Michael Ong | On9 Systems » Development

Things I learnt at Apps World Asia 2011 (Singapore Suntec Convention)

michael — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 09:54:09 +0000

Had the opportunity to present and also attend session at Apps World Asia 2011. Jotted down a few notes (still trying to summarize the content and will probably take awhile).

Presentations I’ve found interesting (not see rest on Slideshare yet)

App marketing and promotion – a showcase of Talkbox by @jacquejac

Highlights

Mobile helps to enable

Improved Global Distribution
New features, updated content (fast) and adapting to new habits with a new distribution medium
Increase revenue with one-click buying (convenience)
Lower the barrier to purchase (cost)
Flexibility allows experimentation to what works (and what does not)

Understanding Local is important in a Global world (Culture)
Freemium approach to monetization is becoming very common

Give away free (viral) and encourage in-app purchases (long tail)

Good Content (Editorial) raises quality and draws repeat readers
“It’s about the users”

Visualizing bookmarks in Delicious

michael — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 05:23:47 +0000

Excellent tool by Jonathan Feinberg allows you to visualize tags. Following up from my previous post on using Delicious as a research logging tool.

Visualization of Delicious Tags

A snapshot of what I’m interested in via Delicious and bit more on how I work in general

michael — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 17:42:25 +0000

Just a quick post about how I approach projects/tasks/requests/anything in general. Something for me to review when I’m another 10 years older in 2021.

It’s a habit of mine that I call the RTFM first before asking anyone practice. It’s something I see lacking in some people who are developers and usually I stop talking too much to them.

Starting quite early, I generally found reading first, then asking was a better way to generally not be an idiot about asking silly questions too much. Of course, with the internet (was more like BBS via a 9.6kbps modem), it made it a lot easier to search first, then ask (which got lesser and lesser as more info is put online).

Delicious when they launched was a godsend for the tonnes of bookmarks (all lost now in some major hdd erase). Everything is neatly tagged when I remember to do so but generally 5.4k bookmarks gives quite a bit of insight into what I’m interested in.

The first bookmark was from 4th Oct 2005 and titled “Drag & Drop Sortable Lists with JavaScript and CSS“.

As of July 2011, here’s the top 10 tags

The most surprising? Singapore at 294! Never knew I did so much research into the country I’ve been in for way too many years.

The one year spent on EVE online and continued interest in the serious business of Internet spaceships probably tells me I should work on the technical topics more

After I do a bunch of research, it’s time to experiment,hack around till I understand enough to use it in a project. It can take a long time but it’s usually worth it when you consider that a developer should never stop learning and definitely not stick to just ONE language/skill.

Never be afraid to experiment, fail and try again. That’s where the LEARNING comes in.

Challenges of being a remote Scrum Master

michael — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 17:45:56 +0000

It’s not easy when one is a Scrum Master remote from the entire team! I’ve heard a few times now that it’s rare and a real challenge to work with.

So why do I do it?

Business Unit requires a tech guy. There’s no technical folks in the local office!
Dev team requires a tech interface for the business unit.
Someone thinks its necessary and hired me for the job.
I like the challenge!

Challenges faced

A lot of non-verbal cues get lost in communications and sprint planning.
Missing out on building the team culture and practices.
It’s not easy to help solve a problem with external factors via Skype/Phone.

Does Scrum help?

The practices recommended (Daily Scrum, Sprint Retrospectives) aim to shorten the feedback loop for delivery of features (user stories). It’s really useful when your entire team is not in the same country.
Daily Scrum is done via Skype and everyone’s on a common Skype channel throughout the day. This helps simulate being in the same room although there is a fair bit of communication gone missing in virtual setup.
Sprint Planning is planned in such a way that both Product Owner and myself are with the team during this period with the team. This means a LOT of flying but it’s also helpful to reduce conflicts and ideally get better planning.
Measuring metrics like Velocity, Operational Efficiency, Reliability, etc helps to let management have visibility into the team’s performance.

Lot of time flying these days and more time to read

michael — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 18:37:20 +0000

Past 3 months have gone by rather quickly. With a new opportunity and managing a new team in KL, lots of challenges are encountered with the remote meetings and daily scrums.

Attend Certified ScrumMaster conducted by Jesse Fewell in KL from 8th to 10th November. The great part? I’m now a Certified ScrumMaster! With one year or more of practice, I’ll be applying to be a Certified Scrum Professional.

Scrum is a relatively common sense approach to project management, I’ve enjoyed learning about the process and how it reacts to dynamic business needs. For teams who are new to process (as in my team), it’s definitely challenging as it requires a high level of transparency to daily work and significant openness to embrace change. There are many barriers to bring a team to such a level ranging from old attitudes and behavior and tendency for most people to be very reserved with their opinions.

Couple of books have helped open my mind to how a business can benefit from having a sense of urgency and not being complacent about their success.

Leading Change

A Sense of Urgency

Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions

Managed to read this in an hour or so while waiting for RT to start. Good book to read after you’ve read the previous two. Found myself laughing at some parallels to real life. They may be penguins in the story but lots of people behave a lot like that.

Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools

Currently we’re using Pivotal Tracker (coincidently met JB Steadman from Pivotal Labs Singapore during a networking session) with Google Docs for most real-time collaboration of documents.

Skype has been tremendous in helping bridge communications but I think Mumble or Ventrilo might be better to maintain better comms. Video might also be necessary soon as a lot of times, facial cues are an important part to communication

The Art of Scalability: Scalable Web Architecture, Processes, and Organizations for the Modern Enterprise

There are a lot of interesting lessons to learn from this book, still 1/3 of the way through it but the topics on hiring, capacity planning and team dynamics is a good read.

Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition

A year of projects with ST701, Singapore Press Holdings

michael — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 19:28:45 +0000

In the course of a year with ST701 (2009 to 2010), I had quite a bit of fun creating up a framework for PHP Content Management from scratch rather than using the familiar Joomla or WordPress. Didn’t quite manage to use Drupal in the end since I wasn’t involved in the project. Got to cover quite a bit of jQuery and front-end work with some very talented web designers and developers. Parenting and Spree was more enjoyable (looking back) as it involved more product planning and discussions.

ST701 - Nurture your child

http://parenting.st701.com/

Custom framework with Content Management, Forum, Event Organizer Profiles and Contest Submission

ST701 - Spree

http://spree.st701.com/

Custom framework with Content Management, Forum, Social Profiles, Dispute Resolution, Group Purchasing and Shopping Cart

Jason Yee's Online Trading Journal - Trade Transactions

http://trading-mentor-sg.com/

Custom framework for Trading Activity Recording

Lovesparkz

http://lovesparkz.com/

Customization of Dating Portal

Sevendays

http://7days.com.sg/

Custom framework for Content Management, Online Appointment Booking and Product Catalog

Chrissie Signature

http://chrissiesignature.com/

Customization of Magento

Pocket Bag - Reusable Bag

http://pocketbag.sg/

Custom framework for Content Management, Product Catalog and Order Management

Summerblue Trading Admin

http://summerblue.com.sg/

Custom framework for Content Management, Product Catalog and Shopping Cart

Fix for Dreamweaver CS 4 : Server Model SSI.htm: has configuration information that is invalid

michael — Thu, 13 May 2010 03:21:57 +0000

Came back from a CS 5 Roadshow and Dreamweaver CS 4 decides to go a bit wonky.

The following translators were not loaded due to errors:
Server Model SSI.htm: has configuration information that is invalid.

Fixing it with these steps (thanks to Sachin (link))

Close Dreamweaver, if it is already open.
Open this folder: “C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Adobe\Dreamweaver CS4\en_US\Configuration”
Delete the file “WinFileCache-7A9586CB.dat“
Start Dreamweaver

Installing iPhone OS 4.0 beta on the iPhone 3GS

michael — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 04:53:45 +0000

The recent announcement of iPhone OS 4.0 beta brought some interested features for developers. I’m still pretty new to iPhone development and was trying to figure out how to update my phone. Below are the instructions once you’ve downloaded the IPSW file to update the firmware.

Installing iPhone 4.0 beta on the iPhone

Make sure to have downloaded the iPhone 4.0 beta firmware that relates to your iPhone (e.g. 3GS).
Extract the firmware IPSW to a folder.
Connect the iPhone to your computer.
Get the UDID registered on the iPhone Developer program. Provisioning Portal > Devices > Add Devices
Open iTunes and click Restore while holding the Shift key (for Windows) or Option key (for Mac).
Locate or browse to the firmware IPSW.
Wait for iTunes to unpackage and install the firmware.

UDID can be view in 2 ways:

In Xcode, navigate to the ‘Window’ drop down menu and select
‘Organizer’. The 40 hex character string in the Identifier field is your
device’s UDID.
OR In iTunes, select your device in the ‘Devices’ section and navigate to
the Summary tab. Click on the Serial Number label to reveal the
Identifier field and the 40 character UDID. Press Command+C to copy the
UDID to your clipboard.

Quick way to create patch files based on modified date with xcopy

michael — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 02:38:45 +0000

Recent projects and deployment method made it difficult to simply publish changes to a web server. Had been doing it manually (check for modified files, copy and transfer) and thought it was wasting too much time each day when change requests occur. After some quick research, I realized that the simplest method would just be to use the good old “xcopy” command in windows. (this is why command prompt tools should be taught in schools). For a quick refresher on batch commands, read http://www.computerhope.com/batch.htm.

I realize that a proper source control (like Git or Subversion) would be nicer but in my case, a simple batch file is just easier to work with.

Copy and paste the following code in your deployment folder that will create a patch folder based on last modified dates of working files.

[START EVENT.BAT]

@echo off
REM – http://www.computerhope.com/batch.htm
ECHO Usage : events [patch-num] [m-d-y]

SET SRC=c:\xampp\htdocs\events
SET DEST=c:\deployment\events

IF (%1)==() GOTO END
IF (%2)==() GOTO TODAYDATE

ECHO Copying files modified on %2
xcopy %SRC% %DEST%%1 /D:%2 /S /C /I /Y
GOTO END

:TODAYDATE
FOR /F “tokens=1-5 delims=/ ” %%a in (“%date%”) DO SET year=%%c
FOR /F “tokens=1-5 delims=/ ” %%a in (“%date%”) DO SET month=%%b
FOR /F “tokens=1-5 delims=/ ” %%a in (“%date%”) DO SET day=%%a

SET TODAY=%month%-%day%-%year%
ECHO Copying files modified on %TODAY%

xcopy %SRC% %DEST%%1 /D:%TODAY% /S /C /I /Y

:END
@echo on

[END EVENT.BAT]

Back to basics in Mobile Development

michael — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:51:15 +0000

I’ve been holding off starting iPhone development for some time. The recent iPad announcement coupled with the lack of progress in the Windows Mobile world has lead me to making a decision to try out a new platform (finally). With the purchase of the MacBook Pro, it’s time to dive right in and start from basics again. I first started in Palm development (horrors of C++), moved on to .Net (C#) and now with Objective-C, it seems “C” is the common thread linking my mobile development path.

Time to dust off the great “C – How to Program” and gettting started with the first book “iPhone SDK Development“!