The news in the Norwegian TV channel NRK recently talked about testing the vision for elderly, the illustration for the test was picked from teh Internet. Obviously nobody looked closer at it before the broadcast…
I am sure most readers of this blog understand what's so funny… The news anchors did not.
For the 12th year, Ben Langhinrichs at Genii Software has created his brilliant Lotusphere Session database.
You can download it here. There are also mobile version in the works from Tim Davis at The Turtle Partnership.
I like my Blackberry. I currently have a Blackberry Bold 9700, and I am happy with many things. But it is almost 2 years old and it is time to look for a replacement. And after almost 4 years of being a Blackberry user, my next phone will probably be something else.
But why? The Bold has been praised multiple times by people like Vowe. The screen is excellent. It has a real keyboard, and most people (including me) think that is the best physical keyboard on the market. Well, there are several reasons.
I have upgraded the operating system from version 6 5 to version 7 6. However, the new version is not as good as the older one. Some functions are very nice, but at the same time, it uses more memory, and I suspect it got memory leaks left and right. I constantly run out of memory when loading webpages, and I see the clock/hourglass icon way too often. It also locks up frequently, sometimes just for a few seconds, sometimes so hard I have to pull the battery. Talking about pulling the battery, Blackberry users are used to do that in a nearly daily basis, especially if you want to clear the memory. But there is an app for that.
This brings us to another big issue with Blackberry. Apps. Or rather the lack of apps. Yes, there are a number of apps in the Blackberry App World. But if you look at different websites (everything from news to specialized services), chances are that they have an app for iPhone and one for Android. But very few places have an app for Blackberry. Next time you visit a website that offers apps, see what your options are. One app I use all the time is SocialScope, previously only available for Blackberry. But now there is an Android version available as well.
Other issues with Blackberry 7 6 is that the UI looks old. There were no big changes between version 6 5 and 7 6, the icons still looks boring. In BB5 there were a number of themes one could download, and also a tool that let you customize your screen/look (if you were a graphics designer). There are themes for BB6 as well, but my favourite themes did not work after the upgrade and have not been updated.
Then we have posts like this one by Darren Duke and this one by Vowe. The question is if RIM will still be around for the next two years, if I get a new phone from them now…
So it is a combination of all this, together with a wish to get a bigger screen and better performance that makes me consider a different smartphone platform. Personally I do not like being locked in to the Apple eco system. I don't have an iPod, but a MP3 player which can be connected as any other USB device, and my files (in many formats, like mp3, flac, wmv, avi, divx and mpg) can simply be dragged over. I want that for my phone too, to have the freedom to do what I want, use the files I already have.
So my next phone will most probably be an Android. I have been looking at (and reading about) the Google Nexus, but there are a few things that I don't like with it, most of all the lack of expansion (no DS-card support). Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket is interesting, as is the new LG Nitro. But I want the latest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, which is still not available on very many phones. So it will be very interestingto see what the lineup looks like after New Years…
Update: I had the wrong OS numbers, it has now been corrected.
For a product that just turned 21, one would expect that all childhood issues were gone. Of course, I am (for now) stuck with a 17 year old slightly temperamental teenager… Anyway, I just ran into a strange issue, related to classes and code inherited from other templates.
Template A contains a script library with a class I wrote, called "AgentLog". It is used to log information about agents running in different databases. So obviously the script library need to reside in each database where I want to do the logging. Let’s say there are two, based on Template B and C. In an attempt to be clever, I simply copied the script library from Template A to Template B and C, and answered "yes" on the question if I wanted to inherit changes when the code in Template A is changed.
I then add some calls to the script library in template B and C, and push the changes out. Everything works great. A week or two later, I decide that I want to add some more info to the logging. I add one public string variable to the class, add a reference to it in one method called Terminate() and add a new method called AddMessage(). The new code is marked in red.
Class AgentLog
Private session As NotesSession
Private logdb As NotesDatabase
Private logdoc As NotesDocument
Private running As Integer
Private tstart As Long ‘ Ticks at start
Private tend As Long ‘ Ticks at end
Private tps As Long ‘ Ticks per second (normally 1000)
Private message As String ‘ Text to store in log entry, e.g. number of docs processed
Public Sub AddMessage(txt As String)
Me.message = Me.message + txt
End Sub
Public Sub Terminate()
Dim seconds As Integer
If logdoc Is Nothing Then
Exit Sub
End If
tend = Getthreadinfo( THREAD_TICKS )
seconds = (tend – tstart) / tps
Call logdoc.ReplaceItemValue("EndTime", Now() )
Call logdoc.ReplaceItemValue("Seconds", seconds )
Call logdoc.ReplaceItemValue("Message", message )
If running = True Then ‘ Check if not terminated gracefully
Call logdoc.ReplaceItemValue("Terminated", "Yes" )
End If
Call logdoc.Save(True,True)
End Sub
Nothing special, right? I did not even modify New() at all. All this was done in anticipation of adding the additional logging later in Application B and C (based on the templates B and C). The updated Template A was put in production, and the next night the update process refreshed the design of Template B and C with the new code, and they in turn updated Application B and C.
Now the users suddenly got an error message when code using the script library was launched: "Type mismatch on external name: AGENTLOG". I tested it and got the same error. I decided to turn on the debugger to see where exactly it happened. And of course then it worked! Debugger turned off, error again. I recompiled all Lotusscript in the application, and it worked with no debugger on. I then recompiled all code in Template A, refreshed design of Template B and C and recompiled all code in Template B and C. Despite this, the next day we had the same problem…
Finally I ended up not linking the script library from Template A to Template B and C. I will just have to copy it over again every time I make a change to every template where I use it. Anyone got any ideas what the problem might be?.