Dave Noderer's Blog

Tampa Code Camp July 16th, 2005

The Tampa Code Camp will be held on July 16th, 2005. See table below for the Tampa and other Florida code camps!

Florida .NET User Group Meeting - Miramar - 2005-06-14 - MS Spot Watch Development

Microsoft Spot Watch Project

Ed Hill - ehill@mir.devry.edu - Professor

Brian Kmak - Student

Ryan Smith - Student

Started with MS Spot Development Contest

• 30 projects submitted
• This was 1 of 10 projects selected
• More info on http://direct.msn.com/

Spot = Smart Personal Objects Technology

• Based on FM sub carrier - MS Direct Band
• Features buttons
  • Select Channel
  • Scroll up/down for options
  • Enter / next
• Only watches now, other devices later

Content

• Instant messages (receive only)
• News, stocks, weather, sports, movies
• Calendar
• Diversions - word of the day, date in history, etc…

Spot Communication

• Atomic time continuously when in coverage
• Agreement with Clear channel stations
• Personalized content only to local area, have to notify where you are
• Content localized and encrypted

Personalization

• Can download watch faces
• Which types of news
• Weather type / cities
• Up to 15 stocks

Programming

• Tiny CLR on Tiny Hal
• For contest, program + data limited to 10k
• Input, 3 buttons
• Screen res 120x96 mono
• Sound - beeps with limited pitch and volume
• Need to max battery life, minimum memory
• Can pop alerts and receive timed events
• USB communications
• Contest used alpha software, not even beta
• Submitted two proposals
  • Game pack - Accepted
  • Exercise monitor - Not Accepted
• Much of what they did is still under NDA with Microsoft, only presenting public info

Tiny CLR Features

• Numeric types
• Sync, timers
• Reflection
• Serialization, compact version
• Etc..

Tiny CLR Exceptions/extension

• Execution constraints
• http://Dotnet.sys-con.com/45514.htm
• Single cpu
• Managed code only
• Only one application domain but dynamic loading/unloading of assemblies
• 416 methods  vs 22471 in standard framework

Demo

• Beta 1 VS 2005
• Alpha ?? Spot sdk
• Only C# for now
• Only single dim arrays
• Graphics are all bitmap
• No drag and drop
• Implement "Logic" game
• Top of watch will automatically display time after a few seconds
• Watch emulator used for development
• So far they have not been able to load onto a real watch.

Future of SPOT

• Spot on PDA, Computer, Car, refrigerator
• New laptop designs with small display, reminder, email headers
• Other devices?
• General availability unknown…

INETA at PDC2005 - Week starting Sunday September 11th

Planning still in progress but INETA will be running the Birds of a Feather sessions again, Stuart Celarier who did a great job for Teched 2005 has already starting working on them with Microsoft.

Still in discussion what other presence INETA may have at PDC.

Atlantic 2005 Tropical Storm Names

Tropical Update: http://www.weather.com/newscenter/tropical/?from=tabset

Non Profit Ways

http://www.nonprofitways.com/ has been in existance for over three years, originally started at a post user group meeting at Hooters!

Recently, an original project, the South Florida Table Tennis Organization site was officially completed.

The purpose was to be able to get local (and now world wide) .net developers to work on projects that would benifit non profit groups that could not afford to undertake a custom development effort.

A new project, Grove House Artists has been started by David Silverlight. David came up with the original name and is now running the site and overseeing all the projects.

INETA Teched 2005 MSN Space - Pictures now available!

INETA Community Lounge

The INETA booth this year is in the Community Cabana area and can be identified by the plastic palm trees, INETA banners and INETA beach balls.

Periodically during the day you may see the INETA Prize Patrol wandering around the convention center, identified by a group of somewhat roudy developers with parrot hats and a boom box. They are looking for people with INETA badge inserts to give prizes to.

Also twice each day there are grand prize drawings.. Prizes inlcude X-Box's, pocket pc's and spot watches, all require the INETA badge insert which are going fast and only a few are available at the booth.

There is a rumor of a secret stash in the Microsoft Technology bus outside of the North Concourse....

INETA User Group Leader Summit!!

Again this year, INETA put on a full day User Group Leader Summit on Sunday before Teched. Over 150 people came and was sponsored by both INETA (Developer user groups) and Culminis (IT Pro User Groups).

Besides the intense networking between user group leaders there were a series of workshops in the afternoon. Three tracks covered all sorts of topics including newsletters, marketing, volunteer orgainzation, funding, and leadership for user group leaders. This is a good chance for the North American INETA leadership to meet with a large number of user group leaders from all around the country. Representatives from the other regions also attended.

A number of changes in the board of directors was announced as some of founding members Bill Evjen, Brian Loesgen, Keith Franklin, Keith Pleas and Julie Lerman move onto a newly formed Advisory board. Bill stays on as past president to share his experience with the new board. This group has done a great service to the developer user group community growing INETA to it's current scope of 772 user groups representing 374197 developers in five regions worldwide. Thanks Bill, Brian, Keith, Keith and Julie!!