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"If user is the King, then usability is the Queen." – Sohail Iqbal

Yet another beautiful piece of software form MS Live Labs: Pivot, a fun way of exploring and visualizing data. Here’s what MS says about Pivot:

“Pivot makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data in ways that are powerful, informative, and fun. We tried to step back and design an interaction model that accommodates the complexity and scale of information rather than the traditional structure of the Web.”

It is so simple and intuitive that “Even an MBA can use it” . And as you may have guessed, its XML driven and as a developer, you can bring your corporate data into it in minutes. All you need to do is publish you images according to Pivot guidelines and write a Data Transformation script out of your DB Engine and you are ready to rock n’ roll.

The dedicated site for Pivot getpivot.com has a comprehensive guide on how to model data collections for use with Pivot Client. Below is the diagram of XML schema which is consumed by the Pivot:

As i said, the UI is highly intuitive, just slice and dice through the data set and narrow down to what are you looking for. It keeps adding filters to data as you select through, and you can easily modify there filters as needed. There are some public collections available on their site for everyone to quickly get going.

Here a live example of how in just a few clicks I learned that our beloved Snow Leopard is one of the most endangered species in Pakistan:

I loved it and hope you too will enjoy it. I think Pivot is a great tool to present data to Information Workers as well as to the management for reporting and decision support.

Download here are give it a try: http://getpivot.com/download/

// ch3ckmat3

Enterprise 2.0 overview, originally uploaded by fredcavazza.

Found an excellent article on Enterprise 2.0 Concepts, including a great visual summarizing it up. A good read for management perspective.

// ch3ckmat3

“The world doesn’t need another computer language. What is really needed right now, is a cross-compiler.” – Sohail Iqbal (21 October 2009)

// ch3ckmat3

Just found a good feature of WCF, which seems quiet useful for distributed application developing/deployment practices. Through Net.TCP Port Sharing Service, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) allows different processes to share the same TCP Ports. Now you can deploy your .Net based network services side-by-side with IIS on port 80 or 8080, the standard HTTP and HTTP Proxy ports you find open in many firewalls by default. No need to mess around with client’s network department on this one.

Read on at MSDN: Net.TCP Port Sharing, and don’t forget to read the related articles on enabling and configuring the Port Sharing Service.

//ch3ckmat3

I just added a feature “Bundle the run-time with apps for mobile (WinMo/Symbian/IPhone/Android)” to Silverlight 4.0 Feature Discussion Group. Cast your vote here http://silverlight.uservoice.com/pages/4325-feature-suggestions.

Cheers

// ch3ckmat3

"I feel, therefore you are." — Sohail Iqbal

Wait a minute… you think you can leech some bits of torrents from every public hotspot that comes your way? No sir, that’s not the case (at least for now). This neat piece of software is not a torrent client, it actually lets you control the uTorrent from your mobile, ideally on Wi-Fi in home or office, where you have uTorrent running with WebUI installed.

I just happen to setup WebUI for myself and had this wild idea to get the remote control on my mobile, and guess what, “Your best idea is already copyrighted.” proves true again!

These guys here have done a great job actually. The uTorrent Remote Control is done in J2ME, with a simple interface, lets you control and monitor torrent activity on your uTorrent application.

I also found some other useful bits here on the same site, but I’m in love with this torrent thingy I tell you that. Go try it for yourself!

Cheers,

// ch3ckmat3

The scene has now become interesting with a number of e-paper based portable e-book readers on the market, and we are getting a brand new gadget every once in a while in this pool now.

Just like BeBook, yet another cool e-book reader on the block…but still no luck with the prices…the asking price for this gizmo is huge 329.95 EUR with converts to almost 510 USD!!!

The success of Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle Reader proves that even latest large screen mobile phones and other hand-held media gadgets are insufficient for reading books, specifically for mature readers.

For other options available, here is a good Feature Matrix on E-book Readers I found on MobileRead Wiki.

cheers,

// ch3ckmat3

Scott Guthrie of Microsoft enlightens us on upcoming and highly anticipated Beta 1 of Silverlight 2. Link to his blog post here.

For those who don’t know about Silverlight, here it is… in a nutshell:

Silverlight is a (cross)browser plug-in, just like Adobe Flash Player… with a rich set of UI controls and application programming framework, just like Adobe Flex. It uses a declarative language (XAML) for UI definitions and JavaScript + .Net Framework languages for programming logic… just like Adobe’s MXML and ActionScript. Microsoft also has a rich tool-set for developing Silverlight applications (MS Expression and VS 2008)… just like Adobe Flash designer tool and Adobe Flex IDE.

Well… Silverlight is certainly much more than that… just like Adobe Flash is… but I suppose that a comparative approach would make it easier to understand for almost everyone.

Scott’s post is quiet comprehensive for everything else you need to know about Silverlight.

happy lightening

// ch3ckmat3