ZoomInfo

I was just over at New Scientist when I stumbled on an article about a new web crawler, which has been developed by a Recruiting company. Basically, you can enter your name into the search box, and a few seconds later you have a resume, created from information available on the internet.

I have to say I was somewhat sceptical, how could they create a resume for me?? Anyway, I went over and gave it a try, and my results where as expected.
"No Web Summaries were found for Eddie de Bear".

Anyway, I was not going to let that stop me from givin git a good test, so I entered a few names of high profile people and was very suprised about the results.

For those of you like me, there is actually a link that allows you to build your own online resume, the only problem is they need your credit card details....... For verification only.... I guess I'm just going to have to try to get my name all over the web instead..

ZoomInfo

I was just over at New Scientist when I stumbled on an article about a new web crawler, which has been developed by a Recruiting company. Basically, you can enter your name into the search box, and a few seconds later you have a resume, created from information available on the internet.

I have to say I was somewhat sceptical, how could they create a resume for me?? Anyway, I went over and gave it a try, and my results where as expected.
"No Web Summaries were found for Eddie de Bear".

Anyway, I was not going to let that stop me from givin git a good test, so I entered a few names of high profile people and was very suprised about the results.

For those of you like me, there is actually a link that allows you to build your own online resume, the only problem is they need your credit card details....... For verification only.... I guess I'm just going to have to try to get my name all over the web instead..

GMail and my PDA2K

As I have written about before I have an iMate PDA2k (same as the XDAII) that runs over EVDO/CDMA. One of the many reasons I got this was so I could check my GMail account from work (It's not allowed due to policy...).

Anyway, I was somewhat disappointed when I first tried, and I got redirected to a screen telling me that my browser was not supported. That was a little over a month ago.

Anyway, I figured I'd check to see if gmail now supported more browsers... Guess what... It does... Now I can check my GMail from anywhere.

Oh, Yes, I am aware that I could use POP3 to access gmail all along, but that does not give me the same functionality for searching etc.

It's a simple 203 step process

A new article just popped up on MSDN. It's titled "Installing the December CTP Release of Visual Studio Team System". Basically, the article runs the reader through the process of installing the December CTP onto a single server. This involves using virtual pc to host each of the tiers in team systems.

Anyway, after having a quick scan through the 26 printed pages (it's much easier to just print it), I very quickly realised that the install process still needs a fair bit of work (I'm assuming the final release will be much easier to setup).

203 Steps is all it takes. This figure only includes the main steps. At the bottom, some of the steps have been divided into sub tasks. This would blow the number out even further..

I think I'm going to wait until beta 2 comes out before trying this on work time..

Optional Parameters

Over at Code Project there is a new poll about peoples opinions of Optional Parameters. I for one have always tried to avoid them at all costs, due more to a bad feeling than any good reason. Anyway, some of the arguments over there got me thinking:

Why don't I like optional parameters

After a sleepless night of debate with myself, I've come to the conclusion that I still don't like them.

The reason is simple. Method Overloading, or passing an object (the properties represent the parameters) can be just as effective as using optional parameters. I feel that this feature is really something that is not needed, and possibly has the ability to create less understandable code.

Less understandable... yes, by this i mean a situation where a method changes it's behaviour based on an optional parameter. This is a situation where a required enumeration specifying the exact operation to perform would be much better, and the code would be much easier to understand. An example is below:

    Sub Main()
        Round(1.23, False)
        Round(1.45)
    End Sub

    Function Round(ByVal value As Double, Optional ByVal down As Boolean = True) As Integer
        '... perform rounding    
    End Function

As opposed to this:

    Public Enum RoundingOperation
        Up
        Down
    End Enum

    Sub Main()
        Round(1.23, RoundingOperation.Down)
        Round(1.23, RoundingOperation.Up)
    End Sub

    Function Round(ByVal value As Double, ByVal operation As RoundingOperation) As Integer
        '... perform rounding    
    End Function

Sure it's more typing, but the code as far as I'm concerned is much more self documenting. Let me know your thoughts...