At Aeshen we work on a lot of new technologies.  We’re often on the forefront of products before they are released.  This makes for a fun time getting to explore the new features to learn about how developers can benefit.  A big part of our job is taking these features and making their value propositions really clear.  The thing with developing is that there are an almost infinite number of ways to do anything.  If I read about a feature that allows data querying in a novel way or that adds some new troubleshooting features, I might be excited by the prospect of it.  Almost always though, people are already doing the same thing using other tools or techniques,  Even if this way results in less code or is easier to maintain, it’s not necessarily a slam-dunk in the eyes of all developers.

Everyone has their favorite ways of doing things.  It’s usually based on custom code, specific tools, third –party libraries, and that special extra touch that they bring to the table.  It takes a pretty big benefit to justify the cost of changing,  There’s the time to learn the new technology to the level of the other choices.  There’s the question of updating existing code or not.  There’s the question of licensing, installation, training for support people, and a host of other questions.  It’s no wonder new features and products are rarely embraced by the general community as quickly as I expect them to be!

The final issue, in my mind, is the question of future.  Every new release is a bit of a gamble.  Will it be deprecated by a new version in a few months?  Will it be abandoned between final beta and release  Will a new product supersede it?  Will it fall by the wayside due to a competitive offering?  It’s a big deal to invest in something new when everyone knows how brutal product lifecycles can be.

I can’t ever help out with that side of things, so I dig into the new stuff and create content to show it off in the best light.  If it doesn’t remain relevant, then I usually feel pretty disappointed.  After all, I’m invested in the new technology due to work required to ramp up and “sell” it.  If it doesn’t take off, and I sense apathy from the greater developer community, I feel like maybe my work wasn’t what it needed to be.  In the end though, the community chooses.  I get to play with shiny new things, and hopefully I helped to inform some decisions!

Well Microsoft PDC ‘09 has come and gone.  I spent a good chunk of time in the expo area (vendor fair) and I was pretty disappointed.  It really seemed like attendance was lower, and there were fewer non-Microsoft booths hawking their wares.  There was actually a good number of Microsoft technologies and product groups represented.  If you want to meet the people behind the magic, then you were probably happy.  If you were looking to learn about third party products, you might have felt let down.

Personally, I like to talk to the Microsoft folks and hear about what excited them.  Seeing them demo their products is fun and being able to provide such direct feedback is gratifying.  Many of them are actively seeking this feedback, others are happy to hear it.  Most of them will at least listen politely.

Not only was the vendor area a bit sparse, but the session offering was a trifle weak as well.  The first day’s keynote was all Azure, as were many of the sessions.  Though day two was more focused on general Windows technologies (including some cool IE 9, .NET 4, and Silverlight 4 demos), it seemed wasteful to take up so much of the first day (essentially a third of the conference) on Azure.  Great if you are looking to host such services, but not everyone is!

I went to a few really good sessions.  I’m really interested in WPF, Silverlight, and .NET 4.0.  MEF is cool, SharePoint 2010 is gearing up to be great.  Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 are full of new features to take advantage of and good sessions will help devs to get started.

I’ve only been to one other PDC (05), but I’ve been to five JavaOne events over the years.  JavaOne events were much bigger and more sensational, though the economy was better during those years.  Hopefully the next PDC will more like PDC 05 was.  Somehow I don’t expect them to do another free laptop though!

One of the great new features in Windows 7 is the addition of sensors and location as common services. Working with a touch, temperature, light, or accelerometer sensor before would require you to obtain specific drivers and learn a new API or understand low-level protocols and use the serial, USB, or other ports. With Windows 7, now you can just use the sensor manager to enumerate sensors by name or type (i.e. all light sensors), find out their status, and subscribe to values. This makes it so simple that anyone can do it – with just one problem. Most systems don’t have any sensors yet. Microsoft anticipates that the next wave of notebooks will have accelerometers and light sensors like most smartphones do. If your laptop has a light sensor that has the right driver, it can take advantage of the built-in Adaptive Brightness service.

This just adjusts your backlight based on ambient light. An accelerometer sensor has less use in a laptop – who wants to wield their entire laptop to play a game! On the other hand, it can be used to determine shock for a hard drive (some drives already do this), check for motion for an alarm, or just be used in unwieldy games! I think that the magic of sensors will be that developers will come up with novel uses that no one has come up with yet. Being able to bridge the virtual with the physical environment is a big deal. This impacts games, social functions, and creative efforts. Adding a web cam can lead to an even better experience due to the positional information.

Location is also very cool in that most systems have no concept of where they are. This information is useful for web searches, news headlines, weather, social sharing, or even theft recovery. Location can be obtained by IP address, cellular tower triangulation, or dedicated GPS units. Each of these has vastly different methods of determining the location involving complex math, hardware interfaces, and software protocols. The location API simplifies this by providing a simple API for grabbing latitude/longitude or even a civil address, if available. This requires that a provider is installed that can do the work of figuring out the location, but then all consumers benefit from one simple way to be updated, with no worries of a device being locked, disappearing, or other issues.

All sensors and location devices require opt-in from the user. This makes it important for a developer to check for the permission first. You can also check for connection and disconnection. Not needing to deal with hardware, protocols, and exact implementations makes a huge difference. Now anyone can add these features to their applications. We just need to cross our fingers that people start integrating the hardware side of things quickly!

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