The Thank You Economy

I’m trying a new thing where I read more books. I’ve worked out that a book on Kindle is less than the price of a couple of packets of cigarettes. If I read a book in two days (unlikely) this will still cost me less than a tobacco habit. And it is much less likely to kill me.

So, today on a whim I downloaded a copy of “The Thank You Economy” after I saw it in Joey deVilla’s blog. I’ve started reading it and it is rather interesting. It makes the point that in a world of connected and savvy consumers, who are going to Tweet, Blog and Facebook any bad customer experiences, a business can’t afford to upset folks in the way that it used to. Furthermore, if you give really good customer experiences you are creating a sales force out of the users of your products.

Apple are brilliant at this. I remember being told an awestruck tale of a dropped (and shattered) iPhone which was ‘Just replaced’ in an Apple Store. This is actually very good business sense. The hardware costs Apple very little, they can write the expense off against tax, and if their delighted customer tells ten people the story and a couple of them go Apple rather than Android then it will have paid for itself.

A couple of thoughts though. Some people seem just born to complain. I’ve stood behind examples of this genre in queue the Post Office, and I’m sure you have too. These folks have presumably got Twitter and Facebook accounts, so I wonder how this policy works with them. With a bit of luck the book will cover this a bit later on.

The other thing I was thinking was how we could apply this to my business, that of education. We work hard at Hull to can give students a great experience, but at the end of the day we also have to give some marks out which will not always be well received. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made was to hand out my teacher assessments after I’d given out the results on a course. Some of the students (who had not actually applied themselves very well and done badly as a consequence) took it upon themselves to deliver payback and the comments were so good they got stuck on the staff room wall for all to enjoy.

I’ve not finished the book, but I’m enjoying reading it. Like most good business books it is full of things that make you say “Well Duh!”, but you might not have actually thought of. It is worth a read, and will certainly do you more good than 40 cigarettes.

Practice Your Passwords

Scott Hanselman (who talks a lot of sense) has been telling people on the internets to make sure they have secure passwords, and different passwords for all their various accounts. This is very sensible, and made me think about my passwords. I find that the problem is that when hit with an “enter new password” dialog my brain turns to mush and I can’t think of anything sensible to use. Actually, my brain turns to mush at other times too, such as when number one wife ask me questions like “What do you think?”, but I digress.

Anyhoo, having pondered the matter I reckon the way to solve this one is that whenever you are doing something mildly unexciting (for example mowing the lawn or vacuuming the lounge) you should use the time think about what might make a good password and practice remembering it. That way, when the prompt comes along you will have something to type in.

24 Hours a Day at the World Trade Centre

Yesterday lunchtime I popped down to the World Trade Centre in the middle of Hull. They were having an event to mark the start of their “24 Hours a Day Opening”.  I was there to show off some technology and be the only one present not wearing a suit. When I arrived the whole place was packed with business folk, as you can see above.

This was my setup, where I was showing off what the Kinect can do when you write your own software for it. (and giving a none too subtle plug for the blog…)

I had a brief chat with Alan Johnston MP about game development, which was nice. I managed to get in the fact that Criterion games (who make titles like Burnout) have just hired four of our students, which counts as all their graduate recruitment for the year. I think he was suitably impressed, which was nice.

I also met up with a number of people who, once I’d told them what Kinect can do, instantly started thinking how they could use it in their business. Great fun.

Why the New Guy Can’t Code

There’s an interesting post on Tech Crunch – Why the New Guy Can’t Code.  (Found out about it via Alfred’s blog). The Tech Crunch post is bemoaning the fact that companies which are supposed to have well managed recruitment processes are ending up with programmers who can’t actually write programs. This is becoming quite an issue in a world which is short of good developers at the moment.

In the past some companies (notably Microsoft and Google) became famous for asking interview questions like “How would you move Mount Fuji? or Why are manhole covers round?”. Their argument was that they wanted smart people, and questions like this will allow a smart person to shine. A tip: I think that in these situations they are interested in what you do when confronted with the question, not whether your answer is actually correct. If you say “I dunno” when asked how to move a mountain, this won’t go well. If you start making plans involving earth moving equipment and calculating volumes of rock then this might go down a bit better. Me, I’d suggest just changing the road signs, but perhaps this is because I have difficultly taking these questions seriously.

Google have apparently taken this a bit further, and now ask for answers to programming questions like “Write me a binary search”. This sounds more technical, but nobody writes that kind of search any more, and the fact you can trot out an algorithm like this doesn’t necessarily prove a lot.

Anyhoo, according to the blog post the trend now is moving towards making an applicant show off what they have made. In other words, the best way to see if a person can program is to look at a program they have made. Well, duh. In the old days you had this idea of an “apprentice piece” that was made by an apprentice at the end of their training to prove their worth. A cabinet maker would create a small wooden box, etc etc, and then show this off to potential employers.

I’ve just spent four days in the labs getting our first year students to show us what they have made. This is the second time we’ve done this marathon effort, and it was nice to see the improvements. Lots of students who last time failed to deliver all the components, or added extras that weren’t needed or worth extra marks, had really focused on the specification and made darned sure that all the important bits were present. And they got very good marks as a result. The students also had the experience of someone looking at their code and asking them to explain it.

I’ll tell any student who listens that they need to get some code out there in the form of an application or game, and be prepared to talk about it when you get interviewed. And if they don’t bring it up, make sure that you do:

“Any Questions Mr. Miles?”
”Yes – do you want to see this game I’ve written? It’s called Cheese Lander”
(sound of minor chord playing in the background)

In all seriousness, if you want to get ahead (or perhaps anywhere) in this business I think that you really do need to have an “apprentice piece” of your own, that you can show off. It is good to see that those hiring are starting to take a proper level of interest in such things.

Update on 2011-05-14 19:22 by Rob

If you haven't already, you should read the comments on the original blog post. They are reflect a wide range of viewpoints on this issue. I thought it was pretty much an open and shut case, but the individual opinions and the way they are expressed are worth a look. I've not changed my views on the matter, but I must admit the matter seems a bit more complex than I originally thought.

Friday the 13th Update Fun

A great way to start Friday 13th. Both of my laptops stuck doing Windows Updates which seem to lock the machine up when it reboots, and then fail, so that when I do a reboot it happens all over again.

Lovely.

Turns out this is a known issue of sorts. If you go here you will find some discussion and things you can try. I managed to fix the problem by only installing one update at a time, rather than all at once, in the order suggested by a post on this thread. If you have this problem make sure that you install KB2534366 after all the rest.

And have a nice Friday the 13th.

Crunchy Teeth

Yesterday I was eating my breakfast, as you do, when something went “crack” in my mouth. Not a good sound. Turned out that a piece of one of my teeth had broken off. Not good. So I rang my NHS dentist. Fortunately he was able to see me today, and so at around two thirty (which is very appropriate time to do this) I went down to the surgery and opened wide. I was expecting this to be bad in just about every way possible. It was going to be expensive and painful. Perhaps at some point my trousers would fall down too, so that it could also be embarrassing and I would have the full set.

But no. After poking around for a while the dentist, a thoroughly professional chap called Julien, pronounced that the tooth was fundamentally sound, and just needed a filling on top. Which he could do there and then for the sum of just 17 pounds. So I was getting it fixed for less than a price of a Blu-Ray. With no injections. Wonderful.

So I’m now sitting here with a mended tooth and a resolve to be more careful when eating nuts in future.

Marking Time

Spent the day marking First Year programming work. That’s around 15 different Breakout games and 5 or so banks (I got to do lots of games for some reason). I’m getting pretty good at paddle control, which is nice. We’ll finish tomorrow.

One thing that is impressing me is how much more the students are focusing on the deliverables. Last time we did this we had lots of submissions with bits missing. This time everybody seems to have read the specification and figured out just what they need to do. I think this is a really good development. Programmers are legendary for “drifting” off the original design, and it is nice to see some attention being paid to delivering what the customer needs.

Static on the Radio

I was doing a C# revision lecture yesterday and I was talking about static class members. I mentioned the fact that every year some students write “Static means that the value of the variable cannot be changed” in the exam, which produces an anguished cry from me and zero marks. I was trying to think of a better way to explain what static really means. And I thought about the radio. If you turn on your am radio and tune it away from a station you will hear static. And that static hiss is always there. It has been there since before radios were invented and it will be there until the universe cools right down. Static class members are a bit like this. They are always there. They exist whether you make an instance of the class or not. Static in this situation doesn’t mean “can’t change” it means “always there”.

We use them in programs when we want a data member that is part of a class but not part of each instance. For example, in a bank we might have loads of accounts, but the minimum amount you can withdraw, the maximum size of the balance we can have and the minimum age for an account holder are all relevant to accounts, but not stored in each account instance. Static works well in this situation.

Don’t Forget Memory of a Goldfish

David Parker, one of our postgrad students, has made a very nice Windows Phone pelmanism (matching pairs) game for windows phone. You can find it on the Windows Phone Marketplace by looking for “goldfish”.

I think I really ought to create a showcase page for Hull applications that have made it to the device (this would of course include Cheese Lander). If you have created an application or game for WP7 please get in touch and I’ll add you to the list.

WiFi Fun and Games

The WIFI connection downstairs has been a bit dodgy ever since I “upgraded” it with a device I got for an amazing price (can you tell what is going to happen here?). I’m pretty sure the discount was because someone had bought it, found it didn’t work and taken it back to the shop. It used to connect quickly enough, and then drop the connection at some random point in the future, just often enough to be really annoying. Its in the bin now. I can’t think of anyone I dislike enough to give it to them to use.

Anyhoo, I’ve recently come across these Tenda routers that you can get from eBuyer for the bonkers price of 12.48 pence:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169923 

They don’t replace the venerable Netgear DSL device that links me to the awesome power of Karoo, but then again I don’t want them to. What I want them for is to spread some WIFI around the house. They are designed to sit on the end of a broadband modem and provide WIFI and four more 10 base T ports. However, by ignoring the modem connection you can use them as WIFI access points. You can also use them to extend and bridge a wireless network if you are happy twiddling with the settings.

I just turned off their DHCP support (so they don’t go around offering network addresses to all and sundry) and set them up as WIFI access points hanging off the wire running around the place. I initially used one as a repeater to extend the coverage, but since that means I end up with a bunch of stations sharing one channel I decided to just make a new network instead. There is a nice little HowTo in amongst the reviews if you are new to this kind of thing.

So far so good, with speed and range nicely improved. 

Devdays Sessions now on Channel 9

All my DevDays sessions have now made it onto Channel 9.  Enjoy.

XNA Games for Windows Phone

Embedded Development with the .NET Micro Framework

Windows Phone Development in Rhyme

If you want any of the demo code you can find it on:

/demos

Data Structures in C#

This article has been around for a while, but it is beautifully written and well worth a read. Particularly if you are doing a First Year Computer Science Course with a Data Structures component…

http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/article/data_structures

Hull Student Winners

Forgot to mention that a couple of weeks ago one of our students was lucky enough to win an Acer Iconia (which looks awesome) in the Think.Dev weekly awards. All Josh had to do was sign up and submit some applications to Windows Phone Marketplace.

If you fancy some of this action (and who wouldn’t) you can sign up here.

In other Hull student news, Harry Over’s version of Destruction Golf has been riding high in the Windows Phone Marketplace for a while now, getting loads of downloads and comments for what is an on-going development.

A Tip: Don’t wait until all your game levels are complete before putting the game out into the Marketplace. It is very easy to release upgrades to an existing program and quite a few developers are producing “episodic” content where they are releasing new versions at regular intervals.

Bought a New Zune HD

There has been a bit of talk lately about Microsoft discontinuing the Zune hardware. I hope they don’t. Although they have not been on sale in Europe I’ve been using the devices pretty much since they came out.

The Zune HD was released a little while back and is a truly lovely device.  I’ve played with iPods and other music players, but I prefer the sound of the Zune device, and really like the user interface. I can also use the lovely Zune Pass to get all I can eat music for nine quid a month.

The other thing about the Zune that I like is that it doesn’t seem to age.  I’ve got a first generation device and it looks pretty much like it did when I bought it. My iPod on the other hand looks somewhat battle scarred.

Some Apple products seem designed to age badly. The ultra-shiny backs really attract scratches and drive someone like me, who is somewhat obsessive about keeping his stuff looking new, up the wall. They also don’t get the same software support when they grow old.  My iPod can’t do lots of things simply because Apple don’t release firmware upgrades for it. In contrast my early Zunes can do everything the brand new ones can, because they have been upgradable all the time.

I’ve just managed to pick up a 64G Zune at a very good price for such a capacious best. It looks lovely and works a treat. If you are looking for a music player with really good sound quality and a nice user interface you could do a lot worse.

DevDays 11 Windows Phone in Rhyme

My Geek Night Windows Phone session in Rhyme is now available for viewing at Channel 9. 

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/DevDays/DevDays-2011-Netherlands/Devdays055

May Day Bank Holiday Happiness

Rob’s recipe for May Day Bank Holiday Happiness

1. Drive to Whitby.
2. Enter “The Magpie Cafe”
3. Order “Magpie Fish Pie” and a pot of tea
4. Eat and drink same
5. Go for walk on pier and beach
6. Take loads of pictures

Oh, and stop off in Bainton at the Wolds Village for a cream tea on the way back.

Tidying Up

It seems that there is a difference between tidying up and picking something up and putting it down somewhere else.

Use Micro Fibre for Shiny Gadgets

I reckon the Scotch ones are the best.

I was lucky enough to be able to spend some time with Scott Hanselman over the DevDays conferences. Scott is one of these folks who have technology running through their veins. It was great to see his eyes light up whenever he was showing off a cool new program or discussing the future of computing. However, I did actually have a gadget that managed to impress him, which was nice.

At one point during our chat I produced the micro-fibre cloth that I carry round to make my Windows Phone shiny bright before each demo. This went down very well, and was promptly put to work shining up all the devices we used for the keynote.

If you want to get rid of all the pesky fingerprints that these devices seem to accumulate then I recommend that you get one or two. You can get really good ones from the Pound Shops in the UK and places like Tesco also do multi-packs at a good price. But if you are properly rich you can get the original Scotch versions above.

XNA Windows Phone Session at DevDays 11

Two more halves of a room and one last Windows Phone XNA session. I seem to have taken a lot of audience pictures over the last few weeks. Thanks to you all for making the final session such a great one.  Remember folks that you can get all the code that you saw  from my demo pages:

/demos

The marks the end of my World Tour for a little while. Thanks to Helen for organising the European leg so well, and to Microsoft for inviting me along.

Windows Phone in Rhyme at Geek Night

Some of the audience arriving.
The rest of the audience arriving

Well, that was fun. Once I found my notes. Thanks to the audience for really getting into the spirit of the event. The roar every time we had a “Silverlight Rhyme Alert” was most impressive. Hope you all had a good time. You can find the notes from the original Red Nose Day lecture here.

If you would like to donate to the Red Nose Day cause (which is very, very worthy and does lots of good work around the world) then you can find my donation page here.

And now I’m going for a lie down…