help.net

Code Party - the photo album

Thanks to every participant for the first Code Party organized in Ireland. I am sure everybody learned a lot from this experience. I wish also thet all participants continue their respective project, so that I can publish the results soon.

Technically I can say that even if VS 2005 and SQL 2005 are in Beta stage, no major problems happened. Only the Sunya team encounter some strange behavior from SQL Server Express beta. It's also good news that the new tools GUI didn't give too much headache. I couldn't find the Diagram features in SQL server, don't know if it's really there in the Beta version or not.

I am now preparing already the next one.

I am thinking about May for the date. I listened to all the feedback I have collected from Saturday and already come with some new ideas for that.

So check the next INDA's newsletter for more information :-)

Note: you can find more pictures here

Team 3 are the winners ! They are known now as the Balkan Express Team. They have in their hands the vouchers they deserve from Software Paths for training.	They worked on the Nanny project and they were able to produce some functioning code after only 3 hours. They covered everything from Business logic to a web application.
Team 1 was working on the Book online project and they tried hard to produce their code on time. Like the other players, they were very close to win. (one missing on the picture, Graham)	Team 2 knows also as DNJ Video shop, works on the VideoShop online project
Team 4 named Suyna (Zero in Hindi) was working on the holidays letting agency. They won the best Team Spirit prize, showing that a strong database model is always the foundation for every good business project	No they are not the Team 5, but they are our Judges. Thanks to Clare, Robert, Eamon and Nick for the help they provide to make this day a great success.
The Help Team, or Help Desk Support if you prefer. Tiernan was the photo reporter and Eduardo give some good advice to many teams.

Code Party materials

As promised you can now have access to the four subjects, if you want to try by yourself:

- The Nanny agency (Team 3)

- The Book OnlineBuddy store (Team 1)

- The Video shop (Team 2)

- The Holidays letting company (Team 4)

Bets are opened. I think Rob the reporter is already there to cover the race.

Code Party report in Dublin

So far the Code Party is going on well after two hours of hard work.

We have 4 teams working with one subject each using only a PC, Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 Beta.
Already we have a leading team, but I can say it's very close.
The ambience is great, everybody is so concentrated on the code :-)
Our judges are also great ( a bit cheeky!) but they are doing a serious interview of each team every hour.


Some people also clearly like Mr Tayto :-)


A Team in action

Guerilla Coding report: one hour in

Deep discussion.  Little coding. 

It all corresponds well with that old developer's addage, "It's always too early to code."  Then again, it may mean we have some architects in the room after all!

Ireland .Net Developers Ireland - We are on the starting blocks!

The Guerrilla Code Party will start soon. I will have pictures taken live posted here. Check every hour for some cool events.

Google challenger!

Strange name, colourful logo, powerful Search engine. Not it's not Google but Blinkx.

I use Blinkx since a week and it remind me the early stage of Google. Strong competitor, and already Blinkx has some unique features.

Before Google announced it, Blinkx can search TV and videos. It has also a desktop version and something really cool called SmartFolders.

Smart folders are a new, unique way of organizing information. Using blinkx to automatically update their content as new information becomes available, smart folders automatically organize information for you and assist you in the filing process. Smart folders are just like normal folders. You can create them wherever you normally create folders, be it on your hard drive, in your My Documents folder or on your desktop.

Once you've trained a smart folder, so that it knows what type of information you want it to store, it automatically gets smarter over time as it continually scans for new information and automatically updates itself. You don't need to remember a particular word or filename, if content is available, it is automatically brought to you without you having to even know of its existence.

For example, if you were doing a research project, you would create a folder and put some relevant files into it. Three days later, an email you receive on this subject would automatically be put into the smart folder for you. Similarly, if some information that is relevant to your project was published on a website, a link to this information would be added to your smart folder.

Smart folders can store the following information types:

The only critic I have is the indexing process, too slow to be initiated first time you install the tool. Blinkx recommend to do the first indexation by night!

I am not sure how many pages they already have indexed, but the results are relevant and limited to few pages. What is the point with Google to know that your search return 1 billion entries? No way you're going to browse every single one.
You can also without clicking knows what's going on in the next result pages.

The Visualizer is also a cool gadget, and you can move in the graphical tree view to search deeper.

Try Blinkx, it's really worth it

INDA Guerrilla Code Party - The Prizes !

Fantastic news!

I am happy to announced that the members of the winning team at the Guerrilla .Net 2.0 Code Party taking place this Saturday, will each receive training vouchers valued at 1250 Euros, offered by Software Paths, with other top prizes offered by Microsoft.

 Thanks a million to our sponsors Microsoft Ireland and Software Paths for their help and support.

So let the coding begin this Saturday at 14.30 (sharp :-)) at the Microsoft Atrium building. 

Looking forward to seeing all the  participating teams there.

Even with the snow some people are still working :-))

LOL Not only you can't easily park in Boston after the blizzard

But you can eventually have a ticket!

Robot rules

Yes they rule. If you don't believe check the video here to see the real robot life. Hilarious :-)

Learning ASP.Net

We are all beginners at some stage. It could be as a driver, a student, or a programmer. Maybe it's because I taught (longtime ago) computers and coding to many people, but I always like to help people who want to start with a new technology.

So I would like to see more focus in the future for INDA members who are struggling with ASP.Net or .Net.

INDA team is currently working on some new sections for the site Developers.ie and we will have soon a place dedicated to the resources you can find when you are really starting.

This list is for me a good start but we should be able to do more. For a project like that I am looking for some volunteer(s) to find the right approach.

After all a good community is good only if it can help everybody, not only the elite.