What do I do

After talking with my folks this weekend, it seems that a layperson explanation of what I do may be in order.

My current work involves coding up some back-end software for processing forms information. Now to unpack that statement: Forms are things that you fill in to say apply for a credit card or in order to get a drivers license. Often they include information like your name, address, telephone number. In my work these forms are electronic on a mobile device like a Cell Phone. This allows the persons collecting the information to be mobile themselves: such as in a mall or at a business meeting.

This information can be stored in a businesses database or on some websites. An example of a website that stores forms information is SalesForce.com. My last bit of work is getting this information integrated into these type of data stores.

Microsoft Office Live

Last week, I worked on Office Live from a server perspective. Office Live is a hosted solution from Microsoft for web sites and business management information like Sales leads, Time sheets, expenses, etc.

My company wanted to be able to programmatically add a new sales lead using the web services provided since Office Live is actually based on Microsoft SharePoint 3.0 that should be possible but alas as of Feb 23, 2007 the Live ID authentication is not supported on OfficeLive. After downloading the Live ID SDK, I was able to authenticate to Live ID but I wasnt' able to consume any of the services from Office Live.

Here's a little snippet that should be possible:
IdentityManager oIDMgr = IdentityManager.CreateInstance("Tailspin Toys;dan@tailspintoys.com;Tailspin Toys Application", "Windows Live ID Client Sample");
Identity oID=oIDMgr.CreateIdentity();
Discovery discoverySvc= new Discovery();
LiveIDSettings settings = discoverySvc.GetLiveIDSettings();
string ticket = identity.GetTicket(settings.SiteName, settings.Policy, false);
authModule = new WindowsLiveAuthenticationModule(ticket);
AuthenticationManager.Register(authModule);
string[] subscriptionIDs = discoverySvc.GetSubscriptions();

Tell me about your experiences...

Google Books Mashup

Wouldn't it be cool to be able to get recomendations about books on Google. Kind of like amazon and their recomendations. There would be some cross over from the amazon site but for some of the older content, it would not be there.

Recycling

After doing the garbage on Tuesday, I decided to create a Google Calendar
(the calendar name is: Ottawa Garbage Recycling Calendar A). Here's a link to add it to your calendar:

kmz import into Blender

Well, I believe this is the gold I've been searching for:
http://jmsoler.free.fr/didacticiel/blender/tutor/py_import_kml-kmz_en.htm

Hard Drive Replacement.

I figured out that my Pioneer DVR-533H can be upgraded to a bigger hard drive. I'm really excited to do this job as I would like to store more programs....


anyway here's the link:
http://www.pioneerfaq.info/english/dvr630.php?player=DVR-630H&question=replace_hdd

SketchUp and Exporting

I've been using SketchUp recently to draw my house but I don't like the idea of being locked into a proprietary file format for something as important as this :-)

I started a search for a converter from SketchUp (or kmz since that's the only export format allowed in the free version of SketchUp)... nothing really a lot of garbage links until I figured out that kmz is sort of like Collada.

This lead me to the Collada import/export to Blender which is another free (really free as in open source) 3d editor.

I'm guessing with this information, I'll be able to simply convert this drawing into a collada file (something about .dae) and then import to blender using this plugin and then export it to whatever formats blender supports which will certainly be better than what the SketchUp free supports.

Update here's a link:
http://colladablender.illusoft.com/info.html