BKeeney Briefs

Making a screencast video presentation is more difficult that you image.  First you figure out the script, then you do the recording (perhaps more than once), then do any editing (cut the coughs and um’s, speed up long typing sequences, etc), add any callouts or special effects, then convert to the appropriate video format, upload the video and finally create an accompanying article to go along with it.

Whew!  That’s a lot of work.  I’ve done this for over nine hours worth of material so far!

We, BKeeney Software, are now offering streaming videos for REALbasic training with over an hours worth of free video (you do have to sign up for an account though).  To say that this has been a labor of love is understating the scope of the project.  With nine hours of video we’ve barely scratched the surface of all that REALbasic has to offer.  We have many, many things still left on the plate. I look at this as a never ending stream of videos as REALbasic is always evolving (on a 90 day basis!) so the work will never be done.

With nine hours available now, what’s it mean for a month or year from now?  I don’t honestly know, but as I’m writing this I’m encoding and updating another twenty-six minutes of video.

Since this is REALbasic I spend a lot of time working in one environment, Mac OS X, and doing debug runs in Windows 7 and Linux (Ubunutu) and show you the big, little and sometimes subtle differences between the platforms.  You’re seeing how I approach a project from the ‘what I’m going to do’ to implementing it and doing final testing.  And yes, you get to see me make some mistakes (hey, don’t we all?) and through the magic of post editing I’ll point those out when I do them so you’re not confused and then we show the correction process.

This is not a typical video training program.  We have five hours of video just on the basic controls available for REALbasic.  Not only do we describe what it does and some of the things to be aware of, we use the control in a project and examine what it does in Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux when there are differences.

My goal is to make you a better REALbasic programmer.  I name EVERYTHING from RB objects to my variables in source code so that they mean something.  At a glance you should be able to tell what your source code is doing because you’re not just writing code for right now, but you’re writing code for six months and six years from now.

Sign up for an account and automatically get a free Guest Pass.  Poke around and take a look at the free videos.  We’d love it if you’d sign up for a subscription.  With our introductory pricing, a three month subscription costs $45.  A year subscription is $150 which is a 20% savings.

What’s great about the video training?  You can help direct what videos are done next.  REALbasic has thousands of classes – some with poor documentation and examples.  We can create the video training that helps you out sooner rather than later.

That’s it for now.  Happy coding!

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but requests for quotes for REALbasic projects has been through the roof the past couple of weeks.  Between the REALbasic Developer Network (i.e. the Find a Consultant web page) and the ARBP Find a Developer web page it sure has been busy.  I can only find one “help me learn REALbasic” post in the past month or so.  This is a good thing since there used to be a bunch of them.

I don’t know if  RS marketing efforts are leading to these requests or if the ever-increasing Macintosh presense in the business world is making more people want cross-platform applications but something seems to have changed.  (Or it’s a combination of everything!)  Of course there’s nothing to say if the requests dry up in the next month or so.  Only time will tell.

I find it interesting that a lot of the recent projects are converting from either FileMaker or 4D.  RB can make a nice database application (assuming you know what you’re doing).  RS is always looking to enhance the user experience and I encourage RS to enhance their database tools.  I, however, do not want them to become another FileMaker or 4D because a generic application environment can do things better than a database-centric application, in my opinion.  Likewise there are things that FileMaker, 4D and MS Access do better than a generic application environment like RB.  It depends upon the requirements, in the long run.

Since I help run ARBP you can take this criticism with a grain of salt.  One of my biggest beefs with the RS developer program is that it’s simply a forwarded email.  If you signed up today you’d miss everything from last week (if you did sign up I’d certainly ask for all recent posts since $1k is nice chunk of change).  With ARBP we keep them around for a while (which is a problem all by itself that I’m trying to correct).  Another point is there isn’t a whole lot of information in the posts.  A contact information (name, email, phone) and a brief description of the project.  It would be nice to get more information.  What platforms?  Is it an existing project?  Is it a conversion project?  From what language?  Is it commercial or internal software?  I could probably continue on what I’d like to see, but I’d be repeating myself.

As a consultant, are you busy?  Better yet, are you as busy as you’d like to be?  Have you seen any trends in the past six months?

Consulting or applications.  It’s my eternal struggle with my business.  Consulting pays the bills but products are…well, this seems silly… a little part of me.  With consulting projects you always know they’re not yours and so you don’t have nearly as much invested in them.  Your products have history and baggage and all the good, bad and ugly that goes into products.

Today we released Task Timer version 4.1.  It has some nifty new features for Mac OS X users including the ability to start/stop timers from the menubar (even when it’s not at the forefront) and from the dock menu.  We also added some charting capabilities so that it’s easy to tell if you’re spending too much time on a project (or product).  Sometimes this is good, sometimes it’s bad to know all this.

Task Timer was our very first product.  Written initially in the REALbasic 5.5 era.  The database it used back then was horrible.  If the app crashed while the db was open it was hosed and the only way to fix it was to use a utility to fix it.  Another version came out when RS change the database format and yet another version came out when it finally became SQLite based.

With version 4 we did a complete rewrite from the ground up.  It needed it.  I’ve learned a few things about REALbasic since then and there are some much better controls available.  Reporting was another big thing in version 4.  We went from using a StyleGrid printer to using RSReport.  Trust me, RSReport is light years ahead of what we were doing before.  In the 4.1 version we added charting which was pretty easy to do using the MonkeyBread ChartDirector plugin.  Both 3rd party items are welcome additions into the BKeeney Software stable of tools.

If you try any of the BKeeney Software products I talked about above and want to purchase, please use the coupon code BRIEFS to get a 25% discount off the purchase price! The coupon is good through July 1, 2009.