My Thought Cache

Contact Backup Service

Joseph — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 23:02:37 +0000

I have recently decided to update my skill set to include mobile and cloud software development. During working hours I get paid to be an enterprise software developer using C#. Over the past few weeks I had been contemplating a decent project that I could do to grow my mobile and cloud skills. I finally decided on what I will build: A contact backup system for smart phones. I don’t have a catchy name for it but it basically does the following:

Automatically send the current contact list on the mobile device to the cloud-based service.
The cloud service merges the existing and new contact list information.
The cloud service offers a simple web page which list the current state of the contact list. Probably lists the QR code of each as well.

That is it. Nothing particularly earth shattering but it has the parts I want to get dirty with: Mobile platform, cloud platform and most importantly: it will be useful to me.

A high level diagram of the product looks like the following

I particularly wanted a simple backend so that I could easily work with multiple cloud platforms (Google AppEngine, Azure and Amazon). The mobile side is also simple so I can easily/quickly move it to iOS, Android and Blackberry.

At the point the first up are Google AppEngine and iOS. As I make progress I will write more about it. Definitely more often that I have been in the past.

Swarm Intelligence and Real Time Scheduling

Joseph — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 03:58:20 +0000

I was recently given the opportunity to learn about applying swarm intelligence optimization techniques to real-time multiprocessor scheduling. I gave a brief presentation outlining the project I implemented. Here are the slides for that brief presentation: Swarm Intelligence Project.

Peanut Butter Jel-ly

Joseph — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 18:37:40 +0000

This is always funny. Who can listen to this and not bounce your head to this.

http://kuoi.com/~davidcb/sounds/banana.swf

Interesting Links

Joseph — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:33:08 +0000

Here are a couple of posts that I found interesting:

Marc McNeill: I agree wholeheartedly that people and organizations (corporate or otherwise) should question their dependencies. As a consultant, I make sure that I have done those best practices which will make transition easy for the support group. If I find myself as a dependency then I havn’t done a good job. http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2010/08/31/indispensable/

Seth Godin is always a good read. This post is particually interesting to me because of this statement: “Corporations don’t have a conscience, people do.” That statement has so many implications in various contexts. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/08/the-corporate-conscience.html

How To Interrogate Your Daughters Date

Joseph — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:34:07 +0000

Rating: R

This snippet from Bad Boys 2 is one of the funniest parts of the movie. I laugh out loud every time I see it. It’s really funny to me because I have a daughter and I can totally relate. Every dad should interrogate their baby girls date this way.