Sorcinelli.net

For all of the accolades you can bestow on YouTube, the greatest value for me happens to be those classic videos that can manage to make me laugh whenever I watch them. A classic example... The other night, my brain was drained from a long day. I really needed a good laugh to energize me. For whatever the reason, Triumph the Comic Insult Dog came to mind. Sadly, I think this says way too much about me :-) Enter YouTube. I searched for the classic Conan O'Brien Late Night bit with Triumph attending a Star Wars premiere. Sure enough - there it was. If you haven't watch this 10-minute video, you're missing out.

10 minutes later, I was wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes and ready to move on. No matter how many times I watch that video, I react the same way. Thanks, YouTube. You managed to make my evening.

I'm currently writing from Charlotte, NC. I planned to be home this morning, but the 2 days of bad weather in the Northeast caused the cancellation of my flight yesterday and the earliest available flight this afternoon.

When I left from Logan Airport in Boston on Monday, I noticed a new initiative regarding parking. Logan is now reserving parking spaces for eco-friendly vehicles.

I think this is a great idea, but (there's always a but)... There has been a lot of long-term effort at Logan to expand the Central Parking Garage. The construction has been a real headache over the past couple of years. The goal - more available parking. In terms of the sheer number of spaces, this goal has been accomplished. However, the total number of available spaces for "Average Joe's" like myself; that feels like a different story.

First, it seems (only my speculation) that the number of reserved spaces for handicapped access has increased. I expect some of that from a percentages perspective, but it seems more than just that amount. Of course, I totally support this type of space reservation. I also totally condemn the number of people who still park in these spaces and the number of people who abuse the handicapped access programs, getting passes when they shouldn't or borrowing others passes just for the "better spot".

Next came Logan's Parking Passport Gold program. For an annual fee, you get preferential parking privileges. Of course there are whole sections of the parking garages dedicated to this program. So, there goes some more of the new spaces.

Now, the "Clean Vehicle" Program pictured above appears. I really do think this is great. I know that I (like much of the population) would buy a hybrid vehicle if afforded the opportunity. Unfortunately, this purchase is nowhere on my radar for the foreseeable future. So I end up watching more parking spaces disappear.

I can't help but feeling like a victim of a twisted form of "New Math". Add a bunch of new parking spaces to a garage, resulting in fewer available spaces. The good news on Monday - I was there early and there were still "normal" spaces available. I can tell you this, though - the first time I drive around the garage looking for a single space at a busy time and see all these unused spaces out of my reach, my blood pressure's probably going to go up a few points.

If you look at the very bottom of this page, you will see that this site is powered by BlogEngine.net. I have to admit that this is a really solid and very lightweight blogging engine (built on ASP.NET 2.0). Of course, when you control your own web site and choose your own technologies, you often face the potential trauma that is the software upgrade.

I finally got around today to upgrading to the latest version of BlogEngine.net. I took the amazing step of reading the Upgrade Guide twice for fear of making a foolish mistake. Now, even though this is just my little personal blog, my years in building and managing web sites still forces me to treat unnecessary downtime as evil. That being said, I began the FTP push of t he upgrade to the web site when... my network connection suddenly chose to take a coffee break. I never realized the Internet was a "union shop" until then ;-) Fortunately, the connection drop was brief, but it forced me to start the upload all over again and swear out loud (the wife and kids aren't around, so I can get away with it).

As you can see, all is well now. I've got and upgraded web site and am none the worse for it. I am, however, dreading the looming monster upgrade I will be making soon for my son's school PTA web site in the next few weeks. It's a cool project, but I guarantee I'll be treating it as if I was upgrading Google if anything goes wrong :-)

This time (and the next several times, for that matter), it's off to Charlotte, NC. It's been quite a long time since I was there last. I will be working with a client on a project that will have me there a few times over the next month, so maybe I'll get to experience the town a bit more than in the past.

If I come across anything interesting in my travels, I'm bound and determined moving forward to capture the images using my phone. Let's see what transpires...

I just finished posting up a review I did for Electric Pocket's FlipSide product at BostonPocketPC.com.



This is a great little application that provides a "finger-friendly" interface to music on your Windows Mobile device. When working with this product, I started thinking about some of the tracks that 3rd party vendors are taking when it comes to enhancing the Windows Mobile UI experience.

Any longtime user of the Windows Mobile platform can tell you that the interface is a little "long in the tooth". The first efforts made by Microsoft at correcting this have come at the home screen level with Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard (non-touchscreen devices and  the new "sliding panel" interface). I think this is a good first step for Microsoft, mainly because the sliding panel is not just about "eye candy"; it provides a more efficient navigation interface to the home screen. Microsoft is definitely not the only one working at the "top level" of customizing the UI, as work by HTC (with the HTC Home plug-in), Spb Softwarehouse (with Spb Mobile Shell) and VITO Technology (with their new Winterize application) are all trying to enhance both the style and substance of basic user interface navigation. However, the phrase "beauty is only skin deep" applies for the most part to this level of effort.

The next level of UI enhancement happens at the application level. While Microsoft has gotten a bit more involved in UI usability with newer applications (Live Search is a great and successful example of this), many of the standard applications (e-mail, contacts, tasks as examples) have changed very little in either their presentation or methods of interactivity for quite a while. Once again, there is some work around this from a third-party perspective. Several vendors have provided enhancements to contact viewing, and FlipSide picks up where Windows Media Player stops. However, even these applications stop at the "viewing level", often dropping to the standard application interface to create or update an existing item.

Enhancing the application level of Windows Mobile for both aesthetic and functional usability is the next great frontier for developers, be they Microsoft or third party. The real challenge here is to go to that next level in its entirety. The contact interface is a great example of an area that can be greatly improved upon by applying the lessons learned over the past few years from both a Windows Mobile and competitor perspective. Finger-friendly interaction, improved layout and greater readability can all find a place in the Contacts application. The same can be said for the other "standard" applications as well. The true challenge here is to not just look at adding graphics to "spice things up", but to look at those various input methods we've seen garner acceptance and apply them to make for a better user experience.

As a developer, I now find myself spending more time than ever asking myself the question "how can I make the user both use and like my application?" Far too often, I (and others) begrudgingly work with what we have simply because there is no alternative. The opportunity exists for all Windows Mobile developers to change that feeling. To those that have begun that change and are mentioned above - I applaud you for taking the first steps and encourage you to go further. For all the rest out there - here is your chance to push the user experience to the next level and gain greater user acceptance of your applications and the Windows Mobile platform in general.   

When I am not traveling on business around the country, I am usually traveling to and from my office and wishing I were only having to travel around the country. You see, I have the distinct honor of living in the Greater Boston area, which proudly boasts some of the worst commuter traffic in the nation. To understand the true nature of my daily journey, I provide to you the following information...

To start, I actually commute into the Greater Boston area (Watertown, MA, to be more precise) from lovely and scenic Salem, NH (no - not the "witch town"; the other Salem in the area).


Map courtesy Live Search Maps

35 miles total. 35 freakin' scenic miles. I use the word "scenic" because you can often take in every detail of a given location when you are sitting in the exact same place for an extended period of time. Now, regular traffic congestion is an unfortunate nuisance during rush hour in any large metropolitan area, but my route takes me through several areas where we see "Boston Traffic Control" at its finest -

• Mistimed stoplights. Apparently someone many years ago decided that the best way to control traffic is by sequencing stop lights in such a way as to prevent you from ever making it through more than two consecutive intersections in a row. This does a wonderful job of reducing the risk of high-speed accidents. Of course, building a brick wall across the road would have about the same effect.
  
  Fortunately, all of this gridlock does afford me some wonderful views, like...
  
  
  
  ...the backs of other vehicles. While this may not seem so hot, it at least blocks the view of the rest of the half-mile backup, which is usually too depressing to face. Ironically, when I snapped the picture above, I realized that a quick glance to the right provided me with a great photo opportunity that summed up my feelings at the moment...
  
   
  
  
• Traffic Circles/Rotaries. Anyone who has driven in Boston probably has a great story about traversing one of our traffic circles (also referred to as "rotaries"). You see, someone decided that, in an attempt to counteract the gridlock caused by poorly sequenced lights, they would have intersections with no lights at all. Instead, people would use their better judgement and driver courtesy to enter the rotary at the appropriate time and yield when necessary. Of course, this utopian vision of commuting only exists in science fiction and is replaced with anarchy and chaos, resulting in... more traffic.
  
  Witness as I approach one of the four rotaries I endure on my morning commute....
  
  
  
  Still a good half mile away. I am shielded from the oncoming terror by a wall of traffic;
  
  
  
  I am now less than a quarter mile away and can see the evil rotary off in the distance. My heart begins to race;
  
  
  
  I am upon the cursed rotary. What you do not see in this picture is the car to my left that, like every day, blocks my view of oncoming traffic, bolts into the traffic circle at the last second and cuts into my lane. Oops - forgot to mentioning the subsequent locking up of the brakes.

All in all, my 35 mile commute lately averages 90 minutes to complete. If not for my XM radio and the comedy channels to try to break the tension, I likely would have snapped a while back.

By the way - did I mention that I reverse this process each evening?

Not my energy, mind you. It was the boundless energy of six (yes - six) 8 year-old boys. As part of Nicolas' birthday present (he turned 8 this past Tuesday), we promised him that he could have friends over for a sleep-over. Now, when we proposed the idea, we figured that we should should allow him to invite a few more friends than we might normally allow.  With his birthday falling in the heart of summer vacation, we figured the decline rate might be high. Guess what? We were wrong. The result - five invites and five attendees.

I have to say that generally speaking, the boys were *extremely* well behaved. I feared I would have to don referee's stripes and carry a crowbar to pry them apart as the evening progressed, but there were no incidents. That doesn't mean that the evening was perfect, however.

I still cannot figure out how the young human body can produce enough adrenaline to to keep them going... and going... and going. At 11:30 PM, we were still playing "herding cats" to get everyone in their sleeping bags for the night (note to self - patent a sleeping bag for children that zippers up completely and only leaves the head sticking out and a locking mechanism). When the kids *finally* fell asleep, it took Melissa and I a combined total of 23.2 seconds to fall asleep ourselves. Fast forward 6 hours...

Before 6 AM, I awoke to the sounds of 5 young boys waking the sixth. "Now", I thought, "is when the REAL battling starts." Amazingly, know sleep-deprived punches were thrown and calm ensued. Most of the boys were gone by 10 AM. As I write this, only one friend remains. Nicolas and his friend are outside running around like they just ingested as pound of raw cane sugar. Melissa and I, on the other hand, are taping our eyes open to make it through the day. If only I could find a way to bottle up that energy, I would do it in a moment. I have no desire to sell it, mind you. I would horde it all for myself. Go organize your own sleep over. 

I keep saying to myself that I want to use this blog as a way of passing along photos that I tend to snap using my phone's camera when I'm on the road. I do snap the photos; I just never remember to get them on the web site. A few examples -


While in St. Louis, a client I was working with wanted to do interviews with workers a facility that would normally be a 2 hour plus drive. Instead, they decided that we should use their corporate jet (a 20 minute flight). This was a unique experience, considering that the weather was... well, "iffy".


I was in midtown Manhattan in early June with a customer. The hotel I was staying at was about a 15-block walk (mostly down 3rd Avenue). I snapped this photo of the Chrysler Building along the way to send back via e-mail to Nicolas. The building had no relevance to him until I explained that this was the building that got the top blown off of it by the jets in the 2000 Godzilla (you know, the Matthew Broderick Godzilla).


Also last month, I took the family down to NYC for a long weekend. We actually stayed across the Hudson in Jersey City. BTW - this was a phenomenal alternative to staying in Manhattan. I snapped a photo from the Newport Marina across to lower Manhattan.
 

Here's a picture of Drew on the carousel at Central Park. It's so hard to believe that he's now 4.

Nicolas is now 8. This is even harder to believe.

I really have to work harder at getting my photos posted. A picture is really worth a thousand words sometimes.

After being deluged with all the iPhone 3G Launch news yesterday, I am amazed at the amazing level of loyalty that Apple fans have for their products. Between long lines, activation problems (some resulting in the bricking of first-generation phones), battery life and application issues and an overall PR nightmare, people are *still* praising the iPhone and Apple. I haven't seen such pure love since Shakespeare wrote "Romeo and Juliet" ;-)

I wonder if the fact that I have been professionally involved with technology for 20 years has made me a bit more jaded. In the IT and software development worlds, we are taught (if not brainwashed) in to being natural skeptics regarding technology. Of course, when a consumer has a poor experience with a product, the cost is usually aggravation, a product return or some lost cash. In the IT world, it is often your job (and potentially your career) that is at stake. I still think this is why the iPhone and other Apple products will have a rough go of it in the world of the enterprise. Consumer brand loyalty does not equal enterprise brand loyalty. Even when that loyalty does exist in the corporate world, it is typically for entirely different reasons. Reasons that Apple just hasn't gotten (or chosen to acknowledge). I speak from first-hand experience when I say that a number of large companies simply do not care that users are buying iPhones that can connect to their corporate network. No matter how much those users love those devices, they will not be set up and/or allowed to retrieve their e-mail. The reason typically boils down to the fact that the iPhone does not meet their corporate standards for security or IT management. When you factor in that allowing these devices could result in a breach of policy that will cost one or more people their jobs, don't expect the IT department to simply cave in.

Now, if Apple approaches the needs of the enterprise with the same focus as they have with consumers, then watch out Microsoft and RIM...

OK - here I go again. Life got me so caught up that I ended up leaving the web site for a while. It's not like I completely forgot about things here. I often said to myself "What is it that I'm forgetting to catch up on?"

Between business trips, family trips (a long weekend in NYC), loads of work and lots of additional stuff, it's been a busy last couple of months. I have recently been playing with "The Grand Social Networking Experiment" as a way to do the quick highlights of things. I am available via Twitter and Facebook (look me up at Facebook if you'd like; I'm not hard to find with a last name like "Sorcinelli"). I actually never thought I would find this type of "in the moment" interaction enjoyable, but it nice to be able to type in a few words in a few seconds and be done with it.

I'll get back to the posting real soon. I promise. Really. I'll... what's that, Drew? You need me to help you? OK. Now, what was I wanting to catch up on?