Friday, March 30, 2007

Propagation of Trust & Distrust

Yesterday, I presented my session in SilverKey Internal Demo Day. The topic title was: "Propagation of Trust And Distrust". There is currently a great interest in maintaining and building trusting networks between the communities members so that you allow users to get the "high" quality of information before acting on it.

Many variants of algorithms and techniques introduced. The techniques of trusting propagation are applied in many well known websites such as Epinion and eBay. In my session, I presented a mathematical approach which introduced by IBM researchers and applied in a wide range of data in Epinion



















































































Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Open XML and Java

As you know Open XML doesn't target only Microsoft products. That is - we find currently many ambitious projects to enhance other programming languages and frameworks to make use of Open XML capabilities. Java is one of the main targets here. This is a meeting with Julien Chable who worked in an open-source API project to provide the functionality of System.IO.Packaging - which used in .NET Framework 3.0 - to the Java developers.


Monday, March 19, 2007

IP-To-Country Mapping

I have just found this interesting IP-To-Country mapping database which enables you to map a certain IP Number to Country. The problem is that this database is not alwayes up-to-date. So, you may take care of this point when you using it. Also, you should check the copyrights section if you want to use it in a commercial applications. The database uses IP Number ranges for identifying the addressed country.


Monday, March 12, 2007

Virtual Earth 3D Control


The Virtual Earth 3D control is a new tool released by Microsoft for visualizing the entire world in three dimensions. Rather than a standalone application, Virtual Earth™ 3D is implemented as a managed control, which allows seamless integration with Web sites or standalone applications. The Microsoft® .NET Framework security model gives users the capability of dynamically loading plug-ins to supply data, but restricting them to execution in a partial-trust environment.

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Customer-Developer Relationship

I was reading on "Agile Software Development Ecosystems"- Chapter 5: Delivering Something Useful. The chapter was talking about the customer-developer relationship and the best methodolgoies which should be followed.

One of the points I liked in this chapter which was talking about demand-driven methodology when you're dealing with your customer. That is you should try to avoid forcasting as much as you can and wait for the customer to demand this feature. This will avoid any missunderstanding and minimize the effort of doing the task and changing it afterwards.

Another nice point, when the author was talking about the developers of customer-domain knowledge. Actually, this skill is rarely to find in most of the developers. Customer-domain aware developers - who have the ability to know the terminology used by the customers, recommend features based on their knowledge, and even use their own experience to fill in details-level requirements gaps. In my point of view, this is a kind of "Good" forecasting which is based on knowledge as developer of this kind know by experience what the customer will demand and what can be done to make the customer life easier. This customer-domain awareness save a lot of time which might be consumed in fixing and modifying the features after customer reviewing.

Also, the chapter was talking about the Proxy Users - the ones we called: "System Analysts". The chapter discussed how Proxy Users are important in the customer-developer relationship. The point which take my interest was that Proxy users sometimes fall in a problem when they begin to believe that they actually are the customers! and start to block the direct contact between the developers and real customers. This will increase the probability of failure to deliver the project as expected by the customer and will increase the number of iterations needed to resolve the requirement.

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Thursday, March 08, 2007

My Post on OpenXMLDeveloper.org

My post about Generating Dynamic OpenXML Docx Files is now on OpenXMLDeveloper.org - The Official Microsoft site for OpenXML. Check the post on OpenXMLDeveloper.org


Thursday, March 01, 2007

Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" March CTP Available Now!


Get an early look at Visual Studio codename "Orcas". Orcas CTP is now available. The next version of Visual Studio, Visual Studio code name “Orcas”, will provide an industry-leading developer experience for Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and the Web. In addition, it will continue in the Microsoft tradition of development language innovation.



100 Best Employers

Maybe you see it before, here is the 100 Best Employers according to Fortune Magazine survey.


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