When I came across a coalescing operator, my head exploded (ok, that may be a bit over-the-top…).

Coalescing operators have a fantastic usage (particularly in C#) with nullable objects.

Example time!

Lets say we’re posting data to a form.  The form contains a name (which is an optional field) and birth year (another nullable field).

Assuming we have a “Person” object, that takes a string and integer for a birthdate, we could code that up as follows to handle the null-case of those objects being passed in.

public void doThis(String? name, int? birthyear)

{

Person p =  new Person();

  // option #1 - if statements

  if(name!=null)

p.name=name;

  else 

        p.name = “Bob”;

  if(birthyear != null)

        p.birthyear = birthyear;

  else 

        p.birthyear = 1902;

  // option #2 — ternary operators

  p.name = name!=null ? name : “Bob”;

  p.birthyear = birthyear != null ? birthyear : 1902;

  //option #3 — coalescing operator

  p.name = name ?? “Bob”;

  p.birthyear = birthyear ?? 1902;

}

How about that for a super quick example? I’m not sure how useful this is, but it seemed like a cool little tidbit of information to come across that I was previously unaware of.  Maybe it’s time I start reading up on the changes between C# 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0.   If I start doing that, I’ll need to look in the differences between Java 6 and 7 (I have 5 and 6 down pretty well), and don’t get me started on PHP 4 and 5…

Ah well, that’s all.  Hope someone on the interwebs finds this useful!

I’ve been curious about making money on the Android marketplace for a while, and have read a few other blogs and articles about such information.  I’m inclined to start fresh.

The question I’m setting out to answer is: what does it take to make $100 by making an Android application.  I plan to launch three different types of applications.  Each of these applications will be in a distinct category within the marketplace.  Each app will also be infused with as much analytical information as I can possibly gather.

The soul purpose of the analytics is so that I can share some pretty charts and graphs about what my apps users are doing.  What types of users respond to advertisements, what types of users are willing to pay an up-front fee for apps, and what in-app purchase mechanisms work well for an audience, etc.

If this were a scientific test, I would do three different apps in three different categories and do a comparison based on that information.  Due to the fact I’m only composed of two hands and one brain currently, I’ll be a little bit more limited than a team of developers looking to answer my rather basic questions (for only $100, too). 

My hypothesis is that in-app purchases will be more difficult (i.e. not as fruitful) on the Android Marketplace than the Amazon Marketplace.  Further, I  think advertisments inside of apps will be almost useless in terms of monetization.  Lastly, I think the freemium / premium app versions will be the best bet.  Give a user a decent ad-enabled free app, and remind them that they would really like to drop a buck or two for the ad-free version at a later date.

I started some small development on these apps this weekend, and after I get some UI help from a friend, will launch them with Google and Flurry Analytics.  From there, I’ll wrap the apps up, launch them in the marketplace, and report back accordingly.

As long as my coworker does a good job of hiding it from HR, he’s set.

Check out the Amazon Cattle Prod Review

When a customer wants to consider purchasing a product, the easiest way many sales veterans might advise would be to get the product into the customers hands.  At stores like Best Buy, Costco, and many cell phone retailers this is where they go insanely wrong.  They get a “model” of the product into the customers hands.  It’s a plastic rip-off without any functionality.  In the age of touch-screen-enabled devices and the mobile-app economy, the former ideology of placing a cheap plastic prototype on display for customers to see is a bit absurd.  How many people would actually walk in and say “Man, this plastic container fits my hand perfectly, so the phone’s operating system, applications, screen, etc., must all be great in the real thing.”  Nobody.

I’d propose fixing this problem by having the likes of LG, Samsung, Apple, Palm (HP) and all the other carriers get a device to put on display that actually works.  Maybe lock it down or disallow the addition of apps in the various models, but the days of a plastic model being the means for making a decision on a new cell phone are long gone.  With increased projections for cell-phone sales this year, it might be time to put some actual sales tactics to use for some of these stores.

I’ll first mention why I do not care for Comcast’s HD-DVR. I don’t like monthly bills—and when a monthly bill is absolutely necessary, I want it to be as low a fixed cost as possible. I pay $40/month for internet via Comcast, which is quite speedy, and when I had the HD-DVR, that cost went to $90.00 for the first six months. Six months later, I saw my bill jump to $120.00, and being a person that doesn’t watch a massive amount of TV, I called and cancelled. The actual DVR lacked many capabilities, and was annoyingly complex. I was paying for HD-service and DVR capabilities, yet when searching for programs 1/2 the screen is taken up with the Comcast logo and new movies available for purchase. I’d prefer to see a full-page listing of as many channels and programs as possible, but the capability to remove advertising is nonexistent. Further, I don’t want to manually delete every show just to free up space on my box. I’m slow at watching programs, and 2 weeks is often not enough time to get me caught up on my shows, and so I get far behind on my DVR. It fills up, and in order to free up space, I have to go through and punch delete (a 3-step, slow process) on every show I decide I can do without seeing.

TiVo HD and Series-2 DVR’s have the same user interface, but their hardware specs differ. One can do HD, the other cannot. One has tons of storage space, the other has 80 gigabytes (which is still alot!). One costs $300.00, the other you can snag used for $30-40 bucks on eBay. After toying with the HD version, I decided on the HD box because of my interest in watching HD content.  There is one caveat with my choice—I had to get a cable card from my local cable company.  When I inquired about the little cards, I had some interesting responses from Comcast—I told them it was going into a TiVo, and that I wanted the “M-Series” card (M-Series = Multi Stream, I believe).  An “M-Series” card allows a user to watch one channel and record another at the same time.  The “S-Series” cards (or Single-Stream) only allow for one channel at a time.  The difficult part of this situation was that, in requesting the “M-Series” card, the phone support tech at Comcast was convinced that I’d have to pay to have a tech come out and do an “advanced install.”  I asked if I could just pick up the card and put it in myself (it really can’t be that hard, can it?), and was told that it was out of the question.  I caved and paid the one-time set-up fee for the tech to come out.

When the Comcast technician arrived, he had an M-series card in hand, popped it into the back of the TiVo, made a phone call to send an “Init” request to the mothership, and left.  I know what you’re thinking, and I blame Comcast (not the technician) for believing that I was too inept to plug in a card and make a phone call.  After reading the forums online, I found out that maybe it was best to have the technician come after all because there are users having great difficulties with CableCards in some cases.  Ah well, at least I got my HD service and TiVo up and running in under a week.

Well, there you have one more rant. Eventually I’ll find time to go back and proof read one of these, but that day is certainly not today.

I’ve got some positive news—my television picks up over-the-air content quite well, so I now have about 25 channels (everything from G4, HGTV and Animal Planet to local programming). I was thinking it might be time to consider getting a TiVo DVR. Then I started thinking it might be worthwhile to compare the features of TiVo to that of Comcast’s DVR.

I believe in this day and age, everything should be about HCI—Human Computer Interaction. If you don’t have an awesome, clean, intuitive user-interface, your product and user-base will eventually disappear. I firmly believe that Comcast’s DVR’s, if they weren’t subsidized by the cost of cable, would all be headed to the landfills because no one would want to pay for such a clunky device (even though most people do, they just don’t notice it popping up on their cable bills).

I’ve played with three DVR devices: Comcast’s HD-DVR, TiVo’s Series 2-DVR, and TiVo’s HD-DVR. There are pros and cons to all of them, and it’s notable that all devices have dual-tuner capabilities, but one device has a warm spot in my heart…

I’ll first mention why I do not care for Comcast’s HD-DVR. I don’t like monthly bills—and when a monthly bill is absolutely necessary, I want it to be as low a fixed cost as possible. I pay $40/month for internet via Comcast, which is quite speedy, and when I had the HD-DVR, that cost went to $90.00 for the first six months. Six months later, I saw my bill jump to $120.00, and being a person that doesn’t watch a massive amount of TV, I called and cancelled. The actual DVR lacked many capabilities, and was annoyingly complex. I was paying for HD-service and DVR capabilities, yet when searching for programs 1/2 the screen is taken up with the Comcast logo and new movies available for purchase. I’d prefer to see a full-page listing of as many channels and programs as possible, but the capability to remove advertising is nonexistent. Further, I don’t want to manually delete every show just to free up space on my box. I’m slow at watching programs, and 2 weeks is often not enough time to get me caught up on my shows, and so I get far behind on my DVR. It fills up, and in order to free up space, I have to go through and punch delete (a 3-step, slow process) on every show I decide I can do without seeing.

TiVo HD and Series-2 DVR’s have the same user interface, but their hardware specs differ. One can do HD, the other cannot. One has tons of storage space, the other has 80 gigabytes (which is still alot!). One costs $300.00, the other you can snag used for $30-40 bucks on eBay. After toying with the HD version, I decided on the HD box because of my interest in watching HD content.  There is one caveat with my choice—I had to get a cable card from my local cable company.  When I inquired about the little cards, I had some interesting responses from Comcast—I told them it was going into a TiVo, and that I wanted the “M-Series” card (M-Series = Multi Stream, I believe).  An “M-Series” card allows a user to watch one channel and record another at the same time.  The “S-Series” cards (or Single-Stream) only allow for one channel at a time.  The difficult part of this situation was that, in requesting the “M-Series” card, the phone support tech at Comcast was convinced that I’d have to pay to have a tech come out and do an “advanced install.”  I asked if I could just pick up the card and put it in myself (it really can’t be that hard, can it?), and was told that it was out of the question.  I caved and paid the one-time set-up fee for the tech to come out.

When the Comcast technician arrived, he had an M-series card in hand, popped it into the back of the TiVo, made a phone call to send an “Init” request to the mothership, and left.  I know what you’re thinking, and I blame Comcast (not the technician) for believing that I was too inept to plug in a card and make a phone call.  After reading the forums online, I found out that maybe it was best to have the technician come after all because there are users having great difficulties with CableCards in some cases.  Ah well, at least I got my HD service and TiVo up and running in under a week.

Well, there you have one more rant. Eventually I’ll find time to go back and proof read one of these, but that day is certainly not today.

The problem I was running into was that only one outlet was of enough quality to support high-speed internet—the same one the digital cable box was plugged into. That creates quite a bit of congestion in terms of wires mixing around in the TV stand. When I realized I was spending $100/month on cable TV and Internet, more than all my other bills combined (yes! you read that correct!), I decided it was worth it to, yet again, live without the TV. I did this for about 3 months a year ago. The difference was, at that point in time, I didn’t have a TV, just a computer.

Here’s what I’m thinking, I’ll save approximately $40/month by cancelling cable and snagging the fasters Internet connection speed. That $40 will go to a long way—I can go to a movie once a week every month, get popcorn and a drink! Or, I suppose I could put that money towards my daily cup of coffee—that’s three weeks of coffee paid for! Maybe I could put it towards my savings account, or invest it in something cool. I could use the $40/month to get a Sprint MiFi plan and then have the internet with me everywhere I go. I’m not sure what exactely I’ll do with the spare change—granted it’s not a bunch, but $40 x 12 months = $480. If I go without cable for a year, I can buy myself a pretty awesome gizmo next summer.

So, you may be thinking, what are you actually gonna do with the money??? I’ve decided my time is more well-spent reading. But I tend to go crosseyed if I read for a long amount of time, so I’m investing that spare change in Audible.com. These guys are professional story-tellers, and I can put it on my portable music device and spend the wasted time in front of the tube exercising my brain for a change. Novel, you say? Exactely my point!

But, alas, I can still watch TV online. There’s always Hulu and the big cable network websites to check out, so I don’t think I’ll starve myself of mindless (though oddly enjoyable) entertainment anytime in the near future.