BKeeney Briefs

What are your first impressions of REALbasic 2009 R4?

The REALbasic Colorado Summit was a success!  I think we all had a good time and learned some things about REALbasic.  I attended and enjoyed all of the sessions and hopefully everyone else did too.

I did two sessions.  The first was on the Reporting Tools available for REALbasic.  Did you know that in 18 months there’s been an explosion of options?  Where there was only one commercial option now there are several (including the new RS reporting tool).  There are also some interesting (and usable) open source alternatives available. It was also the first session.  No pressure there. 

My second session on Saturday was a filler (or emergency) session due to a speaker cancellation and I talked about the results of the 2009 ARBP consultants survey (I’ll eventually turn it into a blog post).  I unfortunately was not as prepared for it as I would have liked but it was meant to spark discussions in the room, which it did.

The offices of Inspiring Apps was a great location in downtown Boulder.  It’s an interesting area and I highly recommend visiting.  After the conference ended on Saturday some of us car pooled up to Estes National Park and, along with several thousand people, watched some Elk (I guess it was mating season).  The park was beautiful and the scenery was breathtaking.

The attendees were awesome as always.  We had a nice mix of people and had a few ‘newbies’ in the crowd and they asked some great questions.  The award for the longest flight was from Australia though Germany was a close second.  Otherwise there was a nice mix of people from across North America.

As with Real World, I’ve come back energized with some new ideas.  Isn’t that the point of going to a conference?  Learn a few things?  Ask questions?  Come back refreshed?

I’ll post more later after I catch up on work!

I don’t normally post video’s but a friend on FaceBook shared this and I thought I’d share it with you.  I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes.  Kind of refreshing.

I’m analyzing the results of the latest ARBP survey (about REALbasic consultants) and I came across an interesting answer considering that the Colorado Summit is coming up next week.  In one question we asked how REALbasic consultants found work.  We had a set of canned answers with the option to add your own.  Several RB consultants  said in the ‘other’ response that they picked up work at Real World.  Of course the numbers are pretty low, but the fact that people went out of their way on the survey to include it speaks volumes.

This answer isn’t surprising, really, since the last couple of Real World events had companies trolling for RB developers.  To me, this has always been one of the best reasons to go to Real World.  I know I turned down work at Real World 2008 because I was already 100% committed to a project already.  Hopefully there will be a few at The Summit as well to make it profitable as well. 

There are still some slots available for the conference if you’re interested in going.  Hope to see you in Boulder!

The REALbasic Colorado Summit is heading into its final stretch.  We’re all very excited about getting together and exchanging knowledge.  Some of the topics I’m particularly interested in because I can come away with ideas that can save me time (which means money).

We’ve pitched the event as a way to learn some advanced REALbasic skills and to meet and discuss RB with other RB professionals.  That’s all true, but one thing I think we’ve done a poor job of saying is that there are other reasons to come to the Summit.

If you are evaluating REALbasic as a development environment the Summit is an excellent place to learn more. I doubt you’ll find more REALbasic professionals in one room all year long (and that includes the REAL Software regional events in my opinion).  You’ll be in room filled with full-time pro’s that have used REALbasic for years.  A few in attendance have worked for REAL Software and can offer some advice that’s hard to find elsewhere.

Need to find a REALbasic developer?  Many of those in attendance are REALbasic consultants and live and breathe REALbasic day in and day out and have been exposed to, literally, hundreds of different applications.  If they can’t help you I’m sure they know another developer that can!

Have technical questions regarding your REALbasic application?  Again, you’ll find a boatload of people that can help you that do this for a living for others.  At REAL World it wasn’t uncommon to see developers going through their RB app to get suggestions from others in hopes of making a better app.  I don’t expect anything different at the Summit.

The Summit is going to be an intimate event because of its size.  REAL World, for some people, was intimidating because it’s hard to break into a group that seems to know each other very well.  With under 50 people at the Summit it should be very easy to mingle with everyone.  Since I always fight being a wall flower (No, really!  Stop laughing!) I’m going to make sure no one is left out.

There will be a lot of ideas and information disseminated in the sessions but it’s the talk that occurs outside of the official sessions that is most interesting and valuable (in my opinion).  It’s generally one-on-one, or in very small groups, and it’s never recorded for posterity.  The after hours events have a tendency to be  fun a well because no one is being ‘official’.

So there’s my alternative reasons for attending the REALbasic Colorado Summit.  To official website is at http://www.inspiringapps.com/REALbasicSummit/.  The Association of REALbasic Professionals site is at http://www.arbpmembers.org/.

Happy coding and hope to see you there!

I’ve been part of the REALbasic Beta List for a few years.  I got involved  back in the early days of the new IDE because I was tired of finding bugs in new features, and in a few cases, new features that never made it out into the public release (though documented as such).  So I make a point to kick the tires of the new features and I generally do this by writing them up as a quick review article that I’ve been posting on the ARBP site.

I’m now testing the 2009 R4 release and I realize that I started feeling guilty about not testing more (a new feature in R4 is one I’ve been asking for a long time).  After talking it through with another developer I came to the conclusion that I’m donating my time to Real Software.  Yes, donating because, as a consultant, I get paid good money to do coding and testing for clients and since I’m not compensated from RS in any way, it is pretty much a donation.

I guess one could argue that I get compensated with a less-buggy, better new features, product.  That’s not very motivating to me, somehow, mainly because I’m paying really good money for that product for the privilege to do that!

Then I came to the conclusion that if I were to be compensated in some way I’d do more testing because it’s worth more to me.  Now I’m not suggesting a free copy of REALbasic because that wouldn’t be economically feasible.  But it does strike me as somewhat unfair that I’m spending time beta testing a commercial product.

I’m not sure what would make it seem more fair.  A discount on upgrades?  A higher support priority?  A t-shirt or coffee mug?  Public recognition?  I dunno.  Certainly the problem with any sort of compensation is how to enforce it and qualify it.  If I log one bug is that enough?  What if that bug is really a feature request?  If I report a hard crash is that more important than a misspelled word?  See what I mean?  It’s a slippery slope at the very least.

Do you think the beta program works?  How do open source projects recognize their big contributors?  Do participants need some compensation?  If so, how do you compensate the one-time reporter versus the consistent reporters?  What are your thoughts?

See my original post here.  It’s not quite what I was looking for but, assuming the rumor is true, it’s on my Christmas list.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/09/10/nike_plans_ipod_nano_compatible_heart_rate_monitor.html

Join ARBP on Thursday, September 10th for an online chat about the Colorado REALbasic Summit. The special guests will be Joe Strout of Inspiring Applications and myself (not that I’m all that special).

This will be a 1 hour moderated chat, beginning at 9 PM ET. Don’t miss your chance to ask us about the Summit, the sessions, or general REALbasic programming questions!

These moderated chats are open to any member of ARBP.  Membership is free, so sign up today!

Colorado REALbasic Summit:
The Colorado REALbasic Summit will be held from Thursday September 24th through Saturday, September 26, 2009 in Boulder, Colorado.

Website: http://www.InspiringApps.com/REALbasicSummit/
Pricing: $199 for ARBP members, $249 for non-members

ARBP offers several types of memberships to REALbasic developers:
Free, Personal ($50) and Professional ($100). Visit the website and click on “Membership Benefits” to learn more.

Members-only Website: http://www.arbpmembers.org

Hot off the presses, here is the latest schedule for the REALbasic Colorado Summit:

Friday
——
9AM  Reporting Tools, Options, and Techniques
Bob Keeney

10AM Cocoa and Reporting Features in REALbasic
Geoff Perlman

11AM SQLite Power Tools
Ryan Vail

12-2 Lunch

2PM  OO Database Framework and Introspection
Seth Verrinder

3PM  Profiling and Performance Tweaking
Joe Strout

4PM  Version Control, And Why it Rocks
Aaron Gerber and Mathias Gran

5PM  Business Roundtable

Saturday
——–
9AM  Building REALbasic Plugins
Christian Schmitz

10AM Usability & Design Techniques
Jay Crain

11-1 Lunch

1PM  TBD

2PM  Facilitated RB/RS/Summit Feedback Session
Brad Weber

The official website is http://www.inspiringapps.com/REALbasicSummit/.  Attendance is limited so if you’re interested I recommend signing up sooner rather than later.

Yay!  It’s about flipping’ time!  Sony finally came to their senses and released a version of the eReader software for Mac OS X.

The installation is fairly onerous as it makes you restart your Macintosh.  When’s the last time you had an installer do that that wasn’t part of the operating system?

Once you restart your Mac and start the eBook Library application (version 3.0) looks just like its Windows counterpart even down to the non-standard (on either platform) scroll-bars and generic listbox.  On the left side of the application you have a typical listbox with your library, a link to the eBook Store and a search field.

At the bottom of the listbox is bevel button that allows you to create a new collection.  The developers left a few things out that would have been handy like being able to right click in the listbox and a menu command to do the same things.

One of the things that I really dislike about the eBook Libarary software (on either platform) is that it makes absolutely no attempt at managing the book files.  Whether you import a file or a folder full of books it keeps track of its currently location.  So if you move your books or delete by accident the eBook software won’t know it until you try  to access them.

Perhaps worse is the cryptic message when you delete things from the eBook Library listbox.

Huh?  Doesn’t that look like your files are going to get deleted?  Don’t worry, they’re not.

Drag and drop is a sorely needed addition to this application.  There are only two ways to import books into the library:  Use the Import File or Import Folder menu command from the File menu.  How long has drag and drop been around now?

One of the things that I like about iTunes is its ability to manage the files for me.  If I import a bunch of files it puts them into a single location.  I’m sure some people hate that feature but I have over 13,000 music files.  I like that it manages them and puts them in the proper spot.  I don’t have nearly that many eBooks titles but even managing a hundred soon gets tiring.

Why is it tiring?  Well, besides having to come up with my own location there’s no way to add/edit meta information about the books.  I’d love to have a Read/Unread field so I can easily track which books I’ve read and not read.  How about a rating field so that I can easily track which books I’ve liked?  After a couple of hundred books I don’t remember which book titles I do or do not like other than some vague recollections about which author it is.  Of course I can create my own collections to do this but it’s not very intuitive.

One thing that IS nice about the eBook Library software for Mac OS X is that you can now read your sony DRM books on your Mac without having to resort to running Windows in Parallels or VMWare or even rebooting using Bootcamp.  As far as I know, there is no way of doing this with the Kindle (although I know there is synchronizing between the Kindle and iPhone app).

All-in-all, the Mac OS X version is very simple application that lets Mac users work with their Sony eReader.  It is a poor port from its Windows brethren but I will give Sony for coming up with a Mac version.  However, all the things I don’t like about the Windows version they did to the Mac version too.  Sorry, Sony but I think you can do a better job and I’m hoping that the next version is better for both Mac AND Windows users.