The images on my phone are now tiny and on the Tattoo are all jammed up together. This is caused by the fact that the images sizes are set to 100 pixels across. I’m going to have to rethink how the pictures are sized and use the display width to figure out the proper width for the images. In retrospect this is what I should have done in the first place, but hey, I believe in learning through doing and you can’t learn without making mistakes.

So, onto reading about density independence and the other joys of supporting multiple screen types.

It’s a pretty simple application that shows you some of the sights around the Isle of Man, together with a small description of what you”re viewing. I’ll be adding more functionality to it in the future, but in the meantime you can see it on the Market view on AppBrain: Isle of Man Views

Next feature I’ll be working on is to show a map of the photo you’re looking at.

Here’s an interesting read if you work in or with a team that’s responsible for building public facing systems. It’s a collection of the top 25 programming errors that have been responsible for most of the major security breeches and system outages over the last few years. Some of them are pretty well known, some a bit more exotic, but it’s always a good idea to make sure you’re aware of the risks you’re facing and familiarise yourself with them.

Here are the top 3, which I’m sure most people are familiar with:

• Failure to Preserve Web Page Structure (‘Cross-site Scripting’)
• Improper Sanitization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command (‘SQL Injection’)
• Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input (‘Classic Buffer Overflow’)

Get the whole list here: Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors

What I like about the list is that there’s a plain English description after each vulnerability (further down in the document), which you can use when explaining to non-programmers what the risk is all about. So next time your website gets hacked, you can use this to explain to your CEO exactly how it happened.

On a side note: My mate Noah maintains that the single Most Dangerous Programming Error was demonstrated to us by James Cameron in the Terminator series: Giving complete control to machines results in disastrous consequences which includes them ruling the world and going back in time to kill your mother. I have a plan for that though; if we take down the satellites they won’t have access to internet satellite services and therefore will get lost as soon as they’re out of Bluetooth range of each other. Reckon that will work?

1. Creativity
2. User adoption potential (or actual)
3. Revenue generation potential (or actual)

So, what did our entry consist of. Well, you might have heard of TweetRoll, the Twitter widget we had created some time back. We’ve used the Sponsored Tweets API to add functionality to the widget to automatically detect if you’re signed up to Sponsored Tweets. If you are, the widget will display a special section that shows your price per tweet and invites viewers to the widget to purchase a Sponsored Tweet. The new functionality embedded itself really nicely into the existing plugin and the upgrade will be transparent to all users.

What the marriage of functionality really results in, is to give Tweeters a platform to monitise their Twitter stream and to use their online presence to do so. The widget itself is available as a line of JavaScript, a WordPress plugin or even a Widgetbox widget. You can see the new functionality running on the left hand side of this blog; just run your mouse over the “Sponsor a Tweet” link in the TweetRoll widget.

Is it good enough to win? Well, keep an eye on the competition page and we’ll know in a few days. In the meantime, you can read more on the TweetBurn blog: Making Money with TweetRoll

It’s a special applet that shows you a 360 view of any object you want, a perfect way to learn more about an item. In this case the subject is a car; and it’s a perfect example of what can be implemented, for example, on a website dedicated to selling cars. But you can see the potential for any product you may want to sell online.

The website include instructions on how to produce the 360 views, which involves creating two points which are used to align all the images, and then taking photos at 15% angles around the item on display. This should give you 20 photos, but you can take more if you want to make the animation a bit smoother. Once the photos are taken, you can log into the 3D Bin website and use the website to upload your photos and make your video. Once the animation is created, the website will give you some code you can insert anywhere you want the 360 view to be displayed. You can use it on your website, on eBay or anywhere that lets you embed your code.

The beauty of this animation is that the person viewing the website has full control of the visual experience. They can spin around the object to their heart’s content, see it from any angle and even zoom in and out to examine individual details. It’s impossible to know exactly what someone is after, but this way, they can just pick antyhing they like.

Want to give it a try? Here’s a coupon for a 6 month trial: S1PWA-SNLYD-HIJQS-3K23T-NECVZ

Mike has agreed to share is knowledge with us, and will be giving a talk on the 3.5 language features, covering Lamdas, Extension methods and linq. I’m sure it will be interesting for everyone.

As you can imagine its been challenging finding a venue especially around TT week. A company in Ballasalla has kindly allowed us to have a room for the evening of the 23rd June 2009.

So the second meeting will be : Tuesday, 23rd June 2009, Global House, Station Road, Ballasalla. Its the office park next to the Ballasalla station. Should we say around 6:15pm.

See u there!

The presentation is being given by Mike Cromwell who is to Visual Studio what Tiger Woods is to golf clubs. Come listen to some new ideas and technique that can help you up your game. It will be a great geeky evening.

Clicking on TweetRoll Me give you your widget:

Thanks go out to @sherrilynne and @cpierret for the translations. You can tailor the captions to say anything you like too, you’re not just restricted to different languages. And you can also change colours and choose from one of the different sizes.

So, what else would you like to see in TweetRoll?

You might have noticed that my Tweetroll (in my sidebar) has been changing colours recently. Well, you guessed it, we’re almost ready to release the next version. The main thrust behind this new version has been allowing greater customisability and conformance. Hyder has been improving the design to make sure it works with more and more blogs. I’ve been working on customisation options, allowing you to select one of a variety of sizes, and specify whatever colours you want to match your blog.

Writing presentation widgets is interesting. You have no idea how hard it is to deploy something that lives in an ecosystem you don’t control, just like trying to merchandise Sferra linens in a food market. The great thing about the delivery mechanism we’re using (Javascript/CSS) is that it gives us fine control over what gets deployed and the ability to resolve issues instantaneously for everyone who’s running the widget.

So watch this space, there’ll be more info soon!

photo credit: erix!

We’ve just rolled out a new version of the TweetRoll widget which is the really cool Twitter widget you can alongside. With every luck you should see much difference but the widget will be better behaved with a greater selection of templates. Creating a Javascript widget that uses CSS for styling isn’t as easy as digital signage as it needs to live within an ecosystem you have no control over.

The great news is that we have some amazing plans of where we want to take the widget and the human-powered Twitter directory down at TweetBurn. So watch this space and go ahead, give the widget a whirl! You can grab it from down on the website, or if you’re using WordPress you can just installed the plugin.

I had an interesting experience today. I organised a talk for the BCS about development techniques, specifically unit testing, TDD and BDD. Granted, it’s a bit of a geeky subject, but hey, it is the British Computer Society, and a technical event was well overdue. We had a great turnout, but if I had access to something like live video streaming services we might have shared it with more people. Maybe it’s something I should look into.

I got immense satisfaction from organising the event, but what was interesting wasn’t the fact that I learnt something new. Yes, that was a bonus, but I got more out of the fact that I had organised something which the 40 or so people in the room had benefited from. The speaker was quite passionate about his subject, and I felt that his enthusiasm was well communicated to the audience; and that made me feel great. The funny thing was that I had expected myself to enjoy the talk for the technical elements, not for the fact that I had be instrumental in setting it up.

Does this means I’m turning no longer a geek and turning into a “people person”?

Update: If you’re after some technical detail, read Nathan’s post