Geeks and Food
Posted by Ben on August 31, 2010
So I’m in the middle of writing a much longer and more geeky blog post about my recent experience with Expression Studio – but I wanted to take a minute out to address a subject very close to my heart… Food.
Now, I’ve written before about the ‘geek’ stereotype and how unfair & out-dated it is, but even I continue to be amazed by the sheer vastness of talents that fellow technology enthusiasts have when they’re away from keyboard. On the right you can see Exhibit A…
Eileen Brown, ‘girl geek’ and personal hero of mine, was in the office today and kindly brought me some of her home-made jam. And boy, they really don’t do jam justice in the supermarket… this stuff tastes absolutely amazing.
I evangelise about technology because I’m passionate about it – so I applied that theory to this mouth watering condiment and tweeted about it.
It was the replies to that tweet that inspired this bite-sized blog post…
This response from Ian Field – student, food lover, and fan of old-school TV shows – really got me thinking… my surprise at the sheer number of tech enthusiasts that love good, home-cooked food was completely unfounded.
Food is something we associate with passion, with love, and with pleasure – it’s therefore only natural that those people who are so passionate about technology are prone to get out the pots and pans when they’re not bathing in the light of their monitors.
And if anyone asks how my diet is going – that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!
Disco Friday…
Posted by Ben on August 27, 2010
In a slight break from this week’s more technical posts, I want to express my sheer delight that I now work in a team that – whilst being on the bleeding edge of technology – manages to appeal greatly to my love of retro technology.
I’ve got loads of old hardware & software in my loft that I can add to this collection… I wonder how well an office Pong championship would go down?
Running with Sharp Objects
Posted by Ben on August 25, 2010
On Monday, I wrote a post about moving from languages like C++ to the more modern C# and the .NET framework. Great if you’re using an older programming language – but what if you’re using a language like Objective-C or Java? These languages (even Java, the oldest of the three) fit into that ‘modern’ category, and will be familiar to anyone developing for the various other mobile platforms out there.
I’ve talked to a number of students recently who are either developing or have the ideas for some really amazing mobile applications, and there’s always a discussion around what mobile OS they are thinking of writing it for. But what if you wanna catch ‘em all and write mobile apps across all of the major mobile platforms? Well, life’s actually pretty sweet. It’s a lot easier than you might think to start working with C#, and before you know it you’ll be writing Silverlight and XNA – a skill that’ll let you write awesome applications and games not just for Windows Phone – but for PC, Xbox, and the browser too!
Some of the Same Rules
If you’re used to programming in Java, then you’re used to the idea of a managed run-time environment with things like applets and JavaBean. You get something very similar with C# – the .NET runtime. This gives you a managed run-time environment called the ‘common language runtime’ (CLR) which forms the basis of writing ‘managed code’ to take advantage of the CLR’s cross-language integration and exception handling, great security, deployment support, and some great debugging and profiling services.
The great thing about the CLR (and the clue’s in the name here) is that it makes life really easy when you want to design components and applications whose objects interact across languages – making the code you write exceptionally powerful.
Hello, Examples
I’m a big fan of making comparisons (simples) so let’s take a look at what a simple, console style Hello World app would look across all three languages:
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C# |
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using System; class HelloApp { static void Main() { Console.WriteLine(”Hello C#!”); } } |
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Java |
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public class HelloWorld { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println(”Hello Java!”); } } |
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Objective-C |
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#import <stdio.h> int main( int argc, const char *argv[] ) { printf( “Hello Objective-C!\n” ); return 0; } |
You can tell I liked to play ‘spot the difference’ when I was little, can’t you? The first big one here is in the code organization: while both C# and Java have a class with one method, Objective-C just uses a method.
The second difference is in the details: in C#, the Main method must start with capital “M”, while in Java and Objective-C, it is not a requirement. The String[] argument for the Main method in C# is optional.
The third thing to note here is in the Main method’s return type: in C# (and Java), it returns void while in Objective-C it returns ‘int’. That’s an option in C# – you can have the Main method return an ‘int’ value if you wanted it to.
Baby Steps
While it’s really easy to start using C# alongside Java and Objective-C, there are some ‘gotchas’ – Java developers are likely to have a much faster start when looking at C#, down to the fact that both languages are object-oriented languages, both are strongly typed, and both have a garbage collector that manages memory.
Those used to writing code in Objective-C will find a few more differences, mostly down to the different approaches to code that the two languages take (like sending messages to objects in Objective-C rather than calling functions in C#). There are also some differences in memory management (Objective-C has no memory management mechanism), and the type system (.NET’s strong type system as opposed to pointers to loosely typed memory locations in Objective-C).
And Finally…
As always with these things, your experience may differ – but hopefully this post has given a bit of an overview of how you can quickly and easily start using C# and harnessing the power of Sliverlight, XNA and the ‘.NET framework without having to drop all of your existing practises and move into something entirely new.
I got a lot of the info for this article from the XNA Creators club, so head there to dive into things in a little more detail – and as always, if you’re a student looking to create amazing stuff, check out Dreamspark – the place to get our developer tools & software free of charge.
Jump In to Windows Phone 7
Posted by Ben on August 24, 2010
A little while ago, two intrepid Brits braved the cold, harsh Seattle summer to broadcast their message to the world. On Tuesday 20th July, Rob Miles and Andy Wigley jump-started the world of Windows Phone 7 development with an excellent three-day course, during which they racked up 12 hours of ‘whats’, ‘whys’ and ‘how-tos’, ranging from the concepts of WP7 game and app development right through to how to get them on the marketplace and sell them once you’ve written one.
All of the content is now up online – so you can watch the videos, play with the labs, and learn along first hand as these legends of mobile development lead the way. Check out the first of the videos below, and follow the link to see the rest of the content and explore for yourself!
Seeing it a little sharper…
Posted by Ben on August 23, 2010
![will_write_code_for_food_tshirt-p235780280084662100t53h_400[1]](http://www.theopenbracket.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/will_write_code_for_food_tshirtp235780280084662100t53h_40011.jpg "will_write_code_for_food_tshirt-p235780280084662100t53h_400[1]")
I love technology. A sweeping statement, but it forms the basis of everything that I do and love. I’ve been working with technology more or less since I finished my GCSEs, and every year there are new advances, new features, and some amazing examples of good practise out there. Modern languages like C# get a lot of buzz – and quite rightly so, given the sheer power, flexibility and development speed that they offer. With all that fanfare you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s a brand new language – but far from it. I was surprised today to learn that C#, the language of kings, has been around for almost a decade.
I remember 2001 – I’d just started working on my A Levels, I looked like this (acne and all), and DJ Ötzi had the most annoying number 1 single of all time.
Back in those days my programming experience was fairly limited to Pascal – but I had started to learn a little about C++ and the wonders of C code in the object oriented world. Fast forward almost a decade and I rarely think about the old days of C++, thanks in no small part to the .NET framework and the sheer ease of development that languages like C# bring to the party.
When I was a student, I always wanted to know about the latest, coolest, and most time efficient ways of doing the stuff I wanted to do – and yet, even a decade after it was announced at PDC 2000, so many people are unsure of what the benefits are of moving to it from C++. The truth is it’s never been easier – C# offers a huge advantages over other languages – but the best news is that you don’t have to re-learn one to use the other. If you’ve got to write something in C++ and you know how to do it in C# (or vice versa) the knowledge is interchangeable.
Over the coming weeks I’ll be writing a few posts that highlight some of great feature comparisons between some older languages (like C++ and Java) and C#, but for now I urge you to download the free developer tools using the link below, check out some of the tutorials I’ve linked to, and see how much sharper your code can get for yourself!
Download VS Express C# Edition for free
![logo_VSE2010[1]](http://www.theopenbracket.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/logo_VSE201011.png "logo_VSE2010[1]"){kind=logo}
Check out the getting started guides for C# on the MSDN Developer Center
Moving on…
Posted by Ben on August 3, 2010
In November 2008, I joined Microsoft as a contractor within their Live@edu team. For the past 21 months I’ve been on an amazing journey – working with some outstanding customers in the education technology space, getting to work alongside some truly inspiring colleagues, and having the chance to be a part of an amazing product as it has gone from the small stage to more broad success.
It’s been a fantastic couple of years, but as with all great voyages it eventually becomes time for a change – and as such, I will be leaving my role as Live@edu deployment specialist on Friday 20th August, to join Microsoft full-time and start a new journey within their Academic Evangelist team.
Something old, something new
If you’re one of the many customers or colleagues I’ve worked with over the past 21 months – thank you. It’s been truly inspirational. One of the things I’ve loved most about working on Live@edu has been the opportunity to get out there and talk to people within schools, colleges and universities all over the country and hear your stories, meet your students, see your challenges first hand and work together to solve them.
My new role will combine some of the things I’ve loved most over the past two years with some really exciting new challenges – I’ll still be working within the education space, but my focus will be on inspiring and engaging with students and academics on a broad range of technologies, from Windows Phone and Xbox to Microsoft’s desktop development tools and productivity offerings.
What next?
I’m leaving an amazing team – one that I’m proud to have been a part of – and I know that both the Microsoft Live@edu and UK Education Teams will continue to be a source of inspiration and thought leadership within the world of education technology in the future.
From now until the 20th August I’ll be winding down my engagement with customers and slowly handing over my responsibilities to other members of the team. If you’ve been dealing with me regularly, you’ll hear from us over the coming few weeks as to who your new point of contact will be.
As for me, I’m excited about the new road that lays ahead of me – and I look forward to sharing it with you all. Stay tuned!
Think big, act big.
Posted by Ben on July 9, 2010
If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll have seen me tweet those four words (well, three technically) a lot yesterday. I first heard someone say ‘think big, act big’ to me as as an Imagine Cup finalist, and they’ve gone on to shape a lot of what I’ve done since.
Watching the worldwide finals of the Imagine Cup 2010 yesterday, I’m pleased to see that mantra still being used… But my tweets left many people asking me: what exactly is the Imagine Cup, and why do I get so excited when I talk about it?
Imagine a World…
Think about what you’d get if you combined the FIFA World Cup with Dragon’s Den… and far from seeing Duncan Bannatyne playing a vuvuzela, you’d get a place where the best of the best can show off their skills, whilst trying to solve real-world problems with technology.
That’s the Imagine Cup in a nutshell – a worldwide technology competition for students that lets you take big ideas and distil them into a solution to some of the world’s toughest problems.
All very well – but how do you get started on such an epic journey? Easy – big ideas start small. Have you ever had one of those ‘light bulb moments’ where you wake up with an idea in your head and you just know it’s awesome? 
If you’re anything like me, you’ll have a folder full of those ideas that, while great, never came to anything because of time, or money, or not knowing where to start.
Imagine what those ideas could become with a little support, the right technology behind it, and a stage (as demonstrated by UK world finalist Kevin Pfister, photographed right) on which to show it off.
The beauty of the Imagine Cup is that any student over the age of 16 can enter – you can either form a team (as I did) or enter as an individual, and set to work creating an awesome project. You don’t have to know all of the ‘how and why’ answers right away either – there are local rounds of the competition before you get to the finals, during which there’s plenty of opportunity to get advice from both wizards of the technology industry and barons of business alike.
Far more than a chance to get your name in the paper, taking part in the Imagine Cup gets you real experience, introduces you to a world of contacts, and – if you win – gives you industry support and prize money that could go a long way to helping you realise even more of those big ideas you wake up with.
Speaking from Experience
I took part in 2008 with my teammate Dominic Green, and our team ended up representing the UK at the worldwide finals. We didn’t win – but I sit here at my desk at Microsoft as a direct result of having taken part.
The Imagine Cup is more that just a competition – it’s an opportunity, a chance to show the world what you can do, and more than that – it’s a challenge.
It was announced at the closing ceremony last night that Imagine Cup 2011 would be help in New York City – and Michelle Obama set the students of the world her own challenge: Innovate. Be the best that you can be, and show the world how innovative you can be.
And so I challenge you – if you’re a student, enter the Imagine Cup, and turn your small ideas into big answers to some of the world’s toughest challenges. If you’re not a student, then there’s still loads you can do – spread the word about this fantastic competition, and encourage students the world over to take part.
You can find more info and enter next year’s competition by going to www.imaginecup.com
See you in New York!
Life Has No Privacy Setting
Posted by Ben on May 27, 2010
I don’t often share stories from my brief stint as a secondary school teacher, but recent conversations around privacy settings on social networking tools such as Facebook made me think back to something that happened a few years ago, shortly after I’d started working at a new school.
As a teacher, you’re encouraged to be very careful around online privacy. Indeed many schools attempt to ‘forbid’ teachers from having Facebook accounts at all – and in many ways, their concerns are understandable. With social networks being something that span generations, that ‘trusted adult’ mode that teachers are in around their students seems break when all of their personal exploits – savoury or otherwise – are there online for all to see.
I was fairly active on Twitter while I was teaching, and I also had a Facebook account which – for what it was worth – was set to all of the maximum privacy settings. I’d been careful when I started teaching to remove a lot of stuff that had been online from my student days (albeit in the much earlier stages of the web), and make sure that the presence that I did have online wasn’t too personal.
The Worst Kind of Spam
And then, one evening, I got an email from one of the year 8 students that I taught. Immediately recognising the name, I read the subject line with an increasing sense of dread – how did this student have my personal email address? Why was she emailing me at 7pm?
With horror, I read the rest of the message. “Hi Sir” it started, but went on to say “I know where you live now, so you’re going to have to make me a cup of tea when I get to your house” and “we can be friends over email”. Being a completely sane and rational person, I spent the rest of the evening panicking.
I printed off the email, the headers, etc, and took them to my head teacher first thing the next morning. I didn’t understand how she’d got hold of my email or home addresses – those things weren’t even on Facebook. The head sympathised and, after making sure I hadn’t replied, called the students parents to chat about the situation.
As it turns out, the student had found an old copy of my CV on a jobs website that had been indexed by Google. The CV was just recent enough to have my current address on – but also all of the details like my date of birth, email address, and full education and employment history were there for anyone to see. The student had then shown this to her mother, who thought it might be “fun to mess with me” – something I didn’t really appreciate the humour behind at the time.
So what’s the moral of this story?
While it’s really important for sites like Facebook to have good, simple privacy settings to allow teachers to use them safely and securely whilst keeping their students well away, it’s equally as important to realise that life has no privacy settings – my error in forgetting that I’d posted a CV online left me open to all sorts of privacy invasion, and it was a real eye opening experience for me.
There’s also a message here about education. After this experience, I built a lesson in for all of my classes around keeping their own identities safe online, and appropriate uses of the internet. It’s something that young people – who have grown up with this technology – need to learn. There are great steps being made in this, but we’ve still got a long way to go.
Teachers have as much of a right as everyone else to use and have an identity on the social web. But they also need to be educated on the dangers, the pitfalls, and what steps they can take to make sure that their private lives stay private.
Working With the Door Open
Posted by Ben on May 22, 2010
If you use Twitter, then it’d have been hard not to notice the rise of Formspring. It’s a free service that, once you’ve signed up, lets the world ask you totally anonymous questions, which you can then choose to answer publically or ignore and hide from view.
Business Transparency?
It’s been used by a plethora of celebrities – and a huge number of teenagers wanting to see if anyone fancies them – but I hadn’t seen anyone in the business / professional world make use of it. So I decided to try an experiment and set up a Formspring account of my own.
Rather than just using the generic ‘ask me anything’ question that Formspring uses by default, I thought a bit about who I wanted to target. This would be going out to my Twitter followers, and I’m always keen not to just spam. I had a fair few re-tweets, and decided to give it 24 hours to see how many questions had come through.
When I came back to the account on Tuesday evening, I was surprised to see 35 messages waiting for me. Some of them, inevitably, were spam. Not automated spam, but personal questions from friends that I didn’t want to answer publically.
You can see what I mean. I did, however, get a huge number of really great questions that not only challenged my own thinking, but I really enjoyed answering. To pick a couple of favourites:
- How much do you think social media services such as twitter and facebook contribute to your professional digital identity?
- Should a company worry about its employees tweeting?
- Do you think the prevalence of interactive whiteboards in primary and secondary schools only serves to further degrade the already shocking handwriting abilities of teachers?
- What advice would you give to someone looking to get a speaking gig in their field?
I wrote reasonably detailed answered to each question, all still viewable on my Formspring page, but one thing was starting to become clear as a result of this experiment – people were relishing the chance to ask me professional questions in an open and honest setting. And people were even re-tweeting the answers I was giving, adding comments and starting conversations.
Open Thinking for an Open World
This really got me thinking – when I sell something on eBay and a potential bidder asks me a question, I publish the question and the answer back to the listing so that anyone with the same question can see the answer and not have to ask themselves.
I also thought back to my time teaching – one brave student would ask a question that at least five of the other students in the room would be thinking at the time but were too afraid to ask.
The ‘Formspring Format’ of people asking anonymous questions and the answers to those being completely public is – understandably – a very scary prospect for businesses and schools alike.
But as we’ve seen through companies like Dell, being open and transparent on social networks can do hugely positive things for your reputation.
Exporting Knowledge
I talked a little about being an exporter of knowledge in my last blog post. The popularity of my more ‘professional’ Formspring Experiment seems to have only worked to strengthen that idea. In the world of information richness that we live in, real knowledge, straight from the horses mouth, is worth it’s weight in gold.
So why not try an experiment of your own? If you’re a company, business, teacher, school, or subject matter expert, set yourself up a Formspring account and see what happens.
It’s a Social World…
Posted by Ben on May 17, 2010
As someone who loves to talk, I’ve taken part in a lot of events that discuss social communities and the ‘social web’. I often notice that one of the most neglected topics of conversation at these events is that, by its very nature, social media is a global phenomenon.
Back in February, shortly after I’d done a series of talks about social communities being a force for good, I saw mention of a social media event to be held later this year in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Not knowing much about the country (save news reports I remembered from the early 90s) I got in touch with the organisers to see what it was all about.
KUL Social
What I found, on talking to the event organisers, was an ambitious project to bring social media and web experts from all over the world to the beautiful town of Laktasi and essentially create a three-day knowledge transfer – giving both local and international attendees a chance to see what is possible through the power of the social web, and for speakers and attendees alike to share ideas and experiences that will ultimately help to enrich what is a very global community.
In the words of the KUL Social website, “The event has been devised as a holistic Social Media ‘melting pot’ that will include a wide range of topics presented by speakers from different countries and cultures, all of whom have a passion for that which is known as ‘Social Media’”.
I’ll be there talking about digital identity, how young people – who were born into the world of the internet – manage their lives through technology, and discussing the pitfalls and possibilities of being able to live your life online.
There have already been a huge number of speakers announced, and the list doesn’t disappoint. So far there are sessions that look at blogging, podcasting, open source software, e-society, freedom of speech, the ‘dark side’ of the web – and the list just continues to grow.
Exporting Knowledge
There are 193 countries in the world, and each one has a different culture – a unique story to tell. The very global nature of the internet has opened up the world – given every single one of those stories a stage – and has made the import and export of knowledge a very personal, accessible thing.
Events like this are key in making this happen – showing that you can be at the forefront of knowledge and technology no matter where in the world you’re based.
And so if you can, support KUL Social – whether that’s by coming along as an attendee, blogging about it, helping the amazing team of people who are organising the event with logistics, or becoming a sponsor – and by doing so, contribute to an amazing event that goes one step further to uniting the world through knowledge, technology, and people sharing the things that they’re passionate about.
For more info & news on the event, and to register, go to www.kulsocial.com
