When VPC Integration Components Upgrade Fails
So I never forget this again. When an upgrade of Virtual PC Integration Components fails,
Delete %windir%\system32\drivers\wdf01000.sys.
rwandering.net
The blogged wandering of Robert W. AndersonAuthor Archive
Educating Customers about Smart Meters
Katie Fehrenbacher at GigaOm has a good piece today about Why the Smart Meter Backlash Story Isn’t Going Away. Taking her points together (except for “hard times”, which the utilities can’t do much about), it really comes down to poor customer education. I’ll get back to the “People don’t like PG&E” point later.
In general, the utilities should have answered these questions for their customers before starting the changeover:
- How does a smart meter help the customer?
- Are meters read more frequently and/or read at finer intervals?
- What is being done to protect that data?
- Will the utility sell that data to others?
- (How) Will the utility provide that data to the government / law enforcement?
- How are the meters tested for accuracy?
- How do we know if my old meter was accurate?
- Why might my bill change and what do I do if I think there is an issue?
I don’t think it is sufficient to have a bill insert that explains these things. I have a new PG&E smart meter, and have never seen any literature about the smart meter change. I was out of town when PG&E came knocking at my door, and again I was away when the installer showed up. I might be able to go find some of this information on the PG&E site, but my point is that I don’t think I should have to go look for it.
And, I certainly don’t mean to pick on PG&E. I actually don’t know that “People don’t like PG&E”. My relationship with them has always been a good one. For example, some foundation contractors knocked my gas meter out of whack (and left the house with an audible gas leak), PG&E came right away to fix it and turn the gas back on. No charge, friendly and professional.
My personal opinion about the reports of inaccuracies is that it has a lot more to do with the meter being replaced than the new meter. I have talked with others in the utility business who have experienced this over the years (e.g., the customer is complaining about their meter, so we replaced it and now their bills have gone up). Utilities must know this in the metering department, so why didn’t they lead with this in customer education instead of just hoping it wouldn’t come up?
Tags: Smart Meter;Utilities;
BizSpark Graduation Offer
Wow.
Somesegar just announced that Microsoft is letting BizSpark Startups keep their production licenses after they graduate.
The program is designed to get people hooked on the Microsoft platform. They just removed a major hurdle for companies who were worried about what happens after they exit the program (not that the licensing issue goes away, mind you). Anyway, BizSpark was already a great deal for startups with a Microsoft bent and now it is a lot better.
Great move by Microsoft. The Microsoft developer story is truly a great one, and getting better all the time.
New EF Features #PDC10
One thing lacking from EF 4 is code first. They showed off a new CTP for Entity Framework that includes these features.
New API surface for simplifying EF: DbContext, DbSet<T>, more. DbContext gives a vastly simplified view at an EntityContext.
Code first can created a database automatically.
Of course, makes all sorts of assumptions based on conventions.
- Pluralization convention
- Infers references between tables into keys and foreign keys
- EdmMetaData table contains snapshot that is kept to keep code/database in sync.
- Attributes can be used to override conventions (e.g., StringLengthAttribute overrides the default length of 4000 for strings). In Microsoft.Data.Entity.Ctp System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.
- StoreIgnore
- DatabaseInitializer can force your code to be in sync. Automatically? Sounds dangerous, but they give you many options. Pretty cool, really.
- Conventions for inferring many-to-many relationships.
They added an OData service on top. OData is really cool. May change my itinerary to go to an OData session.
Other things:
- Enum support!
- Spatial
- Alternate keys
- TVF support!
- Migrations and deployment
- Perf & scalability
- Designer improvements (multiple models!)
- Better SQL generation
Available now in a CTP, 5th CTP out in another month. 2011 Q1 will be the first full release. Terrific that Microsoft is delivering on their out-of-band enhancements.
Tags: EF, Entity Framework, PDC10
#PDC10 Keynote Roundup
PDCs used to be something special, only reserved for big announcements or trends for Microsoft / Developers. Of course, they used to be bigger too – regardless of Ballmer’s calling this the biggest PDC ever. Holding it in Redmond, keeping it down to two days, limiting the attendees to 1000 (or so?) are all indicative of this PDC change. Will it be permanent? Who knows, but I do wonder why they held it now.
Ray Ozzie was sorely missed in the keynote. I can’t help but wonder if this PDC was put on just to show that Microsoft is still developer focused even with Mr. Ozzie’s departure. Ballmer did a fine job this morning, but without Bill Gates and now no Ozzie, it doesn’t feel the same.
Anyway, in terms of the announcements (i.e., the “reveals”), not too much and nothing I would say is truly big.
There are lots of announcements though, but mostly they are incremental additions to existing products (e.g., all the new Azure enhancements) or the completion of initiatives that have been in process for years (e.g., Dallas).
All together the announcements show terrific strides for the Azure platform making it all the more compelling.
Windows Mobile 7 is also pretty cool. I don’t know I’ll every use it, but I can see why a lot of people will. I think they’ll have a homerun here.
Here is a live view on my PDC10 tweets:
Angels don’t belong in hell
Robert Scoble makes some good points about Angel Gate in his post The secret hell of tech industry angel investors.
I mostly agree with what he says, except I think his underlying premise is wrong:
It’s good for entrepreneurs and good for users to have angel investors caught in hell. When they feel they have to spend more money to stay in the game, that’s good for all of the rest of us (press, users, entrepreneurs).
First, there really is a place for the classic angel – that is, the Ron Conway kind that is in it to help entrepreneurs succeed. I don’t think it helps anybody if these angels are “in hell.” The angels that Robert talks about are really VC in my book and frankly I don’t think they belong “in hell” either. Now some do, of course . . .
Second, more money thrown at entrepreneurs is not in and of itself a good thing. On some level it gets more people building companies, but does it really get more people innovating? Before the “dot bomb” hit, the same thing was happening in VC. Everyone and their brother formed a venture company and all sorts of things were funded that were patently ridiculous. That was a part of why the crash happened.
Tags: AngelGate
Google Apps becomes 1st class citizen
Thursday I logged into my Google Apps for Domains “manage this domain” page. I was surprised to find an option to migrate my account to work more like a standard Google account. I’ve complained about this in the past and am glad they’ve resolved it.
24 hours later and my GAFD account worked as a logon – and more importantly, my account was integrated – with just about everything. 14 hours after that and I even have my Google Voice account and phone number ported into my GAFD account.
Awesome.
A couple of points:
- Once you migrate your accounts, it will appear that you need separate browsers for your accounts. You don’t, you just need to read the following and do what it says for each of your accounts: http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=182343
- If you want to move your Google Voice account, fill out this form: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cjlWRDFTWERkZEIxUzVjSmNsN0ExU1E6MA. They say it could take two weeks, but for me it was 14 hours.
GAFD being more integrated is actually a great help because I’m now managing one fewer contact list. Now I’m just hoping for a Google desktop app that can take calls.
Thank you, Google! Chrome starts supporting WSR!
Some time ago I posted that I was abandoning Chrome until it supports Windows Speech Recognition (WSR).
I did go back to Chrome after some time as I became more embroiled in the different Google Apps services, but I have always found it irritating that speech recognition wasn’t supported.
Every once in awhile I try it again and found today an important improvement.
WSR does work in GMail now, albeit just with the “dictation scratchpad”, but that is a big improvement. It doesn’t quite work in Google Docs, but I’m hopeful they’ll get that working soon.
Thanks, Google!
BTW: I actually don’t know if this is Google’s doing or the result of a Windows patch . . . I hope it is the former, otherwise this is likely the end-state.
Silverlight to be announced for the iPhone soon?
Interesting announcement this morning from Apple: that non Apple dev tools can be used to create iOS apps:
In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need.
Nothing in the release mentions the browser. In fact the part that says “apps do not download any code” seems to imply not allowing RIA at all. This part is a bigger pain point for users.
But if the Silverlight runtime (full .NET?) or Flash can be used to built full applications, that is pretty cool.
904 days ago I posted Counting the days till Silverlight announced for iPhone. That sure was more than I expected, but how many more days now?
Tags: Apple, Flash, iOS, iPhone, Silverlight
No GV, then Ribbit-time
I use Google Voice for incoming / outgoing calls all day. Certainly I’ve had a few problems in the past, but it has worked flawlessly for me in the last several weeks – certainly since the GMail / Google Voice integration.
Mike Arrington says Google Voice Is A Hot Mess Right Now:
About 30% of my inbound calls have the caller muted – they can hear me but I can’t hear them. And outbound calls are worse. In the last 24 hours at least 75% of them failed completely. Either it never starts ringing, or it rings a couple of times and then dies. In fact, I called Google PR to give them a heads up on this story and that call failed too. As did a second attempt.
He goes on to say that sources tell him there won’t be a quick fix to the problem. Like I said, I’m not having any of these problems, but Google has sold me on the value of such a service – I would even pay for it!
So if this becomes a problem, I’ll probably jump over to Ribbit. They actually are a telephone company.
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