C++ IDE Installed

I decided to install CDT tonight and begin playing around with C++. I haven't touched the language since my second year of college. Back in my day we used it as our base during Discrete Structures. I think now they use Java. Anyways, why do I want to pick up a new language? Well, cause I'm a geek. Not sure what my first project will be, but I imagine it will be something video related since that is what my focus is at work. Any ideas?

Living Agile: 90 Day Action Plan

So, in breaking out of the post summer slump, our board at Twin Technologies had the executive team create 90 day action plans. I posted mine, and was surprised at how comfortable it was to create. Then, it hit me.. 90 day action plans are just a form of Agile planning.

I've always kept lists of tasks on 3x5 cards as well as various text documents that become intertwined over time. Whenever I start to feel like I am not focused, I return to the cards and find something that seems high priority to me. As a Scrum Master, the correct path should have been obvious, but sometimes we are blinded.

A 90 day action plan is simple to create. I used a Google Docs spreadsheet as my platform:

1. Create a new spreadsheet
2. Create two tabs - Goals and Actions
3. List high level goals you feel you can accomplish in the next 90 days on the goals tab
4. Prioritize these goals
5. List high level actions for goals
6. Create small action "tasks" for actions you plan to work on in the current week
7. Track status (%) against done.

In each goal and action there is an identifier so I can reference between tabs. I also have a column for marking predecessor tasks. You'll notice that this is very similar to a typical Scrum project:

1. Create backlog
2. Prioritize backlog
3. Estimate high priority stories
4. Determine what stories in the backlog can be tackled in the next sprint
5. Create tasks for accepted stories and give detail estimates
6. Track status (%) against done

The same benefits exist:
1. Ability to point to what goals suffer if other goals become a higher priority
2. Ability to self organize
3. Detailed reports can be generated against status daily
4. Reprioritization and goal changes are encouraged and expected

These are just a few. It took me about 30 minutes to create my 90 day action plan, and I encourage you to spend 30 minutes trying it out as well. I find myself more focused and really getting things done!

Agile: I think a Chicken just ate my Pig

Check out my SlideShare Presentation:

Agile: I think a Chicken just ate my Pig

View more presentations from ntunney.

Digital and Social Media Presentation

I suggested a topic for 360|Max. I think it is important to discuss how digital media is undergoing a change that is directly related to the popularity of social media. This trend will change the way you think about your media experience and how you view television (really what you view it on). Go vote: http://tinyurl.com/nwschp

My Adobe ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion Builder Article is Live

I had the pleasure of writing an article to be released with the Public Beta of CF9 (Centaur) and CF Builder (Bolt). I decided to write about SOA and how CF9 and ColdFusion Builder change the way you currently develop your service tier. Hope you enjoy it!

Reinventing SOA in Adobe ColdFusion 9 beta and ColdFusion Builder Beta

Other great CF9 and CF Builder articles:

Introducing Adobe ColdFusion 9 Beta (by Ben Forta)
Introducing Adobe ColdFusion Builder Beta (by Ben Forta)
Introducing ORM in Adobe ColdFusion 9 Beta (by Mark Mandel)
Getting started with ColdFusion Builder Beta (by Simon Free)

Thank you Adobe

I've been an Adobe fan for years, first got started with Photoshop back in version 6 and I've seen it through CS4. I was pretty stoked a few years ago when another product I've been with forever was purchased by Adobe: ColdFusion. Being a CF Junkie since the Allaire days, seeing it through Macromedia and the Adobe acquisition, living through the yearly '<insert company here> is going to discontinue ColdFusion' threads and generally enjoying being a Team Macromedia member and now an Adobe Community Expert for ColdFusion, I'm happy to announce that public betas of both ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion Builder are being launched right at this very minute.

There have been quite a few announcements of new features coming out in ColdFusion 9 (codenamed Centaur) so I'll just hit a few of the most exciting to me:

1. CFaaS (ColdFusion as a Service) - ColdFusion core services are available via web services such as PDF document management, email, charting and image manipulation.
2. Enhanced CFSCRIPT support - that's right! The tag functionality we have been been breaking out of script for is now available in cfscript! No more switching back and forth... use script when it makes sense for the entire process, not just bits and pieces.
3. Implicit getters and setters - I just cannot say enough about this feature. Thanks Adobe!
4. Lots of changes to CFCs - too many to list, just go check the docs.
5. Caching improvements - granular control of objects and page fragments to disk or memory cache.
6. Portlets - Government shops will love this one. You can now expose ColdFusion applications as portlets in leading JEE portals.
7. Desktop server manager - AIR app lets you manage multiple servers from the same console (even supports clusters).
   

There are a few other features that are cool as well, go check them out (links at the bottom of the post).

Now to the second release of the night - I've seen quite a few ColdFusion IDEs - having worked in ColdFusion Studio, Homesite+, instructing in Dreamweaver and rocking the house in CF Eclipse, and now I'm proud to have gotten to take a sneak peek at ColdFusion Builder, the first code centric IDE for ColdFusion put out by the parent company since Homesite! I have to say, it's very cool and very handy. It is built on Eclipse, so one IDE to rule them all. Code generation has been moved out of Flex Builder (now Flash Builder) and integrated into CF Builder. You can connect to CF exposed services right from the IDE, generate AS3 code, start and stop servers and <drumroll>STEP DEBUG</drumroll>. CF Builder also provides code hinting and insight the likes of Flash Builder :). It even supports code refactoring, meaning updating a function name in a CFC will update all references to that function within your project!

I'm pretty excited about this release. I was glad to see the release provides more under the hood performance and functionality than widget-type tags. Go see for yourself:




Now the fun bits:
ColdFusion 9 Public Beta
ColdFusion Builder Public Beta

Developing Applications with ColdFusion 9
ColdFusion 9 CFML Reference
Installation Guide for ColdFusion Builder
Using Adobe ColdFusion Builder

Mixing it Up: Defining the Corporate Solution

At a high level, solving the corporate issue can be accomplished by performing the following:

1. Identify what networks to monitor initially
2. Define what criteria makes a node the most influential for each network
3. Identify the most influential nodes within each social network
4. Identify which nodes belong to more than one of the networks
5. Also, allow an entity to define what networks have more weight than others
6. Rank each node according to influence across entire set of networks

The end user perspective is a bit more challenging but necessary since this is the dataset we need to crunch to perform the aobve. I will begin to tackle that in my next post.