Technology Is Crazy

It’s really amazing how fast technology moves. I’ve been working on a lot of things recently. In liue of like 8 blog posts, I figured I’d split this up between what I’ve been up to recently, some technology news that has interested me, and what I’d like to work on in the future.

Things I’ve been up to recently:

We are finishing up a sprint at work. A “sprint” is a unit of time/work in the SCRUM methodology that we use. I’d been working a lot of overtime in the past week or so, but that is coming to an end. Also, things have been interesting around work recently because my previous employer (Software Architects) was bought by Sogeti. As of April 1, I officially became a “Sogetian”. I’m still kind of apprehensive about the acquisition, but hopefully things will work out.

Things I have been following closely lately:

• Apple has had a couple of interesting things happen recently. First of all, they released the Apple TV. Normally this wouldn’t be a product for me, because I don’t buy video content from the Apple store. I do have a bunch of TV shows archived on my hard drive, but they are not encoded in H.264/MOV/MPEG so I wouldn’t also be able to get the content onto my TV. Within days of the Apple TV being released, however, the hacks started flowing. It seems like Apple almost intentionally left it very hackable. I might have to pick one up, with all the possibilities that a 3-inch tall $300 computer with builtin TV outputs / WiFi could bring to the table when some of the hacks become more mature.
• Another very interesting thing that Apple has announced was that they will being to sell non-DRMed content in the iTunes Store. It seems like the first instance I have heard of where a large company is actually trying to stop screwing over consumers with the content that they buy! Things bode very well for the future. Apple may achieve its goal of taking over my living room if they continue with this kind of strategy.

I’ve also become hooked on a variety of google services

• GMail – I’m not sure why I’ve been using this. I’ve been using all the other google stuff and it seemed like a good thing to do.
• Google Docs / Spreadsheets – Very useful just to be able to share some simple spreadsheets with other people(mainly my fiance).
• Google Calendar – A friend from work got me hooked on this. It seems like the easiest way to maintain a calendar from anywhere. There are even a few tools out there to sync with iCal.
• Google Maps(My Maps) – This is a really sweet new feature. Check out the “My Maps” tab at Google Maps. You can add your own locations to a map, add paths, shapes, etc. It seems like you can do a lot of really cool stuff with it. Also, the friend who got me hooked on Google Calendar is the one who showed me this as well.
• Google Reader – Really the only way in my mind to read RSS feeds. I’ve tried using various desktop RSS readers, the RSS readers built into Safari, Firefox, IE… but I always run across the same problem. I check the news on multiple computers, and there was no way to keep track of what I had already read in sync. Thanks to Google Reader, I don’t have this problem anymore. I think I’ve gotten a couple people hooked on this as well. The things that I think are interesting should be displayed at the top of the blog if you are viewing my main homepage at alexargo.com.

Finally, I’d really like to work on a couple projects in my spare time. I hadn’t had time recenetly with the acquisition and being busy at work. The two projects are:

• WIG – A javascript framework that me and a friend came up with. We had a really nice demo going that was a nice ajax-y database designer tool. I want to extend it and iron out some issues, and hopefully it will be useful to other people.
• Mag-Games – A java framework that lets you play a bunch of simple two-player board games. It is also going to be extended so that you can create AI for the various games and test them against other AIs. I’m doing this mainly because I never got to do a similar fun project in CSAA 486(Articial Intelligence) when I was in school, that a bunch of people I know enjoyed when they got to do it.

Well thats about it for now… check back soon because I hope to start posting more.