The Trucking Nerd

In my earlier post regarding the new release of the .NET 3.5 Framework and Visual Studio 2008, I mentioned a very exciting concept within the .NET framework called XBAP which stands for XAML Browser Application.  XAML is basically a layer of abstraction that describes the presentation of a .NET app.  So what is XBAP?

XBAP is simply taking a .NET application and making it run in the browser.  In the olden days, you’d have to determine if you were going to write a desktop based application or a web application.  Web applications are not as robust and feature rich in the UI and presentation in addition to having many constraints being a stateless model, hence why most complex applications end up on the desktop.  That era is one step closer to being ushered out.  With XBAP, the gap that exists between web applications and full client applications is closing. Read the rest of this entry »

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When it first dawned on me that the deadline for analog cell service was coming to a closure in 2008, I didn’t think much about it.  After all, it is reported that only 1% of the cell phone population use a cell phone that is analog only, so what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that there are millions of devices around the US that rely solely on analog, and many of them are not phones, they are devices like OnStar, GPS tracking systems, alarm system devices, etc.  When the analog service is shutoff, these devices will be rendered useless.  This could happen as early as February 18th, 2008 since this is the date the FCC says it is ok for cell companies to shutoff analog services.

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To celebrate this Christmas Season, the Trucking Nerd will randomly pick two lucky winners to receive complimentary coffee mugs.  I am certain these fashionable mugs will make you the envy of your co-workers.

To be eligible for the give away, you must have contributed to the Trucking Nerd by sharing a comment on the site.  The winners will be chosen randomly on Christmas day from the comments posted on the site.  You must have a valid email associated with your comment so that I have a method of contacting you should you be one of the lucky ones! 

Of course if you don’t want to take your chances and have to have a mug, you can always purchase one directly.

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This week Microsoft released Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Framework.  While the 3.0 framework has been out for sometime now, the 3.5 framework builds on this and adds some additional features to the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF).  So why is this worthy of a blog entry? 

The answer is simple! Microsoft’s latest strategy with the .NET platform is brilliant.  At a recent MSDN event I attended, the presenter stated that they had basically concluded that the only thing developers should have to worry about are the elements that are unique to the business requirements they are programming.  These fall into two simple categories, 1) the User Interface (UI) and 2) the business rules.  All other code components are not unique across applications nor across businesses and industries.

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Aaron Huff who runs the Private Fleets blog has just posted an interesting article based on an presentation from Dr. Joseph Salvo, the manager of the Pervasive Decisioning Systems at the GE Global Research Center. In this article Dr. Salvo discusses the end of the information age and the beginning of the systems age. He also makes reference to the fascinating topic of swarm intelligence and gives some real world insight to how these concepts apply to the transportation industry and what the future will hold, some very cool ideas and concepts!

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At the last MSDN event I attended, there was some discussion of the new Microsoft Surface concept.  If you are unfamiliar with this relatively new technology venture Microsoft is headed down I think you will be impressed with how neat the concept is.  Basically it is bringing touch screen computing to a whole new level.  Imagine a screen that is very large with software that is very interactive.  You can start to explore and navigate in ways that a traditional mouse simply cannot. 

Some say it is the future of computing, but I’m not sure.  There is a great blog post here that actually discusses the technology behind it, it is pretty fascinating.

As you can see from the video below, the technology is amazing, but I’m not sure where it fits in my business.  Don’t get me wrong, I think it would be sweet in my living room (so long as it could stand a few kids jumping, scribbling and spilling on it).  I’ll be watching this technology, I’m sure it’ll be everywhere in the future as people start thinking of great ways to leverage it!

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I made a frustrating discovery a few weeks ago that I’m still dumbfounded by and keep hoping someone will surprise me with an answer, but so far my forum postings have yielded no fruit. 

We have standardized on the increasingly popular Microsoft SQL Reporting Services as our standard report writing architecture at the office.  It is great because it is very similar to Crystal and offers a bunch of features such as a web service API, supports report subscriptions and tons of other useful elements. 

The discovery I made however is that while the graphing components are a stripped down version of the Dundas controls, the ability to plot a simple trendline on a line chart or scatter plot is non-existent.  We have gotten so used to looking at trend lines and Excel has made it so easy to do this, just a couple clicks and you can quickly see how things are trending using a variety of regression formulas.  We use SQL Reporting Services 2005, and apparently, adding a trend line means you have to do it the hard way.  Y=MX+B, how hard could it be?…let me tell you, it isn’t something they teach you in SQL 101.  If anyone else out there has found a relatively painless way of doing this, please share!

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I posted over at LifeOnTheRoad a brief article discussing the ever popular and useful Google SMS service. 

I’m surprised to find that there are still a lot of IT people who don’t what this is nor have ever attempted to experiment with it.  If you’re in IT and don’t know what it is, stop right now and go click this link to learn more.  In short, you can shoot Google short SMS messags and get answers quickly back regarding just about anything such as phone numbers, weather, sports, stocks, flights, movie times, directions and tons more. 

If you’re in IT at a trucking company, you’re drivers will appreciate all the tips you can give them, let them know about Google SMS, it’s a great tool when you’re out on the road!

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This is the third article in the TOLIA Document Imaging for TMWSuite series.  To recap, in article 1 of this series I discussed the TOLIA Image Viewer which is used for quick document retrieval and viewing in addition to some upload capabilities.

In article 2 I discussed the TOLIA Batch Entry program used to upload and tag scanned images in a batch mode. 

In this article, we’ll focus on the last of the methods for inputting documents into the imaging system, which is with a tool called TOLIA QuickScan.

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As I mentioned previously, I am continually scouring for tools to make my life easier.  Every now and then I find one that after a while I wonder how I functioned without it.  Accountants can’t imagine how they’d live without Excel and Carpenters can’t imagine how they would live without their hammers.  Well, IT professionals are no different!  This posting focuses on the tools I use nearly every day (in no particular order).

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