Just now, I was looking up some old Microsoft Word files that I had written a while back. After taking a little while to find the right ones, I double clicked and got this incredibly helpful message:
“This file was created in a pre-release version of Word 2007 and cannot be opened in this version.”
Of course, I had create the file in the beta release of Word 2007 and now that I have Office 2010, it wouldn’t open. You would think that this is slightly insane, considering Microsoft didn’t actually explicit warn me that any files I created in the beta version would actually not be readable later. (I wouldn’t have minded, I would just liked to have been warned.)
This is the interesting bit. My first thought was to email myself a copy of the file, and see whether Gmail’s Word document previewer could open it. Well …. turns out it did. With no problems. I then thought it would be interesting to look up the official “fix” for the situation and found this webpage from Microsoft Support telling me that what I should really do is either find the Administrative templates or I could edit the registry.
Seriously? Edit the registry? Just to read a Word file, which clearly, didn’t pose that much of a problem for a non-MS previewer?
Yeah. This is the reason why Google wins over Microsoft.
In Oct this year (2010), the Edinburgh University Hoppers Group which Maxim Cramer and I help to run, decided to run a female developers conference. We ran this conference for a variety of reasons which warrants a blog post all by itself, but the important thing here is that I’ve been spending an increasing amount of time thinking about is how to encourage non-coders to code.
There are two groups of people which I think could benefit a lot from learning coding.
In my startup life, I am lucky enough to meet a variety of people from different backgrounds – some in management, marketing etc – some starting their own companies for the first time. Unsurprisingly, most of them are web-based. But one thing that it always strikes me is how quickly people are willing for someone just to take over the design and development of their sites without they themselves, having a go. Of course I’m not saying that you should build the whole website yourself first – after all, it takes YEARS to train as a good developer – but having some sort of background understanding helps articulating your vision in their terms, helps to understand what is and what isn’t possible, and helps you to see where opportunities for innovation are.
The second set of people which I think would help are … well, less a ‘set’ of people, but more the world … unlike two or three decades ago where new innovative products were real, physical things; instead, opportunities lie increasingly in the digital space. However, rather than seeing increasing trend of students going on to study computer science at University level, we see the opposite. And don’t even talk to me about the percentage of women within that number too. Having spent many long hours discussing how this could be better resolved, one large part of the answer is the need to make programming fun and exciting.
So here are some awesome tools which you should look at if you are interesting in learning how to code, or if you’re looking to teach non-coders to code.
Android App Inventor is by far one of the coolest tools I’ve seen in graphical programming. The idea is, with a few simple clicks by dragging and dropping components, you can get a fully functioning app running on your mobile really quickly. Meaning that non-coders can get results, fast. And the ability to show off to their friends what they had built.
There’s a front-end (interface builder) and a back-end (“blocks” builder for the programming aspects). Certainly the blocks builder is the most important part, as it is a gentle way to start teaching common programming concepts such as loops, if-then statements and database access.
I’ve had a play with it myself. Its fun. Although it can get me frustrated really quickly because I just want to get around to tweak the code, that’s probably a sign that this tool is great for step 1, but once you’ve got to a reasonable level, its time to move on.
The idea behind Rails for Zombies is that you would be walked through the basics of creating a “twitter for zombies” through a series of tasks. In each section, you start with a simple task which gets built up to much more complex tasks. You get to learn about database programming prinicples, web development through ruby and so forth. Each player gets credits for solving a puzzle. Its meant to be fun and way more interactive than learning from a book or screencasts.
I can’t even explain how excited I am about the potential for Rails for Zombies and how awesome it is that gamification prinicples have FINALLY arrived in programming. I haven’t had a chance to play with it properly yet, but once I do, I’m certainly going to explore setting up programming workshops with Rails for Zombies.
Built by the awesome people at FUSE labs (brought by Microsoft), Kodu is a visual programming lanugage made specifically for creating games. In particular, its aimed at teaching children programming principles. (And in that sense, it has a lot in common with SCRATCH).
The idea is that you can design, build and play your own games through a graphical interface. You can create the (3D) environment, build your character and set obstacles and tasks that the character has to achieve. The best thing about Kodu is that (not only is it free) but that you can run games on your XBox360 meaning that it makes you feel like you’ve actually created a real game. For fairly little work, someone can create a simple, but very polished looking game.
Obviously this one is aimed more at children: of the demos I’ve seen most of them have been aimed at the primary school age. Kids can share and play each other’s games over the network, and they can also download numerous other games around. To me, this is the 21st century equivalent of creating your own board game (I created quite a few when I was little) and enables them to explore their creativity. For adults, you should definitely check out Wild Pockets (Shanna Tellerman, their CEO, actually came and at one of the Girl Geeks Dinners this year).
So there you go. Hope you have fun!
(And after all that hard work, here’s some humour to go with it …)
Today, Google announced that there would be a tablet specific version of android. Codenamed Honeycomb, the release is rumoured to have higher resolutions and APIs that are tablet specific. Apparently, according to Google – apps will know if they are being run on a tablet device.
There are some interesting multitouch gestures that Andy Rubin used to rotate and pan the map view.
Interestingly enough, we wonder whether this is just Google catching up to Apple (with a lot of the interface design principles being borrowed from the iPad). Also, we wonder what other features Honeycomb will have that are very specific to tablets besides the multiple frames/views. Google is famed for producing great, usable UIs, but I still have yet to be convinced about android. Maybe Honeycomb will sweeten me up on that one?
Last week, I presented at MEX on the subject of Multi-User, simultaneous use of touchscreens. I plan to write a much more detailed report of the conference in the up-coming week. In the meantime, here are some photos that I took at the conference:
“The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. There is an allure to enumerating how many women Don Giovanni slept with: It was 2,063, at least according to Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. We also have completely practical lists — the shopping list, the will, the menu — that are also cultural achievements in their own right.”
and later on notes:
“SPIEGEL: Why do we waste so much time trying to complete things that can’t be realistically completed?
Eco: We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That’s why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It’s a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don’t want to die.”
Considering I’m currently embarking on a big list of things to do, this article stuck a cord with me. In fact, my friends find it so amusing that I’m constantly recruiting them to complete things on the list that they’ve suggested that I should create a club for people who will help each other to create lists …
When I was compiling my list of 30 things to do, part of the emphasis was to do things that were quirky and different. By this I don’t mean doing something that was slightly different, but things that were really out there and unusual because I think everyone needs an adventurous side to them. If anything, the principle was that it would help me to be more creative by experiencing things that I normally don’t experience.
One of those things is Extreme Ironing!
Extreme Ironing – what and why?
Contrary to popular assumptions, the sport didn’t involve doing all your ironing at once, but instead, involves extreme sports enthusiasts ironing up various mountains, under-water or even skydiving. By its very nature, it’s supposed to be an oxymoron: combining two things that normally don’t go together – the thrills of mountain climbing and the mundaness of ironing – to create a shock value. And it is this surprise that most people get when hearing it, which makes it something that sticks in people’s heads (see Chip and Dan Heath’s book on Why Ideas Stick). Continue reading →
This week has been a rollercoaster! Just a quick update to say that I’m ecstatic that both Interface3 and Startupcafe were in the media. Interface3 was featured in both the Scotsman (last saturday) and the Times Education Supplement for Scotland (today).
Then as if that wasn’t enough, the wonderful Nicola Osborne pointed out that Startupcafe and myself got mentioned on the Guardian Tech Weekly podcast (which I listen to all the time!) this week. We got a mention around the 28th min, regarding the Startup Shuttle!
Number 13 on my list was to take a martial arts class.
Although I’ve played rugby for 10 years, I’ve always thought that martial arts was of orders of magnitude more aggressive and harder. Part of this image has been constructed by people ‘casually’ mentioning that people have broken necks or even died from Judo competitions (incidentally, this is mostly from people being thrown and breaking their necks – eek). So taking a martial arts class was something that I never thought I would do.
Thankfully, to help encourage me along, one of my rugby friends – Emma – offered to take me along to a Judo class (the other option apparently involved a cage). Emma had ‘played’ judo for a number of years and a fully signed up member of the black-belt club; but she had taken some time off the mat and hadn’t practised for a while. She signed us up to a class taken by one of her former coaches.
We turned up, to what was a room under-the-stairs of Meadowbank Stadium. It was padded on the floor and on the walls.
First thing was to get warmed up. So running around the room to begin. Then we progressed to a lot more rolling and tumbling – starting with doing forward rolls up and down the hall; wheelbarrows; leapfrogs and more rolls. We then moved onto practising a particular type of throw – which I could just about get the first two steps of, but shifting my weight quick enough to get a foot sweep was definitely a challenge.
Then we split into pros and beginners. We learnt about arm locks, throws and a hold with the two other beginners.
Judo was deinitely fun and I want to have more time to be able to do something like this on a regular basis: it gave me a chance to switch off. We’ll see how the best of the year pans out!
So, its been just over a month since I first made my 30 things to do before I’m 30 list. I’ve been talking about it quite a bit and generally, people think its a great idea. In fact, another one of my friends has just started her list too before her birthday.
I thought I would give a quick update to let you know where we are:
1. [completed - 2/9/2010]
2.
3. Ride a motorbike
4. Go rock climbing
5. Visit New York
6. Dye my hair - I’ve been talking about how I should go about doing this. The opinions differ from sensible colours like “brown/purple” to “if you’re going to do it, go blonde or bright blue”. Still haven’t made my mind up. But one thing is for sure. Looks like I should get it done professionally.
