Friday, July 15, 2011

My Monday thoughts on Thursday

  For more than three weeks I wanted to do a post on Monday called "My Monday thoughts". Too bad that on Monday I always have a lot of work to do and never got it done.
   Three weeks ago was about localization and ignorance. The italian "garante" for personal data privacy, Francesco Pizzetti, declared that smartphone are dangerous because they are always "tracking" us at any step. That, in my opinion, is pure ignorance. First of all somebody has to explain to him that GPS is a receiver not a transmiter and that having a cellular phone (any cellular phone) is having a tracking device (the mobile operator is logging the sequence of cells where your phone is connecting). So if you don't want to be tracked don't buy a cell. Than there is the question what is the mobile operator doing with this data? Almost all the time it is used for statistics, and then, when an authority asks for it they are used in investigations. Would I mind being tracked by Google, Apple or Microsoft? Not really and if this could help them make better products I would agree to do it. Does anyone ask you if you want your data logged by the mobile operator? I remember the guy that discovered the logged positions on his iPhone and everybody saw it like a big problem. But if anybody, besides Apple, arrives to read that data it means that he already has access at your emails, contacts, phone calls which are more sensitive than the log of your position. If you don't have anything to hide being logged or not is not such a big deal and in some cases could save your life (accident in the mountains for example) . On the other side the persons that usually vote against it are in parliament and some of them have things to hide.
    Two weeks ago  I had a week of holiday and I was in Nice, France. Wanted to blog a lot instead I just wrote an article about Mango, fixed some bugs for some clients, and ported the code for network printing on WP7 in order to write a blog post (still have to try it with the printer). I arrived at the conclusion that writing along with a glass of wine is much easier. The project that eats almost all my time at this moment is a Home automation/Domotic one. The client wanted the WPF:


and in my spare time (usually from 10pm-1am) , for a demo for Microsoft Italy, I've developed the Windows Phone 7 client that uses sockets:

  I intend to finish the application before the Mango Marketplace opens and have it as a free version with a fixed plant in our office.
     This Monday I was pretty sad because I had the occasion to go Microsoft WPC and present Boxfiles for Dropbox on stage and could not go. The problem was that my visa (I am romanian and need a visa) was not ready. Anyway I already have in mind version 2.0: multilingual , add Skydrive support in order to be able to upload files to dropbox from skydrive when mango arrives (this is the only way to get your modified word, excel docs back to dropbox). Also 2.1 plans: background download/ upload of files.
     Today I am just happy that my article was published. But one of the things I am more happy about is that in all this period I made new friends: Lorenzo Barbieri, Roberto Freato, Alessandro Scaradova, Matteo Pagani, Michele Locuratolo. It's good to feel part of a group that share the same passion for mobile development ( DotNetLombardia). A special thanks to Lorenzo Barbieri and Roberto Freato for making it happen. 

Getting back soon with the post on Network printing on Windows Phone 7

NAMASTE

No comments:

Post a Comment