At Filtrbox, we spent the better part of the last three years solving the information overload problem by separating the signal from the noise. With that problem yet to be completely solved, I am already dead smack in the middle of a signal overload problem.

Needless to say, I am used to a great signal because I developed and used Filtrbox for my content filtering. However,  recently my “Folksabox” (human version of Filtrbox powered by folks) , which is Twitter, has also started to produce ever-increasing large quantities of quality signal that is absolutely overwhelming and is now almost impossible to keep up with.  I credit my signal overload to the quality of content shared by people I follow on Twitter.  The majority of the people I follow are sharing thoughts, opinions and notions that they have put a lot of thought into, they are also sharing very valuable data/content (this may not reflect everyone’s experience on Twitter, I tend to follow people and organizations on Twitter who have an inherent understanding and appreciation of its value as an information dissemination/opinion sharing tool).

Too much signal has become a problem for me. As I write this post, I lament as I watch a steady stream of great content that I would love to read but I know is going to go unread because there is just too much of it and I don’t have enough time in the day to do so.  On a good day, I manage to read just 1% of the total amount of content that I would love to read. For me, this is creating an information poverty of a different kind. I am not well informed despite too much good information (try to figure that one out). Given the increase in the zettabytes of content being generated, this problem is bound to get worse – this is just the beginning.

How do we solve the problem of signal overload on our way to becoming SWIFs (super well-informed information freaks)? Until we, ordinary humans, have the means and capacity to absorb large amounts of data and information in a short time, we’ll settle for good ‘ol algorithmic solutions.  The solution lies not in filtering out signal further to get another uber-signal. The solution lies in the extraction of important data, facts and opinion from the signal in order to reduce the amount of information so that it can be human-consumable within a reasonable  amount of time.  Today, there are a few products that perform content summarization but like other NLP-related products (e.g. sentiment), none of them do it well and there is still a long way to go. Given that we are still a long ways, in my opinion, this one of the major “whats next” areas in information processing (are you listening future Techstars 2011 applicant). I hope we can start working on signal overload solutions soon because the problem is bound to get worse.

]]> http://tomchikoore.com/2010/07/08/i-have-a-signal-overload-problem/feed/ 4 http://tomchikoore.com/2010/06/29/guest-speaker-event-bard-entrepreneurship-network-of-denver/ http://tomchikoore.com/2010/06/29/guest-speaker-event-bard-entrepreneurship-network-of-denver/#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:29:50 +0000 tomchikoore http://tomchikoore.com/?p=271 I will be speaking at the Bard Entrepreneurship Network meetup on June 30, 2010 at Jackson’s (map) in downtown Denver at 6:00 pm. I will be speaking on various startup and entrepreneurship topics.

The event is sponsored by the Bard Entrepreneurship Network (BEN) which is a network of entrepreneurs associated with the Bard Center for Entrepreneurship (which I attended several years ago).  Several of BEN’s members have founded vibrant startups in the Denver area.  Yes, Denver does  indeed have a up and coming startup community with a healthy diversification of ventures.   The University of Colorado at Denver Business School has for the better part of the last decade invested a lot of energy into cultivating entrepreneurship-focussed graduates and that investment has begun to pay off.  The University of Colorado at Denver’s Bard Center for Entrepreneurship and the Business School’s startup incubator have played a large role in contributing to the startup activity in the Denver area.  This is a great start, there is still a lot of work to be done; I would like to commend both the University of Colorado at Denver Business School and BEN for their contributions to the entrepreneurial community in the Denver area.

If you an entrepreneur in the Denver area and are looking to be part of the entrepreneurial community, I strongly recommend the Bard Entrepreneurship Network

Find more information about BEN here.

Find more information about the Bard Center here.

PS: For speaking engagement requests, contact me at tom [at] tomchikoore.com

I will publish the results of my research here.

NOTE: The research is limited to the Denver metro area EXCLUDING Boulder. Boulder, I still love you though

A couple of workarounds have been suggested to get around this problem. One of the workaorunds that I considered  is using Eclipse to generate entities from table using a JPA project.  However, this approach does not create Roo-specific annotation such as the @RooEntity,@RooToString and @RooJavaBean, all of which will have to be coded by hand. Given the inadequacoes of all the approaches, I came up with a method that has been working for me. I must say, I suggest this method ONLY if you have a few tables (and for non-production work). I can see this method turning into a laborious process if you have many tables; if that is your situation, you are probably better served going the Eclipse JPA project route.

(NOTE:  Ben Alex has indicated that the next version of Spring Roo will address Jira issue “ROO-435″)

Here is the process for creating a Spring Roo project using an existing database (the assumption here is that the reader is familiar with the creation of Spring Roo projects. If not, please take this excellent tutorial by Ben Alex first):

We are going to create a Directory project that allows us to look up people using a Person object.

Step 1: Create a database named “directory”. Create a table named “Person”. Insert a few rows into the Person table. I am using MySQL for the database but any database of your choice can work with this tutorial.

$ mysql -h localhost -u su -p

mysql> create database directory;

mysql> use directory;

mysql> CREATE TABLE Person (person_id INTEGER UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,last_name VARCHAR(45) NOT NULL,first_name VARCHAR(45) NOT NULL,date_of_birth DATE NOT NULL,created_date TIMESTAMP NOT NULL,PRIMARY KEY (`person_id`));

mysql> insert into person (last_name, first_name, date_of_birth, created_date) values ('Winnfield','Jules','1967-06-07',NOW());

mysql> insert into person (last_name, first_name, date_of_birth, created_date) values ('Vega','Vincent','1971-04-15',NOW());

mysql> insert into person (last_name, first_name, date_of_birth, created_date) values ('Wallace','Marsellus','1970-01-01',NOW());

mysql> insert into person (last_name, first_name, date_of_birth, created_date) values ('Wolfe','Winston','1960-07-04',NOW());

mysql> select * from Person;
+-----------+-----------+------------+---------------+---------------------+
| person_id | last_name | first_name | date_of_birth | created_date        |
+-----------+-----------+------------+---------------+---------------------+
|         1 | Winnfield | Jules      | 1967-06-07    | 2010-03-19 15:33:31 |
|         2 | Vega      | Vincent    | 1971-04-15    | 2010-03-19 15:35:00 |
|         3 | Wallace   | Marsellus  | 1970-01-01    | 2010-03-19 15:36:52 |
|         4 | Wolfe     | Winston    | 1960-07-04    | 2010-03-19 15:37:19 |
+-----------+-----------+------------+---------------+---------------------+
4 rows in set (0.09 sec)
mysql> select * from Person;
+-----------+-----------+------------+---------------+---------------------+
| person_id | last_name | first_name | date_of_birth | created_date        |
+-----------+-----------+------------+---------------+---------------------+
|         1 | Winnfield | Jules      | 1967-06-07    | 2010-03-19 15:33:31 |
|         2 | Vega      | Vincent    | 1971-04-15    | 2010-03-19 15:35:00 |
|         3 | Wallace   | Marsellus  | 1970-01-01    | 2010-03-19 15:36:52 |
|         4 | Wolfe     | Winston    | 1960-07-04    | 2010-03-19 15:37:19 |
+-----------+-----------+------------+---------------+---------------------+
4 rows in set (0.09 sec)

mysql> exit;

Step 2: Create an empty directory named “directory”, cd to it and fire up Roo.

$ mkdir directory

$ cd directory

$ roo
    ____  ____  ____
   / __ \/ __ \/ __ \
  / /_/ / / / / / / /
 / _, _/ /_/ / /_/ /
/_/ |_|\____/\____/    1.0.2.RELEASE [rev 638]

Welcome to Spring Roo. For assistance press TAB or type "hint" then hit ENTER.
roo>

Step 3: Create the Roo project with a top level package of “com.tomchikoore.examples.directory”

roo> project --topLevelPackage com.tomchikoore.examples.directory
Created /Users/tom/Documents/workspace-sts-2.3.1.RELEASE/directory/pom.xml
Created SRC_MAIN_JAVA
Created SRC_MAIN_RESOURCES
Created SRC_TEST_JAVA
Created SRC_TEST_RESOURCES
Created SRC_MAIN_WEBAPP
Created SRC_MAIN_RESOURCES/META-INF/spring
Created SRC_MAIN_RESOURCES/META-INF/spring/applicationContext.xml
Created SRC_MAIN_RESOURCES/META-INF/spring/log4j.properties

Step 4: Install a JPA provider and database. Since I created the Person table in a MySQL database, I am going to specify MYSQL as my database.

roo> persistence setup --provider HIBERNATE --database MYSQL --databaseName directory --userName su
Created SRC_MAIN_RESOURCES/META-INF/persistence.xml
Created SRC_MAIN_RESOURCES/META-INF/spring/database.properties
please enter your database details in src/main/resources/database.properties
Managed SRC_MAIN_RESOURCES/META-INF/spring/applicationContext.xml
Managed ROOT/pom.xml

Step 5: Disable the auto database creation in the persistence.xml file

Roo sets up the persistence settings so that the database is created when the application run. Since your database already exists, turn this setting off by going to this file:

SRC_MAIN_RESOURCES/META-INF/persistence.xml

and comment this line:

<property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" value="create"/>

So that it looks like this:

<!-- <property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" value="create"/> -->

Save the file and close.

Step 6: Create the Person entity.  This is the Java object representation of a Person row entry in the database

IMPORTANT: The important thing to understand here is that Roo creates two fields by default, an identifier “id” field and a versioning “version” field.  The problem here is that our Person table has neither of those columns (I purposefully created the Person table without either field, especially the “id” field which I named “person_id” so that I can clearly make this point). In my case, I have a schema that has been in production for years and I do not want to start adding columns to our the table on because they are required by a RAD tool, that will turn out to be a bad decision once the next RAD tools comes along.

Therefore what I want to do is  instruct Roo NOT to create a default “id” and a “version” fields.   Unfortunately, I cannot instruct Roo not to create a “version” field  at this step, I can only do it at a later step. At this step, I can only instruct Roo not to create a default “id” field by instructing it to use a different field for an “id” field. So I am going to go ahead an instruct Roo to create a Person entity WITHOUT the default identifier field named “id” but instead use the “person_id” field as the identifier field:

roo> entity --class ~.model.Person --identifierField person_id --identifierColumn person_id  --table Person
Created SRC_MAIN_JAVA/com/tomchikoore/examples/directory/model
Created SRC_MAIN_JAVA/com/tomchikoore/examples/directory/model/Person.java
Created SRC_MAIN_JAVA/com/tomchikoore/examples/directory/model/Person_Roo_Entity.aj
Created SRC_MAIN_JAVA/com/tomchikoore/examples/directory/model/Person_Roo_ToString.aj
Created SRC_MAIN_JAVA/com/tomchikoore/examples/directory/model/Person_Roo_Configurable.aj

Step 7: Add entity fields

IMPORTANT:  This is the most important step when creating the entity because it involves reverse-engineering the database table schema into entity fields. This is the functionality that is currently lacking in Roo. For this step I am going to use a script that I found in the Spring Roo forums; I have made several enhancements to the script to to make it usable. The script introspects the databse schema and generates Roo entity fild creation commands.

The first step is to run the script to create the Roo entity field creation commands.  In a separate window log back in to MySQL and run the following script:

mysql> select concat('field ',
elt(
field(data_type,'int' ,'varchar','bit' ,'timestamp','datetime', 'date', 'tinyint'),
'number','string' ,'boolean','date','date','date','number'),' --fieldName ',column_name,if (is_nullable='NO',' --notNull ',' '),
if(character_maximum_length is not null,concat(' --sizeMax ',character_maximum_length,' '),''),
elt(
field(data_type,'int' ,'varchar','bit' ,'timestamp','datetime','date', 'tinyint'),
'--type java.lang.Integer','--type java.lang.String' ,'--type java.lang.Boolean','--type java.util.Date','--type java.util.Date','--type java.util.Date','--type java.lang.Integer')
) from information_schema.columns cols where table_name='Person' and table_schema='directory';

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| field number --fieldName person_id --notNull --type java.lang.Integer                         |
| field string --fieldName last_name --notNull  --sizeMax 45 --type java.lang.String            |
| field string --fieldName first_name --notNull  --sizeMax 45 --type java.lang.String           |
| field date --fieldName date_of_birth --notNull --type java.util.Date                          |
| field date --fieldName created_date --notNull --type java.util.Date                           |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

5 rows in set (0.02 sec)

The second step is to execute the entity field commands generated by the script in the step above at the Roo comand line (go back to the Roo command window):

IMPORTANT: DO NOT RUN THE FIRST COMMAND. That is because the “person_id” has been specified to be the identifier in Step 6. If you create it here again, you will get duplicate field errors.

roo> field number –fieldName person_id –notNull –type java.lang.Integer

roo> field string –fieldName last_name –notNull –sizeMax 45 –type java.lang.String

roo> field string –fieldName first_name –notNull –sizeMax 45 –type java.lang.String

roo> field date –fieldName date_of_birth –notNull –type java.util.Date

roo> field date –fieldName created_date –notNull –type java.util.Date

Step 8: Perform JUnit Integration test

roo> test integration

Step 9: Create the web tier

roo> controller scaffold ~.web.PersonController

Step 10: Add finders

roo> finder add –finderName findPeopleByLast_nameLike

roo> finder add –finderName findPeopleByFirst_nameLike

Step 11: Remove the default “version” field

In Step 6, I mentoned that Roo creates two default fields for each entrity, the idntifier “id’ field and the versioning “version” field. In step 6 we were able to instruct Roo to use the “person_id” field instead of the default “id” field for the default indentifier.  At this step we are going to instruct Roo not to use the “version” field.  To do this, we have to change the @RooEntity annotation in the Person.java class. In this example, the source for  the Person.java class is located at:

SRC_MAIN_JAVA/com/tomchikoore/examples/directory/model/Person.java

Open this source file and locate the following line (notice the identifier overrides that we set in Step 6):

@RooEntity(identifierField = “person_id”, identifierColumn = “person_id”, finders = { “findPeopleByLast_nameLike”, “findPeopleByFirst_nameLike” })

Add versionField = “”, such that the line looks as follows:

@RooEntity(identifierField = “person_id”, identifierColumn = “person_id”, versionField = “”, finders = { “findPeopleByLast_nameLike”, “findPeopleByFirst_nameLike” })

Save the file and close.

Step 12: Import the project into Eclipse

(I am going to use Eclipse/STS for the sole purpose of being  consistent with the original Spring Roo tutorials so that I don’t throw off novices)

roo> perform eclipse

After this command completes, open up Eclipse or STS and import (File -> Import -> Existing Projects into Workspace) the “directory” project.

Step 13: Run web aplication

Deploy the application war and go to http://localhost:8080/directory

When you click on “List all People”, you should see the following:

"List all People" results

Thats it!!

The new UCD Business School building is a 98,570-square-foot $24.1 million building located in downtown Denver at northwest corner of 15th and Lawrence.  By locating the Business School in the heart of downtown, the University of Colorado has finally firmly established its ties to the business community and economic center of the city of Denver. If you are familiar with this area you will realize that that UCD has created an “education corridor” on Lawrence Street between Speer Blvd. and 15th Street. This corridor is being billed as “the gateway to higher education in downtown Denver”.

Dean Ambron Showing Plans

Today, Business School students attend classes in six venues scattered all over the Auraria campus and downtown.  When I attended UCD, I attended classes in the North Classroom Building, the Science Building, the King Center (the first laptop friendly building on campus), the 14th Street building and the Bard center building on the 16th Street Mall. I am very happy that future Business School students will take all their classes in one place – the new building will consolidate all the six or seven different venues into one.  Judging by what will be available in the new building, students will not need to leave the building much. There will be atriums, fountains, patios with mountains views, roof top gardens, to name but a few amenities. The building will be LEED certified (not sure to what level), energy efficient and environmentally friendly – a sign that UCD is willing to practice what it is preaching to next generation leaders.

Outside fountain and courtyard to be converted into a two story atrium

I was pleased to learn that the new location will house the Bard Center for Entrepreneurship, a business incubator and venture capital fund offices. The Business School is fully committed to putting all the structures in place to support entrepreneurship – a commitment to serve the local economy. Of note is the Bioscience Entrepreneurship program that is being offered at the Bard Center for Entrepreneurship in partnership with the Anschutz Medical Campus, the Colorado Bioscience Park Aurora, the Technology transfer Office and the Colorado Bioscience Association companies. I hope that the Business School will launch programs in other areas that support some of the economic goals of the state, such as clean technology.

Make Your Mark Wall. If you look closely you'll see Mayor Hickenlooper's "Every Great B-School Creates a Great City" mark. That is where I took the title of this post.

My Mark, "The future belongs to those who prepare"

Overall, I must say that I am very encouraged by what the Business School has done.  The location of the new building shows the University of Colorado’s commitment to the business community and the economy of the city of Denver and the state of Colorado.   The simple power of agglomeration, in this case, cannot be understated; the fact that the Business School is now closer to the business community is going to result in the graduation of students who meet the needs of the local market.

Here is a little nugget of information about Dean Ambron that I learned while writing this blog post;  Dean Sueann Ambron coined the term “MULTIMEDIA”, she literally invented the word and the concepts of multimedia (hard to believe that at one point in my lifetime both the word  and concept of “multimedia” did not exist) and back in the day she was called “the mother of multimedia”; here is a Wired Magazine article on Dean Ambron from 1994 – Mother of Multimedia.

DISCLAIMER: The title of this blog post “Every Great B-School Creates a Great City” was taken from the “mark” Mayor Hickenlooper made on the Mark You Wall wall in the new Business School building.

It will be “be a fascinating look at how you go from startup, through funding, to building out the sales to investor management to exit – all in two years!”. It’s a review of Life in the Startup Lane. If you are interested in attending, register at the Rockies Venture Club web site here.

PS: For speaking engagement requests, contact me at tom [at] tomchikoore.com

Today we have a lot of work to do so I will not say much, however, I will be blogging about social business software and social intelligence once the dust settles down.

And yes, this blog will still be called “Life in the startup lane”

You can find more details about the acquisition here

I am still failing to reconcile the strong fundamentals of the Java developers with their inability to design outside the container.  I view the ability to design outside the container as something every Java developer should be able to do.  During interviews, that should not be a question that should be asked at all. In fact, I never used to ask the question at all until I noticed that each time I asked a candidate a design question, they made the assumption that there should be a container, servlets and JSPs involved.  When I dug a little deeper, I made the observation that there is an unbelievably high number of highly certified Java developers who fall short when asked to design anything that is not hosted in a container.

In my opinion, Java certifications and their emphasis on particular patterns are dumbing down the Java developer.  The world of Java consulting exacerbates the problem because it rewards those who solve problems by rote.  While I have nothing against patterns or consulting, I cannot help but observe that we might be losing a generation (in dev generation years) of Java developers in much the same way we lost a good generation of developers to 4GLs at the end of the last decade. Who is going to develop the complex stuff?  Who is going to innovate? Innovative solutions to complex problems cannot be solved within the constraints of containers.

For the past nine months, I have been organizing the Boulder CTO Lunch, a monthly “meeting of the minds” lunch of Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) in the Boulder area. The mission of the CTO Lunch is to provide resources and support to local CTOs. 

Boulder is fast becoming a growing technology hub, especially for startup technology companies. Thanks to Techstars, several newly minted startup technology companies are pumped into the community each year. On average, each of these companies has a developer who is thrust into the role of a CTO overnight.   How does one transition from being an energy drink-fueled, all nighter-pulling rockstar coder into a CTO?  There are no schools or ready-made resources to help coders transition to CTO roles.  CTO Lunch attempts to fill in the gap. CTO Lunch harnesses the existing local CTO community to provide a network of resources to support CTOs of companies in the Bouder area.

In addition to helping startup CTOs find their feet, CTO Lunch is a resource for all Boulder CTOs. We have a good mix of startup CTOs, experienced CTOs, serial CTOs and on occasion we have had ex-CTOs who are now CEOs.

CTO Lunch is in the form of an informal roundtable idea exchange that is held once every month at The Bunker (Techstars Headquarters).  A guest CTO is invited every month to share their thoughts or expertise on certain topics. During the hour-long event,  CTOs discuss and exchange ideas with their peers.  The topics of discussion have become deeper over the last several months and usually reflect the technology issues of the day and challenges that face CTOs on a daily basis in the pursuit of keeping their companies technologically competitive. Peer interaction does not end with the monthly event; to keep the communications lines open among CTOs, there is a Google Group (”Boulder CTOs”) on which CTOs can discuss topics and exchange ideas at any time.

To be part of the Boulder CTO Lunch, send me an email at [tom][at][filtrbox][dot][com].  Boulder CTO Lunch is also part of the “Winter In the Bunker” events. Go to http://winterinthebunker.com/ to find out more information.

Here is how the Peek works: After you purchase a Peek, you simply enter 4 things –  First name, Last Name, Email address and Email Password.  The email address can be any e-mail address. For example, I used my [tom][at][tomchikoore.com] email address and Peek auto resolved my server. No entering IMAP and POP servers and ports  and authentication methods, none of that – just an email address and Peek figures out the rest. From the information that I gleaned from their tech blog (which I think is the most transparent tech operations blog of the tech operations blog that I know of), Peek is running EC2 instances that act as proxies to my email account. The EC2 instances perform some interval polling on my mail server and deliver any emails to my Peek. The Peek has nationwide wireless coverage and I think that is because they are working with nationwide providers.  I was able to prove this nationwide coverage while vacationing in the Black Hills of South Dakota during the Labor Day weekend; my Peek received messages while my iPhone had a several hiccups.

In addition to the simplicity of usage, I really love the Peek pricing and service plans.  I currently own the Peek Classic which I purchased for $19.95 with a $19.95 service plan (the service plan starts from $14.95).  With the Peek Classic, I can setup up to 2 email accounts and I can send and receive an unlimited number of emails.  For those who want a little more oomph, there is a Peek Pronto that costs $59.95, and supports up to 5 email accounts, instant email, unlimited email and unlimited texting (all for the same service costs that starts from $14.95). In addition to the 5 email accounts, the big difference between the Classic and the Pronto is the instant email (which I assume is simply higher polling frequency to your mail server) and support for text messages.  The physical device is the same for both the Classic and the Pronto.  It features a scroll wheel like a Blackberry and a QWERTY keyboard.

I am not sure how well Peeks have been  selling (since last year when the Peek debuted) but from a business strategy point of view, I think the guys at Peek are onto something for the following reasons:

1. Single Purpose Device

There is a good segment of the consumer market that simply wants mobile email and are not interested in anything else other than that.  Moreover, I do see a lot of potential for Peek usage by businesses, especially small businesses.   First, all the small businesses that have always wanted Blackberries but could not afford them, the Peek is a very low cost alternative. Second, I see applications for Peeks in small businesses that are characterized by  one way messaging to mobile field employees (for example:  the dispatch of instructions home contractors).  

2. Price

The low cost of the Peek devices and  service plan has the potential to bring mobile email to the masses.  Small businesses that wish to streamline field communications without huge hits to their budgets provide the biggest potential market for Peeks.

3. Simplicy

The Peek is very un-geek. It is very simple to setup and very simple to use.  No “Geek Squad” or “Genius” needed here. Take a Peek out of the box, enter your name, your email and password and you are good to go.  The simplicity makes it a very consumer friendly device and eliminates/lowers technical support costs for businesses.

I admire the thinking against the thought stream that the guys at Peek are doing and I think that they will be successful.  They have been harvesting a number of awards and thats a good sign.

On a personal note, I have developed a bias towards Peek devices because I have come to the conclusion that  the low cost and simplicity of the Peek device render it the perfect device that can be leveraged to mitigate some of the effects of  the ‘technology divide’.  Given that, I have chosen Peek to be the primary technology device for a non-profit project  that I have started  and that I will be announcing in the next couple of weeks.  Simply put – the Peek has a potential to democratize a lot.