Goodfellow.net

Dear Ms. Wendy Portillo

2008-05-29T22:20:00.004-05:00

We, the parents of children, have decided to take a vote to see "whether we are ready" for you to join us in the "being an adult" category.

The vote has come in at ~80,000,000 to 2 that you are not qualified to be a teacher, leader, or even participate in any way, shape, or form with our children.

Please move to somewhere very remote and isolating. If we find you near one of our children you will be forcibly removed.

-Parents on the Internet.
Police report reveals teacher's side of incident in which boy 'voted' out of Port St. Lucie class

Mac's Rule

2008-05-10T23:11:00.004-05:00

I don't necessarily like the song, but the way the video is made is very cool. I'd like to see someone do something like this with a machine running Microsoft Windows...but I never will.

Basic Browser History in Flex 3

2008-05-08T22:06:00.002-05:00

I just wrote a quick Flex 3 technical post over at the StudioNorth Interactive blog. I'm not sure if folks read this blog or that one, but I wanted to make sure both were aware of it.

You can read it here: http://interactive.studionorth.com/2008/05/08/basic-browser-history-in-flex-3/

-Andy

Who's got talent?

2007-12-27T14:07:00.000-06:00

Today is a day of mixed emotions for me. As my company StudioNorth grows we strive harder and harder to "hire tough". To reach the long-term goals set by our senior leadership team we can't afford to do any less than get the best possible talent. But how can we be sure we are getting the best and brightest? Yes, our company is growing, but is that because of something else? Maybe the industry is causing it? Maybe Web 2.0? Maybe adding new disciplines like strategy to our offerings?

Well today is confirmation to me that we are on the right track with the talent we are attracting. You see today Adobe told me so. They have reached into our operation and stolen one of our Senior Interface Architects. How do we know when we have the right people? When other people want them. And not just "any other people" will do. I mean when folks like Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Google want them.

I'm mixed about the whole thing for several reasons. I come from a big company background. I know that StudioNorth is a better place to be. We have a top notch health insurance plan, a constantly growing and changing environment, a family like and giving culture, and anyone can walk in and talk to management whenever they want, including the CEO. Working at StudioNorth now is more like working for Macromedia right before they bought FutureSplash Animator. Yeah, it's the place to be.

Another reason I'm mixed is because now we have a new challenge. We are attracting and attaining great people, but now we have to figure out how to keep them. At this point in time we don't have the big money net to swing through the market so the younger less experienced folks will have a hard time not seeing the seemingly greener grass. We are maturing though, dare I even say becoming sophisticated? Holding on to them will come with time.

Finally an open note to Adobe, Microsoft and Google. I've been a staunch proponent of Flex, AIR, .NET 3.5, LINQ, SQL Server 2005, Google Apps, Google Analytics and more. StudioNorth has been key in introducing them into the enterprise of Fortune 500 and even Fortune 100 companies. Yes, each and every technology product I just mentioned and more. SO LEAVE MY PEOPLE ALONE, or else I'll take my ball and go home. ;)

Technology Leadership Redshift

2007-12-12T09:52:00.000-06:00

Time for a physics flash back. Who remembers what "redshift" is? Hint: it has something to do with speed and light. Remember? Yeah, me neither. Wikipedia to the rescue!

If a source of the light is moving away from an observer, then redshift (z > 0) occurs

and as that observer approaches the speed of light the observer experiences what's called Time Dilation. Time appears to be moving faster for the observer than it is for others around that observer, relative to that observer.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift

From my experience, as the observer, the same thing has, is and will continue to happen in the technology fields. My interest is specifically in how it occurs using technology for interpersonal and business communication.

I hear people say that we are moving into another "more controlled" dot com boom. The truth of the matter is we are just constantly experiencing technology redshift. All the time, in almost all technology related fields. It's when we forget that time is constant and redshift is only a relative observation that things begin to come unraveled.

As we become involved on the edge of new technologies sometimes it appears we are moving faster than everyone else. Adopting things sooner... being innovative. Sometimes we are, sometimes we are not. I use that manifestation of the redshift phenomenon to check and re-check myself and my company to be confident we are positioned correctly. When things loose their redshift I need to re-evaluate. I've found one thing to be true, if I am not experiencing redshift then it's a guaranteed that we are not innovating. Also, by the same context, if things ever begin to appear to have a blueshift I need to re-evaluate and re-engineer immediately.

I love change so living with redshift is very comfortable to me and I can recognize it well. It's not for the faint of heart, but it keeps me on my toes!

The Social Web

2007-11-03T15:34:00.000-05:00

One of the strongest concepts behind Web 2.0 has always been "community and participation". We are seeing it quickly take over everywhere. Think of del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, etc. They all have one thing in common, they are social sites where the community can actively participate.

They are so open that each site has it's own API (except MySpace currently). They expose their data and services for me to engineer something that augments both their site and my site or application. A small little culture of Mash-Up applications and events even popped up. At these events programmers take the separate API's and mash them together to create something that combines two or more things like say Twitter and Flickr. Even I got on bored with Whirrl.com by mashing Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, Twitter, and Jaiku into a BlackBerry GPS service.

Funny how you lose site of the obvious so easily. Facebook brought me back to reality very quickly. Although the API's allow the data and some functionality to be used, in reality they are all different. For Whirrl.com I didn't want to stop with Twitter and Jaiku. I wanted to add it to any social service with a "status" or "activity" message. The obvious first choice currently is Facebook of course. However when I started to dig into the Facebook API I quickly realized that, unlike Twitter and Jaiku, this would not be a simple task.

You see Facebook touts it's developer friendly API as one of it's strengths. The truth is that those interfaces are there for one purpose only, and that's for Facebook. As a developer the only thing that I can do with the API's relatively easily is add things to Facebook's site. If I want to use their API's to add some Facebook features to my own site or application things suddenly become much more of a pain.

In my opinion Facebook has literally taken the Web 1.0 concept of a walled garden and brought it full force into the Web 2.0 world. That leaves a seriously bad taste in my mouth. So for right now, any Facebook integration is on hold.

But never fear! Google to the rescue! Google has just released some of their API's for what they are calling OpenSocial. Unfortunately it's currently missing the Activities Data API, which is the one that I want. I'm sure they will release it soon though. The whole point of OpenSocial is to defeat this disparate API problem all over the Web right now. From the OpenSocial web page:

OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds.

Many sites, one API

Common APIs mean you have less to learn to build for multiple websites. OpenSocial is currently being developed by Google in conjunction with members of the web community. The ultimate goal is for any social website to be able to implement the APIs and host 3rd party social applications. There are many websites implementing OpenSocial, including Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.

In order for developers to get started immediately, Orkut has opened a limited sandbox that you can use to start building apps using the OpenSocial APIs.

Sounds very promising, we'll see how it plays out.

Adobe Hosted Services

2007-10-05T13:29:00.000-05:00

This week at Adobe MAX 2007 I attend a session about Adobe Hosted Services. They've named it SHARE and you can find it at http://share.adobe.com/. Currently the service touts the following features:

Share your documents online
Send documents without e-mail attachments
Embed your documents in web pages
Access your documents from anywhere

I've been exploring it a little bit. It's a Flex front end on what looks like a Java Struts web back end. Not that any of that really matters. What matters is how we can use this new service and what makes it different from other hosted services.

For starters I can share a URL to a document or even embed it. Check it out.

That pretty slick stuff. But wait, there's more. It's developer friendly. Check out the API at http://api.share.adobe.com/

Vacation Project - Blog GEO Beacon

2007-08-01T19:51:00.000-05:00

This week I got a much needed break with my family. We went up to the Wisconsin Dells for the first time. This place is crazy! My wife says it's like a "family" version of Las Vegas. I absolutely agree.

Besides hanging out at the pool and on the water slides with my kids I also had a project in mind I wanted to complete. I blogged a few weeks back about my BlackBerry 8830 and I still love it. One of it's cool features is a built-in GPS chip set.

Since my kids are still young (under 4 years) I have plenty of time in the evening where my wife and I are imprisoned in our hotel room. My plan was to build three applications to allow my BlackBerry to communicate my GEO coordinates to my blog here. Like so:

The first application would reside on my BlackBerry. It's job is to communicate my device and GPS data to a server application to be saved at a given interval. I am sending and saving things like:

Device Id
Latitude
Longitude
Altitude
Distance
Speed
and Time

The second application sits on the server and saves the data sent to it into a database table. It also returns a geo-coded RSS feed when requested. The geo-coded RSS feed for my device is found at http://whirrl.com/geo-feed/851582166.

Lastly the third application is a maps mash-up (in this case Google Maps) to show my last known coordinates on my blog.

Everything seems to be working ok so far. I've placed a little map on the right gutter of my blog that shows my last know coordinates.

All in all this was a pretty interesting adventure. I had to remember back about 7 years to my Java days. The BlackBerry uses a Java based operating system so the applications that run on it are written in Java. Then for the server-side I got to play around with some fun PHP and Apache Rewrite Header goodness. Lastly for the maps I fiddled and tweaked JavaScript and a tiny bit of CSS.

Hmm... the more I think about it I really touched a lot of different technology during this vacation! Let see... to build this handy little system I had to touch the following languages and syntax:

Java
PHP
SQL
JavaScript
CSS

and I had to touch these operating systems:

Macintosh OS X (10.4.10)
Vista
Windows Server 2003
BlackBerry OS 4.2.2

and I had to work with these integrated development environments (IDE's):

NetBeans
Enterprise Manager
Query Analyzer
TextPad
TextMate
Blogger (eh, I'll count it)

Phew, good thing I don't specialize! Based on interest level, in a future article I may publish the step by step how-to of the whole ordeal. If you want to know more please leave a comment below.

The Automobile Facet of my Brand Identity

2007-07-25T19:43:00.001-05:00

I have been loyal to the BMW brand going on about 7 years now. I currently drive a 2001 BMW 525i and before that I drove a 1995 BMW 325is. Why am I loyal? It's all about where I came from. My parents drove them throughout most of my childhood, initially swearing by their quality and their engineering. They drove them for as long as I can remember, literally driving at least three of them into the ground.

One thing I noticed as time passed was the common weaknesses in the vehicles. After about 5 years they were consistently in the shop about every 6 months. All of them started out as wonderful examples of engineering. Unfortunately that engineering proved unable to stand the test of time. The problems were always the same; electrical system faults and environmental system bugs.

Now that my BMW 525i has exceeded it's 5 year limit I am seeing the same things happening. Over the last month my environmental controls have become gummed up to the the point the buttons are very hard to press. I think it might have something to do with the Starbucks Cinnamon Apple Cider I spilled on the dash, but that's another story.

Last week the fan button literally fell off when I tried to turn the fan down which brings me to my fun story. I called Karl Knauz BMW, the local dealer where I bought my car, to bring it in to be fixed and they had me schedule an appointment for last Monday at 7:30am. At that time I would bring my car in and they would give me a loaner.

Well guess what... I forgot all about the appointment. I made it from my cell phone while driving and did not write it down (yes, their number is programmed into my BlackBerry, that should be sign enough I guess).

I got no reminder call, not that it's their responsibility to remind me, but for goodness sake, even Mario Tricoci calls to remind me the day before for a simple hair cut. So I just dismissed it thinking I saved a little money for the month. I'll reschedule in a week or two.

That is, until... They called me today to ask how my appointment had gone and if I was happy with their service! Woah. What kind of craziness is that?! I'm dreading the bill I'm sure to get in the mail for this ghostly service that they can perform through some kind of remote telekinesis.

So now I have another issue with BMW, a loss of confidence in their service. (BTW, this is the second time I have gotten wacky service from a BMW dealer. Once when I took my 325is into Patrick BMW Schaumberg they literally lost my car)

Um yeah, that brand equation's not really working for me anymore. Now I need to find a new brand that I trust. I need a vehicle that is built with quality and engineered for the long haul. I also need something that I will truly enjoy to drive. An environment that will energize me towards innovation on the way to work everyday and also help me to relax and shed stress on the way back home each night.

Will the real Ultimate Driving Machine please stand up?
(go ahead, you know you want to sing that phase to the tune of Slim Shady)

Time to start saving my penny's because I think I've found it. It's the Infiniti M35x. It's engineered by Nissan so I know it's made well. But here is the kicker for me, the interior. It's nothing short of a work of art. Crafted for luxury and underpinned with technology. That got Andrew D. Goodfellow branding written all over it. Go to a dealer and sit inside one quietly for 60 seconds. I dare you not to fall in love with it.

2008 will bring a new brand direction into my life and I will no longer tie my personal brand to BMW. Oh but wait, what will my parents say when they find out?! Well one of their BMWs' just died on them about a month ago and they replaced it with... a Toyota RAV4.

The Blackberry 8830 World Phone

2007-07-16T21:30:00.000-05:00

Today my new Blackberry 8830 World Phone arrived. Thus ends my experiment with non-digital time managment and planning.

I have been a Blackberry user since the devices first came out. I purchased mine (or rather my company did) at the JavaOne conference around 1998. I remember watching the RIM guys at the conference and finding it amazing how fast they could type with their thumbs. I learned to type the same way pretty quickly.

As I progressed in my career I used the Blackberry to it's fullest potential. It worked great for email (duh) and calendaring, but it was horrible for note taking. I hated the fact that I had to have a notebook or tablet to take notes on. I really wanted only one device for everything.

About a year ago I began to notice that all the other officers in my company and all the good managers, directors, and C-level client folk I interacted with used Franklin-Covey planners to manage their lives. I figured I must be missing something. So I decided at that time to try something new and abandon my Blackberry, buy a Franklin-Covey planner and just use a regular cell phone. I chose a full day view planner and the Sanyo Katana.

Now, after about a year I find I still do all my time management online thanks to Googles slick SaaS tools. Despite how hard I tried I never found the secret to blocking out time using a pencil on paper. I found myself using my Katana phone in ways that I never thought the little device capable and I got very good at T9 and SMS text messaging with it.

Then it happened. July hit. I went into my drawer to retrieve my Franklin-Covey July notebook to replace June in my planner and guess what. No July. Hmm... Do I go give Franklin-Covey another $100 or so for the next 12 months of notebooks so I can fit in with my less than technical peers and clients?

Forget that garbage. It's time for me to get over it. I now realize that, despite common opinion, there is such a thing as a technically savvy executive and I fit the bill quite nicely thank you.

So from now on as I track performance, measure billable efficiency, and decide on what market direction to create or follow I'll also be typing like a crazy man with my two wonderful opposable thumbs. I'll also use a Moleskine as a backup for more free hand things.

Long live the Blackberry, may it become the device that unifies all devices into one. Down with paper notebook planners, may they become 100% post-consumer material and find a better use containing my morning coffee.

Back, I'm back...

2007-03-02T21:03:00.000-06:00

Ok, so Whirrl worked well for a while and had a big user base in China. However the darn spammers over ran it and YouTube took over everything. That's life. However it's time to try again! I've relaunched Whirrl.com with spam blocking now. I'm working on enabling video uploading and recording now.

Wow, I just noticed my last post here was almost a year ago to the day. Strange.

So I'm off to the Flex360 conference next week. Hopefully I get some Apollo stuff there to bring back to StudioNorth but I'm not holding my breath.

We'll see how we do with Whirrl.com this time...

Goodbye Blogger - Hello Whirrl!

2006-03-05T18:04:00.000-06:00

So for the 0.2 people that monitor this blog from time to time this will be my last post here. I'm moving my blog over to http://adg.whirrl.com (Whirrl). Whirrl is a video blogging network that I've been working on in my spare time since November 2005. It's starting to work well so that's where I'll hang my hat now. I've already got a bunch of posts there so hopefully I'll read some of your comments there soon.

-Andy

p.s. If you want your own Whirrl blog they are free. Just go to http://whirrl.com/

Remote Whirrl Video Test

2006-01-27T22:32:00.000-06:00

Let's see if we can post a video from whirrl.com into blogger. Looks good!

Goodfellow.net goes Flex

2005-07-15T13:39:00.000-05:00

Ok, I haven't posted in forever. I've been insanely busy working on the CDW Virtual Tours (more on that later). Now thats live I took a quick minute to update my server with Flex and move the site in that's been waiting for months on my harddrive. I borrowed some of the examples like the Slideshow and Blogreader to get started quickly. Actually this site has been "done" for months now but I hadn't gotten a chance to setup Flex on our server until today. So... here it is, enjoy. Feel free to leave me any feedback.

http://www.goodfellow.net/

Isaac as a lion... GRRR!

2004-10-30T12:10:00.001-05:00

Isaac as a lion
Originally uploaded by 80g.

We dressed Isaac up as a lion for halloween this year. Yesterday we took him out to see his great grandma and grandpa Hamer in Byron, IL. His great uncle Tom and great aunt Denise were also there. Tomorrow we'll take him to see his grandparents and our friends. He looks too cute in that costume, especially with those two bottom lion teeth.

File Transfer with Central and Flashcom

2004-10-27T17:10:00.000-05:00

In my opionion this is great news for Macromedia Central. It's amazingly easy to build a p2p system that now has the benefits of e-commerce and sand-box safety. We'll have to see, but I think this type of thing should cause word of Central to spread quickly accross the Net. I know it's also possible to do this type of thing without Flash Communication Server, say using the AOL AIM/ICQ API's, although it would be less effecient...

File Transfer with Central and Flashcom

Recipe Finder 1.2

2004-10-26T22:48:00.000-05:00

I just launched Recipe Finder 1.2 yesterday. I've upgraded it to use the new Gemini 1.5 / Central Shared v2 components. I also reworked the meal planning section to be more user friendly and added a shopping list generator that combines planned meals and spits out all the ingredients to one shopping list. Check it out by clicking the button below!

Colorado Tornados

2004-10-06T09:45:00.000-05:00

Tornados 3
Originally uploaded by John Daharsh.

Wow, very cool shot of a tornado in Colorado. That must have been freaky to see.

Recipe Finder

2004-09-21T01:08:00.000-05:00

Yay! I finally launched my first Macromedia Central Application. It's a recipe finder and meal planner. I've been working on and off at it since June. That almost 4 months! I'm gonna try to see if anyone will buy it for $10. I also increased the trial from 15 days to 30 at the behest of my wife Cris. :) Give it a try!

Text of Zell Miller's Speech at RNC

2004-09-01T21:25:00.000-05:00

Wow, I just watched this speech at the RNC and... wow. It's a nice break to see that we actually have some honest, courageous and God fearing Democrats around. With more politicians like these we wouldn't have to worry about terrorists referring to us as the Paper Tiger any longer. This man is an inspiration.

John spotting at sunset

2004-08-22T23:20:00.000-05:00

John spotting at sunset
Originally uploaded by John Daharsh.

Now this a cool photo. Hopefully I'll get a chance to go out to Colorado and Nebraska soon and shoot with John.

Which Epidemic?

2004-07-25T19:49:00.000-05:00

I just saw an advertisement while I was watching VH1. It was about how AIDS and HIV was an epidemic that we had to do something about. There has been so much money and so much press dedicated to how to prevent this disease when the solution is so simple. Stop spreading it people!

Not to be insensitive, HIV is a terrible, horrible thing. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. However seeing the ad did make me think. The ad mentioned how 20+ million people had died from HIV, I assume it was placed in there for shock value. It failed to shock me. Only because I know that 41+ million people have died because they have been aborted.

Why should we worry about this disease called HIV when we are killing ourselves without the need for any disease at double the rate? Think about it, which is the worse epidemic???

AIDS.com: AIDS/HIV Facts

US Abortions Statistics

westward expansion

2004-07-09T11:23:00.003-05:00

Recently the company I work for, StudioNorth lost one of it's best developers, John Daharsh, to Colorado. That's the third developer in my career I've lost to that stinkin' state. I guess it's only a matter of time before all developers either migrate to CO or CA. We'll see how long it takes me to get to one or the other.

In John's career at StudioNorth he has taken ownership of many large name clients like BP, Hewitt, and Cardinal Health. His last project at the Studio was the site you now see when you visit the Addison Public Library. He will be missed.

Anyway, if you are looking for an excellent independent web developer/designer give John a buzz. Otherwise check out StudioNorth.

The Adventures of Safety Man!

2004-06-08T14:42:00.000-05:00

Finally the game that I have been working on for the Rubbermaid Commercial Products division of Rubbermaid Corp. is done. It's an isometic tile-based game done completely in Macromedia Flash. Although it was one of my more fun projects it was a challenge. I can understand why game developers are a different breed. Give it a try if you have the time, let me know what you think.

The Adventures of Safety Man!

Codes:
During gameplay - "andyg" my head; "chris" the designers head; "handy" my friend Darryl's head

Have Fun!

Address of Theodore Roosevelt to the Assembled Panama Canal Force

2004-06-07T09:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday the pastor of my church quoted the Roosevelt Panama Canal dedication speech during his message. Sometimes I get so frustrated with people today when they voice their short-sighted opinions of the Iraq war and Bush administration. This is a good truth to remember... "They will have their say and they will go downstream like bubbles; but the work you have done will remain for the ages". In the years to come we will see the good brought about and the evil prevented by the Bush administration... and the opponents will be forgotten.

November 16, 1906 - "Why, gentlemen, there never was a great feat done yet that there were not some men evil enough, small enough, or foolish enough, to wish to try to interfere with it and to sneer at those who are actually doing the work. From time to time, little men will come along to find fault with what you have done; to say that something could have been done better; that there has been some mistake, some shortcoming; that things are not really managed in the best of all possible manners, in the best of all possible worlds. They will have their say and they will go downstream like bubbles; they will vanish; but the work you have done will remain for the ages. It is the man who does the job who counts, not the little scolding critic who thinks how it ought to have been done."

--Theodore Roosevelt