June 2010
1 post
Beeline Web UI
Since we submitted the Beeline app to the Store, we have been working hard on v2.0 of the web UI. We just shipped the new, improved version and you can find it at www.beelineapp.com.
All the functionality that is available in the iPhone app is now accessible through the browser, making it even easier to manage your mobile team.
We would love to hear from you if you have any questions,...
May 2010
1 post
Beeline on the App Store
The Beeline App has been approved and is available on the app store. Beeline tackles the problem of communicating and organizing a small mobile workforce. You can allocate jobs, map their location and provide a simple, realtime line of communication inside your team.
Check it out, we would love to hear what you think.
December 2009
1 post
Server Logging
As with any server installation, a massive feature (often overlooked) is the need for good server side logging. That is, the ability to work out what is being used, by whom and for how much. Even more important is to be able to find out what went wrong, in case of any (ahem) bugs.
We already have procedures and systems in place for our Windows installations, but as this is the first time...
April 2007
1 post
.NET Control C++/CLI Treasures - Toolbox Bitmaps
One of the most frustrating things I have encountered whilst developing C++/CLI controls is getting a simple ToolboxBitmap to work correctly! Yes, it’s ironic I know, to find that one of the first things (or the very last thing) that you need to do as a control developer is to get your graphic artist to design an icon for your control and then allow it to be displayed in the Visual Studio Toolbox...
March 2007
6 posts
1 tag
.NET Control C++/CLI Treasure Trove
Maybe this article should have been called, “.NET Controls - Things that trip you up” or “.NET Controls - Making your life easier”. Regardless, this is a small compendium of issues that recently arose whilst I was writing an Interop layer over some Win32 Windows and COM Objects using C++/CLI.
Essentially, the mini-project was to convert some Win32 windows that we use regularly for inhouse...
1 tag
Great Power, Great Responsibility
Microsoft Excel is undoubtedly an extremely powerful, compelling application and has often been described as a killer app for the Windows platform. It is no wonder as the spreadsheet paradigm is certainly the original killer app, and built on top of this foundation is a powerful array of functionality to extend and customize the Excel calculation engine. However, with great power comes great...
ASP .NET Pre-compilation
ASP .NET 2.0 comes with a handy feature called ASP pre-compilation. It is described in detail on a number of pages:
http://www.odetocode.com/Articles/417.aspx http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms228015.aspx
There is even an add-on for Visual Studio 2005 that can do the pre-compilation for Web Application Projects:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms228015.aspx
Pre-compilation
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4 tags
Javascript vs ActionScript vs Java
One of the fun aspects of life here at Cognethos is the number of different languages and environments you can find yourself working in. I’ve had projects in C++, C#, Java, HTML+Javascript, JSP, ASP.NET. Sometimes it feels like each month it is a new language and a new IDE.
Lately, I’ve been working on Craig’s port of the chart to Flash and ActionScript. This has given me a chance to compare the...
1 tag
Loki - Cognethos’ Application Framework
For the past few years, Cognethos has been using an application framework we call Loki to build most of our desktop applications. Traditionally these applications would have been built using a source code framework such as MFC or ATL - which are fine - but we had a few additional requirements that we wanted to be able to use in all future applications. For this reason we developed Loki which is a...
February 2007
1 post
3 tags
Mobile Development and HTTP
Developing software for a mobile phone is supposed to be a snap, especially when you use the Java2 Micro Edition (j2me). However, just a quick perusal at the sun or nokia development sites, you’ll quickly see that simple “one size fits all” solutions simply don’t exist. In fact, there is a well-coined phrase: “Write once, test many”, when it comes to mobile development. Even Google Maps for mobile...
2 tags
Introduction to CogChart
For the past 12 months or so I have been involved in creating yet another charting product aimed at the finance market. This will have brought the total number of financial charts that I have worked on to 5.
I hear you ask, “Why?”. The answer is simple. The finance charts that I have worked on in the past have been part of a complete package (either for Reuters Kobra, Telerate Active8 and the...