Progress update

Almost three months without publishing anything! I am definitively not proud of this score...

I have been busy on three fronts:

1. At work, I continue working on mobile related development. The easiest platform to play with is the Android one (see my post on Android Dev Phone 1) and I thrilled to see new handsets being made available, like the HTC Dream and Motorola Cliq, with their respective HTC Sense and Moto BLUR custom UIs (see videos below). Even if its SDK is not as rich as Android's one, even if the gadgets are not as polished as Android's ones, I also like developing for BlackBerry phones, like the BlackBerry Storm.

2. For my side project, running on Google App Engine infrastructure, it is progressing very well. Today, I reached a milestone: the first part of [still a secret] runs live. In terms of coding, it represents ~6,000 lines for the source files and ~12,000 lines for the test. I have always considered source vs test as being 50-50; it seems I should re-evaluate the balance to 1/3-2/3 ;)
   
   
   
   
   Thanks to different contributors, I have developed a series of mock classes allowing to test transactions with BigTable, the database used by App Engine. A really neat piece of code I am going to describe here later.

3. On the social side, I am working with the board of Diku Dilenga Canada (board I am member of) to move as its Executive Director (still as a volunteer). The move has been inspired by Jean-Pierre Tchang, founder of IRIS Mundial. I hope this update will make Diku Dilenga (Canada) as successful as IRIS Mundial.
   
   I had a lot of activities on this front recently: a fundraiser thanks to Louis Lamontagne walking between Saint Jean Pied de Port (France) and Santiago de Compostela (Spain), a trip of 780km, a first series of computers to be shipped to Kananga, Democratic Republic of the Congo, etc.
   
   The plan to link the [still a secret] project with Diku Dilenga activities have been formally approved by the board during the summer. This side, there is a possibility I will do a presentation to the 2010 Africa/Middle East Regional Microcredit Summit (AMERMS) to be held in Nairobi, Kenya April 7-10, 2010. It would be nice to participate, isn't it?

Stay tuned, I should be back in few days with technical information about unit testing transactional code on Google App Engine ;)

A+, Dom
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Videos:


HTC Hero, the first phone with the HTC Sense, a customized UI scheme on the top of Android.


Motorola Cliq, the first phone with Moto BLUR, a customized UI scheme on the top of Android.


BlackBerry Storm, first BlackBerry phone with a touch screen