Software Reviews

Yes Google Chrome, I'm sure.... 'nuff said.

Lou Vega — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:30:35 GMT

Chrome feels a little rusty...

Lou Vega — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:10:46 GMT

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Google hater. Google has come out with some pretty neat tools over the years and their search engine has been rock solid for years (I was an early convert to Google search), but their latest entry to the tools market hasn't quite got me sold on it yet despite hearing so many great things from so many of my friends and others on the web.

One of the things I took interest in was the built in task manager. As an experiment I fired up Chrome, IE 7 and FF3 and had all three of them hit the same site. Memory utilization was higher on Chrome than either Firefox or IE. Another thing I noticed is that although I only had one Chrome instance running (with two tabs open) there were four (4) separate Chrome.exe processes running in Windows Task Manager with only one IE and one FF instance running (same # of tabs open).

So out of the box it appears that Chrome uses more resources (ok just a little on today's resource rich machines) but is that so bad? Maybe not, but it is not something I'd expect from a product that's supposed to be so streamlined and efficient. More to come on Chrome as I experiment.

How about an ASP.NET Web Server that runs on Mobile Devices?

Lou Vega — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:48:35 GMT

Came across an article about Padarn today. What is it you ask? A pretty cool concept if you ask me. It's basically an ASP.NET web server capable of running on mobile devices (CE 5.0 and 6.0). I've seen similar attempts at writing and hosting a web server on mobile devices, however this is the best one I've seen yet. I can imagine this being useful to more and more devices as the project grows. Go ahead and check it out! http://www.padarn.net/

Software Review - Live Search (Mobile)

Lou Vega — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 02:35:31 GMT

Available from: http://livesearchmobile.com/

Pros:

Super Easy to use
Easy access to Gas prices and Movies for the local area
Speech enabled
Satellite imagery is more up to date
Turn-By-Turn directions interface is more intuitive than competitor’s options.
Integrated auto-updates for the application (menu notification turns active when updates are available)

Cons:

Traffic Info not available in my location
Getting directions from current GPS location isn’t as straightforward as it could be.
Could stand to have better integration among the parts of the program (see notes in the review)
Often stops updating imagery while driving.
Sometimes slow to get GPS location
Does not auto-detect GPS settings

One of the early comments posted on my review for Google Maps was asking about Live Search – well here it is! Despite my lengthy “cons” list above, I actually like the program, I just think some things could be done better…so let’s get on with the review.

Using Live Search is pretty easy. When you launch it you’re presented with options for Local Search Categories, Your Local Map, Directions, Traffic Conditions, Movie Times/Descriptions and Gas Prices. One of the neat features you notice from right here is a “Speak” menu which allows you to speak your search request in rather than type it or select it from the menu choices. In my testing with the speech portion of this application I found it to work well most of the time provided there wasn’t a lot of background noise. For example, one day when I was using outside, I happened to walk by a building generator as it kicked on. Another day it was pretty windy out and that was skewing the speech recognition results. I suspect however that for most people’s ordinary usage (i.e., while in the car, in your home, etc.) that it would work fine and it did work fine for me the rest of the time I was using it.

Of course I couldn’t wait to try the map portion of the app – especially wanting to see if it had more recent imagery for the aerial view than Google Maps did, and it does. You may remember when reading my review of the Google Maps that I noticed the white car in my driveway that I haven’t owned in over a year, the lack of my fence around my property and the fact that my church which had burned down over a year ago was still showing. Well using Live Search’s maps proved to be more recent. There’s no longer a white car in my driveway, I can see my fence, and there’s the wide open field where the church once stood.

One thing that disappointed me with the Maps portion of this app is there’s no direct way to call up directions while on the map screen. In Google maps it’s constantly available in the menu options. Here in Live Search you have to close out of the maps screen, go to the directions screen, get your directions, and then go back to the map…though I will add that the turn-by-turn interface was done better here than in Google maps.

Two other neat features I liked with Live Search were the Movies and Gas Prices options. Activating the Movies option automatically starts a movie show times search for your local area. You can even get movie descriptions and reviews from the movie search results.

The Gas Prices feature is similar – you get a quick rundown of local gas stations along with their currently reported prices. Pretty neat to have readily accessible with the way prices are these days…oh for the days when gas was less than a buck here in Charleston!

All in all I would totally recommend having this on your GPS equipped phone/pocket pc. It’s a great resource to have and it’s free!

Windows Server 2008 (RC1) - installed this morning

Lou Vega — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:11:30 GMT

After a bunch of trouble with the test box I had planned to use I finally got started installing Windows Server 2008 (RC1) this morning...so hopefully I'll have a lot more to say about it later today when I've had a chance to go through it.

One thing I noticed is it is rebooting a bunch during setup...no big deal I guess but I don't remember any previous Windows Setup routines doing it so much....maybe because I'm doing an in-place upgrade instead of a clean install. I'll try the clean install later now that I have the DVD working in that machine.

Software Review - Wolf Clock for Pocket PC's

Lou Vega — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 02:49:43 GMT

Available from: http://www.structuretoobig.com/products/wolfclock.aspx

Pros:

Free!
Easy to use – very configurable!
Unlimited Alarms
Set music to auto-turn off while you sleep
Supports a wide variety of sound formats
Just download it! :)

Cons:

Can’t think of any – did I mention it’s free?

So Brian’s probably going to kill me for bringing more attention to a piece of software he hasn’t touched in years…but when I upgraded my phone I lost one of the features I had used on my old one…the built-in alarms that I programmed for different days. I never woke up to an alarm clock in the past 4 years…I’ve always used a built-in alarm on one of my phones.

Some may say “But Lou – you’ve got alarms you can set in Windows Mobile” – yeah but there are only 3 built-in and you can only choose certain sound formats and they just aren’t that cool and configurable…so when I remembered Brian had created this little gem I decided to try it.

When you look at all the features packed into this you wonder how you might have gotten by without them. One of the neat ones I like is that you can set the app to full screen – this way at night when it’s plugged in on my nightstand I can look over and see the clock…you can configure the background image in the program too which actually includes a number of them you can pick from.

Another neat feature is the “ramp up” which allows you to set the rate at which the sound increases…so you can get a more gradual wake up instead of a blaring one. I haven’t tried out the timeout settings on the audio player yet – could use that to set music to play while I fall asleep. What I’m thinking of doing is hooking up the phone to an FM transmitter so that I can play the music on the radio in the room – it will auto-shut off at the determined time and there will just be the soft static of the radio after that…then in the morning the alarm will slowly grow louder over the radio. I know – they make clock radios that can do that stuff, but this way would be so much more fun.

All in all this is a pretty handy little app to have on your mobile device. It’s an older app so it doesn’t do well if you view the app on a horizontal screen versus the standard mode (picture doesn’t update, clock doesn’t scale) but that’s forgivable since it was created before these devices came to be. Maybe if there’s enough interest Brian will start working on this again!

Software Review - Google Maps Mobile

Lou Vega — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 02:30:38 GMT

Available from: http://www.google.com/gmm/index.html

Pros:

Super Easy to use
Auto-detects GPS settings on your device
Directions (Route Planning) is very easy to get to and features a “fly-to” feature for turn-by-turn.
Satellite View or Map View – Satellite view has road names integrated
Easy to navigate using hardware keys or touch screen
Download speeds were pretty good for “live” tracking

Cons:

Satellite Imagery is at least a year old in some places.
Traffic Info not available in my location
They put a goofy little disclaimer in their “Help/About” that says if you give a suggestion for improvement they reserve the right to implement it without giving you credit (ok that’s just a personal sore point…not really a reason NOT to use the program!)

As anyone who’s seen me or read my blog in the last week knows I recently bought an AT&T Tilt – an awesome little phone if I may say so. One of the things I wanted to try out was the GPS functionality and the first way I tried it out was with the free Google Maps Mobile (GMM).

One neat feature with this is that you can initiate the install straight from your device by browsing to www.google.com/gmm on your mobile device. Installation and setup was pretty easy and in just a few minutes I was ready to use the program.

When I first launched it I was trying to get the GPS to detect my location and found two neat features right away. The first was that it didn’t ask me for GPS settings, it auto-detected and went for it. The second was that even though it didn’t find me initially it “failed gracefully” by providing a “poor man’s GPS” location (within 1700 meters) by triangulating my position using nearby cell phone towers. A few minutes later it was able to pick up a GPS signal and there I was on the screen represented by a tiny blue and white blinking dot. So I got in my car and drove toward home.

I was nicely surprised during the drive to glance over and see my dot moving happily across the screen on the map. At the first traffic light stop I switched it from Map view to Satellite view and was even more nicely surprised that it was steadily downloading the updated imagery as I scrolled off an edge.

When I finally arrived home and looked at the imagery Google has of my house from space I chuckled because in my driveway (on the satellite image) was my old white 1993 Dodge Dynasty (which I got rid of more than a year ago). I also noticed looking around my property there was no fence…which I actually have a fence installed now. Thinking that it might be because my area is so new (most homes here were only built in the last 2 years…mine’s “old” because it’s been here since 2002 I decided to check some other local areas where I know there have been changes. One such area is the church I attend – well used to, it burned down in a massive fire on August 19^th 2006…but there in the Google Maps imagery you can see it still standing. So the imagery is definitely dated but then again you don’t get real time imagery on the commercial market anyways.

One feature I had hoped to try out but wasn’t able to was the traffic feature. My locale isn’t large enough that it rates inclusion in the traffic analysis piece so that was a minor disappointment…but it also got me thinking of a way to try and integrate the views from the traffic cams we have installed along the major roadways here and see if I could get them included on the map.

Overall Google Maps Mobile is a pretty neat program, it’s free, and with the ease of use and auto-detection of GPS settings there’s no reason you shouldn’t have it on your phone…so what are you waiting for?

NS Basic/CE - Review Copy

Lou Vega — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 18:30:50 GMT

In the past few days I've been talking back and forth with the folks at NS Basic/CE and they are sending me a review copy of their product to more fully test it out. I was really interested in some features that simply weren't available in the trial version and they were kind enough to offer a review copy so I'm pretty excited to get that in the mail. More to come once I start working with the review copy.

For those unfamiliar with NS Basic/CE - they position themselves as a "kindler, gentler alternative to the other
tools." for mobile and device development. I have to admit it's pretty easy straight out of the box to get started with it, especially if you're already used to Visual Basic (I've been doing VB development since VB 4.0 - remember the 16 bit version and the 32 bit version you could choose between?) .

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite - my first look...

Lou Vega — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:35:44 GMT

So I finally got the time to sit down with a copy of Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and got it installed on my test rig. Here's how it all went down...

I did a custom install this first time around - no Visual C++, and none of the SQL Compact or Crystal Reports stuff. I was certain to include the new Code Analysis, Performance and Testing tools though. I've heard some interesting things about the way those tools have improved with VS 2008 and am anxious to try them out.

I'm also pretty anxious to try out .NET Compact Framework 3.5 development. I was so into .NET CF back in the 1.x days and then got so busy with other things I pretty much missed out on all the cool stuff with Windows Mobile 5 and .NET CF 2.0...and now Windows Mobile 6 and beyond. I guess it would also have helped if I had a newer device! If any manufacturers out there want a really thorough review of their device, send it to me and I'll gladly review it :)

So after the lengthy install process I got started right away with some old code snippets and running those through the new performance tools. I really like the idea of the Code Metrics tool and can't wait to try it on some production code from the shop. There was rather limited support for this type of information with Team Suite 2005, but it's improved quite a bit in Team Suite 2008.

There were some layout changes to the Code Profiler tool that took a moment to get used to. You can now access the sub-sections using a drop down list instead of a button/tab interface like in 2005.

Aside from the performance tools that I quickly tested out, another thing I thought was pretty neat was the visual XAML designer....that's right, drag and drop to build WPF apps instead of using XAMLpad. I'll have to check that out after I'm done with all the performance tool testing.

Next order of business is to find some suitable hardware to install Team Foundation Server 2008 so I can see what's changed there from TFS 2005.

I'll post a little more detail on the code profiler, code analysis and code metrics as I start to test them on real world app.

Joost – Install and first run

Lou Vega — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 00:11:00 GMT

OK so thanks to Scott I now have in my possession the Joost install – downloaded it and went to install. I’ll say this – the install routine could have been a little cleaner. There was a progress bar while installing and then suddenly the whole install window went away and I waited….nothing and then the whole screen is engulfed in the Joost login screen prompting me to login to the site. I goofed and typed the wrong password in the first time before I remembered a capitalization issue and got it right the second time.

Once I put in the correct password I was greeted by some dancing shapes on the big black screen – this was quite a long pause so once the main screen did come up I exited the application and fired up a protocol analyzer to see what’s going across the wire during this long pause. One thing that was interesting to see is that the Joost client caches your password because when I fired up Joost the second time it just went to “Checking your password” and logged me in (to the tune of more dancing shapes)

Watching the protocol analyzer screen during the login/dancing shapes phase of the program launch I saw a spike in TCP traffic which I took a closer look at once I got back to the login screen. Out of 291 packets of TCP data, 61 packets were secured using TLS which was comforting in some ways – whatever data Joost was sending over to the multitude (6 different hosts) of Joost servers was encrypted, but at the same time I have no idea what that data was so it was a mixed feeling ;)

One interesting note – not sure if this was an isolated incident or not (I only just started experimenting with Joost today), but there were a surprising number of malformed packets reported during that exchange. It could be due to network conditions at my location, at the target location or it could be software related as well. I worked with a firmware developer in the past who had malformed SSL packets streaming out of their box that caused me a lot of grief until I was able to show a protocol analysis to them detailing the errors in their packets. I’ll try this again later and from a different location to see if the results are any different.

Here are some neat things I liked so far – basically User Experience (UX) stuff, but I thought worth mentioning…when you first start the program you get a screen that looks like a movie release screen…and when you close the program you get the small grey closing “dot” like on older tube television sets…I especially got a kick out of the closing since I figured there was some developer back at Joost who decided that would be a fun little thing to add and did it.

Unfortunately due to other issues that came up I wasn’t able to play with Joost much further yet…hopefully this weekend I’ll be able to do some more with it.