Google Listener

I just read this article about the new 'Google Listener' App they released for Android.

I like the idea of being able to search for audio clips online. Search on media like video and audio is difficult because you become reliant on meta information for indexing and relating it to searches. Test is easy because you can search the text easily. It appears this isn't as much of a way to search all audio clips online, which would be incredibly difficult, but cool, but a way to find postcasts etc.. kind of like iTunes or something.

Despite my interest, I wonder how much interest others would have in being able to search all the internet for any audio clip posted. I'm always trying to remember quotes or wondering how to get an audio clip of famous speeches, etc. My desire to search audio clips is not for any particular reason, but if I had a way to conveniently do it, I would probably find useful things to do with it.

This could become standard Google search option, like Google Images....oh, the possibilities

Video Streaming is the Future?

I read this article this morning about a renewed and growing partnership between Verizon FiOS and the online streaming/ content provider blip.tv.



This is an area I will continue to watch with interest, especially after reading another report this morning about the incredible growth in the amount of video content being consumed on the internet.

The question is, will people prefer to watch it on their small iPhones, or is this market of 'on-demand streamed programming' for your television going to start taking off more? Imagine, waking up in the morning, not to CNN or your local news, but to a series of video blogs you have subscribed to. I don't see that as too far fetched an idea do you?

Enterprise 2.0

This summer I have been able to work on quite a few projects related to ‘enterprise 2.0’, and more specifically how it is being used in organizations. The last few weeks I’ve been working on pulling together what I’ve observed over my time on these projects and the research that has supplemented it.

The term Enterprise 2.0 is still being defined, or so we like to say, so I will throw out my definition before starting. Enterprise 2.0 is the use of social software and tools (ie. applications, usually web based, that allow people to identify themselves, connect to each other, ask questions, self publish, etc) used to achieve business objectives.

According to that, Enterprise 2.0 is more than just an IT initiative or project, it needs to be an enterprise plan with a strategy and it needs to involve all parts of the organization including but not limited to knowledge management, operations, IT, Human Resources, Communications, and Marketing.

Marketing and Communications seem to build their strategies around what I like to call ‘Social Media’, or 3rd party external sites like facebook & twitter. Usually the strategies are to improve the branding and PR of the organization, and does not directly impact the day to day operations of the employees.

Human Resources, IT, Operations, and Knowledge Management people seem to be interested in a larger enterprise solution. They often turn to internal development, but there are growing offerings by external companies like Jive, Socialtext, etc. The development of these internal systems require large changes in culture and processes and require significant change management support. Of course a robust IT approach is required as well.

I see significant opportunities in both these areas. This seems to be a trend in government, in the consulting industry, and increasingly other industries as well. Here is a small table of some of the examples I’ve read about or heard about.

 

Examples
Company	Platform (s)	Business Need
IBM	Beehive, Blue Pages, Sand	Connect a decentralized global community of knowledge workers. Facilitate innovation and networking to create better solutions to the worlds toughest problems
Deloitte	D-Street	Encourage networking among employees scattered throughout the United States, and create a platform to engage them for feedback.
Booz Allen Hamilton	Hello.bah.com	Facilitate the sharing and creation of documents in a increasingly decentralized work environment
Lockheed Martin	Unity	Allow employees to connect to one another and have a workspace to easily collaborate with one another and partners
Best Buy	Blueshirtnation.com (BSN)	Capture and share knowledge between employees in stores all over the world, increasing customer service and employee moral
Intelligence Community	Intellipedia	A place to publish and track information across several departments and agencies to secure he safety of citizens
State Department	Diplopedia	Make available information and knowledge about the department, countries, diplomats, and other affairs
Department of Defense	Techipedia	Discussion between engineers and other workers in the Department
Cleveland Federal Reserve	N/A	Knowledge sharing among employees
Cisco	N/A	A platform for meetings using Cisco technology and encourage and facilitate innovation

What are other good examples? Have people have observed similar trends?

Restart

Well, It has been a little while, but I think I am ready to get this blog going again. I have been learning a lot and will update this more tomorrow, but my goal is to start keeping a better record of my growing knowledge as an IT professional. I hope this becomes a more utilized site, at least by me.

Sample Code Post

I think I've found a way to post some code to this blog. I hate to admit it, but for a quick solution I am trying out Windows Live Writer, which has some plug-ins for posting code. So here we go. Referring to the previous post you should find a <icon> tag that is commented out in the [appName]-app.xml file in your FLEX or AIR project. Un comment it and after placing your icon images in the src folder put the file names in the corresponding tag.

      <icon>
	<image16x16>myIcon16.png</image16x16>
	<image32x32>myIcon32.png</image32x32>
	<image48x48>myIcon48.png</image48x48>
	<image128x128>myIcon128.png</image128x128>
      </icon>
        

So I hope that this helps someone in the future and hopefully this means I can add more code in the future.

Icon Solution

With a new day and a fresh start I was able to bring my thoughts around. I decided to try messing around with the tag at the begging of my FLEX project to see if there were any options for icons. This proved to be the wrong approach. After some fruitless tries on a few proprieties I decided that maybe it was in the xml file that defines the application title when it is installed. This proved much more successful.
In the [appName]-app.xml there is an 'icon' tag that is commented out.
Remove the comment tag and place the path name to your .png file(s) in the appropriate size.
There are 4 sizes. 16x16, 32x32, 48x48, and 128x128.
*NOTE on the path name: It took me a few minutes to figure out where its 'root' was. It is the src folder in your project. So if you put your images in the src folder all you have to do is put in the name of the file between the corresponding tags.
I would give an example, but I am still learning how to post code on this blog. Hopefully I will have it figured out soon

Problems I'm currently working out in FLEX 3

With finals over with I have dug in the last two days to try and deal with some of the major obstacles I've had learning flex. I decided to make a list and perhaps, if I figure out how to get around them there will be answers.

FLEX Skins
I have been playing around trying to make my own FLEX skins. While researching the subject I discovered that Adobe has made it much easier to play around with your own design. There are quite a few sites out there written by people who know much more than I do about FLEX and ActionScript, so I won't go into details. I have been playing around with the extensions that adobe provides for Flash, illustrator, and photoshop. The extension basically provides you with a basic template to start from, with pre-made symbols and naming schema. It also adds a convenient export option that makes the .swf or .swc file that you can then easily import if you are using Flex builder. Following are some links that have been helpful to this point.
Adobe PDF explaining how to import .swfs
Blog with links to download extensions
A simple tutorial on Yahoo!
Some cool examples of what can be done and some instruction

I have been successful in designing a a simple button and other minimal components. Design isn't my strong point, but it's been fun playing around. I have had trouble getting the Panel symbol to work right. It wasn't sizing right, meaning that it wouldn't expand or shrink right as well as putting the label for the panel too low blocking access to some functionality of other parts of the application. I finally got around it a little by adding padding to the top, bottom, and sides to get it all to fit right. I also removed the white 'text' area which was really annoying. I'm still working out design issues.

Another semi design related issue I'm working out right now is putting my own application icon on the application. When I run it from flex builder the AIR icon is the default, but when I install the program it is just the lame 'general' icon that windows uses. From what I've read it might be quite involved as operating systems handle these different from each other.

Foreign Language Support
Since the program is for the Humanities department which includes foreign language classes I've been trying to read about 'globalizing' the application. In other words making it compatible with other languages and their character sets. I haven't made much progress on this point, there is little information, put it does appear it is supported.

Certificate Recognition
I'm also working on getting the right kind of certificate so that I can sign the application and it will be recognized as a friendly application and won't throw errors.

HTML 'Control'
I'm also working on working with HTML within the application. Pretty sweet functionality. I'm trying to figure out if I can get it to navigate to a web page if a link is clicked on with out navigating int he HTML component I have in the application as well.

If anyone happens to read this and has suggestions or knows of a site I can go to for more information I'm more than happy to receive feedback.