Ben Benner’s Blog

… the more they stay the same.

Let’s see, updates on what has been going on.

1) The Benner family has gotten a new bunny. I am not referring to Zoe, who joined the family back in June. I am referring to ‘Wash’, yup his name is Wash. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of Wash, but Gina has been snapping plenty of photos.

2) Gina got an early X-mas gift. She got a Canon Rebel EOS XSi. She has long been into photography, but her old 35mm Canon cameras need to be repaired. You might think that the reason I got her a digital is purely due to my love of technology, it is not purely due to my love of technology. She has really liked her digital cameras in the past and has scanned several pictures for web posting or reprinting. It just seemed like the best logical progression.

(note: Gina will tell you that I also got it for her, so that she would have a hobby. I prefer to think of it in terms of helping her find a creative outlet, mine lately is bread.)

3) I got a Mac. John bought a new Mac Pro (desktop) and cut me a great deal on his old 13″ Mac Book Pro. I have made the conversion from my HP laptop to the Mac. There are A LOT of things that I like (Exposé for instance - it is FANTASTIC) , but there are some thing that I am still getting used to. Like the fact that the ‘control’ key doesn’t do anything I want it to do anymore, meaning I have not yet finished the training myself to use the ‘command’ key yet.

4) Work has been extremely busy. There has been the normal fare, the day-to-day stuff that always takes up time. But we have also been knocking out a few new things here and there. One of our customer’s Oddcast had us work with them on a project for Whataburger. If you are from/in Texas then you definitely know the name, from what I am told other southern states have this unique burger chain as well, but anyone from Michigan will likely be a bit clueless.

The Whataburger project itself is a variation on a few different projects we have done for Oddcast in the past, but there was a spark of genius in the way in which we implemented this project that I hope to leverage for all future projects like it, in terms of fluidity and efficiency I would dare say that the underlying work represents a 10x increase in both areas. That project launched on Nov 9th and runs until Dec 21st, which reminds me the entire dev team will be heading to Whataburger to get ourselves an A1 Thick and Hearty Burger here either on Friday or Monday.

With the new team that I have assembled to work on web applications for the parent company, we launched a new web app for a customer. Unfortunately, I cannot state who that customer is at this time. I do want to note that Kevin and Daniel (the two senior developers on the team) played a big part in completing this project for a timely launch. We have found (and corrected) some bugs here and there, which is to be expected with as quickly as we rushed it into production. But along the way we have also made some enhancements that I feel really proud of. We will be re-using parts of what we have done on other parent company projects in the future.

The other notable project/product that we have been working has recently launched a pilot with a retailer that I think everyone would know the name of, but at least right now I cannot state who that retailer is. The product is CommentFunnel. (Jaduka blog post)

We took some of the telephony tech that we had created for Oddcast in the past and reworked it a little bit here and there to allow for a comment recorded by a customer can be immediately be emailed to the store’s management and we also provide a dashboard that allows for reporting and reviewing comments right on the web. As we move beyond the pilot phase we will be upgrading the telephony and the web aspects of CommentFunnel. We will look to add in text (sms) messaging for mobile couponing and look at transcription technologies to allow us to make the audio comments searchable.

5) I fixed Gina’s big red chair. Had I not lost the IKEA receipt for the chair, this item would read ‘I got a replacement for Gina’s big red chair.’ The Chair’s ’spring’ supports had broken away from the frame, causing you to sink into the chair. After much contemplation (which sounds better than, ‘I was being lazy’), I finally devised a solution for the chair. A square piece of 1/2″ plywood, some metal ‘L’ brackets, many wood screws, my trusty Black&Decker drill, some muslin and my Powershot staple gun. After a couple of hours in the garage, the chair was ready to be put back into the living room. I used the muslin and staple gun to replace the fabric covering the bottom of the chair, and unfortunately hiding my handy work.

I am sure there are mundane things that I could list out here, but I will leave that for another blog post.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

bdbenner apple, gina, mac, work bunny, commenfunnel, gina, Jaduka, mac, oddcast, update, whataburger, work

I do not follow many blogs, nor do I repost or comment on others blogs here much. I guess I am a bit anti-social even on the web. I am endevouring to change this, but that is not the topic of this post.

One of the few blogs I follow, Anil Dash, had a really good post yesterday, the title was ‘re:Vision’.

“…is it a good thing for the world if this thing takes off? My sense is that we’re more likely to get positive answers to that question if the teams that are making these products are led by an appropriately ambitious vision.”

Those closing lines of Anil’s re:Vision post, are what made me feel compelled to comment on his latest article. I have been paying more and more attention to product design over the last couple of years and I don’t just mean the style of the design, i.e. how cool something looks.

I have started asking myself whenever I come across a new product (or service), “What problem does that solve?” Because, a great product should solve problems (or at least more problems than it creates).

Rarely, have I thought about “is it a good thing for the world if this thing takes off?”

I think to looks a product/service and be able to really answer that question, you do need to look at the vision, move beyond what is quite frankly just the utilitarian aspect of “solving a problem”.

“When launching the new version of Amazon’s book device the Kindle, Jeff Bezos offered up the vision that the company has for the device: “Our vision is every book, ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds.” It’s a message that Amazon has been consistently advocating since the device’s initial rollout, and meshes nicely with the early Amazon vision of being the world’s biggest bookstore. “

The opening paragraph of Anil’s article. He quotes Jeff Bezos, who states the vision for the Kindle(2). I mean, in terms of solving a problem, if there is someone out there that truly needs access to every book ever printed and they need it in less than 60 seconds, then Amazon’s Kindle devices are going to likely be their best bet.

But, as I said, moving beyond the utilitarian aspect of “solving a problem” the idea of being able to access any book in the world in less than 60 seconds (for a nominal fee of course) is amazing. It would seem like the stuff of the future just a couple of decades ago, only the futuristic worlds of the Jetsons or Star Trek would allow you to have that sort of information at your fingertips.

But thanks in part to many of the other companies, some of which were mentioned in Anil’s article, like Microsoft and Apple that dream of instant gratification has become a reality. After reading books like “Where Wizards Stay Up Late”, “What the Dormouse Said”, “Accidental Empires” and lastly “Dealers of Lightning”, I would have to add companies like Xerox, IBM, Bolt Beranek and Newman, government agencies such as ARPA (later known as DARPA).

I also want to also mention Vannevar Bush for his idea of the Memex (proposed in 1945) having influenced J.C.R. Licklider who is considered one of the most important figures in computer science. Lick, as he was known to friends, wrote a fairly famous paper Man-Computer Symbiosis.

My point of all of that is that, the idea of being able to access man’s collective knowledge is something that has been around what seems like forever (in Internet time). And I applaud Amazon as taking up the vision where others have left off.

I am glad to see that there are companies out there that are doing more than just solving problems, they are trying to change the world. I know that the made for TV movie, Pirates of Silicon Valley comes to mind, in regards to a young Steve Jobs talking about how they are “changing the world, overthrowing dead culture” (paraphrased).

And of course, it just also happens to fit nicely into Amazon’s business plan to be able to give you access to any book in the world, with no physical delivery to deal with (or a warehouse, or physical returns, etc).

Latez

bdbenner Technology, amazon, apple, blogs, kindle amazon, anil dash, apple, kindle, microsoft, vision, xerox

I took the photos a while ago, but haven’t really had a chance to put together a post.

(One of my gifts has been taking up a lot of my ‘free’ time.)

I’ll let you guys figure out which one.

Last year my mother-in-law, Brenda got me a cookie basket (mmmm… cookies). This year, to be a bit more healthy I got a fruit basket (with a balloon). The basket was mostly melon, which I will have to admit I am not a huge fan of. I have on occasion eaten a few pieces of musk melon, but not a fan. So I let Gina eat the melon, she LOVES it. I really enjoyed the grapes, strawberries, apples (dipped in cholocate) and the pineapple stars.

Thanks MOM(-in-law)!!!

Our good friend John Hale got me a 4th Gen Nano, in light of the fact that Steve Jobs stole my last one.

Thank You John!!!

This brings us to what the wife got me for my birthday.

The first thing I will mention is that she got me a Neti pot. Which I actually used, after weeks of it sitting in my bathroom, in the box. I NEEDED it when I was sick to help remove the pressure from the sinuses that were giving me a serious headache.

The next thing she got me was pretty much the only thing left on my list.

The Nerf N-Strike Vulcan EBF-25 gun. It is a fully automatic, belt fed NERF machine gun.

Because of the fact that while shooting the dogs might be fun (namely the evil little black and white one), the fun would be short lived as the darts would probably mean costly trips to the emergency vet, the gun is staying at the office.

The gun is a bit louder than I originally was expecting. I didn’t think it would be silent, but not quite as loud as it is. However, the speed at which it can burn through the full 25 dart belt is quite impressive. But the noise makes it like a after 5pm toy. (unlike the revolvers which are more of a ‘not on the phone right now’ kind of toy)

I also bought myself a couple of gifts, Civilization Revolution (for the Xbox360 and the Nintendo DS-Lite).

The folks at Firaxis did a great job of optomizing the play control of the game for both the Xbox360 and DS-Lite. As a long time Civ player, I really enjoy the fast paced action of the game. They made certain parts of the game simpler, in a good way. Except one.

They only give you one Nuke. For whatever reason, as Jeremy can (and does) comment on, I seem to like games with Nukes. In part, because I actually use them. In Rise of Nations, I can be found to use them to help level the playing field. In Civ3 and Civ4, there were a few times I found myself at a relative stalemate (cold war if you will) and had enough cities with high production, to be able to build enough of a nuke stockpile to be able to hit every city of my computer opponent, in a single turn.

The one thing I will say about the nuke in CivRevolution, is that rather than simply eliminate the enemy units (and reduce the population of a city) as it does in the other Civ games, the Nuke in CivRevolution completely removes the city in question off the map, nothing but a smoking crater.

Well, I need to pack it in and get to bed.

Laterz

bdbenner Personal, XBox360, apple, ipod, video games 4th gen nano, birthday loot, civRevolution, fun fun, games, gifts, ipod nano, l00t, nerf, nerf vulcan gun