospital Management Systems).

A hospital is a complex system and a truly integrated solution is mind-boggling. It takes a lot of brain power to comprehend the enormity of implementing such a project at even a mid-size hospital. There are processes within processes and to top that everything is highly regulated. It’s a question of life or death. Literally.

The typical architecture of HISes (Hospital Information Systems) is client-server, mostly implemented in Java. Large established hospitals still run mainframes but the basic architecture is client-server. The textbook approach of modernizing such “legacy” systems is to go the web applications route with a heavy mix of web-services to make everything “service-oriented”. You would probably throw in lots of JSP (Java Server Pages) pages and expect them to run in a browser. So the browser becomes your client accessing the application functionality. Then, you sprinkle the campus with desktops running browsers and you have your setup.

My proposal is this. Instead of using $500 desktop based browser clients to access system functionality why not access the functionality from $200 Android devices? Heck, with bulk orders, these could even cost about $100. These devices will access the required functionality via Android apps. Just imagine what would happen if Google and McKesson were to collaborate. McKesson’s Paragon Community HIS can dole out app features via Android apps. Google could subsidize these devices and could reduce the overall implementation cost of the system. Granted not all application features can be appified. (I invented this word, if anyone patents it, you heard it first here). But I suspect most of the features can be. So instead of nurses or hospital staff needing to go back to their stations to access the system, they can whip out their Android devices, and perform their tasks right at the point of the service. No need to make entries on paper charts and then transfer them into the system back at the station. Just tap them into the device. Throw in a pico-projector into the device and you have the option of viewing the data on a large screen. Like, say, you want to view the blood glucose chart of a patient or the vital signs charts. The possibilities are endless.

So instead of trying to create web clients or thin desktop clients, makers of complex software systems should focus their effort on developing downloadable android apps of their applications’ functionality. And McKesson, if you are looking for someone to lead up such an effort, you know where to find me.