I'm Free(lance)

It's seems like only 8 month ago that I was leaving a job. It's just too much fun to switch around my insurance and investment plans, I guess.

I've had a great time at AMC. I proved to myself I can be happy being a developer full-time--something that worried me after five years as a program manager at Microsoft.

I'll miss working with Paul and David. Working day-to-day with David has been amazing. One of the hardest working and sweetest guys I know. He's made be a better developer and probably a better person.

What's next?

On June 16 I enter the wonderful, terrifyingly independent world of software consulting and freelancing.

My first gig will be helping out some good friends and former MS co-workers at Jackson Fish Market.

You'll hear all about the project when it's done. All I can say now: Ruby on Rails and a little Flash.

I can't wait to hear the comments about either leaving or go to the dark side.

Yes, I've been spending time at the Apple Store. Scary.

No, I'm not giving up the MS stack. I'm hoping to have the chance to do consulting and freelance work in WPF and Silverlight, too.

While I'm likely booked for over a month, I'll be looking for gig+1, +2, etc. shortly.

If you would like to chat about my services, please drop me an line: edeya9902(at)sneakemail(dot)com.

In the mean time, happy hacking.

iPhone 2 - Apple's entry into the console market

Well, maybe not so much the console market as the console business model.

The $200 price tag has been thrown around a lot.

Can the device be this cheap to make? Maybe, but I doubt it matters.

It seems Apple is going for the two-headed revenue model of Xbox.

1) Get a slice off the service. Assuming the existing deal sticks around with AT&T and is copied in other countries, Apple gets a cut of the monthly phone service plan. ($18/month currently.) This is an even better deal for Apple than Xbox Live is for Microsoft. MS has to deal with the infrastructure and up time for their for-profit service. Apple leaves all of that grunt work to the carriers and still walks away with a fat check every month.

2) Charge app authors. There will be a flood of apps for iPhone 2. Apple gets 30% of the sale of all applications--similar to fees changes for XBox and PS. If initial excitement around iPhone apps holds up--even if it's just for games--Apple stands to make a lot of money.

Apples doesn't even have to break even on the hardware to come out ahead. That puts Steve Jobs in an amazing advantage over Blackberry and others who have to make their hardware generate profit from sales alone.

Brilliant.

In the end, I don't care. I'm happy with the money I've thrown down so far.

One request: add over-the-air calendar/contacts sync with Google.

I'll be the happiest man alive.

Rob Relyea doesn't hate my mom; Karsten?

Search for "why does rob hate my mom". I love the internet.

In March, I called out Rob Relyea about his passive aggressive stance towards a wonderful high school librarian in Iowa.

He was kind enough to respond, but I've been lazy about the follow-up.

So now I redirect my indignation: what's the story, Karsten?

GMail feature request: help me keep track of replies.

Scenario:

1. I sent out email to many people via BCC.
2. I get a bunch of replies to this email.
3. I want to reply in kind to these incoming messages, but GMail doesn't show which received messages I've replied to.

Suggestions:

1. Give the option of the standard threaded discussion via. While GMail's interface is better in most scenarios, there are cases where a tree is better.
2. At minimum, give some indication that I've replied to a message. With many messages stacked in a thread, I can't figure out which I've replied to and which I haven't.

You have until next Friday, or I'm going back to Hotmail.

I bet if I wait long enough, Microsoft will give me $.05 for every email I send.

Why I hate Frameworks: from hammer to "general-purpose tool-building factory factory factory"

A recent discussion with a smart guy reminded me of an article I read years ago. I wanted to think I read it on Joel on Software. I wanted to think it had something to do with "hammer factories".

Google did the rest.

The write-up, Why I Hate Frameworks comes from Joel's discussion group. Written by Benji Smith.

"So, instead, we started selling schematic diagrams for hammer factories, enabling our clients to build their own hammer factories, custom engineered to manufacture only the kinds of hammers that they would actually need."

"Let me guess. You don't sell those anymore."

"Nope. Sure don't. As it turns out, people don't want to build an entire factory just to manufacture a couple of hammers. Leave the factory-building up to the factory-building experts, that's what I always say!!"

Like most good content on the internet, brilliant and hilarious.

License for the Bag-o-Tricks...uh...

I might as well handles the two "90% issues" together.

A lot of people ask about the license for the bag-o-tricks.

Here's the story.

Most of the code in the bag-o-tricks was written while I was at Microsoft. I never took the time to formally license it while at Microsoft.

Given the type of code and how it's been released, I think it's more than safe to consider it under the Microsoft Public License.

I say "I think" because I'm not a lawyer and I'm not 100% sure how to deal with code that I wrote while at Microsoft--and therefor, technically, "owned" by Microsoft.

I'd bet $10 you won't get sued if you use it any way you see fit. But that's as far as I'll stick my neck out. Being on the other side of the fence from the MSFT legal department is a bit...uh...interesting.

Everything that's new since I left I've put under the MIT license, which I find pretty good.

I'm trying to keep a clear firewall between that code, even going so far as to keep the namespaces separate.

I hope this helps a little. I know folks are looking to use individual controls in their commercial applications.

While I can't give you a 100% guarantee about the code, I can say I'm pretty sure you have nothing to worry about.

I'm not sure if that sounds more like lawyer speak or marketing speak.

Happy hacking (except where prohibited)

Bag-o-Tricks DatePicker control...uh...

90% of the questions I get on the bag-o-tricks fall into one of two buckets.

The first bucket is DatePicker.

While I'd love to take credit (or perhaps blame) for it, I didn't build it.

It was done as a demo by some engineers in a Microsoft office in China.

I have the slightest clue how it is built or how it works (other than I'm pretty sure I'd do a total 180 if I were to try to implement the same functionality.)

I've got a number of bug reports and feature requests. I'm sorry for being quiet on them. DatePicker really doesn't line up with anything I'm playing with at the moment...so I haven't spent much (read "any") time on it.

If anyone has bug fixes or new features, as always, send me me an SVN patch and I'll be happy to get things fixed.

Alternatively, you can always offer to shower me with cash and lavish gifts to dig in on your favorite problem.

I'm not above being bought. :-)

 

Oh, and it's great being back in Seattle. India was great, but there's no place like home.