Rafael Mizrahi web log

Presenting at DLD Tel Aviv 2011

2011-11-06T08:30:00.000-08:00

DLD (Digital - Life - Design) is a global conference network on innovation, digital media, science and culture. It connects business, creative and social leaders, opinion-formers and investors for crossover conversation and inspiration.

DLD Tel Aviv Summit is one of the events of Tel Aviv Festival.

DLD hosts were kind to invite Rafael Mizrahi, CEO at Feng-GUI to present at the following panels.

1 November
14:30 - 15:15 Brain Machine Interface
Moderated by:
Dr. Rafi Gidron - Chairman, Israel Brain Technologies; Former Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Precede and Chromatis
Discussion:
Rafael Mizrahi - GarageGeeks; CEO, Feng-GUI
Amnon Demri - Engineer and Entrepreneur
Prof. Nathan Intrator - Tel Aviv University
Imad Younis - President & CEO, Alpha Omega

Rafael Mizrahi presenting at Brain Machine Interface

Pick a StartUp - Showcasing Israeli Start-up companies at DLD festival
Out of all the digital Start-Up companies registered to this event, thirty companies will be randomly picked out to pitch its idea and will have the opportunity to give a 5 minute presentation each to to the audience which will include VC’s, Angels, leaders and executives of digital community.

Moderated by:
Vladimir (Vova) Soroka - Global Technology Unit (GTU) Leader, IBM
Commentators:
Yair Goldfinger - Co-founder & CEO, newCo; Co-founder, ICQ; Founder, Dotomi
Shimon Shocken - Computer Scientist Professor, IDC Herzliya
Stephanie Czerny - Managing Director, DLD Media & Ventures, Co-Founder DLD Conference
Marcel Reichart - Managing Director, DLD Media & Ventures, Co-Founder DLD

Feng-GUI presentation at Pick a StartUp

Feng-GUI presentation at Pick a StartUp

GarageGeeks and Yossi Vardi Meet the Industry Leaders at DLD Tel Aviv

In the DLD festival the GarageGeeks and Yossi Vardi will host "Meet the Industry Leaders" party.
We are inviting the entire entrepreneur community to meet with the leaders of the digital media industry.

This event will create a unique opportunity for leaders of the industry to connect with the next generation of leading entrepreneurs and potential business partners.
Moderated by Dr. Yossi Vardi – Co-Chairmen, DLD Tel Aviv Summit

* Christian Hernandez Gallardo – Director, Platform Partnerships EMEA, Facebook
* David Lawee – VP, Corporate Development, Google
* Dan Powers – Global VP Sales and Business Development, Amazon
* Dr. Hubert Burda – Co-Chairmen, DLD Tel Aviv Summit
* Haran Sold – Chief Strategy Officer, Alcatel-Lucent
* Arkady Volozh – Founder, Yandex
* Bhavneet Singh – Managing Director and Executive VP, MTV International

Rafael Mizrahi presenting at GarageGeeks party

Mind Controlling the Angry Birds game

2011-03-28T06:29:00.000-07:00

Using emotiv neuro-headset to control the Angry Birds game.
Mapping mouse movement and mouse left button click using emotive EmoKey KeyMap and GlovePIE.
GlovePIE is used to map the emotive push to mouse left button click.

http://www.feng-gui.com/research/MindControlAngryBirds/

60 LEDs Guitar

2011-03-01T03:07:00.000-08:00

A Guitar which light LEDs to instruct you which string to fret and where to place your fingers.
The guitar was built during a 36 hours weekend at GeekCon conference.
Project members: Rafael Mizrahi, Yuval Sapir, Eitan Shefer

project page at :
http://www.feng-gui.com/research/60LEDGuitar/index.htm

GarageGeeks and Yossi Vardi hosting Marissa Mayer, Google

2010-06-25T01:03:00.002-07:00

in the series "meet the Industry leaders", the GarageGeeks and Yossi Vardi invite you to a special garage event, to meet:

Marissa Mayer, Google Vice President, Search Products & User Experience

Greetings: Yossi Matias, Director of Israel R&D Center, Google

The event took place on:
Tuesday, June 29, 20:30 at GarageGeeks HQ, HaPeled 40, Holon

* This is a User Generated Dinner, so, bring some snacks and drinks to share with others.

Rafael Mizrahi and Marissa Mayer at GarageGeeks

Marissa Mayer sign the GarageGeeks wall

Google Powers Awesome Iron Man Flight Simulator

2010-06-03T12:19:00.001-07:00

article via businessinsider

A team of virtual reality enthusiasts working in Israel has built a simulator that recreates the experience of flying in the Iron Man suit.

Via the Google Earth Blog, the system is built around the Google Earth Flight Simulator, which lets you fly around Google's 3D representation of the world. This program is fed into a set of virtual reality goggles, controlled by a motion-sensitive Nintendo WiiMote attached to the wing off of an unmanned aerial vehicle -- that is, a drone. The user is strapped to the wing and a propeller, and the whole rig is suspended in the air by a small crane.

It's very weird, way too elaborate, and incredibly awesome.

Enjoy:

Super-Size Boxee Box Spotted In The Wild

2010-05-06T09:56:00.000-07:00

originally posted by andrew kippen at Boxee blog

Over the past few months Boxee been working closely with D-Link to really get to know the Boxee Box. running experiments in Boxee lab in Tel Aviv, and well, the results have been astounding.

One Israeli researcher, Rafael Mizrahi, has developed a special bond with the Boxee Box… he feeds it, polishes it, takes it on walks, tucks it in at night. Rafi’s special “TLC” has dramatically influenced the Boxee Box’s progression from small standalone set top box to something much more…

This specific Boxee Box has grown to 5 times normal size. It’s shed its austere black exterior for Boxee neon green, and taken a bath in Boxee logos. Not content with a normal Boxee Box’s HDMI and optical audio connections, the Box has developed its own “limbs” in the form of speakers and an HD monitor. It even has an IR port for that sexy Boxee Remote. Here’s a picture of Rafi taking the “Boxeecus Maximus” out for a walk in sunny Tel Aviv.

If you see this Box in the wild without a handler, please report it to us immediately as it has been known to wander into local bars in hopes of picking up “content providers”.

Juke Boxee Box project page
read the engadget coverage

President Shimon Peres meets the GarageGeeks

2010-03-28T05:19:00.000-07:00

Israeli President Shimon Peres visited the city of Holon.
The president was meeting with high school students, visited the "Invitation to Silence" exhibition at the Childrens Museum, and met the GarageGeeks and Dr. Yossi Vardi at the MediaTheque .
GarageGeeks member and Feng-GUI CEO, Rafael Mizrahi, presented to the president's staff about of the underground high-tech scene and creative activities in Holon and Israel.

The first Israeli AWS User Group event

2009-12-02T02:45:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 8:00pm

This month we'll be hosting:

* Simone Brunozzi from Amazon EU, which will give a technical presentation about S3 internals.
* Natan Elsberg from RDV Systems, which will describe how they are using the entire AWS stack to enable 3D real-time collaboration on engineering projects.

In GarageGeeks fashion, we will have beer and light snacks on the event, but only if you bring some with you.

Yet Another Tron Costume

2009-11-04T02:29:00.001-08:00

Yes, there are few more geeks who made a Tron costume,
but none of them built a frisbee controller and played the arcade game Discs Of Tron.

More info and pictures at the Tron costume project page

GarageGeeks Sessions: Professional Apple Developers

2009-08-04T21:27:00.000-07:00

One Million Apple devices are in need for Developers

Missed the last Apple WWDC , no worries, GarageGeeks Sessions and iLoop inviting you to GGDS

Join iLoop’s round table discussion and learn about advantages of being an Apple developer in Israel.How Apple development scene will change with the arrival of the iPhone?

iLoop Panel Participants:* Eyal Redler- developer of Mellel The Word Processor for MAC OSX

* Gershon Kagan – iPhone consultant

* Adi Diamanat – strategic business consultant

* Sharon Carmel – serial hi-tech entrepreneur

Where: GarageGeeks HQ, HaPeled 40, Holon

When: August 6 20:30

** Beer would be served (if you bring some..).
** Don’t forget to update the wiki (http://wiki.garagegeeks.org/) with stuff/food/drink that you will bring.

More about iLoop

iLoop™ is the meeting point of the Israeli community for professional Apple Developers. It is operated as a non-profit organization, sponsored by its community and 3rd parties, iLoop™ is an independent organization and it is not related by any mean to Apple™ formal development activity.

Goals

Our goal is to develop and maintain a strong community of Israeli Apple developers to become a significant contributor or Apple applications, worldwide. By supporting this community, we wish to take part in Israeli success stories related to Apple’s platforms.

The Community

The number of Apple’s developer in Israel is estimated as 200 with a potential growth to 400 within 12 months. iLoop™ has already directly approached 100 developers. Each developer goes through a personal interview where his/her experience is inquired. Once approved, the developer is registered into iLoop™’s database and he/she becomes a member of the community.

This monkey goes to Boxee

2009-04-18T14:14:00.000-07:00

I guess that after 6 years of mono contribution during my time at Mainsoft.com;
Mono, is an addiction hard to overcome.

Working with plaYce.com an in browser 3D geographical games company, mono was chosen for cross-platform game scripting engine.

Now, "Carried away by the moonlight shadow", this monkey goes to Boxee.tv the social media center.

Lost in Conversion?

2009-03-16T03:26:00.000-07:00

Lost in Conversion? Unleash the power of web analytics to improve conversion rates.

Web analytics and conversion optimization is probably the biggest untapped opportunity within online marketing, particularly in a time of economic downturn.

Within this GarageGeeks session, you be exposed to best practices and new developments in measurability, user behavior analysis and proven conversion rate tactics.

Conversion is the New Black!
Itai Levitan, Co-CEO and Daniel Waisberg, Head of Web Analytics, easynet search marketing http://www.easynet.co.il

Google Analytics & Website Optimizer an Overview
Nir Bar-Lev, Head of Analysis Products, EMEA at Google

From Porn to AI in 20 slides.
Rafael Mizrahi, http://www.Feng-GUI.com

Reveal the mystery of what visitors are doing inside your webpage
Dr. Tal Schwartz, Founder and CEO, ClickTale
http://www.clicktale.com

NuConomy - next generation personalization and advertising platform based on advanced user level Analytics.
http://www.NuConomy.com

Session Summary
Itai Levitan of easynet search marketing.

- Mingle and Mangal

The event will take place on Thursday, March 12th, 20:00, at the GarageGeeks HQ (Hapeled 40, Holon).

Digital Innovators Summit

2009-03-16T03:20:00.000-07:00

Feng-GUI is invited by the 'New Media' Sector at the Israel Export Institute to present at the Digital Innovators Summit, Berlin.
We will be presenting at the "Innovative Companies: Analytics and Ad Management" Panel, with Microsoft Advertising and ClickTale.

VDZ, the Association of German Magazine Publishers, along with
www.emediasf.com and CeBIT are hosting the "Digital Innovators Summit" which bring together dynamic companies to present their digital media concepts and offerings.
The conference will be held on March 3-4, 2009 at the Deutsche Telekom Conference Center, Franzo"sische Strase 33a-c, 10117 Berlin, Germany.

Feng-GUI welcome the "Digital Innovators Summit" participants.
You can access the Dashboard using the Feng-GUI XNIP-Code (as username/password) found at the summit program.

Mozilla SDK hall of shame

2009-01-19T00:45:00.000-08:00

I use FireFox on daily basis, but this goes way beyond my acceptance as a developer.

The following is taken from Mozilla SDK:

The samples may not build any more on all platforms. There are plans to clean up the sample plugin situation - better organization, updated build systems, get them building on all platforms. However, even if one cannot build the samples they can still be very valuable as code references.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Plugins/Samples_and_Test_Cases

GarageGeeks Sessions: Developing Mobile Apps

2009-01-08T01:26:00.000-08:00

GarageGeeks are happy to invite you to a session about: developing mobile apps.

Whether you have your own site, simply an idea for mobile app or interested to learn about new trends in the mobile development world, this session is for you.
We will discuss mobile development platforms with emphasize on Windows Mobile, iPhone and fring.

The sessions will include live coding demonstration and real world case studies.
Agenda:
Windows Mobile: Every developer is a mobile developer
- Avner Mor, GM, Telecom and Mobile Services, Microsoft R&D
- Guy Merin, Dev Manager, Windows Mobile, Microsoft R&D

Developing community mobile applications with fring API
- Avi Shechter, Co-founder and CEO, fring
- Itamar Kunik, API Team Leader, fring
- Alexander Zaidelson, Mobile Product Manager, Wefi

Developing for iPhone - First steps
- Gershon Kagan, iPhone consultant

** Don't forget to update the wiki http://wiki.garagegeeks.org with
stuff/food/drink that you will bring.

When: 15/1/2008 at 20:00
Where: GarageGeeks, 40 Hapeled St, Holon
See you there!

mono song by Shlomi Saranga

2008-12-28T02:11:00.000-08:00

This is for all you mono guys out there.

New Song of the Israeli singer Shlomi Saranga - Mono, on his way for his next album, based to be a mix between Hebrew & Greek songs !

Cloud and Grid computing session

2008-11-25T08:17:00.000-08:00

In this Session event we will learn about Cloud and Grid computing, the new platform for software developers.
Pay per Use for on-demand software services.

November 27 20:30
GarageGeeks HQ

speakers:
* Avner Algom, CEO of IGT (Israeli Grid) www.grid.co.il
* Nati Shalom, Founder and CTO of GigaSpaces
* Moshe Kaplan, Founder, Rocketier
"how with 10 bucks NRE and Cloud computing you can build a start up and start running it"
* Shlomo Swidler: Developing on Amazon's EC2 Using Open Source Solutions

מדוע
מייקרוסופט http://www.microsoft.com/azure/default.mspx
גוגל http://code.google.com/appengine
סיילספורס http://www.salesforce.com/platform
ואחרים מציעים פלטפורמות פיתוח מבוססות ענן?

המודל הכלכלי של תשלום עפ"י שימוש חוסך הרבה כסף לצרכני שרותי התוכנה ומציע למפתחים פלטפורמות יעילות וזולות לפיתוח ופירסום של שרותי תוכנה באינטרנט.

בערב זה נלמד מהו מחשוב עננים, מדוע זה קורה עכשיו, וכיצד אנו יכולים להרוויח מתשתית פיתוח זו.

GarageGeeks hosting Yahoo! BOSS

2008-10-28T05:16:00.000-07:00

The GarageGeeks and Yossi Vardi invite you to a special garage party:
GarageGeeks hosting Yahoo!
"who's the BOSS"?

Yahoo! Search BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) Hack Day is making its way around the world and its coming to Israel!

You are all invited to learn about BOSS technology, ask questions and meet a group of Yahoo's leading product folks headed by:
- Bill Michels, GM of Yahoo! Search BOSS
- Ronny Lempel, Head of the Yahoo! Haifa Research Lab
- and lead BOSS product managers and engineers

The event will take place on Wednesday November 5th, 20:30, GarageGeeks HQ (Hapeled 40, Holon).

Yahoo! will also be hosting an extended developer-focused BOSS Hack Day on Nov 6th. For more details, please go to http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1223198. For more info on BOSS here visit http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/.

** Don't forget to update the wiki (http://wiki.garagegeeks.org/) with stuff/food/drink that you will bring.

Garagegeeks is sponsored by Giza VC and Carmel Ventures

[Tele]Vision! II a different viewing perspective

2008-10-18T02:17:00.000-07:00

The GarageGeeks sessions with Jeff Pulver and Dror Gill present:

[Tele]Vision! II a different viewing perspective

Following the success of the first [Tele]Vision! session held on April 2007, we will once again bring the best brains together to find out where TV is headed. The format of the session will be quite unique: Each presenter will talk about a topic for 5 minutes, and then lead a Q&A session and discussion for another 5 minutes. There will be no pitching and no company presentations, only pure vision and audience interaction. A peek into some of the topics:

- TV Gets Social (Again)
- From YouTube To Prime Time: It's All About Telling a Story
- Internet TV: Who Sells The Popcorn?
- Over the Top TV: Delivering Content to TVs over the Open Internet
- Investor Perspective: What it Takes to Start a New Media Company

The event will take place on Thursday, December 18th, 20:30, at the GarageGeeks HQ (Hapeled 40, Holon).

Meet France Telecom and Orange Developers Community

2008-08-26T02:16:00.000-07:00

GarageGeeks and Yossi Vardi hosting: Steve Glagow, Vice President of Orange Partner will discuss the program and tools available by Orange for its developers community. This is your chance to meet some of France Telecom members.
27 August, 20:00
GarageGeeks HQ, Holon
Please update the wiki (http://wiki.garagegeeks.org) with food/drink that you will bring and how you can help.

Mageeks with Lior Manor

2008-08-07T02:14:00.000-07:00

GarageGeeks is excited to host an event with the great magician Lior Manor.
In the event Lior Manor will teach us about magics, how magicians think, modern magics in the Internet, new ideas and other surprises.

The event will take place at the GarageGeeks HQ, 40 Hapeled St, Holon on Thursday August 7th at 20:00. After the Lior Manor's show we will have a BBQ party so please update the wiki (wiki.garagegeeks.org) with food and drinks that you'll bring.
We looking for a few volunteers to come earlier for setup and a few to stay last and help us clean.

Kick Ass Free Media Centers

2008-07-24T12:30:00.000-07:00

GarageGeeks and HomeTheater.co.il are happy to invite you to a special session about free media centers. Power users and developers will demonstrate some of the leading free media center applications for different platforms with diffierent capabilities -- movies, music, pictures, PVR, internet services, social features....

Our presentors (list subject to change):
* BOXEE - Social Media Center (Open Source) - Tom Sella and Idan Cohen
* MythTV - Homebrew PVR solution for Linux (Open Source) - Ran Nachmany (a.k.a Shed)
* Tvitty - Free media downloader plugin for Microsoft Media Center - Gil Hirsch
* XBMC - Cross-platform media-player (Open Source) - Yuval Tal (Tentative)
* MediaPortal - The open source media center for Windows - Tentative

When: 24/7/2008 at 20:00
Where: GarageGeeks, 40 Hapeled St, Holon

Please bring with you some snacks and drinks for the rest to enjoy. Please update the wiki (wiki.garagegeeks.org) with stuff that you'll bring.

GarageGeeks hosting Microsoft Strategic Trends

2008-06-25T12:32:00.000-07:00

GarageGeeks and Yossi Vardi invite you to another meeting with industry leaders.

Strategic Trends: Hosting Microsoft adCenter VP Alexander Gounares

As Corporate Vice President, adCenter and Commerce Platforms, Alexander Gounares is responsible for leading the engineering efforts for Microsoft's core advertising platform and commerce technologies (including payments, points, and subscriptions).
Before taking this role, Gounares was the Corporate Vice President for Corporate Strategy, where he was responsible for helping set the overall set the overall strategic direction for the company. Prior to that, Gounares spent three years as the technology assistant to Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, and he was also responsible for helping formulate and drive the technical strategy for the company. Gounares has been involved with many initiatives across the company, covering everything from search to workflow technologies to new Internet services such as Microsoft Virtual Earth and a number of yet-to-be announced products.

The event will take place on Wednesday June 25th, 21:30, Garage HQ (Hapeled 40, Holon).

IMPORTANT!!!: Please update the Wiki (wiki.garagegeeks.org) with food drinks that you will bring.

please tag photos and videos as GarageGeeks and HGLP

DisrupTV convention

2008-05-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

Feng-GUI for Videos will be demonstrate at DisrupTV convention (23 May). We will show how to predict people's attention in videos, commercials, and games.

Disrupt.TV is an un-conference intents to bring together Israeli and global Technology, content and creative talents that are taking part in creating the future of TV and media for sharing knowledge, exploring the opportunities and to spark new ideas about how TV and Video will change us and we will change TV.
It is aimed for people who are in the conjunction of Media, Content, Creative and Technology.

Sergey Brin at GarageGeeks

2008-05-17T15:33:00.001-07:00

The GarageGeeks and Yossi Vardi invite you to a special garage party event

"GarageGeeks hosting Google"

Sergey Brin, Co-founder and President of Technology at Google,

And
Meir Brand / Country Director, Israel
Yoelle Maarek / Director of Haifa R&D Center
Yossi Matias / Director of Tel-Aviv R&D Center
Riki Drori / Country Marketing Manager, Israel

The event will take place on Thursday May 15th, 21:30, Garage HQ (Hapeled 40, Holon).

Due to security and space limitiations, the event is private and closed. This invitation is for one person only and is not transferable. Please confirm your participation and bring a printed copy of this invitation to the event.

Reflections

http://thenextweb.org/2008/05/17/sergey-brin-about-the-israeli-start-up-scene-video/

http://hitech.themarker.com

http://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1000342562&fid=594

http://www.nrg.co.il/online/16/ART1/734/327.html

http://news.walla.co.il/?w=//1282861

KinnerNet 2008 personal contributions

2008-04-22T07:28:00.000-07:00

KinnerNet Un-Convention is always a blast. and this year it was an explosion of geeks, technologies, art, food, humor … you name it.

I will not be able to describe (like last KinnerNet 2007 review I did with the blog WMMNA) in one small post, everything that happened this year. So, please accept my apologies, while I am only sharing my own contribution to this art-tech frenzy.

As an artificial vision explorer at Feng-GUI and a GarageGeeks member, I was invited to KinnerNet2008, and here is my contribution.

WiiMan SuperHero

http://wiimansuperhero.blogspot.com/

WiiMan and DR. Yossi Vardi

WiiMan the Super Hero is a full action figure costume of a super hero that functions as a Nintendo Wii remote.
Having trouble playing Wii? WiiMan to the rescue.
This project combines Gaming, Technology and Useless Activity to the extreme.

The GarageGeeks along with Yael Hertzog built this custom that acts as a fully functional Nintendo WiiMote remote with buttons, Bluetooth, accelerometers, and an IR cam.

Gadgethon

Under the category of Gadget I bought, I showed:

Wearable social bookmarking accessories made by Limor Fried, AKA Lady Ada,

Digg Button , MiniPOV

Under the category of Gadget I made myself, I showed:

* React-a-Baby - A collaborative electronic music instrument for babies

* iLed - Wearable party led lights glasses which flickers between 8-16 Hz and amplitude is based on a microphone input. Hallucinogen state of mind, not included.

KinnerNet Business Card

Hagai Cohen requested my programming skills creating a souvenir for KinnerNet 2008 participants. A business card with a stretched font that is readable only when you tilt the card.

Dove Shit Dove

The garagegeeks built a huge Dove that sense if someone is underneath it and crap a small spit of Dove soap on him. I helped with the sound effects.

MAKE /Face workshop

A workshop conducted by Michael Shiloh (MakingThings, MAKE magazine and OpenMoko) and Hanoch Piven (www.pivenworld.com) I built this Fakir’s hours made out of computer parts.

Skateboard Session

Oren Zuckerman from IDC Herzelia and MIT's Media Lab organized a spontaneous Skateboard session.

It turned into an old dogs session, of myself, Nir Ofir (BlogTV), Meir Brand (Google Israel GM), Ohad PressMan (3D3R) and Gary Shainberg (British Telecom CTO) on the SegWay

DLD 2008 - Digital gets Physical and Social

2008-01-30T04:29:00.000-08:00

Our made man, Ohad Eder Pressman reached to Speaker level at DLD* 2008, lecturing about connecting the Physical and Digital worlds.

Digital gets Physical session include Kati London, Julian Bleecker (NearFuture), Neri Oxman, Ohad Eder-Pressman and hosted by Kevin Slavin

watch the full video at sevenload

http://de.sevenload.com/videos/kHp4S78/DLD08-Day-3-Digital-gets-physical/sliderPage/2

DLD conference is a blast of sharing ideas, thoughts and vision.
It was a great opportunity to meet GarageGeeks friends from all over the world:

Pabls Holman the international hacker, Digital Dan Dubno , check out their great presentation at DLD*

http://en.sevenload.com/videos/bAoG482/DLD08-Day-2-Educate-experiment/sliderPage/2

JB Jean-Baptiste Labrune who creates our next generation of interfaces, Régine Debatty editor of the art/tech blog http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com

Michael Reinboth from Compost records, Munich, kindly had a meeting with us and we discussed about various ways to integrate the GarageGeeks activities with the music industry in Germany.

Music Workshop - DIY Toy Music Controllers

2008-01-30T04:16:00.000-08:00

At this music workshop, we are creating modified toys music controllers that send their MIDI or Audio information to central audio and visual stations.

Reflections from this workshop

photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rafael_mizrahi/sets/72157603505744930/

videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4z5LKpeLZU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri4vpqTnP9A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd1H2T5uUqQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5raa-XiAFAo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S42jX6-n9K4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd1H2T5uUqQ

Date: 3 January 2008
Hosts: Rafael Mizrahi, Eyal ‘Person’ Sachar and Shira Miasnik

Schedule19:00 Garage Open: Prepare your "Basta".
20:00 Workshop agenda: Enough with Baby Einstein, its Baby Clubber time.
20:30 workshop starts

Who should come?
* Experienced music technicians and interactive designer.
* The event is open for everyone. You can join others (see /write in the wiki http://wiki.garagegeeks.org) by helping take apart and stuff the musical toys with gadgets.

The Garage will be wired with MIDI, and Audio cables. Each station can choose from several methods of communication to the central stations Hub. Your Toy output can be connected to the central stations or to your Laptop, and from there, to the central stations.

Ingredients: bring one or more of the followings:

A Toy (or some device that you wish to convert into a controller)

Sensors http://www.sensorwiki.org/index.php/Sensors

Sensor interface board http://www.sensorwiki.org/index.php/Sensor_interfaces

Parts - Assorted switches, potentiometers and other parts
http://www.anti-theory.com/soundart/circuitbend/cb04.html

Laptop

Cables:MIDI, LAN, Audio and converter accessories.

Tools: soldering iron, glue, etc’
http://www.anti-theory.com/soundart/circuitbend/cb03.html

USB Keyboard to take apart.

How to participate with low budget:
Here is a list of ingredients to build a Music Toy Controller for anyone who wish to participate but is not so skilled or equipped. A Toy wired with Keys from a USB keyboard sending keystrokes to a utility (MouseTrap) which translates them into MIDI messages, mapped by MIDI-OX into Ableton Live.
* Toy
* USB Keyboard to take apart (also a mouse can be used).
* Laptop
* Ableton Live Demo http://www.ableton.com
* MIDI utilities:
** Keyboard/Mouse to MIDI: MouseTrap http://www.humatic.de/htools/MouseTrap.htm
** MIDI virtual device: MIDI-OX http://www.midiox.com/?http://www.midiox.com/moxdown.htm
* switches, knobs, sliders to hook on the Toy
* wires, solder, glue gun.
* anything else you wish to do with your lovely musical Toy.

Examples of participation (there can be more variations):

Toy+MIDI board->central station.

Toy+USB Keyboard->laptop->MIDI device or Audio->central station.

Toy+phidgets->laptop->Audio->central station.

Toy->laptop->MAX/MSP with MIDI module->MIDI device->central station.

Toy+ Arduino with MIDI module->laptop or central station.

Recommended boards:

MIDISense (MIDI) http://www.ladyada.net/make/midisense

MIDITron (MIDI) http://eroktronix.com

Arduino (Multi Purpose board USB) http://www.arduino.cc

Phidgets (Sensors to USB) http://www.phidgets.com/index.php?module=pncommerce&func=itemview&IID=85

Pocket Electronic (MIDI) http://www.doepfer.de/pe.htm

Make Controller Kit (USB and OSC) http://www.makingthings.com/products/KIT-MAKE-CTRL

notes: Don’t buy a board without understanding what you are buying and how to operate it.
The board kits are pretty easy to build, but prepare them at home because it takes several hours to assemble a 50$ kit.

Home Preparations:

Get a Toy, disassemble it at home and look for ways to attach the sensors or potentiometers onto it.

Decide how the toy will function? (MIDI, USB, Phidget, OSC, etc')

Prepare your board and test it with the sensors or potentiometers.

A handful of parts (knobs, slides, etc') that you can hook on the toy, bring extra, maybe others can use them.
tour some electronic shops for such parts, or just take them from electronic junk you still didn't throw away.

Links

List of electronic shops which also sell sensors http://www.garagegeeks.org/blog/?p=78

List of music shops that sell music instruments http://www.act.co.il/index.php?action=shops

Reading material

MIDI
Essential MIDI toolbox
Use to monitor midi messages, send midi from your keyboard, map midi devices and more.
MIDI-OX
http://www.midiox.com/?http://www.midiox.com/moxdown.htm
MIDI-Yoke
http://www.midiox.com/index.htm?http://www.midiox.com/myoke.htm

OSC – Open Sound Control
OSC is meant to supersede the MIDI While MIDI requires a MIDI USB device, OSC communicate via a standard home or studio network (TCP/IP, Ethernet) or via the internet.

http://opensoundcontrol.org
http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu/OpenSoundControl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSound_Control

OSC to MIDI utilities
OCCAM (MAC OS) http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~c.ramakr/illposed/occam.html
OSCulator (MAC OS) http://www.osculator.net/wiki

USB keyboard or Mouse to MIDI or OSC

MouseTrap - MouseTrap lets mouse and keyboard act as general purpose Midi / OSC control hardware.
http://www.humatic.de/htools/MouseTrap.htm

More Links for Muse

http://www.act.co.il
http://createdigitalmusic.com
http://createdigitalmotion.com

GuitarHeroNoid at LeWeb3 France

2007-12-17T06:35:00.000-08:00

Kathy brooks from Six Apart and Loic Le Meur invited the GuitarHeroNoid to perform at LeWeb3 conference France.

Our man Tal Chalozin, the heronoid Puppeteer, went there and presented the garageGeeks activities.

Here is a video of the show

GarageGeeks Music Workshop No1

2007-10-28T00:59:00.000-07:00

Date: 25 October, 20:20(Garage Open at 19:00)

Some say that at the dark side of the moon, an area which we cannot see from earth, there are aliens. And these aliens are watching us. They have no interest in our technology, only in our Art.

Last Thursday, the first Music Workshop took place at the GarageGeeks headquarter.
Hosted by Rafael Mizrahi, Eyal Person Sachar and Uri Levanon.

Thursday, 10 AM, we started wiring the place with MIDI and Audio wires, creating a star shaped network for the attendants to come that will hook their equipments and laptops into the central main 4 stations that where in the middle of the room.

Agenda
The music workshops line intends to establish and maintain an open platform where music activity from different areas can be presented in one context across institutional and professional boundaries, in an
informal and progressive environment.

Or, in English, bring some musical instruments/Laptops to the
Garage and let's form a "GarageGeeks sound system" workshop.

19:00 Garage Open: Bring your instruments. Prepare your station.
people start to show up, some with laptops, some without, some with home made music controllers, drums, trombone, harmonicas, synths, keyboards, beer.

The participants started hooking up their equipment at the stations we prepared, and got to know each other.

Vibe faeries where floating in the air, and the crowd was full with enthusiastic and curiosity, what will happen tonight?

Abelton Live Training: quick hands-on training and how to edit music for dummies.
"Person" gave a 25 minutes quick-start field guide on Ableton Live, and after few questions, the Jam began.

Live with 'Abelton Live'
An Open Jam Session, bring laptops (with MIDI), and/or other musical instruments.
We will hook and sync them together.

21:15 We reached 10 Live stations all synced together with

MIDI and audio, playing samples and loops chosen almost randomly by the one who played on that station.
About 4 of the stations where public, so 2 you could join the jam and throw some drum-n-base loop or Madonna acapella into the musical wiki part.

For the next two and a half hours, the music stopped only for few times, choosing new rhythms, trying out some conductive-gaming ways to sort some order. Sometimes it was noisy and disharmony, sometimes it was super-cool and funky, but all the time, it was tribal, and fun.

Reflections
Thank you so much for participating.
Already started forming Music Workshop No.2

Flickr images taged with garagegeeks and ggwrksp

Tangible Kabuki at GeekCon 2007

2007-09-11T06:40:00.000-07:00

This was my GeekCon2007 project. Thanks to:
Project members: Dani Vardi, Tal Yaniv and Eyal "Person" Shachar
Performers: Dror Gill, Ayelet Yagil, Zvi Devir and Jeff Pulver
Photographers: Yaniv Golan and Alex Sirota

1. The TangibLaptop is a collaborative electronic music instrument with a laptop tangible multi-touch interface built by the GarageGeeks (Rafael Mizrahi, Ohad Pressman and Eyal "Person"). inspired by the reactable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReacTable

2. The GeekCon un-convention get-together is a creative gathering happening with a goal to form a critical mass of technically oriented creative talented people that will think up, create and deploy ideas. Or it’s a short summer camp for geeks… Take your pick.

1+2=3. Taking it one step further, instead of using physical small hand size objects, YOU will be the players in a musical part by wearing masks. Together, we create a musical part where you can take part by wearing fiducial masks detected by the Tangible laptop.

Reflections:
More Tangible Kabuki images at Flikr tagged with "Tangible Kabuki"

More GeekCon 2007 images at Flikr tagged with geekcon2007

Tarazi Per Capita Exhibition

2007-09-04T13:54:00.000-07:00

Few months ago I was honored to join the studio of the designer Ezri Tarazi.
My first contribution will be part of the 'per capita' exhibition in Tel Aviv from 06 - 27 september 2007.
As usual, image processing, motion detection, and users experiance.

The table that you see on the invitation is called a 'search table' which will be on show, was created by using the first few hundreds of images that were hit when the word 'table' was clicked in the google search engine. the images were 'sawn' to flat surfaces printed directly upon the aluminum plate, creating the overall table structure.

More images at flickr set
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rafael_mizrahi/sets/72157601398764901/

Get a Lijit Wijit

2007-08-14T08:18:00.000-07:00

Yep, it sounds like Will Smith. but this has nothing to do with "Gettin Jiggy with it",
its more about a custom "Google with it".

Its a free Search Widjet from Lijit to place at your blog/site that searches all the sites and content you author all over the web.

me like it.
ha ha... ha ha..

Novell wins Unix victory over SCO

2007-08-12T23:09:00.000-07:00

The SCO Group today took a major shot to the groin, when a judge confirmed that Novell still owns the Unix operating system copyrights.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=41632

Judge tells SCO to find its checkbook

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/11/novell_gets_unix_from_sco/

Sun UltraSPARC GPL

2007-08-09T00:58:00.000-07:00

More open source hardware from Sun Microsystems, Inc

Sun will provide the UltraSPARC T2 processor design to the free and open source community via the GPL license

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2007-08/sunflash.20070807.1.xml

Open source hardware

2007-07-31T02:58:00.000-07:00

Open source hardware is a term used for describing some of the MAKE projects featured at MAKE magazin, as well as some of electronics kits.
open_source_hardware at MAKE

Last week, Phillip Torrone and Limor Fried (Adafruit Industries)
presented the closing keynote, "Open Source Hardware: A Start..." at O'Reilly Media's Open Source Convention. Open source hardware is a term slowly working its way into many new projects and efforts, but what is it?

Phillip torrone and Limor Fried at OSCON 2007

and BTW, a month ago I sent Limor my dead TR-606 Roland drum machine for her to use as an organ donor.
In return, Limor sent me a bag of her goodies. weepee.

GarageGeeks hosting Google

2007-07-26T07:14:00.000-07:00

The GarageGeeks and Yossi Vardi hosted to a special garage party event under the title "GarageGeeks hosting Google"

For the last week, the GarageGeeks guys where cleaning and dusting up the place inside-out.
The back yard of the garage was also cleaned because the assumption which turn out right, was, that lots of people will arrive to the event.
Well, if the guys meet at the garage, even for cleanups, they had to pull some creativity into it. So, after finishing cleaning and painting the toilets, a printer was assembled on the door as a toilet paper holder.

21:00-21:45
Marissa Mayer (Google VP Search Products & User Experience), along with Prof Yossi Matias (Director, Tel Aviv Engineering Center Google) and Meir Brand (Country Director, Israel) enter the garage with 25 Google product managers and Google Israel employees.

They were sitting for 45 minutes while we gave them presentations about the un-conventions activities in Israel. Presentation included GarageGeeks, KinnerNet, GeekCon, EureCamp, MuseNet and so on.
http://www.garagegeeks.org
http://www.kinnernet.com
http://www.geekcon.org
http://www.eurekamp.com
http://www.themusenet.com

21:45-02:00
Marissa gave her keynote speech from Zvika's father forklift,

The party started, hundreds of Israel high tech enthusiastics gathered outside for drinks, barbeque and mingling.
As usual, the place was also equipped with games, Playstation, XBOX360 and Wii.
I was the bartender for an hour and a half, so I didn’t have to circle in order to mingle, people came right to me.

It was a Great.

Uri Levanon with a hacked iPhone
ohhh... just remembered, there where also some guys that didn't went outside, and preferred to stay at the Garage and do some iPhone hacking using mono running on iPhone BSD OS.

Flickr Images tagged with hglp and google
http://www.flickr.com/search/?s=rec&w=all&q=hglp+google&m=text

Jerusalem Rocks

2007-07-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

For the first time ever, an international lineup of artists is being brought together in Jerusalem to perform on one stage in support of peace and unity.
This musical event will take place on September 9, 2007 at Teddy Kollek Stadium in Jerusalem. Jerusalem Rocks will bring a line-up of artists from Israel and abroad, including The Commitments, The Black Eyed Peas

http://www.jerusalemrocks.com
http://www.jerusalemrocks.co.il

Mainsoft DevZone Blog

2007-07-11T06:01:00.000-07:00

The new DevZone Mainsoft blog is now live (http://blog.mainsoft.com).
check out the behind the scenes at Mainsoft community.

here is my latest geek contribution about Debugging .NET On Linux Using a Wii Remote

GarageGeeks round table

2007-06-21T02:04:00.000-07:00

This is a great GarageGeeks moment I will remember forever.
After demonstrating the GuitarHeroNoid at KinnerNet2007, we went to the gaming room, sat down, had beer, opened laptops, and start blogging and telling the world about the GuitarHeroNoid building process.
This was a victory moment of geek heroes.

Compile VB code with no VB run-time at ORCAS

2007-06-12T03:39:00.000-07:00

if you remember my post about compile VB.NET code without VB run-time

and... now it is official.
Microsoft added this feature in VB compiler version 9 at ORCAS Visual Studio 2007

"In order to make it easier to support these and other platforms, like .NET Compact Framework and the XBox 360, Visual Basic 9 has added significant flexibility to how the runtime is supported. One option developers will have is to not reference the VB Runtime at all. Obviously this means the associated language features will not be available at compile time."

http://www.panopticoncentral.net/archive/2007/05/31/20766.aspx

http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/06/VB-Runtime

Wii debugging Visual Studio 2005 and Grasshopper 2.0

2007-06-10T06:58:00.000-07:00

"Rafael Mizrahi (thats me), QA Manager at Mainsoft , who's also a known GarageGeeks member , plays true to his nickname, and hacked together a Wiimote powered Visual Studio Debugger. So the same remote that allows you to play Virtual Tennis in Nintendo Wii can now be used to debug and step into your .NET code, and of course, your Java code from .NET using GrassHopper, the developers edition of Mainsoft for Java EE." Roy Osherove.

this video is on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2598d7Pxlk

Announcing Grasshopper 2.0

2007-06-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

After more than 100 person years and $12 million of direct R&D investment, and the cross-compilation of 4.7 million lines of code from .NET to Java™, we’re celebrating the release of Grasshopper 2.0. This freely-available plug-in to the Visual Studio® 2005 IDE enables you to produce .NET Web and server applications that run on Tomcat under Linux® and other Java-enabled platforms, without having to rewrite your C# or Visual Basic code. Version 2.0 introduces support for Microsoft's® Visual Studio 2005 IDE, the .NET Framework 2.0, ASP.NET 2.0 controls, role-based security, and C# generics.

If you have no bugs - eat cakes

2007-05-08T07:55:00.000-07:00

Just take a look how Guy Cohen is happy that the exception dialog has start working again.
He made this cake by himself and brought it this morning.

Or, as the queen of England said:
If you have no bugs, eat cakes.

Intel think that ActiveX is Web 2.0

2007-04-22T04:26:00.000-07:00

Everyone appreciate Intel, and Intel want to take a part of the new things that goes around the net lately.

But I am sorry, marketing an ActiveX which gets information from Windows hardware as a new “Intel Web 2.0 technology development kit”
ActiveX is dead, in term of Internet, that’s too 90’s for me, and that’s not Web 2.0, guys!

Anyway, you may find some more interesting projects at Intel’s new wiki wiki, collaborate, blog, open sources, we are filantrops and geeks than ever web site, at
http://softwarecommunity.intel.com

Becoming a real Visual Basic developer

2007-04-13T15:52:00.000-07:00

14 years ago, at 1993 I started programming using Microsoft Visual Basic 3 (while teaching C; for all you language racists :)
During computers BA studios, I founded a company called InfoDesk with Nir Meshulam, and we developed small business applications for local offices. Rapidly creating windows application within minutes, connecting to databases with data binding controls, grids and using VBX (third party controls). Sorry for being geek but this was awesome.

Over the years I was working using lots of languages and technologies (C,C++), including VB4 (16bit and 32bit), VB5, VB6 and VB.NET

Few months ago I had the opportunity to lead the development of VB.NET 2.0 run-time at Mainsoft.
We wrote the Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll run-time using VB.NET and share its source with the mono project community.

I feel like a cycle is completed.

More Info:

Miguel de Icaza's and Novell announce the support for Visual Basic.NET

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Feb-20-1.html

http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=27659

VB history at Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2001/jun01/06-19vbnet.mspx

VB page at mono http://www.mono-project.com/Visual_Basic

GuitarHeroNoid

2007-03-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

The reason I haven't been blogging for some time, is this robot I built with the GarageGeeks guys. Bringing my image processing and visual attention skills from http://www.Feng-GUI.com to the brain of the GuitarHeroNoid, a robot who play the PlayStation GuitarHero game.

more images at flickr
geek power!

Intel OpenCV face detection license

2007-02-06T15:13:00.000-08:00

Intel OpenCV is a great free image processing library.(take a look at its license)

but regards face detection, it might be not that free.
looking into $OpenCV\data\ which contains the HAAR cascades, you may find a readme.txt file which goes like this:

This folder contains various data that is used by cv libraries and/or demo applications.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
haarcascades - the folder contains trained classifiers for detecting objects
of a particular type, e.g. faces (frontal, profile), pedestrians etc.
Some of the classifiers have a special license - please,
look into the files for details.

Now lets have some background
(thanks to Sébastien Marcel at idiap)

The face detection method implemented in OpenCV by Rainer Lienhart is very similar to the one published and patented by Paul Viola and Michael Jones (patent 1 and patent 2), namely called Viola-Jones face detection method.

More precisely, Rainer Lienhart proposed an extension of Viola and Jones work which consists essentially in additional haar-like features (center, tilted) and the use of a tree-based classifiers instead of stump-classifiers in the cascade. Indeed, even if the excellent implementation of Lienhart is available in OpenCV, it seems that the classifiers (check carefully the face detection XML models) in the cascade are not trees but stumps and that they don't contain any "tilted" haar-like features. As a consequence, those "default" models implement a solution very close from Viola and Jones.

Therefore, to differ really from the Viola-Jones patent, you will need to re-train yourself a cascade with tree-based classifiers, and possibly with tilted features.

GarageGeeks made man

2007-02-03T01:55:00.000-08:00

I am a "Made Man" now.
I a so happy and proud to be a part of this great group.
http://www.garagegeeks.org/people.html

GarageGeeks - Physical & virtual space for multi-disciplinary creative people to meet, innovate and build non-commercial projects that would otherwise may not come to life.

Rafael Mizrahi Technorati Profile

2007-01-31T00:55:00.000-08:00

Technorati Profile

Grasshopper 2.0 Technology Preview 2

2007-01-24T06:53:00.000-08:00

The Grasshopper 2.0 Technology Preview 2 enables you to create Tomcat Web applications leveraging Grasshopper pure Java ASP.NET membership, roles and profile providers, and all the ASP.NET 2.0 new features such as master pages, login controls, wizard control, and data-bound control such as GridView. You can now also use the Visual Studio 2005 debugger to attach to your Tomcat Web application to control its execution! Read more about it in the Release Notes.

Website visual attention heatmap

2007-01-07T10:10:00.000-08:00

The ViewFinder Heatmap service, simulates human visual attention and creates areas of attention heatmap.
Find out how people View your website and which areas of the page are getting most of the attention.

http://www.feng-gui.com

The Computer and the Skateboard

2006-12-27T12:55:00.000-08:00

John Mauchly - apparently is the one who invented the first computer and the first skateboard.

http://www.blastoffmedia.com/mauchly/synop.htm

http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/24/222213&mode=thread&tid=97

Mono-Project monkey in ISRAEL

2006-11-22T11:18:00.000-08:00

The monkey has landed in ISRAEL (doing "Alia").
He is feeling great, eating "Falafel", and going to "Ulpan" (Hebrew studio).
Right now, he is unemployed, so I gave him a job as my card holder.
He is sending his love to all other primates around the world,
and looking for a JAP (Jewish American Primate) to marry with.

Art. Lebedev Studio Industrial Design

2006-11-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

Just got this link to a neat Russian company which makes cool computer (and more) gadgets.

http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/id/

Open Source Physical Objects

2006-10-15T03:33:00.000-07:00

Limor Fried AKA LadyADA is this week idol. respect!
introducing the Open Source x0xb0x Synthesizer.

http://www.ladyada.net

want more ? :
The Eyebeam OpenLab
The Eyebeam OpenLab is a home for artists, engineers and hackers pioneering open source creativity.
http://research.eyebeam.org

LED Throwies
led throwies at instructables

http://graffitiresearchlab.com

more Labs:
http://www.laughingsquid.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid

Visual Studio.NET developers welcome to MacOSX

2006-09-28T03:13:00.000-07:00

Visual Studio.NET developers welcome to MacOSX
30 minutes and IBuySpy ASP.NET starter kit is running on Tomcat 1.4 on MacOSX 10.4.1
using Grasshopper 1.8 and View by Safari.

Thumbs up MONO and Mainsoft Grasshopper !

23.5 Rules of Thumb classic video

2006-09-12T03:29:00.000-07:00

Twenty Three and a Half Rules of Thumb...
The Classic Video
One of the best videos on software development ever created.
Jim McCarthy gave this speech to the entire Microsoft Consulting organization as the leader of the C++ team.
The video has been divided into each of the individual rules comprising the speech.

http://www.mccarthyshow.com/Default.aspx?tabid=407

BTW, the video is a "short" version of Jim's book Dynamics of Software Development

Enjoy,
I know I did.

GeekCon 2006 flickr PhotoStream

2006-09-09T23:53:00.000-07:00

During the last weekend, I participated the GeekCon 2006 event.
For images, search for geekcon2006 tag in flickr
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=geekcon2006&s=rec&z=t

Mono-Inside, yet another enterprise application

2006-08-31T04:16:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of 2006 I was leading the PacificEdge customer porting project at Mainsoft. Using Visual MainWin for J2EE (with mono-inside technology :) we delivered in just few months, A J2EE version of PacificEdge Portfolio project management web application running on Tomcat/Linux.

The PacificEdge Portfolio application is a rich web UI application with hundreds of pages, menus, AJAX, ASHX handlers, you name it.
Frankly, during the first WebEx demonstration, in which the customer demonstrate us how the application works, we where giggling (nervously) to see all those web widgets, popup menus, grids and charts.

Well, we made it happen, and the application is running on Tomcat on top of RedHat Enterprise server.

The J2EE version utilizes the same 1 Million Lines of C# source code and Dundas charting control.
Just to emphasis the Single-Source strategy of running a J2EE application using .NET source code; the amount of code changes made during the project, where no more than 0.5% of the entire source code.

"Pacific Edge looked at implementing our product as a set of Web services to interface in a loosely-coupled manner with our partners' applications, but that didn't meet some of our key technical requirements, such as the need for tight integration at the user interface level, as well as high performance of the application as a whole. Our only other alternative was to completely rewrite Mariner as a Java application." John Scumniotales, VP PacificEdge

John Scumniotales, VP Products for Pacific Edge Software, did one better. He hired Mainsoft to port Mariner to Java & Linux, saving $5 million savings over an application rewrite. Read the full case study at: http://www.mainsoft.com/solutions/pacificedge.aspx

Mono and Mainsoft,
Thumbs Up !

GeekCon 2006 - Im In

2006-08-23T06:23:00.000-07:00

As the “The Lawnmower Man” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104692/ say at the end of the movie: "I'm In" !!!

After months of nagging a friend of mine, I finally got the exclusive private invitation to the closed event of GeekCon 2006.

Some examples from last year GeekCon 2005 conference projects.

GeekCon 2006 projects

That's it. I'm officially a geek.
SDR - Source, Debug and ReDeploy !

Open Space Motion Detector Monkey

2006-08-20T23:47:00.000-07:00

You primates are not going to believe was I just assembled.
Seating in open space in an inner cubic, you never know when someone will surprise you from behind.
And being a mono-project contributor, I always thought that I should get some ape doll.

Well, I got two of these wishes on the price of one !
Sick of people sneaking behind your back, surprising you in the middle of a flash game or while you are watching nude.
I give you, the Open Space Motion Detector Monkey,
It screams and rattles, whenever you are in his sight.

IDF - Hisbala fight at south Lebanon

2006-08-15T03:04:00.000-07:00

Itay Angel – Israeli journalist, joined, at the beginning of August 2006, to IDF- Hisbala fight at south Lebanon.
The most shivering news cast from Lebanon and top rating show that week.
I’m only sorry that there are no English subtitles.

http://www.keshet-tv.com/ProgramVideo.aspx?ProgID=1403&CatID=411&MediaID=6150&CurrentCatID=1421

Inverse negative daughters

2006-07-03T22:52:00.000-07:00

I was standing at the kitchen, starring at the plastic (see-through) box, which we use to put Rony’s (my first daughter) milk powder, and it has her name written on.

When it stroked me!
The box was upside down and Rony’s name was inverted.
What I saw was, ‘Noga’, the name of my second daughter.

Spooky.

Compile VB.NET code without the implicit reference to Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll

2006-06-21T04:01:00.000-07:00

Background
As you all know, Visual Basic.NET enables you to code using VB6 legacy syntax and keywords.
For example CInt, Mid, InStr etc’
The implementation of that compatibility layer is at the Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll.

Goal
Let’s say you are developing a program using Visual Basic.NET (stop hurling and stop value languages by the amount of semi columns they contains :)
And your wish to make sure that your code is using “pure” .NET and VB6 free.

Behind the scene
When compiling your program, using either VS IDE or the vbc command line compiler, the Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll is added as a reference, and there is no direct approach of removing this reference.

The official (and quite not reasonable) solution to the problem is to add the –sdkpath command line option to the vbc (you cannot set this option at VB Visual Studio project)

Copy the .NET Platform assemblies that required by your project references, into a different directory, and build your program from command line, having the –sdkpath pointing to that directory.

(Aough..)

Behind the whole Theater
There is an undocumented vbc command line option –novbruntimeref, which you can use as an alternative to -sdkpath.

Adding -novbruntimeref excludes the implicit addition of Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll reference.

Enjoy and Deploy.

Go Skateboarding Day

2006-06-18T22:55:00.000-07:00

On June 21 skateboarders around the globe will celebrate the pure exhilaration, creativity, and spirit of one of the most influential activities in the world by blowing off all other obligations to go skateboarding!

Skateboarders everywhere will hold fundraisers, contests, protests, demo’s, they’ll skate across cities, gather in skateparks, stream into their local skate shop and some will even revel in the solitary act of skateboarding alone, all bringing together the skateboarding community in the grind heard around the world.

ClearCase top 10 script - copy merge

2006-04-16T06:36:00.000-07:00

The internet will be a much better place with more links on this issue.
also referred as Clear Case Copy Merge.

The Problem:
You need a copy of the LATEST element versions on the source, branch A, to the target, branch B, where the resulting versions on branch B will be identical to the versions on branch A. However, there will be a merge arrow between the source and target directories. Hence, the procedure is referred to as a copy (merge).

The following commands demonstrate Copying the LATEST directory version of a sub-branch (branch.2) to the MAIN LATEST directory version

On UNIX

cleartool findmerge . -fversion /main/branch.2/LATEST -type d -merge 

cleartool find . -type f 'version(.../branch.2/LATEST)' -exec 'cleartool co -nc $CLEARCASE_PN ; cp $CLEARCASE_XPN $CLEARCASE_PN ; cleartool ci -identical -nc $CLEARCASE_PN'

On Windows

cleartool findmerge . -fversion /main/branch.2/LATEST -type d -merge

cleartool find . -type f -version "version(.../main/branch.2/LATEST)" -print -exec "cleartool co -nc %CLEARCASE_PN%"

cleartool find . -type f -version "version(.../main/branch.2/LATEST)" -print -exec "cmd /c copy %CLEARCASE_XPN% %CLEARCASE_PN%" 

cleartool find . -type f -version "version(.../main/branch.2/LATEST)" -print -exec "cleartool ci -identical -nc %CLEARCASE_PN%"

More info from IBM:
how to perform a copy (merge) of the exact LATEST directory version on a sub-branch to the MAIN LATEST directory version when using IBM® Rational® ClearCase® on Microsoft® Windows®, UNIX® or Linux™.
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=984&context=SSSH27&q1=merge+copy&uid=swg21125348&loc=en_US&cs=utf-8

Get default value of stored procedure parameter

2005-12-25T02:29:00.000-08:00

Get the default value of a stored procedure parameter.
Well, SQL Server, does not store the default values of a stored procedure parameters in its system tables, they are merely evaluated by the text of the procedure at runtime. Boo- Hoo-.

So, taking an SP (_GetParamDefault) created by Eva Zadoyen back in 2002, adding another one of my own and some C# code and "Walla".

Some small information on the process:
* _GetAllProcedures - get all parameters of all stored procedures.
The resultset which returns contains:SP Name, SP Column

* _GetParamDefault - get default values for a stored procedure parameter.
The SP gets:SP Name, SP Column and an OUTPUT parameter for the default value.

* Now, lets wrap it all with some C# glue:


// open two connections
string ConnectionString = "Data Source=localhost;" + 
  "Initial Catalog=Northwind;user id=sa";
SqlConnection conSP = new SqlConnection(ConnectionString);
SqlConnection conSPParamValue = new SqlConnection(ConnectionString);
conSP.Open();
conSPParamValue.Open();

// get all stored procedures and parameters
SqlCommand cmdSP = new SqlCommand("_GetAllProcedures", conSP);
cmdSP.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;

// loop on all stored procecdures and parameters
SqlDataReader myReader = cmdSP.ExecuteReader();
while (myReader.Read())
{
 if (myReader.GetString(0).ToLower().StartsWith("dt_") != true)
 {

  string ParamDefaultValue = "";

  SqlCommand cmdSPParamValue = 
     new SqlCommand("_GetParamDefault", conSPParamValue);
  cmdSPParamValue.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;
  cmdSPParamValue.Parameters.Add("@Procname",myReader.GetString(0));
  cmdSPParamValue.Parameters.Add("@ProcParamName",myReader.GetString(1));
  SqlParameter param = cmdSPParamValue.Parameters.Add
     ("@DefaultValue",SqlDbType.VarChar,100);
  param.Direction = ParameterDirection.Output;
 
  cmdSPParamValue.ExecuteNonQuery();

  ParamDefaultValue = param.Value.ToString();
  if (ParamDefaultValue != "NO DEFAULT SPECIFIED")
  {
   Console.WriteLine("{0}, {1}, {2}", 
     myReader.GetString(0), myReader.GetString(1), ParamDefaultValue);
  }
 }
}
myReader.Close();
conSP.Close();
conSPParamValue.Close();

Create the following 2 stored procedures:


CREATE PROCEDURE _GetAllProcedures
AS

SET NOCOUNT ON
 
select sysobjects.name,syscolumns.name from sysobjects, syscolumns
where
sysobjects.xtype='P' and
sysobjects.id = syscolumns.id
 
 RETURN
GO

and...


CREATE proc _GetParamDefault
 @Procname varchar(50),
 @ProcParamName varchar(50),
 @DefaultValue varchar(100) OUTPUT
as
/*
This procedure will return DEFAULT value for 
the parameter in the stored procedure.

Usage:
declare @Value varchar(30)
exec  _GetParamDefault 'random_password','@password_type',@value OUTPUT

SELECT @VALUE

*****************************************************
Created by Eva Zadoyen
*/

set nocount on
declare @sqlstr nvarchar(4000),
 @obj_id int,
 @version int,
 @text varchar(8000),
 @startPos int,
 @endPos int,
 @ParmDefinition NVARCHAR(500)
select @procName = rtrim(ltrim(@procname))
set @startPos= charindex(';',@Procname)

if @startPos<>0
begin
 set @version = substring(@procname,@startPos +1,1)
 set @procname = left(@procname,len(@procname)-2)
end
else
 set @version = 1

SET @sqlstr =N'SELECT @text_OUT =  (SELECT text FROM syscomments 
  WHERE id = object_id(@p_name) and colid=1 and number = @vers)'
SET @ParmDefinition = N'@p_name varchar(50),
   @ParamName varchar (50),
   @vers int,
   @text_OUT varchar(4000) OUTPUT'

EXEC sp_executesql
@SQLStr,
@ParmDefinition,
@p_name = @procname,
@ParamName = @ProcParamName,
@vers = @version,
@text_OUT =@text OUTPUT

--select @TEXT 
select @startPos = PATINDEX( '%' + @ProcParamName +'%',@text)
if @startPos<>0
begin
 select @text = RIGHT ( @text, len(@text)-(@startPos +1))
 select @endPos= CHARINDEX(char(10),@text)    -- find the end of a line    
 select @text = LEFT(@text,@endPos-1)
 -- check if there is a default assigned and parse the value to the output
 select @startPos= PATINDEX('%=%',@text)      
 if @startPos <>0 
 begin
  select  @DefaultValue = ltrim(rtrim(right(@text,len(@text)-(@startPos))))
  select @endPos= CHARINDEX('--',@DefaultValue)
  if @endPos <> 0 
       select  @DefaultValue = rtrim(left(@DefaultValue,@endPos-1))

  select @endPos= CHARINDEX(',',@DefaultValue)
  if @endPos <> 0 
       select  @DefaultValue = rtrim(left(@DefaultValue,@endPos-1))
 end
 ELSE
  select @DefaultValue = 'NO DEFAULT SPECIFIED'
end
else
 SET @DefaultValue = 'INVALID PARAM NAME'

set nocount off
return
GO

System.Messaging using OpenJMS

2005-12-21T09:26:00.000-08:00

Source code of this sample
The situation:

You are working on a port project from .NET to Java using Grasshopper.
Your application utilizes System.Messaging
Grasshopper 1.7 does not support System.Messgaing.

Your reaction:

Scratch your head and raise the eyebrows.
Whine a bit.
Get down with some mixed .NET and Java code.

The ingredients:

1 Grasshopper version 1.7
1 Tomcat 5.5
1 OpenJMS server http://openjms.sourceforge.net
OpenJMS is the Message Queue MOM for Tomcat.

In this example we will demonstrate a System.Messaging namespace stub (stub – an empty or a mockup class) which is filled with JMS (Java Message Service ) java implementation for Message and MessageQueue classes and for the methods MessageQueue.Send and MessageQueue.Receive.

Let's start with a System.Messaging stub file which contains all our application needs from System.Messaging namespace.

Now, just before we start writing the Java JMS code, we should add some Java References, taken from the OpenJMS lib directory.
Add Java references to the following jars
* commons-codec-1.3.jar
* commons-logging-1.0.4.jar
* concurrent-1.3.4.jar
* jms-1.1.jar
* jndi-1.2.1.jar
* openjms-0.7.7-alpha-1.jar
* openjms-common-0.7.7-alpha-1.jar
* openjms-net-0.7.7-alpha-1.jar
* spice-jndikit-1.1.jar

Add a using statements to JMS namespaces


using javax.naming;
using javax.jms;

Fill up the MessageQueue class with JMS functionality.
MessageQueue class constructor is using a helper class MessageQueueProperties which behave as a small pool for JMS Context objects.
The .NET message queue path is get parsed at MessageQueuePath class.

In general, JMS applications begin by looking up a ConnectionFactory instance from JNDI (the Java Naming and Directory Interface), and then using this to create Connection and then Session instances.


java.util.Hashtable properties = new java.util.Hashtable();
properties.put(Context__Finals.PROVIDER_URL, "tcp://localhost:3035");
properties.put(Context__Finals.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY,
    "org.exolab.jms.jndi.InitialContextFactory");
properties.put(Context__Finals.SECURITY_PRINCIPAL, "admin");
properties.put(Context__Finals.SECURITY_CREDENTIALS, "openjms");

If you wish to avoid hardcoding the JNDI properties,
they can be specified in an application "Embedded Resource" file named jndi.properties located in the application's classpath or at WEB-INF\classes.

Here is a code sample which Sends messages to the queue.
"queue1" is one of the pre-configured queues of OpenJMS.


 string queueServer = "localhost";
 string queueName = "queue1";

 int N = 10;
 if (args != null && args.Length > 0)
 {
  N = Convert.ToInt32(args[0]);
 }
 for (int i = 0; i < N; i++)
 {
  Message theMessage = new Message();
  theMessage.Body = "test value " + i;
  MessageQueue mq = new MessageQueue("FormatName:DIRECT=OS:" + 
                   queueServer + "\\" + queueName);
  mq.Send(theMessage);
  Console.WriteLine("Sent Message: {0}", theMessage.Body);
 }

 java.lang.System.exit(0);

Here is a code sample which Receives messages from the queue.


 string queueServer = "localhost";
 string queueName = "queue1";

 int N = 10;
 if (args != null && args.Length > 0)
 {
  N = Convert.ToInt32(args[0]);
 }
 for (int i = 0; i < N; i++)
 {
 MessageQueue mq = new MessageQueue("FormatName:DIRECT=OS:" + 
                  queueServer + "\\" + queueName);
 Message theMessage = mq.Receive();
 Console.WriteLine("Received message: {0}", theMessage.Body);
 }

enjoy and deploy.

also thanks to Svetlana Zholkovsky.

Reach Out Touch Faith - Depeche Mode comming to Israel

2005-12-08T02:41:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to brag that I got 4 tickets for the first Depeche Mode concert in Israel, Thursday, August 3rd, 2006.

Depeche Mode "Touring The Angel 2005/2006"
http://www.depechemode.com/tour/dates.html

Israel - Castel Tickets: http://www.ticketnet.co.il/depechemode
phone: +972-3-604-5000

Life after .NET

2005-11-01T12:07:00.000-08:00

Hey, what a smashing title. Right ?
In fact I just wanted to share we ya all, (and Google references index :) that I finished upgrading the 3 extreme Hebrew websites I built.

http://www.skateboarding.co.il Israel skateboard and Roller club.

http://www.snowboarding.co.il Israel Snowboarding community.

http://www.offpiste.co.il Snowboard "only" shop.

image: rafi, judging 2003 mini ramp contest

rafi
About the title ?
It means that this is what I do on my spare time.

Kaiser Sosa - its a Case RePort tool !

2005-10-02T00:15:00.000-07:00

I would like to promote a Case Sensitivity Report tool written by Andrew Skiba.
This tool was written during work on a large porting project (3000 files) from ASP.NET to Linux.
When the project was run on Linux for the first time, a lot of files were found to be referenced in a bad case from other files. These included hard-coded filenames in the source code, images, xml, htc, js, xsl files, etc.
Enjoy,
I know I did.
http://casereport.sourceforge.net

Tech.Ed Microsoft and Open Source

2005-07-17T08:39:00.000-07:00

Attending Microsoft Thech.Ed at Amsterdam was great. I mostly enjoyed meeting with people, than listening to lectures. The second day I was wearing the mono T-Shirt which got so much attention so I decided to wear it for the next 3 days.

I was at the Open source session (small session with apx. 60 people)
CHT053 Microsoft and Open Source
Speakers: Mark Thompson , Thomas Lee , Steven Adler , Ash Pal
Session description: Many customers have questions about Microsoft’s view of Open Source and its ability to coexist and interoperate in a Microsoft environment. The session aims to answer your questions about Open Source and provide information and guidance on Microsoft’s position on open Source.

At the beginning we were asked to raise questions, and then we discussed them. Here is a brief of the issues raised by the hostile audience:
(most of the clear answers were answered by us)
Statement: Business intellectual property
Statement: Wiks – open source installation
Q: Why do the open sources projects of Microsoft have a special license and not GPL license?
A: blah,blah,,, intellectual property, blah,blah, CPL.

Q: Will Webmatrix be supported on .NET v2
A: Yes

Q: will Microsoft ever sue mono?
A: blah,blah,,,nobody wants to go to court, blah,blah,, no one can promise anything, blah,blah,,,mono is not a threat (yet;).

Q: Do you have a wiki for .NET?
A: flexwiki

Q: Why MS pricing is so low? It is almost free as in open source projects.
A: Do you wish that we will increase our price?

Q: Why does Microsoft diverting from standards?
A: blah,blah,,,TCPIP,,blah,blah,,,interop,,blah,blah

Q: Does MS licensing other vendors software?
A: Yes. GIF,Mainsoft in Internet explorer.

Q: Code access to see Microsoft sources.
A: No. SSCLI can be viewed.

Q: Why doesn’t Microsoft invests more in interop with other platforms?
A: blah,blah,,,Microsoft invest where the business is.

Q: OpenDoc?
A: Officec12 supports xml format of office documents.

Question that where asked, but did not have the time to answer:

Mambo
Blackdog
DotNetNuke, IBuySpy portal
Eclipse
Patents.

Team = Software

2005-06-23T13:54:00.000-07:00

Hello to anyone who wish to upgrade.
A year ago I have forward you an article, about: "Shipping Great Software, On Time, Every time, which summaries Jim McCarthy book "Dynamics of Software Development"

http://rafaelmizrahi.blogspot.com/2004/10/21-rules-of-thumb-for-shipping-great.html

The McCarthys next book "Software for Your Head: Core Protocols for Creating and Maintaining Shared Vision" is even better.

The new project management bible from Jim and Michele McCarthy of McCarthy Technologies Inc., offers a groundbreaking, yet comprehensible solution for building great teams and great products, every time.

The core protocol summery:
http://mccarthy-tech.com/elementsofthecore.asp

The protocol itself:
http://www.mccarthy-tech.com/thecore1_5.pdf

I recommend it as a "Must Read" book.

Automatic testing System.Drawing

2005-06-13T23:33:00.000-07:00

I have finished the prototype of automatic testing System.Drawing:

1. Use W3C SVG conformance test suite as input test files http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Test

2. Convert the SVG files into Bitmaps using SharpVectorGraphics library (aka SVG#):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/svgdomcsharp
http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/releases/viewuploads.aspx?id=8bcf7f55-ac4f-4778-9792-37d3e69ecf5c

3. Compare the Bitmaps with the expected PNG images using FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) and MSE (Mean Square Error).
It is the Cumulative squared error between the compressed and the original image.


             M N                         2
MSE   = 1/MN ∑ ∑    [I (x, y) –I’ (x, y)]
           Y=1 X=1

 I (x, y) = original image,
 I’ (x, y)= approximation of decompressed image
 M, N = dimensions of the images

The FFT of the images was calculated using the ExocortexDSP library.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/exocortexdsp

More Info:
ImageMagick also using MSE for image comparison.
http://www.imagemagick.org/script/compare.php
If MSE is not "fine" enough, we will add more compare algorithms to the process, and combine the results into a value which will estimate the similarities.

TODO:
* FFT of 8x8 sub regions
* have images using the same file format
* resize images to be the same size
* reduce images colors
* lowering resolution
A percentage match can be found by measuring the level of similarity of several processes:
* Color - strip boarders, compare histograms to get top colors and areas.
* Edge Detect - edge detection, and line generation, compare line lists.
* Histogram to detect shapes

computer table - building my new kingdom

2005-05-01T05:18:00.000-07:00

It took me several months, but here it is, my new computer table.

specifications:

3x0.9 meters
2 monitors
4 computers
pulsar sound card
midi tech keyboard controller
rack mount with some synths modules

Mono hackers conference Boston 2004

2005-04-29T02:45:00.000-07:00

Mono invited Mainsoft to participate the Mono hackers conference 2004 at Boston.
Me at the Ximian office.

I wish to thank Miguel, Eric, Gonzalito, Jackson , Atsushi, Ben, Duncan, Lluis , Martin, jordi and the other mono monkeys,
It was a great experience and also fun, meeting you.
I have learned a lot from you, and I hope you feel the same.
I see it as a beginning of a new friendship, with deeper “checkins” in
the CVS ;), and I wish all of us good luck with creating a world which
has no OS and language boundaries.

Thank you very much for your kind hospitality, See you in base64 ;)

Gonzalo Paniagua from mono and Eyal Alaluf and Kosta Trigger,
trying to find a sneaky bug.

Dogfooding - eating your own dogfood

2005-04-20T21:27:00.000-07:00

Dogfood (verb)
To use the software you are building. Derived from "eating your own dogfood."
If you've never had to do it, the metaphor is very evocative of the actual practice.
Dogfooding means we always have the latest features fresh from the daily drop.
It also means the primary tool I use to do my job (the debugger) will break. I then get to stop what I'm doing and figure out why, and I get to use that broken tool to figure out why it's broken. I'm not required to use the broken version. It's perfectly acceptable to use a recent non-broken version to debug the broken one. Strangely enough however, it is often practical to do exactly what I said above when debugging on a machine that has only the broken version.

European Union Language Standard

2005-04-02T12:29:00.000-08:00

Here it is - the latest news from Europe ;-)
The News Standard has received this bulletin fresh from our Brussels-based hack. The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).
In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c".
Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like "fotograf" per sent shorter.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted
to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by v During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav
a reli sensibl riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.

Yamaha DX7 is FM7

2005-03-04T09:41:00.000-08:00

back in the 80s after I saw Beverly Hills Cop (1984) with Eddie Murphy (AxelFoley)
listening to the XLF theme, I knew, I want the Yamaha DX7.
I was poor, at six grade, and my parents did not like that I listen to yazoo and kraftwerk.
Now, with Native Instruments emulations I can have it on my PC.

Behold, I give you the FM7 !

Rafael Mizrahi Resume (curriculum vitae)

2005-01-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

email:rafaelmizrahi(at)gmail.com
phone:(+972)0507296305
14 years of experience at ISV and IT organizations, from stand-alone to distributed Web applications. C#, Visual Basic.NET, C, C++, Java. Leading teams of 5-12 developers.
Shipping great software on time, every time.

Work Experience

2003 – Present Mainsoft, Professional Services Manager (4 years)

Primary responsibilities include managing a team of developers responsible for developing customer projects.
Additional responsibilities include peer development, resource management, schedule coordination, providing feedback on product design, establishing product quality criteria and working with other test and development teams.
Accomplishments:

Leading large turn-key customer service porting projects of .NET to J2EE.

The SDE/T tests harness we developed is SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) distributed over 20 machines (Windows,Linux and Unix), and 12 databases, integrated with Mercury TestDirector and Rational ClearCase contains 1.5GB of 100,000 files, executing more than 60,000 test scenarios.

Product technical reference documentation based on JavaDoc, NDoc and XSLT (35,000 pages)

Mainsoft developer’s website. Ported DotNetNuke portal application to java and run it on Linux using PostgreSQL and MySQL databases.

Languages	C#, Visual Basic.NET, Java
Technologies	J2EE Application Servers, ASP.NET
Databases	SQLServer,ORACLE,DB2,Sybase,Ingres,PostgreSQL
Application Servers	Tomcat, JBoss, WebLogic, WebSphere, WebSphere Portal

2002 IFN Systems, Development Team Leader (1 year)

Participated in creating an Enterprise Content Management and business process management solution for Harel(Shiloah,Sahar,Zion) insurance companies to streamline and automate their business processes, access and manage all forms of content and automate records management to help meet compliance needs.

Accomplishments:

Architected and implemented a merge of two large scale (Shiloah and Sahar insurance companies) distributed applications based on Visual Basic, FileNet, ASP and ORACLE databases.

Functional documentation of Shiloah workflow application.

2000 - 2001 Seebex, R&D Manager (Co Founder) (2 years)

Leading the R&D team (12 developers), I had overall responsibility and participated at the design, development and marketing of Seebex cross platform Instant Messaging technology.
Accomplishments:

Developed cross platform internet server extension for the Instant Messaging RVP protocol (RVP is now a part of Microsoft Exchange).

Developed a set of COM components library for building Presence and Instant Messaging applications.

Wrote the product documentation (over 400 pages) and support knowledge base.

Languages

C, C++, COM, ATL.

1999 SQLink, Product Development Manager (1 year)

Leading SQLink’s OLAP (On-Line Analytic Processing) development team (5 developers). I have set PowerChart product strategy and EIS (Executive Information System) Data Warehouse projects.
Accomplishments:

Developed Strauss Decision Support System (DSS).

Novolog pharmaceutical distributor, serving the manufacturers and importers who use the logistics company’s services.

Languages	Visual Basic
Technologies	OLAP, EIS, Data Warehouse.
Databases	SQL Server, ORACLE, Sybase, DB2, Ingress

1997 – 1998 Comtec , Team leader (2 years)

At Comtec's PC Projects Unit, I led several development teams and was involved with large scale projects from areas such as ERP, Insurance, Customer Relationship Managements and Manufacture Quality Assurance.
Accomplishments:

AIG front-end application based on Visual Basic, IBM MQ Series, DB2 and ORACLE.

Comtec received ISO9000 based on Teva microbiologic monitoring project I was leading.

Porting Comtec insurance legacy application from DB2 to ORACLE.

Leading TimeBit (employee punch clock/time cards application) development team, acquired by Lavie.

Build Automatic code generators and pre compilers for Embedded SQL, RTF, HTML, Cobol, PL\SQL, Open SQL.

Languages	Visual Basic, C++
Databases	ORACLE, SQL Server, DB2

1994 – 1996 Infodesk Software, Software Programmer.(3 years)

Develop small office business applications (Visual Basic, VBA).

1993 - 1994 Computer Software Teacher (2 years) (C, C++, Visual Basic) at several colleges (Sivan,Yeda,Ashrot).

Membership/Association/Publication
Mono Project Contributor to the mono community - the open source platform which enables .NET applications to run on Linux and Java.
DotNetNuke Project Contributor to the DNN community - created a Java DNN2 version using PostgreSQL database DAAB (Data Access Application Block) and running on Linux.
XML : Implemented several OASIS and NIST, XML conformance test suites in C#.
IETF IMPP : Participated at the IMPP (Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol) working groups efforts to define a standard protocol so that independently developed applications of instant messaging and/or presence can interoperate across the Internet.
Code Project: Gold Member author. view codeproject profile

Education/Certification
Computer Science BA studies, Haifa University, Israel.(1994-1996)
Electronic Technician Diploma, “Rotberg” High School, Ramat HaSharon, Israel.(1989)
Electronic & Computers “Rotberg” High School, Ramat HaSharon, Israel.(1986-1989)

Firing bullets vertically into the air, can kill you

2004-10-29T15:12:00.000-07:00

Firing bullets vertically into the air.bullets will return to earth in less than thirty seconds and will be just asdeadly when they arrive as if they had been shot right at you.
http://www.loadammo.com/Topics/March01.htm
http://perpetualbeta.com/woifm/archive/002290.html
FYI, we talked about that in the Mainsoft trip.
rafi

21 Rules of Thumb for Shipping Great Software on Time

2004-10-12T04:20:00.000-07:00

Jim McCarthy, Microsoft Corporation

Shipping great software on time is a difficult but not impossible task. Elements you think would count the most count for very little. Development methodology, process, technical prowess, excellence of tools and depth of project management skills all influence the outcome of a software development project; but nothing indicates success as much as the manager’s ability to focus on a few critical and conceptually simple things. These things can be expressed as rules of thumb.

I enumerate twenty-one of these rules of thumb. Pick a handful (or so), apply them, and your project will be more likely to succeed. I lump them into three groups: "Shipping," "Great Software," "On Time". Duh. I cover them in a different order, because the concepts build a bit.

On Time

1. Don’t know what you don’t know.

It is essential not to profess to know, or seem to know, or accept that someone else knows, that which is unknown. Almost without exception, the things that end up coming back to haunt you are things you pretended to understand but didn’t early on. At virtually every stage of even the most successful software projects, there are large numbers of very important things that are unknown. It is acceptable, even mandatory, to clearly articulate your ignorance, so that no one misunderstands the corporate state of unknowingness. If you do not disseminate this "lucid ignorance," disaster will surely befall you.

Human nature is such that we dislike not knowing things that are important to our well being. Since there is so much we don’t know in a software project, the nearly universal tendency among developers and their managers is to gloss over or even deny altogether the extent of their ignorance. You should reward and treasure those who consistently make themselves aware of the list of relevant things that are currently unknown. It requires mental and psychological strength to resist the normal human cravings for certainty and order. It especially difficult to believe in uncertainty when things have a veneer of orderliness, which is often the case. Pseudo-order is a maladapted defense against uncertainty.

The organization surrounding you will undoubtedly abhor uncertainty, would infinitely prefer pseudo-order and will make countless attempts to magically convert your ignorance to knowledge. Your job is to make uncertainty an unshakable fact, and to coerce the reshaping of the surrounding organization to cope with the uncertain situation. The organization must learn to thrive in an uncertain environment for its own well being.

You should expend a great deal of effort making sure that all the people on the project are aware of their ignorance rather than naively converting it to falsehoods. Bear down on them until they realize they haven’t comprehensively assessed the unknowns. In the successful project, this is much easier in the early stages, or during times of change. This is no time for niceties. People ultimately prefer success even if disillusionment is a prerequisite.

2. Get to a known state and stay there.

The function of QA is to know (and articulate) the quality of the product at all times in the development cycle. This should be achieved by abbreviated, repeatable tests conducted daily, and full product sweeps conducted weekly or biweekly.

It is not properly the job of QA to determine when a product is ready to ship; rather, the moment of shipworthiness in a product development cycle is evident to everyone involved, and is non controversial. This is because shipping has been the goal of the entire effort. Crossing the finish line, while it has intangible emotional and definite financial rewards, is no surprise when you’ve observed every single painful step toward it.

The only reason you’ve been able to make these micro-observations is because you got to a known state and stayed there, and your QA is how you did it.

Achieving a relatively accurate view into product status is a very challenging goal, requiring a highly motivated and competent QA team. It is also a pre-requisite for success. Many software development organizations have rudimentary or no real QA assets, and there is little that can be done for them until they make the appropriate investments in creating a modern development organization.

A known state consists of all components having accurate status information at a given point in time. You know that it’s accurate because the status has been tested by QA.

A developer articulating the status of his/her component is an exercise that does produce information, but if it happens to communicate the component’s status, it is only coincidental. This is someone else’s job.

Status should consist of a comprehensive listing of tested and missing functionality, bug count sorted by severity, bug arrival rate, bug fix rate, projected total bug count, and other vital metrics.

3. Remember the triangle.

There are only three things that you are working with as a development manager: resources (people and money), features and the schedule. Changing one has an impact on at least one other axis, usually two. It is a simple enough matter to mentally run through the sides of the triangle, or force others to do so, when discussing any part of it. Since the people, the product or the schedule is almost always what you’re discussing, this means that you must constantly envision the triangle. This leads to the most fruitful line of thought.

4. Don’t go dark.

Some features have long development lead times, months or even years. Yet slips usually happen a little bit every day, and must be compensated for a little every day. This means that the granularity of development tasks must be such that deliverables are achieved at intervals sufficiently small that slips can be compensated for. A week is a long time to go without knowing what is happening. While micromanaging is always a danger, and will certainly be an accusation leveled against you from time to time, if the goal of the project is to ship great software on time, and if everybody accepts that goal as uppermost, they generally enjoy the chase. Team interdependency is also a powerful motivational force.

5. Use zero defect (ZD) milestones.

Organize the project around the concept a reaching milestones with zero defects. Zero defects does not mean that the product does not have bugs, or missing functionality; it means that the product achieves the quality level that had been set for that milestone. The product is tested to that effect. The essential point of ZD milestones is that nobody makes the milestone until everybody does, and nobody leaves it until everybody does. This enables the team to discover what aspects of the project are in trouble. Load balancing can occur. Awareness of unknowns rises.

At a milestone, the team and its leadership also have the opportunity to perceive the whole project status simultaneously, to draw conclusions about erroneous practices, to remedy bad design decisions and to reorganize for peak performance. Shipping is just the final milestone. Though the external organization cares most about shipping, which adds special pressure to that milestone, the team develops extraordinary focus and introspection about each and every milestone.

6. Beware of a guy in a room.

This is really just a special case of "Don’t go dark." Specialist developers who lock themselves away in a room, going dark for long stretches, are anathema to shipping great software on time. Without regard to their individual brilliance, before investing a developer with a significant assignment, it is essential that they understand and agree with the type of development program you intend to run. They must be capable of performing on a team, making their work visible in modest increments and subjecting it to scrutiny as it matures. Some people find this intolerable, and though there is a role for people of this disposition in the software world, it is not as part of a team devoted to shipping great software on time.

There are many pathologies at play here as well as certain healthy patterns of creative behavior. One pathology is a type of savior complex that cannot be satisfied without blowing every single deadline but the last, and then emerging victoriously with a brilliant piece of work five minutes late. A more healthy pattern is that of the true innovator who is truly designing something great, but who has no personal resources left over for anything but the work at hand. Every ounce of psychological, emotional and intellectual energy is being consumed in the work itself. Teamwork, in this case, is an insignificant factor to a person immersed in this sort of creative experience.

But whether or not the cause is healthy or bogus, the results are uniformly fatal to the professional development organization. Beware. Extricating yourself from this trap is nearly impossible.

7. Never trade a bad date for an equally bad date

Generally, you know you’re going to be late before you know when you’re going to be done. Further, everybody on the team and everybody they come in contact with knows you’re not going to hit the schedule. The pressure to reset the end-date (or the milestone date) is enormous. Even though your information is obviously better now than when you originally set your goal, it is probably insufficient to make a new schedule. This is because with each slip, you and your team are spending your credibility. It is essential that after a slip, the next milestone be hit. This is so the team believes in their ability to manage the project, and so that the reserves of credibility are rebuilt for later consumption.

It is difficult to say precisely and in all cases when you should "officially" slip. A good general rule is that the schedule should be reset when the total extent of the slip is known for each component, the causes of the slip are understood, and remedies are in place. Usually, this takes the effort of the entire team and its leadership, and must be an explicit, focused activity. After this level of work is achieved, create a new, closer and more conservative milestone which the team is very likely to hit, and promulgate that. Avoid just sliding the schedule out. Your near-in milestone should be extremely realistic, and uncertainties about later milestones will remain and should be highlighted.

8. When slipping, don't fall.

Slipping is what happens when information that was unknown becomes less unknown. Though slipping is widely perceived to be a "bad" thing, it is the symptom of a good thing, as a fever is the sign of the body’s immune system at work. Although it is undesirable to have so many unknowns that slippage occurs, it is not an unusual situation, and may even be the norm. This is because much of contemporary software development is essentially experimental, i.e., new platforms, new operating systems, new programming technologies often coalesce on new programming projects to create a high degree of uncertainty.

In order to avoid calamity, certain measures should be undertaken in connection with a slip. Ideally, one or more of the pre-identified unknowns caused the slip. It is important that everybody involved understand that the risk to the schedule had been known previously. Alternatively, it is essential to understand how the unknown/s had come to be overlooked. How this gap occurred should become part of the group knowledge for future success. Also, determine whether or not people are working on the correct things. Often, slips occur because members of the team become occupied with features of marginal consequence, or features that are not part of the core product message.

If the slip was a surprise, your communications system is broken, and dramatic communications efforts are required. Large amounts of detail must be brought to the surface for everybody on the team to see. Assess the reality of all current near-term estimates. Expose denial. Team defensiveness will have to be pushed back for the purposes of group learning. Slips reveal your team’s weaknesses, presenting a good opportunity for insightful management and mentoring. Make sure that each individual who has a role in the slip receives the needed guidance and support.

Slips are also an opportunity to re-evaluate the feature content and resource loads, generally with an eye toward decreasing the features and shoring up weaker areas on the team.

A good slip should be a net positive.

9. Low tech is good.

A smaller effort is almost always more desirable than a larger one. Shipping great software on time requires that we value an understood solution much higher than one fraught with unknowns. Keep in mind that customers would almost always rather see progress than promises.

10. Design time at design time.

The product will ship when the design can be shown to be implemented. Developers and their managers often ignore the exigencies of time when creating a design. Instead, they should consider the implementation time as a critical design element. When evaluating alternative design decisions, the one that takes longer to implement is consuming more time and should therefore be disadvantaged in comparison to the alternative. This must always be weighed. Often, when appropriate design value is awarded to timeliness, implementation time can be substantially compressed.

11. If you build it, it will ship.

Conversely, if you don't, it won't. The product should be built every day, along with all setup scripts and on-line help, in a public place, where QA can conduct appropriate assessment of daily status, and the entire team can observe progress or its lack. This is the single biggest indicator that a team is functional and a product being developed.

12. Portability is for canoes.

And system software. Even discounting the added development burden, with the addition of each additional platform the job of QA increases substantially. While clever QA management can minimize the burden somewhat, the complexity of multi-platform support is beyond the reach of most development organizations. Place your bets. Demand multi-platform support from your system software vendor, then build your product on the absolute fewest number of platforms possible.

Great Software

13. Enrapture the customers.

Most software is a renewal business. Customers buy multiple releases over a relatively long period of time. As a consequence, the market has a deep understanding of your software and its flaws, and your organization and its flaws. Often, the market has grown uncomfortably dependent on software that doesn't meet its needs. In many software situations, customers spend hours per/day uncomfortably shoe-horning their lives into your product. As a consequence, they crave your understanding, and will respond enthusiastically to the least sign of it. Normal success, meeting customer expectations, means to improve the most outrageous and flagrant violations of their needs from version to version. They will likely stay with you if you are faithful about that, though they may well be sullen if not mutinous.

Great software, however, requires that you pivot your entire technology so that it flows in the direction of their deepest needs. You must innovate in ways that clearly affirm their inarticulate desires. Surprise them by articulating and resolving in your product concerns and fantasies that heretofore had been rumbling about only in their pre-conscious. The fantasies of the market are generally centered on issues of empowerment, control and security. The market wants to be able to do things with its computers that it currently can't. Customers often find they can't even publicly admit these needs for fear of computer illiteracy. They derive value and security from being able to apply your software. To admit that they can't do what they want to do requires a sense of security beyond most customers’ reach.

Market understanding is the foundation of great software. To repeatedly demonstrate through a series of two or three releases that you genuinely understand the market will result in enormous customer loyalty and brand equity. You will be viewed as the source of the market's empowerment. They will be rapturous.

Gaining this understanding and embodying it in your software requires skill, tenacity and creativity. You must recognize the central market need and organize all your technology and communications efforts in the direction of satisfying that need. While good listening, careful observation and concept testing will be required for you to identify the correct need, addressing it in your product will have these effects:

1. It will appeal to the customer's sense of security.

2. It will extend the customer's control.

3. It will be such that if all else were dropped from your product, but the central need was met in unique ways, the product would be compelling.

4. It will clarify your product messages.

5. It will simplify your product's use.

14. Remember one thing: Unity.

Unity is the master principle of great software. Each element in the product is necessary to the value of the whole and all necessary elements are there. Since everything you need is there, you aren't tempted to go beyond the present experience, and since nothing is there that isn't required, your absorption into the world of the product will not be disturbed. Unity of purpose and unity in execution should be the hallmark of your team. Unity is achieved in a product by following certain creative principles (#15-#19, below), whether intuitively or consciously.

15. State your theme.

Theme is the dominant idea that constitutes the basis of the design. All of the values of the product must stem from the theme. In order for people to comprehend the theme, it must be rendered with surpassing clarity. Theme is analogous to purpose. The more specific the purpose, the greater the effect. Having a theme to the product will require that you eliminate or at least minimize orthogonal values. This is painful and involves risk.

16. Vary it.

Variation is the theme restated and elaborated in slightly altered and embroidered ways. Variation is the means by which we intensify the user's comprehension and appreciation of our theme, and leverage his/her growing consciousness in new ways.

17. Balance it.

Allocate appropriate emphasis among the various elements of the product. If a key component supporting the theme, encountered every time the thematic function is enacted, is weak, the theme is weakly stated and the product will be justly criticized.

18. Evolve it.

Evolution is when earlier parts determine later parts. Lessons learned in one part of the product apply to the others. Things progress in a way that is pleasing. Outcomes, if not predictable, are satisfying because the product foreshadows them in countless ways.

19. Your product should be a hierarchy.

Hierarchy is when the elements of the product gain attention in proportion to their importance. Closely related to the property of balance, hierarchy provides a means for establishing and evaluating balance. If the theme is the top of the hierarchy, elements at the next level have balanced value with respect to each other, all equally supporting the thematic function, and so on throughout the rest of the hierarchy.

20. Establish a shared vision.

It seems absurd to even have to state this, yet it is perhaps the most difficult thing of all to achieve. Everybody on the team must know what they are trying to achieve, what the finished product will look like, what the basis of the product strategy is, and when they must deliver it in order for it to have its intended effect. Contradictory visions must be resolved and unified. Harmonious purpose must be achieved, or greatness is out of the question and even shipping becomes infinitely more complicated.

Shipping

21. Get the team into ship mode.

There is a moment on every development project when it is ideal for a team to enter ship-mode. Ship mode is a high performance period characterized by efficiency and determination. It is a period of flow. Before a team can enter ship mode, several pre-requisites must be satisfied.

1. Shipment must be the next milestone.

2. Everybody (or nearly everybody) must believe that achieving the milestone is possible.

3. All members of the team must understand precisely what they must do prior to shipping. All unknowns are factored out.

4. Management must lead the team to ship mode by entering ship mode first. That is, superfluous management hoo-ha is eliminated, the manager’s awareness of detail climbs, fire-drills and other de-prioritizing activities are eliminated entirely and tremendous focus is brought to bear.

5. The team must desire to ship. Generally, a complete awareness of the effect of shipping (or not shipping) will create desire.

The team becomes especially vigilant about thinking things through, and looking for traps. Check-ins are made with extra precaution. Stabilization of the product is the principle goal. All development is complete but for bug fixing.

The endgame, the last stage of shipmode, is different yet again. It is conceptually a very simple exercise. There is a list of activities. When every activity on the list is complete, you ship. Though the list might have hundreds or thousands of items, it is still just a list. There is no time for any effort that does not contribute toward completing the items on the list. Everybody is expected to complete their items as promised. As unanticipated items arise, after appropriate resistance, they are put on the list.

A daily meeting should be established, with final decision-makers in attendance. Agenda is ad hoc, assembled at the beginning of each meeting. No item is postponed that can be handled now. The team is aware that all issues can be brought to this meeting for expeditious remedy. Management is involved, leading the team toward their goal.

The goal is an acceptable quality level at ship time. Only showstopper bugs should be addressed at all. Showstoppers are bugs that will either effect more than a handful of users or will cause unacceptably serious errors. Cosmetic changes, performance enhancements, new functions are not appropriate changes. The purpose of beta feedback during this period is to prove there are no showstoppers, provide advance warning of unanticipated market reaction and provide input to the next release.

Understand the range of quality that is acceptable to your customers. How many low priority bugs did your product ship with last time? Was it a problem? Are the customers better off with this product including this bug? Since destabilizing the software is more of a problem than most bugs, be very careful about which bugs you fix. This is why we have "ReadMe’s" and bug lists.

Shipmode is basically a succession of daily milestones climaxing with the product’s shipment.

Many thanks to the staff and management of the Visual C++ Business Unit at Microsoft, from whom I learned and plagiarized these ideas.

http://www.mccarthy-tech.com/
Dynamics of Software Development
“Software for Your Head: Core Protocols for Creating and Maintaining Shared Vision”

GrassHopper IBM zSeries Linux Test Drive

2004-08-02T15:07:00.000-07:00

Dev/QA ran (during August 2004) part of the VMW4J2EE run-time tests at IBM’s zSeries Linux.
Dev/QA received for 30 days a remote machine at IBM and we ran some of the run-time tests of VMW4J2EE on that machine. No formal report was delivered regards that test. No performance or scalability tests were conducted.

Test Sets conducted
Compiler, Visual Basic, SSCLI, SSCLI_BVT, SuiteSharp, XML-DOM and Web-Services.
Status
Apart of some I/O problems with tests that we (or a well known ISV which rims with Mainsoft ;) ) did not design for UNIX , all tests passed on the IBM zSeries Linux.

Notice that successfully running the Web-Services test suite implies that a lot of underneath run-time infrastructure is working fine. Well, as we (Dev/QA) can say about java, “Code once, Test everywhere”.

More information on IBM PartnerWorld for Developers zSeries at:
http://www.ibm.com/servers/enable/linux/testdrive.
* Tested JVM: java version "1.4.1", Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment,
Standard Edition (build 1.4.1), Classic VM (build 1.4.1, J2RE 1.4.1 IBM
build
cx3901411-20031011 (JIT enabled: jitc))

The MizrahiX

2004-02-02T14:19:00.000-08:00

This is me my wife and my new version baby girl.

Thrasher - 20 Years of Grind