Carter Maslan

New Blog Location (blog.maslan.com)

2007-03-14T22:38:00Z

My personal blog is now http://blog.maslan.com

Help find Jim Gray's boat

2007-02-05T20:39:00Z

Please examine some aerial images if you can.

Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista

2007-01-08T20:16:00Z

Karsten had a great time working with the Yahoo team on their Windows Vista Messenger client. They've posted a video preview of the app with some fun features like the group skinning in the fantasy football league example.

Karsten - at the risk of exacerbating the speculation that my office is at the beach, hook me up with a rippling ocean water skin to rendezvous with surf buddies. What will the voice visualization do with the background surf noise? :)

Peninsula Library System Bookmarklet for my Mom

2006-11-18T23:26:00Z

If you're on a web page that displays a book with its ISBN/ISSN number, you can search or reserve the book at our local library with one click using this bookmarklet:

Right-click on this link: Peninsula Library System and select "Add to Favorites..."
Select "Yes" when prompted with "You are adding a favoirte that may not be safe. Do you want to continue?" (only because this link comes from a trusted son :) Usually say "No" if you see this)
Select "Links" from the "Create in:" folder prompt, then press the "Add" button.
Right-click on any blank area of the browser's toolbar above and select "Links" if there is no check-mark next to it.

Now, whenever you're on a web page showing a book you want, just click the "Peninsual Library System" link on your toolbar. If there's an ISBN/ISSN number on the web page, then a new window will open with the search results for that book in our local library. The search includes all these San Francisco Peninsula libraries. You can then reserve the book online and pick it up at your local library.

If you're not my Mom, and want a bookmarklet for a different library system, check out The LibraryLookup Project.

Update: the link now looks for the ISBN/ISSN on the web page itself if no number was found in the URL. So clicking the link from step 1 above should now jump to the Barack Obama best seller because "ISBN: 0307237699" is on this page.

Deep Link URLs for www.seewindowsvista.com

2006-08-24T19:13:00Z

Soma's post mentioned three specific Windows Vista applications (The North Face, British Library, and Avenue A | Razorfish) on www.seewindowsvista.com.

Since other people may also want to link directly to the videos of specific applications, here are the URLs for each one:

Click2Call on Local Search Results using your Vonage

2006-07-24T11:29:00Z

Call me lazy, but I often just want to search, click, and talk. Now, this Live.com gadget lets me do it by using the Click2CallU beta service from Vonage. When you click on a search result, you receive a call that connects you automatically to the desired number (no dialing).

I hope Vonage adds WS-Security protocol support to this service (even better using WCS and WCF). They currently only provide POST and GET over https, which makes it challenging for gadgets like this one. Why? Because this gadget simply wants to act as a pass-through intermediary for connecting me securely to Vonage's service. Even when gadget frameworks don't have SSL proxies or SSL iframe support, it should be simple to connect securely at the application message level. That way, even if javascript requires that I talk back only to my original http domain, my domain could be a credential-blind, trustworthy relay on the way to Vonage's service.

It's a bit inconvenient to be prompted for your Vonage password whenever you refresh the page, but it's better than storing or transmitting your password in the clear. Your password remains client-side, and is only transmitted via the https GET call to the Vonage service. There's still a risk of an evil inline gadget walking the DOM looking for the global variable with your Vonage password. We'll have to contact Vonage to work with them on a WCS and WCF implementation.

If you see "authorization failed" or this disabled phone icon after clicking "click 2 call" on a search result, it means that you haven't yet specified your Vonage account settings for this gadget. Click the gadget's "edit" link, and enter your:

Vonage phone number (formatted like 15556667777)
Vonage username

Also, kudos to MarkL and team for the v0.1 ajax search control I used in this version of the gadget. (Yes, Google is a rival, but he added VirtualEarth-like simplicity to hosting a search control). I'll post the Live Search version that I have running on my localhost as soon as my hoster Server Intellect (add your vote) adds support for either .asbx or .axd tunneling used by Atlas.

Fantastic Work in Data Visualization

2006-07-12T04:17:00Z

Jason's Channel 9 interview with Accruent provides some background on the real estate application shown on www.seewindowsvista.com. If you only have 10 minutes, jump to the clip of the Windows Vista application for visualizing demographic data surrounding store locations. The whole category of "Data Visualization" is hot - especially now that subsystems like WPF make it easier to aggregate multiple data sources/servicesd into hi-fi UI. Jason included a post with resource links.

The Long Tail includes post-ophthalmologic-surgery geek humor

2006-07-07T01:49:00Z

Steve Marx has really lengthened The Long Tail. His risky prank and SwansonVision Atlas app qualify him as the undisputed king of post-ophthalmologic-surgery geek humor.

This is the future of SDKs

2006-06-25T03:38:00Z

The new Virtual Earth Interactive SDK does a great job making the platform discoverable and easy to use. The SDK is organized by the things you want to do, and each of those things is correlated to a live running sample, source code, and reference documentation - all one tab click away. Go check out http://dev.live.com/virtualearth/sdk/. Also, ignore all the old code I posted; version 3 makes it simple to add custom pushpins.

Better Search via Application Context

2006-06-22T02:11:00Z

Typing keywords into a search box is tedious – especially when most of the relevant search terms are staring you in the face in the application you’re using! For example, as we close the fiscal year, I’m reviewing budgets, purchase orders, invoices, and expense reports while correlating them with quarterly line item projections and cross-team charge agreements. All of these line of business apps should provide a simple search function based on the current state of the app.

Viewing a list of open purchase orders for a specific budget code?
Search all spreadsheet projections and email exchanges that reference that budget code.

Approving an invoice from a vendor?
Search my email exchanges with that vendor.

Confirming that a purchase order is using the right budget code?
Search the intranet for explanation of the budget codes associated with my cost center.

Etc, etc...

Jeremy posted five minute video explaining how to use Windows Vista Search from within your application. The video doesn’t illustrate the context-based search examples above, but at least it shows the simplicity of embedding search into your application.