From the Whole Earth Catalog October 1974, actually titled “Whole Earth Epilog”, Page 324. Founded by Stewart Brand.

Mentioned by Steve Jobs in his commencement address at Stanford University in 2005.

Only a little vanity post; a collection of links to stories and other potentially interesting tidbits.

These were some of the first mentions of the HP TouchSmart 310 with HP TouchSmart 4.0 software, unveiled on September 20, 2010.

Most of these have no real reviews yet, they just “wordsmith” the press release or other people’s “wordsmithing”. But that won’t stop me from highlighting “good stuff”.

CNet: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20016921-1.html

The new case is graceful enough, and the $699 starting price for its low-end AMD CPU and 20-inch display is fair, but the biggest news for this new all-in-one may lie in its software. [My emphasis]

First, HP has tweaked the main TouchSmart software interface to streamline the way you access and organize media and applications using touch. In addition to organizing applications in a carousel layout, now you can also "pin" apps and individual media files to a more dynamic background featuring various parallax-animated environments. HP says this design lets you organize your touch software in a more natural manner, akin to how you might organize a desk.

In addition to the new background, HP has also updated the specific touch applications to the TouchSmart suite, most impressively with a new Marvel Comics streaming service, from which you can buy touch versions of more than 8,000 titles from the Marvel library. That number dwarfs the 500 Marvel titles available from Apple’s iPad application. The Marvel app and the entire TouchSmart suite, dubbed TouchSmart 4.0, will also be available for download by owners of current TouchSmart all-in-ones.

Hot Hardware: http://hothardware.com/News/HP-Debuts-Omni-100-And-TouchSmart-310-AIO-PCs-Along-With-New-tm2-Notebook/

ZDNet “The Toy Box”: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/gadgetreviews/hp-rolls-out-omni-100-touchsmart-310-all-in-one-desktops-20-hd-widescreens/18143

VentureBeat: http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/20/hp-launches-fancy-touch-based-desktops-and-an-app-store-for-touch-apps/

The latest software transforms a user’s boring Windows desktop into a “magic canvas,” which appears to be an overlay on top of the computer screen. You swipe your hand across the display to move the transparent overlay. You can drag applications, music, photos, videos and other web content directly onto the overlay. HP refers to these objects as “magnets” since they are just like the magnets you put on your refrigerator with notes attached to them. You can pick multilayered wallpapers to bring the illusion of 3D depth perception to a screen. You can also browse through material via the carousel at the bottom of the screen — all with the touch of a finger.

You can use existing TouchSmart apps such as Twitter, Hulu, Netflix, Recipe Box and the HP Music Store powered by Rhapsody. All of those apps can be started and used via finger taps on the touchscreen. You can use the webcam to film a personalized video message and post it directly to your friend’s Facebook wall.

The HP TouchSmart Apps Center has a small collection of apps available now. You can access them via a TouchSmart Carousel. Some of the apps contain a lot of content, such as the Marvel Comics app and the Cartoon Network app. The Marvel app gives you access to more than 8,000 comics. You can tap on them and read them page by page on a a beautiful high-definition display. The Cartoon Network app offers news updates on shows and characters.

PC Magazine: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2369352,00.asp

The TouchSmart interface is much more advanced than the competition, including Sony, MSI, and Gateway.

TG Daily: http://www.tgdaily.com/hardware-brief/51618-hp-launches-new-much-cheaper-touchsmart

HP has rebuilt its TouchSmart software for the 310 model, making it easier to organize and play back media from the touchscreen, as well as adding enhanced everyday computer applications as well. When the first TouchSmart computer debuted, its touchscreen technology was more of a novelty than anything else. Since then, gadgets like the iPad have made touch more relevant and important than ever, and have shown everyone that it can be a powerful computing tool.

Also added with the new TouchSmart announcement is a deal between HP and Disney to offer digital Marvel comics. TouchSmart users will now be able to stream special versions of classic comics, and then literally thumb through them with on-screen controls. More than 8,000 Marvel titles are available, which HP says is the most extensive digital collection ever offered from any content partner.

HP is also launching a new "app store" interface for touchscreen programs and games, making it easier for developers and consumers to take advantage of the PC’s touch capabilities.

Existing TouchSmart users will also have access to this and the other enhancements being made for the 310, with the release of a sweeping software upgrade. TouchSmart 4.0 will be downloadable for anyone who owns a legacy TouchSmart computer from HP.

Softpedia: http://news.softpedia.com/news/HP-Releases-Three-New-TouchSmart-and-Omnio-PCs-157124.shtml

TechConnect: http://www.tcmagazine.com/tcm/news/hardware/30503/hp-intros-touchsmart-310-and-omni-100-all-one-pcs

Geeky Gadgets: http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/new-hp-touchsmart-310-only-699-20-09-2010/

Waleg: http://www.waleg.com/techgadgets/archives/020976.html

Electronista: http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/09/20/hp.intros.omni.100.touchsmart.310.all.in.one.pcs/

Digital Trends: http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/hp-touchsmart-310-pc-offers-improved-touch-based-software/

IC Tech News: http://ic-technews.com/laptop/1493-hp-touchsmart-310-priced-at-price-just-699-a-complete-software-redesign

Chip Chick: http://www.chipchick.com/2010/09/hp-touchsmart-apps-center.html

Product Reviews: http://www.product-reviews.net/2010/09/20/new-hp-touchsmart-310-review-specs-and-release-date/

Financial Times: http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2010/09/touchsmart/

Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/20/hp-announces-touchsmart-310-and-omni100-all-in-one-pcs/ [Love all the trolling and spewing of prejudices on this one…]

SlashGear: http://www.slashgear.com/hp-touchsmart-310-omni100-and-touchsmart-tm2-get-official-20103191/

[Update]

GottaBeMobile: http://www.gottabemobile.com/2010/09/22/hp-touchsmart-software-gets-more-touchable/

The Touchsmart’s UI is much more fluid and touch applications are no longer required to run in full screen, offering a little breathing room.The Touchsmart’s UI is much more fluid and touch applications are no longer required to run in full screen, offering a little breathing room.

[…]

The new revision of the software looks like a big improvement compared to what’s on my TouchSmart 600xt, which my wife and I use as our bedroom PC.

eWeek (with Slideshow): http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/HP-Omni-TouchSmart-310-TouchSmart-tm2-Unveiled-175093/

Tom’s Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/TouchSmart-Omni-HP-All-in-Ones-AIO-touchscreen,11332.html

DesktopReview: http://www.desktopreview.com/default.asp?newsID=1222&Review=HP+TouchSmart+310+Multitouch+all-in-one+First+Look

HP has what appears to be an ingenious solution. After a program is launched, a couple of fingers swivelling across the screen automatically shrink the application into a cube and paste it onto the TouchSmart’s background. The background itself can then be scrolled through, just by touching it anywhere on the screen.

One really cool aspect of engineering the software like this is the parallax effect that HP added to the wallpaper. As you scroll through the desktop, items in the foreground move at a different rate relative to items in the background.

While we didn’t see it demonstrated, an HP rep also mentioned that the TouchSmart will ship with software to generate these movable backgrounds with pictures that customers take. The effect won’t be as strong as the ones included by HP, but being able to customize it even that much is a nice bonus.

Windows Experience Blog: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/windowsexperience/archive/2010/09/21/hp-updates-their-touchsmart-software-amp-all-in-one-pc-lineup.aspx

To couple the new hardware, HP is revving their TouchSmart software to offer a number of new capabilities.  They’re saying that with it, the desktop transforms into a “Magic Canvas” where users can easily drag apps, and content – even web content – directly onto the desktop.  There’s also a new multi-layer wallpaper that gives the machine a lot of depth.  I haven’t had a chance to work with these new features directly, but I have seen a demo and it looks really nice.

[/Update]

A little promo video of the new TouchSmart 4.0 software:

Product Marketing Manager Ken Bosley presenting the TouchSmart 4.0 software on YouTube:

The HP Video channel with tutorials:

http://h30429.www3.hp.com/?fr_chl=ce319b479b9d330ec6ef5a60bd25d2567c423f97&rf=bm

For developers:

TouchSmart 4.0 SDK: http://www.touchsmartdevzone.com/download/3369/HP-TouchSmart-SDK-4.0-English/

And I may have some details to add myself if and when I find the time…

 
Proof that it happened. 100024 views.

Daily stats leading up to 100000 views.

  
Weekly stats leading up to 100000 views.

Blog stats all the way from the beginning to 100000 views.

People usually reflect on what got them to 100000 views. I guess for me it’s been my involvement with the community site that is connected with the TouchSmart PC. I’ve posted some things here specifically in response to stuff that happened on the community site. As you can see from the dip above, my blog is not particularly popular just for its own sake. It’s usually when something big happens around a release of TouchSmart that people start looking.

Here’s a list of the top posts in case you are into that kind of stats:

For some reason people like to read about my experience with Crossloop. Whoda thunk?

Anyway, no matter what prompted you to pay a visit – thank you!

And Merry Christmas!

Not only is more “happy” coming with Windows 7, as Kylie is fond of saying, if you buy an upgrade, it also brings you a lot of “shiny”.

Sorry about the bad scan quality (it’s from today’s newspaper – yes, dead trees, and yes, I still read newspapers). It says:

80% of Toyotas sold in the last 20 years are still on the road today.

Is it any wonder that it’s hard to make any kind of change on environmental impact? Not just for cars. Think, for example, about the inefficient lighting systems installed in millions of old houses (that aren’t well insulated, have old, inefficient furnaces/air conditioners, etc.). Things like these have a habit of lasting long and they weren’t designed with environmental impact in mind.

With information like this, it’s harder and harder to stay optimistic, wouldn’t you say?

You may never have heard of ACCU, the Association of C and C++ Users as it was originally called. It is a volunteer organization, consisting of programmers who care about programming. The ACCU publishes two magazines, both devoted to raising the standards of programming everywhere: C Vu and Overload. On top of that they organize a conference every year, where some of the top names in C/C++ programming (and many other software development fields) come to speak and mingle with programmers from all around the globe.

I was introduced to the ACCU several years ago, when I first came to Silicon Valley, and still renew my membership every year, even though I don’t attend the local ACCU-USA events anymore. Yes, there is a local “chapter” of the ACCU in Silicon Valley, and they have monthly events that you can attend for free. I had the good fortune of hearing Bjarne Stroustrup speak once (plus going to dinner with him and the rest of the attendees afterwards, and even getting to exchange a few words with him in private.)

At one time I also co-hosted an event for the ACCU, and I think it is this personal connection that has kept me going as a member, even though I’ve not been much directly involved since. What keeps me hanging on now are the two excellent journals, which are largely ad-free and contain almost nothing but passionately written articles and code samples, demonstrating how to become a better programmer.

If this is something you strive for, I highly recommend checking out the ACCU and encourage you to become a member. Even if you live in the United States or elsewhere outside the UK.

I’m trying to block the IP address range that has been causing this, but I have no idea when my host will unilaterally decide to shut my domain down again (I suppose it isn’t nice of me to turn it back on without telling them, but they didn’t tell me they would shut it down either.) Apparently it is my responsibility to monitor the access logs and detect excessive activity and deal with it. I’m not aware of any tools they provide that help me do so, nor do they provide any kind of alerts that would help me be more responsible (if you can call finding yourself in a situation that you didn’t cause and dealing with it being “more responsible”.)

Of course, they’re in the clear, because the terms of service state that they can do whatever they want if my site causes problems for other customers on the shared web server box.

I’ve contacted Microsoft’s abuse email address and sent them access log “greps” that prove the problem. I’ve also tried to find access logs for other addresses the host claims have caused issues, but those logs seem to have been deleted by now. So now I’ve embarrassed myself with an abuse email to an ISP without having the ability to back up my claim. Nice.

Anyone have any advice on what else I can do?

A recent neighborhood sunset. Points for anyone who can guess where this was taken. Looks different when posted using Windows Live Writer. Wonder why that is?

Support claimed I had a “custom” PHP install, which I think is not the case. Anyway, I had to copy the 64 bit PHP CGI binary from their system location to my blog location, update a pointer and now everything is good again.

Apologies all around for going “dark” for a while.

THAT’S WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPENED. Apparently the speech recognition software turned that phrase into a command and proceeded to empty the nine page paper of all content without hesitation. On top of that, the undo feature of Word seemed to not have noticed the command (or been bypassed somehow), so she couldn’t get the document back via undo either!

This all happened while I was in a meeting at work right before lunch. When I got back to my desk I had several panicked voice messages. Luckily, five pages from the day before could be salvaged because my wife had the presence of mind to close the document without saving, which let her recover all but the about four hours of work that had gone in before the disaster struck.

I went home over lunch to see if I could salvage any more. I decided that I needed support from Microsoft. Well, the call with Microsoft Product Support was less than pleasant (as support calls usually are) and didn’t get us the four pages back, either. Best I could tell nobody had ever reported such an issue before.

I’m surprised this glaring problem escaped all testing at Microsoft. One of the cardinal rules of software development was violated in this case: “Never, EVER, lose the user’s data.” I can’t believe there was no prompt to confirm if she really intended to delete everything in response to the phrase “delete document”. I can’t believe there was no undo possible.

I just can’t believe it. Yet, it’s true.

This is something that has come back in popularity in my family recently: Boomerang, the audio magazine for kids aged 6-12. It’s a really interesting concept, in that it tries to introduce kids to "big ideas" through all kinds of interesting angles. Here are some of the topics they cover in their productions:

• Natural Wonder (fanciful musings about something in nature)
• Widget and Whack (taking things apart, with a comic slant)
• Money
• Weird Words
• Mystery
• American Journey
• Schmave’s Elevator (stories about the 50′s and 60′s)
• Jokes
• The Count (counting to ten in foreign languages)
• Book Beat (a children’s book author reads from their book)

Each "magazine" is about an Audio CD’s worth long, i.e. about 70 minutes. You can download each issue, buy a bundle at 40% off or subscribe to have a physical CD mailed to you.

There is a weekly podcast available, and you can download and listen to a sample. Give it a try and see how your kids like it. I’m pretty sure they will.

Boomerang, it’s granola for your ears.

It’s a simple experiment to do with your kids when they ask what the gears on a bicycle do. You’ll need:

• A bike with gears
• Sidewalk chalk
• A measuring tape or stick
• Paper for keeping a table of measurements

I started by making a schematic drawing of the two gear assemblies, front and back (we had a 21 speed bike) and numbered them. Then I made a table with a corresponding number of rows and columns and labeled them.

We went out on our low-traffic street after dinner and drew a starting line close to the curb. Next was getting the gears into the first position: smallest wheel in front, largest in back. Then I explained that we would put the front wheel of the bike right on the starting line and make sure the pedal was in its top position (easy to remember). I asked one of my kids to get on the bike and make exactly one whole turn with the pedal, while I held the bike steady during travel (don’t forget the bike helmet!) We then marked how far the front wheel had traveled and labeled the mark with the gear number combination. Now we changed the gear and did the whole thing over until all gears were covered.

During all this it turned out that holding the bike steady was too much work, and we had to be careful not to "coast" without treading the pedal. So I ended up holding the bike myself, turning the pedal while trying to walk alongside, half on my knees. Plus, we had to speed things up because it was beginning to get dark.

Here’s a picture of our markings (from the next morning):

Just by looking at the markings, we could tell that sometimes you can go approximately the same distance with several different gear combinations.

When we were done with all gears and markings, we got out the measuring tape and measured how far each mark was from the starting line. That resulted in the following table:

We then entered this table into a spreadsheet and turned it into a graph:

Sorting by distance, it looks like this:

This is shows that if you want to go smoothly from the lowest speed to the highest, you have to do a lot of shifting. Some steps aren’t doable without shifting both front and back gear, so in essence you won’t be able to go up smoothly.

Anyway, a fun experiment for after dinner or a weekend afternoon.

We bought a JanSport backpack three years ago or so for use at school. A few days ago a buckle broke, so I contacted JanSport via their customer service web page. I explained the situation of the buckle breaking and not having a receipt and asked if that would be a problem if I’d like to have a repair done. I got a very friendly reply by email the day after, telling me the service center would send me a new buckle if I just gave them my shipping address. I replied back with my address, but also talking about how I wasn’t sure how to thread the buckle back on, could they include some instructions, please.

Well, today I got the buckle with a handwritten note, telling me how to put the buckle back. Not only that, but the buckle in the package had two pieces of webbing threaded through, held together with paperclips to show me how to thread properly. Brilliant!

Thank you JanSport for showing that customer service still exists in this day and age of outsourcing and automation!

CNet News.com posted something about how HP is trying to do an "end run" around Windows. The post seems to quote a BusinessWeek article from last Friday (online edition) and I wonder if anyone did any fact checking.

Now, I’m not about to dignify the speculation around what the future may hold, especially with regards to operating systems and "end runs", with a response, but I can’t stand to see factual inaccuracies about past product development, especially since I was personally involved. You could say this is a matter of personal and professional pride (for better or worse.) The post says this:

HP isn’t confirming the report, but had previously been open about the formation of a new group within its Labs that developed the touch-screen technology and special software used in its TouchSmart PC. The software lets users get around certain features of Vista to do certain multimedia tasks more easily.

Just to be clear: The software came out of the group that designed and developed the HP TouchSmart PC, the Consumer PC division, in conjunction with a few outside partners. Also, the software very much builds on top of things in Vista and couldn’t have been done on XP or any previous Microsoft OS. While it may be true that the software does so, it was not purposely built to let "users get around certain Vista features to do certain multimedia tasks more easily". It was built to provide the user an environment optimized for touch interaction, while providing interesting experiences and useful features at the same time (and yes, we can debate both the word interesting and the word useful, as lots of people have already done.)

CNet, did you check your stories and go back to the sources before posting something like this?

It would have been nice if they had updated the website with this information. That could have saved us burning all that gas, just to turn around and go back home.

If you’re going, my guess is you should arrive right when the doors open in order to get a spot.

Or even better: take public transportation.

One side benefit for the local economy from this somewhat “wasted” trip: we spent some money at a local German butcher on the way home. Mmm. Delicious German sausages!

—

One of the really unsettling events before the launch of the TouchSmart PC was that Engadget somehow got a hold of some pictures that had been prepared for the launch in early 2007 at the Consumer Electronics Show. It was billed in the first sentence as “AMD’s sweet new rig”, which was a little bit of a slap in the face, since most of the real work fell outside of AMDs realm. I remember the team meeting when our program manager came in and told us about the “leak”. He had heard it from Microsoft just a few moments before joining the meeting. The mood in the room instantly turned. People started feeling both mad at the leaked information (and the leaker) and depressed about the potential impact this would have on our launch at CES. Microsoft especially was disappointed, since the TouchSmart PC represented a big investment on their part, carrying some of the Vista messaging. The TouchSmart PC was to be billed as one of a few “dream” PCs at CES. Having gone through an experience like that, I now always think about how the people involved must feel when I see “leaked” information about upcoming products. It’s not fun to have it happen to you.

On a happier note, the TouchSmart PC seemed to make quite a splash at CES. At the last minute I was asked to attend the show to help with technical support on the show floor. This was my first time attending CES and going to Las Vegas, and I quite enjoyed the experience. I ran into quite a few of the people that had worked with us on the project, and it was fun to see the crowds milling about the TouchSmart PCs at the HP and Microsoft booths. Having backstage access was a unique thing, but it involved a lot of walking around, helping the people doing demos by making sure the software was installed properly.

Since then, the HP TouchSmart PC has received numerous awards (including spot number seven on PC World’s list of most innovative products of 2007) and for a short while even had a fan website, the HP TouchSmart Owner’s Club.

—

This is the tentative end of the series. If you’re curious about other aspects, let me know, and if I can talk about it, I’ll see if I can accommodate your curiosity.

—

The guiding principles for HP SmartCenter and the other touch-optimized applications were to provide quick, “transactional” experiences, to have the applications be as intuitive as possible to use, and have them look polished and clean. HP SmartCenter was to be the “home page” for touch-based interactions with the PC. It had to easily give the user access to key Media Center experiences (TV, music, games) as well as two other touch-optimized programs HP was developing (HP SmartCalendar and HP Photosmart Touch). Finally the user had to have the ability to add access to a certain number of programs of their choice.

To enable some of the quick, “transactional” experiences using a touch screen, HP SmartCenter had to have large “target” areas that are easy to hit using a finger. This requirement helped making decisions about the layout of the “tiles” that the user touches to “launch” something.

We wanted to highlight a few of the key features of the TouchSmart suite of software. We decided that three tiles would be larger than the remaining ones, and that those three would be able to show more details from the underlying program than the smaller tiles. The calendar tile, for example, will pull three upcoming events out of the calendar program and display key information about those events right within the calendar tile. The Photosmart Touch tile will look for pictures in the My Pictures folder and display five of those in a rotation. The weather tile will display high and low temperatures expected for the day as well as the current temperature as reported by the weather service. The analog and digital clock tiles will display two additional clocks (probably configured for different time zones) in text form, in addition to the main clock, which is shown in a larger, graphical look.

The three user configurable tiles would be able to either start a program on the system or a web page, using Internet Explorer. We settled on only having three configurable items, since there was an overall limit in the graphical design at nine small tiles plus three large tiles, and we wanted to encourage people to stick with tiles that didn’t take you out of a touch-optimized / touch oriented environment.

Beyond picking a software development technology (WPF), our other challenges were the many changes in both Windows Vista and WPF as both matured. WPF introduced “breaking changes” several times in our short cycle, and we discovered numerous problems with the integration of WPF and Windows Media Center. We worked closely with Microsoft to get these addressed. But a few problems remained, one of which is that every time you start one of the programs we developed, the computer screen will go black for a few seconds. It gives you the unsettling feeling that something went wrong, but it’s actually a consequence of the interactions between certain software components that are controlling the graphics card (DirectX, WPF and Media Center). As much as we didn’t like it, we were out of time to address these problems by the time our shipping date came.

—

That’s a wrap for part 3. Next time you’ll hear about the reactions from the team when information about the TouchSmart PC was leaked to Engadget way before the actual launch event, and I’ll also talk a little about the launch at CES 2007.

Update (2008-04-30): Part four is now posted.

—

I hacked together a very simple first version of HP SmartCenter (then codenamed LaunchPad, which still is the name of the executable, incidentally) in HTML and my colleague Maguy added some rough graphical elements to give our design firm an idea of what we were looking for.

My quick HTML mockup

Improved graphics

From about February 2006 until April 2006 we then iterated with our design firm on the GUI and user experience design. Towards the end of May 2006 we took final delivery of the work from them. I was to turn their beautiful work into a living application with page navigation, drag-and-drop functionality, configuration options, and settings persistence. They had provided a solid foundation to build on, including well thought out namespaces, classes, animations and navigation design.

But there was still a lot of work to be done during the next three to four months. In addition to the application itself I was also responsible for delivering an installer, a supporting “touch optimization” program, and integration with our factory PC build process, including dealing with the “sealing” process that prepares the master hard drive for replication.

We participated in Microsoft’s early adopter program for Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Vista, which gave us access to builds of the WPF bits, with a seemingly never-ending stream of Community Technology Preview versions. Windows Vista was in a similar state of flux, and I had my hands full, wiping out and reinstalling test machines and updating my developer machine to keep up with the changes.

At the same time I climbed the learning curve for WPF (which Simon Middlemiss once described as more of a cliff), trying to figure out how to get the mostly fixed-content XAML pages that the design company had delivered turned into malleable components and re-configurable layouts.

The initial design from the outside company included two components that pull information from the web: weather and stocks. We had to drop the stocks piece for business reasons early on, and had big challenges working out the business issues for the weather feed integration. We wanted our own high-quality images to illustrate the weather conditions and had to get approval from the owner of the feed data. I thought several times that the weather feature was dead, but stubbornness overcame pessimism, and we pulled all the right people from several companies together to get our images approved within 24 hours before the final code submittal deadline. I remember pulling a work-at-home weekend to fine-tune the weather feature where I had to stop working because I was hit with the flu. I was out for three days. After something like that happens you don’t give up a feature without a fight.

One benefit of being part of the early adopter program for WPF and Vista was that Microsoft arranged for training and troubleshooting sessions. I made two trips to Redmond under this program, once to get more in-depth training on WPF and Vista, and once to get help with troubleshooting performance issues we had run into. That’s when I learned that there is such a thing as a “managed memory leak“, which can be introduced in WPF without the programmer necessarily realizing it. Towards the end of the program three of my colleagues and I got to spend a couple of days with Microsoft again, this time at their Platform Adoption lab (Building 20), going over some last minute design and performance questions with their WPF developers one-on-one. This especially helped with getting HP Photosmart Touch into better shape for final release. We got a lot of tips and strategies for dealing with images, collections and containers in these sessions.

—

That’s it for part 2. Next time I’ll dig a little more into the guiding principles that were used for the implementation of HP SmartCenter, as well as some of the challenges and problems I encountered on the way.

Update (2008-04-30): Parts three and four are now posted.

My involvement with the HP TouchSmart PC began in about December of 2005. The decision was made to invest in software that would be best suited for the touchscreen that the unit would have. One of the results is HP SmartCenter as seen here (screenshot from my developer machine, not necessarily representative of the final product):

We had tight deadlines. Our final bits would be due in about six months, around June / July 2006. Our product marketing folks decided they wanted the touch application to provide quick access to TV and music as primary features. Windows Media Center was our software of choice for delivering TV and music experiences, and so we made HP SmartCenter run within Windows Media Center. This helped to avoid waiting for Media Center to start up when the user wants to watch TV or listen to music. In other areas the choice created lots of challenges. The initial one was picking a software development technology.

I had just attended PDC05 and was pretty excited about Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and the speed I could sense it would give developers and designers for rapidly creating exciting software. I had learned that Media Center in Windows Vista would support WPF, and my recommendation to use it for our apps to make the deadlines while delivering a polished user interface was accepted.

An interface developed in HTML would not have had the same quality (read: look-and-feel). Using the Media Center Markup Language (MCML / SplashFX) was not an option, since that was not going to be revealed in any useful detail until about March 2006, way too late for us to learn how to use it and produce a product.

At PDC05, it had been mentioned that a well-know design company had worked on some XAML styles for the show. We approached them to help out with the application design and asked them to deliver their stuff as working XAML / WPF code. They were pretty excited about the idea and signed on.

—

That’s it for now. Check back soon for the next installment of this mini-series, where I’ll show you a few screenshots of very early prototypes.

Update (2008-04-30): Parts two, three and four are now posted.

Anyway, he performed a song I hadn’t heard before (although it’s over a year old by now). It’s a commentary on the state of elementary education in the U.S., and it hits the nail right on the head, if you ask me.

Check it out at www.tomchapin.com (to download and pass along) or watch the video below:

Anyway, here are a few pictures of a kind of unboxing. It’s really more of a series of pictures of the packaging/parts, since I had already unboxed the thing by the time I took these.

Simple cardboard packaging and plastic bags for protection

All parts arranged on the open box

Front of welcome brochure and power brick

The OLPC itself with the two random color elements that make it “unique”

Back of the OLPC, with battery removed

Battery and welcome letter

Inside of welcome brochure

Back of welcome brochure

The battery actually came mostly charged, which was a nice surprise. Turning the laptop on for the first time took me through a simple naming step and then right to the “hub”/home screen. It took a while to get there, but it was really, really simple. No series of screens that ask for all kinds of information, like on regular PCs.

My initial exploration of the software took me around to the Journal, Webcam app (called Recorder), Paint, Measure (seemed to enable you to analyze / show the sound from the microphone), wireless setup, Browser and a few other things. Looks very interesting so far.

Both my kids have expressed interest in fiddling with it. Should be a lot of fun.

If, for example, you have a home network server with a caching proxy feature, try turning the proxy feature off. That helped me with MediaError(1400) problems, anyway.

If your ISP has a caching proxy, see if there’s a way around it, too. It may be a source of problems.

Unfortunately I’ve been so swamped with work (really exciting new stuff, too) that I haven’t been able to prepare at all. In other words I still have no idea about what sessions to go to. Argh. To add to that frustration, the SD West website doesn’t make it really easy to plan your days for maximum efficiency. Double Argh.

Here’s how I like to plan my attendance: I have an idea at a high level about what kind of sessions I’d like to focus on (in my case .NET and People, Process & Methods mostly). So I need to be able to filter all sessions by those high-level criteria. Next, I need to figure out which sessions in those high level tracks are available at what time and how they may conflict relative to how interesting they sound to me.

The information provided on the SD West website provides some ability to filter and search for sessions, but it doesn’t help you with detailed planning.

So I decided to spend a little time pulling down all sessions as an Excel sheet (which the site allows, thank goodness), and started to shape and mold the sheet to my needs. The result is available for you to use as well, in case you’re as late as I am: sdwest08_all.xlsx (update: rename this file to have an .xlsx suffix after downloading, WordPress changed the extension on me).
(I think I have all sessions in there, but I noticed that one session seemed to not be fully downloaded (a session with quotes in the description), so I added it back by hand. Maybe there are others missing too, but I think that was the only one.)

You’ll see all sessions sorted by time, color coded by time slot/event type (keynotes, birds-of-a-feather), color coded by track, and with filters on each column. I also added a priority column at the beginning to perhaps help making decisions if you change your mind while at the event.

And, yes, I will most likely be wearing my Geek Tie at the event (it has a Red Verbatim Store’n'Go USB memory stick and a gray CaseLogic case at the end).