The first thing I wanted to change was our code versioning system. Our office has been using Subversion (SVN) as our code repository for a couple years now. It’s done the job well, and has saved our butts on more than one occasion, but there were a few things I didn’t like. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I like moving around when I work; hitting a coffee shop in the morning, or taking my laptop to the local bookstore on a hot day. Subversion forced me to always have an internet connection to commit changes or make new branches. As a result, I would perform larger commits, or have branches pulling double duty, which is far from ideal. Further, setting up and maintaining the permissions with ssh and multiple developers is quite a pain on Subversion.

A few of our developers have used Git for some open-source projects, and we all quite liked it. We’ve been talking about changing for months, but we couldn’t justify the effort until we had to re-install everything anyways. We decided to use Gitosis to manage the Git server, setup the permissions, and manage users (good tutorial here). This proved to be fairly simple. I then imported all of our previous projects with git-svn with some help from this post. Next, our system was configured to send out a summary e-mail every time a developer pushed a change. Finally, I modified our deploy files so the servers read the code from our new Git server rather than our old SVN server. The entire process was completed in under two days.

While many of us had used Git before there was still a learning curve. I found a very useful guide called “Git Magic”. It starts off with the basics that all developers should know, but moves all the way to “Git grandmastery” in chapter 7.

Final thoughts:

Git has more of a learning curve than I expected, and is more complicated than Subversion — but it is so much more flexible, that I think it’s worth it. You can really use it however is best for you. For some developers, it won’t be much different than working with svn, but I’m really appreciating the differences. I read an interesting analogy comparing clones, branches, tags, etc. with multiple desktops, windows and tabs. The more options available, the longer it will take for a person to come up with the best system for them, but once they figure it out, they can really fly.

I would love to hear your thoughts on Subversion vs. Git (or any other systems you recommend for that matter). Why do you think one is better than the other?

The conference was an excellent event for me. It gave me real insight about where the web is going next and on the seriousness and progress rate of the current developments. In the opening panel (video below) Ron Conway describes the real-time web as having multiple multi-billion dollar opportunities. He goes so far as to compare the current development with the early days at Google, when they still hadn’t figured out a business model and could only imagine what an impact Google would have on how we use the web today. Watch the video below for the full opening panel on ‘The Realtime Opportunity’ …

The day was packed with interesting panels and presentations and after getting an idea of how far people and companies are along in developing new platforms, tools and services, I have to say I am once again astonished. The world might be in a recession but Silicon Valley is bursting from the mass of innovation it’s producing, and its buzzing with people who will eventually turn that innovation into striving businesses.

I keep repeating myself but every time I am in the Valley I notice its biggest advantage in the tech sector: A huge amount of people who want to try new stuff – not just entrepreneurs but also consumers and businesses of all sizes. This results in new ideas getting traction early on. By the time the rest of the world notices a new idea like twitter already has a couple of million users, and the rest of the world watches as they reach critical mass.

TechCrunch put on a nice after party and I met a lot of people from last year and some people I have only met online so far. All in all it was a great trip that opened my eyes with regards to the next big wave of innovation. I look forward to taking the opportunities that come with it .

Oh, at the conference someone noticed that I didn’t wear socks in my business shoes so I had to explain my reasons on camera. Watch the third video under the ‘Channel’ button in the embedded video box below!

This is what utilities look like with the new windowing system.

One of the more obvious changes are utilities. We’ve launched our first two: a message center utility, and a centralized task list. Both of these aggregate information across all your accounts, and let you work with that information from anywhere in Smibs via the navigation bar. This magic is performed by the windowing script I wrote about a few months back. You can drag, resize and adjust columns. We even carried over some tricks like holding down shift to select multiple messages. After working with desktop browsers, our interface should be really intuitive for users.

The next trick is less obvious, but even more useful. While Ajax is great for loading data from the server without reloading your webpage, the back button stops being useful. Doorbell used to jump back to the Dashboard when you pressed the back button. I am now proud to announce that we no longer suffer from this annoyance. Thanks to a handy tool called HistoryKeeper, we can now use JavaScript to add items to the browser history in the form of anchor tags. This may result in a messy url, but now Doorbell keeps track of your history for more that 4 items. Once you have browsed through several contacts, groups, or opportunities you can use the back button to search through a true history of your browser.

We’ve had a lot of fun building Smibs and Doorbell, and hope that you’ll have as much fun using them. Login, check it out, and let us know what you think. We love feedback.

Despite what is often portrayed in the media, entrepreneurs are seldom “lone wolves”. This point was made obvious when I attended theTEC Edmonton’s Venture Prize Award Luncheon, it takes a community to support and inspire innovation in an entrepreneur. Business leaders and representatives from Western Economic Diversification Canada, Alberta Research Council, Economic Development Edmonton, the University of Alberta’s School of Business, and many more were on hand to show their support for this program that “assists aspiring entrepreneurs to transform high-growth ideas into solid business plans”. On Thursday April 30, 2009 there were three finalists for TEC Venture Prize’s fast growth award CIE: Seek Your Own Proof, SmileSonica Inc. and Swiftclips Media Networks. The finalists were competing for more than $90,000 in cash and in-kind prizes. The pitches were polished and the presentations pristine, but when the dust settled Ken Bautista and Jason Suriano’s Seek Your Own Proof emerged as this years winner.

CIE: Seek Your Own Proof is an online community where kids ages 8-13 are challenged to investigate the extraordinary, unexplained and unusual side of science and history. As agents of the “Central Institute for Exploration”, kids work together to crack open the truth – completing missions, sifting through information, and moving up within the ranks of the agency. It “blurs the lines between entertainment and education, nonfiction and fiction, and the online world with the real world”

The Student Business Plan Competition Award was given to Gordon Mckinlay and his company KennelSeek.com. KennelSeek provides boarding kennel/cattery management and online reservation services. Gordon walked away with $10,000.

Congratulations gentleman. Everyone here at Smibs wishes you continued success!!!

XKCD - Exploits of a mom: A perfect example of not filtering SQL code.

The real question is when to filter the data. There are two trains of thought on this: filter the data right when the user gives it to you, before you store it in the database or store exactly what the user supplies and filter the data when it needs to be filtered.

Rails is designed more for the latter approach and there are a number of good arguments for post-filtering. It makes mass-assignment much easier (storing a large amount of data from a form into a database). More importantly, it lets you store exactly what the user wants to store. Obviously, you don’t want to be altering the users data. Depending on how the data is being read, it may not need to be filtered. An RSS reader is a perfect example of this. In the RSS stream you can display an unfiltered version of what the user entered, but a filtered version can be shown in the browser.

Despite these benefits, the method I eventually chose was pre-filtering data before it was stored in the database. This has better performance, because you filter once, and display the data many times. I still have various unfilter functions, which can restore the parts of the data we need in situations when we want an unfiltered, or partially unfiltered string. Finally and most importantly, I feel it is more secure. If your data is safe, you don’t have to constantly be remembering to filter when you are displaying your data. Doorbell and Smibs are large applications, with plenty of spots where you could forget to place the all important “h” in front of your variable. It just seems safer to me to store a string that can do no damage, and convert that to a dangerous string in the few instances when you need it, rather than the reverse.

In my next post I’ll go into the code and show how I implemented the pre-filtering in our applications.

______________________

What are your thoughts on pre-filtering vs. post-filtering? Did I miss any important points?

This is the first post in a 5 part series of articles I will be sharing discussing how audio and video blogging are changing the landscape of the Internet and how you can use these tools in business and in your personal life.

How we share information online is transforming. A decade ago, simply having a website made you more innovative than your competitors. In the beginning, online communication was completely controlled by the author allowing the reader little control over the content they were exposed to. Today, several innovations have changed the way in which we share information online. For example, the ability to hyperlink to content within a site/blog or to a completely different site provides more flexibility for the user by letting them finish the blog post or follow a suggested link.

More and more information sharing has become vertically integrated and hyper-specialized. Conventional, generic text-based websites are growing obsolete. Now, websites are being constantly upgraded and integrated to include images that act as links to  audio, video and themed music. Your online content must provide a specific service, or solve a specific problem. Users are searching for exact solutions to solve defined needs. Generally, if the user is not satisfied with the content on the page he/she will link out to a site better suited for their query. Using audio and video to support your online content will help satisfy a users specialized needs.

Greater network bandwidth, the use of standardized formats, and the overall commercialization of the Internet has changed both the geography and how we communicate online. A newer medium of communicating online is via video blogging and podcasting.  Podcasting emerged into the mainstream in 2005 after Apple added Podcasts into its Itunes platform. Immediately exposing podcasting to 40 million people. Within one week there were over a million new users. When implemented properly it can help you to gain exposure, market, and gain an edge over your competition.

Podcasting supports your desired message to the user by providing an easy and effective way to distribute audio and video files.  Previously, if I was having problems figuring out the sum function in Microsoft Excel I would have to look for an online forum, or find step by step textual instructions to help me out. Today, I simply go to websites like youtube.com or mrexel.com and watch step by step instructions on how to effectively use excel via video.  In this way, video blogging increases the efficiency by which we share information.

Not only do podcasts and video blogs help you to share information to a targeted  audience but they are an excellent way to give voice to your business. Video blogging enables you to tell an online story about your business. Who you are, what you do, and what your product is. Over the next couple weeks, I want to discuss ways to instigate, develop, and market video casts into an effective tool for your business.

Check Digg’s founder Kevin Rose’s video blogs on his vimeo page . Through his videos Kevin demonstrates new applications he has implemented into his websites and educates users on how to integrate them into his existing platform. What’s really awesome is that besides marketing his product, he essentially grants the viewer a window into his personal life, sharing his interests and experiences with them through his video blogs. Another great place to visit for video blogs is right here at SmibsTV .

My next topic will deal with the steps around planning an effective video blog.

It is actually quite possible to draw lines on the screen. An excellent explanation of an efficient method can be found at http://www.p01.org/releases/Drawing_lines_in_JavaScript/ (I believe it was written by Mathieu ‘P01′ HENRI) I recently turned this method into a Prototype class with some useful functionality.

My demo is at http://lines.live2code.ca (Tested on IE7, IE8, FF3 & Safari)
or you can check out the code at http://github.com/forrest/javascript-line-class

Big reason #1 for not upgrading: “Upgrading may break our current apps.”

IE6 behaves differently than every other browser, so it requires more development time. It is a last generation browser which doesn’t support many newer features. It is half the speed of most modern browsers (on a good day). This limits new applications, not to mention the price increases that accompany longer development processes. Google has been actively pushing people away from IE6. When you log into Gmail with IE6 you get a “Get faster Gmail” message which encourages you to switch to Chrome or FireFox. Even 37Signals has dropped support with an explanation of IE6’s limitations at http://37signals.blogs.com/products/2008/07/basecamp-phasin.html. It is much easier to upgrade an app to a modern browser, than develop modern apps to run in IE6. While these organizations may need to spend money on upgrading older applications, they will save money in the long run because all their new projects will be quicker and easier to develop.

Big reason #2 for not upgrading: “We don’t know the security and compatibility implications of upgrading.”

Even Microsoft has decided it is time to move on. They have announced that they will stop actively supporting IE6 in June. It will be grandfathered in, but will receive no more compatibility and security updates. If this isn’t an indication that it is time to move on I don’t know what is. In 2009, Secunia, a computer security company, reported 142 vulnerabilities compared to the 34 in Firefox (http://secunia.com/advisories/product/11/). I wonder how long it will take for IT departments to catch on that upgrading will be cheaper and easier than trying to support software that even the company that wrote it won’t support.

If anybody else has complaints about IE6, let’s hear it.

A talk by Robert Scoble – Peter Urban

P.S. After the talk we also recorded a SmibsTV episode with Robert, talking about the current economic development, his experience at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, what’s currently hot in Silicon Valley and how to survive the credit crunch as a blogger, freelancer and creative professional. The episode will be up early next week.

Back in the old days before my time, computers were programmed with Procedural Languages. Measure 1 cup of pancake mix into a bowl, stir in 1 cup milk, mix. Heat griddle … well, you get the idea. Everything was spelled out in procedural sequence. And programs were long and hard to maintain.

Then along came Smalltalk-80 which introduced the world to Object Oriented programming. Now we can tell the Griddle object to flip the contents. How that happens is entirely up to the griddle. The goal is to split large programs into manageable pieces (objects) that are easier for people to work through.

Tell Don’t Ask refers to a guideline in Object Oriented programming: tell an object to do something, don’t ask it for private data.

Alec Sharp (1) contrasts procedural and object oriented programming in his book Smalltalk by Example by:

With procedural languages writing something like this was common:

while scanner.has_links_to_visit

link = scanner.next_link_to_visit
webpage_contents = get(link)
process_webpage(webpage_contents)

end

My fingers hurt just typing that in.

Imagine my shock and horror when I realized that example was recently written in my favorite object oriented language: ruby. How could this be?  Was I asleep at the keyboard when I typed in the while loop?

How do we know this code is procedural?  Simple, it asks the “scanner” is there any work to do and makes a decision based on the answer which violates the “Tell, Don’t Ask” guideline.

We can turn this procedural code into object oriented code by using an iterator. David A. Black covers this topic nicely in his book The Well-Grounded Rubyist.  The object oriented version using an iterator turns the while loop into

scanner.each_link_to_visit {|link| process_webpage(get(link)) }

The iterator “each_link_to_visit” quietly hides the details and provides values to the block, one at a time.  The big win comes during application maintenance: reading 1 line of clear code is easier to understand than reading 5 lines of code.  It’s like reading the Cole’s Notes version of War and Peace versus the reading the original version in Russian.

Iterators are a handy-dandy tool for converting procedural while loops into object oriented loops.

Happy iterating,

Alvin.