So awhile ago I asked if the new iPod Touch was worth it and I got some good responses (thanks again, btw) although nothing that really pushed me to run out and get one at the time. My birthday was in the end of January and my wife decided to buy me a 16GB iPod Touch and after three+ months I think I can now the answer that question myself though it would be a "maybe" though definitely leaning towards yes. I say "maybe" because there are a few obvious features that are missing which I’ll mention in another post that would make it far more valuable although perhaps would cut into iPhone sales.

What I Like

The best feature by far is the nearly full fledged Safari browser coupled with the slick touch UI. It’s awesome to be able to surf the web naturally from such a small device. The browser provides quick access to apps like Google Reader and Google Calendar both of which I use heavily.

Second, would be the ability to quickly check several different email accounts though my work account, based on Exchange, is currently only accessible via the browser but that’s scheduled to change in June. I am, however able to use the simple Outlook Web Access site and check my work email.

Third, is the screen. Having such a high resolution screen in your pocket is huge. From full web pages to Google maps and YouTube videos it’s really awesome to have such rich display at your finger tips. Last weekend I demo’ed it to my Mom and after about a minute she was saying "I want one now!" and that’s coming from someone who is not the gadget type.

Conclusion

I believe the iPod Touch has huge potential even given some of things I think it’s lacking. I found this BusinessWeek article an interesting read and I would agree that it’s only a matter of time before we see more types of content appearing for the iPod Touch and iPhone. In fact, Google now has excellent support for the iPhone/Touch and I’m using their apps all the time now. When the iPhone SDK starts shipping we’ll see an explosion in the number of applications available which will only serve to make things even more interesting.

To the right is a screenshot of MSDN style documentation created using Microsoft’s SandCastle and SandCastle Help File Builder (SHFB) which is generated as part of a Continuous Integration build running under CruiseControl.NET shown here hosted within a page on a ScrewTurn wiki at a client’s site.

The documentation was created for the EDI Invoicing system I developed. Originally, I’d simply followed the Thoughtworks style for documenting Tasks and Source Control providers but that proved rather time consuming and required a fair amount of hand editing. Using this mechanism the documentation on the wiki is always up-to-date and I don’t have to worry about maintaining lots of static content.

SandCastle Help File Builder to the Rescue

Rather than using SandCastle, Microsoft’s oh-so-slowly-developing documentation tool for managed code, Eric Woodruff has created SHFB which gives SandCastle the user experience you’d expect from Microsoft itself. (btw, if you’re a Borland fan be sure to check out Eric’s Turbo Vision page for a trip down memory lane)

SHFB allows you to create a project, select the desired assemblies, and generated web based MSDN style documentation easily. In fact, SHFB allows you to select from three different web site styles. Be sure to read the Links to Resources section as there are a number of additional tools required. Of course, the same thing is possible with SandCastle itself and if you’re up for it check out this post for details.

Generating API Doc Under Continuous Integration

Since I didn’t want to have to manually regenerate the documentation I setup a CruiseControl.NET task to handle creating the documentation web site which also uses SHFB and looks like this:

<exec executable="C:\Program Files\EWSoftware\SHFB\SandcastleBuilderConsole.exe">
  <baseDirectory>c:\work\utilities\edi\help</baseDirectory>
  <buildArgs>vtalk.shfb</buildArgs>
  <buildTimeoutSeconds>2400</buildTimeoutSeconds>
</exec>

Adding this as a task ensures that the documentation is never out of date with the one minor downside being that the documentation isn’t available during the build but that’s really minor.

Conclusion

If you’ve been holding off using SandCastle or have been looking for tools to make it easier be sure to give SHFB a try as it worked like a charm for me.

What’s your experience with SandCastle been like? Have you tried it?

The shoe finally dropped. My former employer Borland finally completed the sale of their CodeGear division. The sale is for $23M to Embarcadero Technologies of San Francisco a database tools company. After 16 years looks like I’ll finally be removing BORL from my watch list. It’s pretty quiet on the CodeGear Blogs on the subject and I have yet to hear from anyone on the inside. I wish them great success going forward!

If you’ve taken a peek at Microsoft Live Mesh would you leave a comment here and tell me what the big deal is? And what the hell is Steve Gilmor talking about? Seriously, read that article if you can get through it. I get the feeling that top bloggers like Gilmore and Scoble use all this social networking buzz like a proverbial hacky sack devised to simply keep a conversation afloat. Scoble even goes so far as say

Microsoft’s fans are delivered to the promised land.
  - Robert Scoble (link)

Where exactly is this promised land? Seriously, that’s out of touch given Mesh’s beta status, numerous missing features and a nebulous definition. Heck, I’m an MS fan and I just don’t get it. I’ve yet to come across a clear description of what Mesh really is or will be? My initial experience completely sucked. The other night I sat down for dinner with Barry Kelly and Adam Markowitz (Adam, you’ve been linked to so get that blog up!) and neither had a good understanding of Mesh and these are bright guys!

I’m actually glad or perhaps even relieved it confounds Joel as well. For now, I’ll take that as a good sign.

Anyway, .NET started out pretty nebulous and poorly defined but the end result has proven extremely satisfying so there is hope. I wonder if Microsoft felt compelled to release something in these days of exploding social networks simply to remain relevant and in the conversation which, in this case, somehow seems to have worked. IMO it seems Mesh was released so customers could try to help Microsoft to figure out exactly what to do with this technology as a number of pieces seems like a rehash of existing services.

Now, had Microsoft announced a Windows based, Amazon-like, elastic compute cloud that would have been really interesting.

If you’ve downloaded either the Facebook Developer Toolkit or Facebook.NET Starter Kits I recommend voting in Facebook’s poll regarding which client library you use. It seems to me there’s no good reason Facebook shouldn’t provide an ASP.NET support on par with PHP though I’m biased. Here is the blog post about the poll.

Heck, even if you haven’t downloaded my starter kits but you do ASP.NET development be sure to vote!

So this is a new twist...

I decided to take a peek at Microsoft’s new Windows Live Mesh and upon attempting to install the client for Devices got this error message:

 
Now, I don’t know about you but I’d be hard pressed to think of someone I know running Vista who hasn’t disabled UAC. Anyway, I switch my account to Power User and install the client which gives me this message hovering over my tray:

Pressing forward I click on the Mesh icon in my tray and see this:

Now, I recognize the little colorful shield next to Configure Live Mesh Report Desktop means it requires elevated privileges. I click the link and get the above error window again. So, I exit live Mesh, click on the Start menu, type "mesh" then right click to "Run as Administrator":

I return to the above Live Mesh window and click the "Configure Live Mesh Remote Desktop" link and:

So much for living on the edge now, back to work!

Anyone else have better luck?

I’m a big Clive Clusser fan and I stumbled into this article by Joshua Davis in Wired through Barry Kelly's shared Google Reader items. It’s been sitting in a tab in my browser for days now and I’ve read it a few times and I keep getting drawn back to it sort of like I did with Into Thin Air yet another good real life story.

Thanks Barry!

Do you have a link blog or share links via Reader?