Cats, bags and YouTube
It wasn't supposed to be public knowledge
yet that the parts of my life that weren't spent on my newborn daughter
were instead spent on this.
But it's
all over the Yellowverse now,
so I might as well take the opportunity to answer a few questions that
people have been pinging me with over the last couple of hours...
There is a reason it doesn't say Lotus 911 all over it. This isn't an internal skunkworks project.
Yes, I know there's a cartoon of a naked lady in it. It's all for science.
1 visual designer, 2 full-time devs, 2 part-time devs. 90 days so far. (90 days of 80-hour weeks, that is.)
It's inside a Notes client, but you don't see much of the Notes interface because we're hiding it. There's some plugin.xml tuning you can do to mask certain pieces of Notes if you're properly motivated.
No, I'm not kidding. It really is a Notes client. That's a composite app called "smoke.nsf." ("Smoke" as in smoke-test, not smoke and mirrors.)
We're using the Eclipse SWT controls almost exclusively. Most of the Expeditor APIs weren't discoverable enough for us to use. JFace wasn't helpful because those are all native OS controls, and we specifically need controls that have nothing to do with the underlying OS. Even a lot of SWT wasn't adequate for us to do what we needed. Later revisions than the one in the video (yes, there are later builds) don't even use the standard text rendering. I wrote an elaborate approach to rendering anti-aliased text against a gradient background in Eclipse.
No, I will not tell you where we got the hardware. Ask me in two months.
I'd be happy to talk about reseller partnerships, but not until August.
Yes, the fingerprint scanner handles a Notes ID login.
I am aware that this is a surprisingly technical presentation for doctors. This particular presentation isn't targeted at doctors. We're still working on that one.
There are indeed outtakes from this video in which I channel the Sham Wow guy. No, you cannot see them.
The software does work on non-touchscreens. But it doesn't really make sense unless you're on a touch screen. There's no reason to have the world's largest scroll-slider on the screen unless you have to touch it with big fat fingers like mine.
Yes, I realize that it'll look better with transitional animation. I am writing that code personally. Yes, it is fun.
That's the microphone battery pack on my pants. I wasn't happy to see you. Well, not THAT happy, anyway.
It does indeed scroll through a Notes view DRAMATICALLY faster than the native client. We didn't use any magic for that. ViewNavigators are just... well... fast!
The mistakes you see once in a while on the responsiveness don't occur in normal usage. It's actually extremely difficult to stand OVER the unit and press the screen, because you don't have a good X/Y understanding of where your finger is. So some of the spots where you see me mis-hit a button or control are because I can't tell what I'm pressing.
It's not a subtle gesture that I use my middle finger sometimes. That fingernail is slightly longer, and because the screen is sonically triggered, it works better to scrape it a little with your nail.
Prior to me writing this, exactly ONE person has notice that I'm channeling the McKenzie brothers at the beginning. It was supposed to be a joke, but our editor (who's also my boss) thought it was funny.
Comments
Posted by Rob McDonagh At 03:01:03 PM On 06/09/2009 |
Posted by Peter Presnell At 03:15:30 PM On 06/09/2009 |
Friggin' FANTASTIC app!
All it needs is an iPhone app for housecalls or remote clients self-service. The touch-interface is built already. Brilliant!
Posted by Lars Olufsen At 03:41:29 PM On 06/09/2009 |
Posted by Curt Carlson At 03:45:40 PM On 06/09/2009 |
Posted by John Smart At 04:26:03 PM On 06/09/2009 |
Posted by Tim Tripcony At 04:29:54 PM On 06/09/2009 |
Posted by Chris Blatnick At 04:50:46 PM On 06/09/2009 |
Posted by Devin Olson At 04:55:52 PM On 06/09/2009 |
bit of a rollercoaster ride the last week I reckon.
First we see Google Wave and what it might do to Lotus's entire portfolio and now this.
Very impressive
Posted by Eoin Meaney At 05:01:08 PM On 06/09/2009 |
Posted by Jack Ratcliff At 05:21:05 PM On 06/09/2009 |
Posted by Chris Miller At 06:43:26 PM On 06/09/2009 |
Posted by Frank Cseh At 07:02:27 PM On 06/09/2009 |
Posted by Tony Palmer At 07:52:18 PM On 06/09/2009 |
My immediate reaction: this adds ammunition that I can use with management when explaining that Notes 8 is a whole new environment and we need to upgrade NOW. Even though we will never have the budget to develop in-house applications that complex, it helps to show what the platform can do.
Posted by Michelle O'Rorke At 08:13:21 PM On 06/09/2009 |
Posted by Pete Oberlin At 08:28:01 PM On 06/09/2009 |
Posted by Mary Beth Raven At 10:14:25 PM On 06/09/2009 |
Posted by John Lindsay At 06:47:07 AM On 06/10/2009 |
Posted by Ian Scott At 07:35:18 AM On 06/10/2009 |
Man, you just keep raising the bar for the rest of us --> out of sight!
Posted by Don Mottolo At 10:31:59 AM On 06/10/2009 |
Posted by Abby Rardin At 11:36:49 AM On 06/10/2009 |
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 11:42:12 AM On 06/10/2009 |
I do have a few questions. Are there going to be templates for specialties like opthamology and chirporactic? Can doctors set up their own macros?
Posted by Greg Gould At 12:28:58 PM On 06/10/2009 |
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 01:00:32 PM On 06/10/2009 |
I'm already pointing our management team to the video as a sort of proof of concept demonstration.
I wonder what impact XPages on the client will have on this kind of development.
Posted by Wayne At 01:02:35 PM On 06/10/2009 |
Posted by Russ Holden At 02:27:30 PM On 06/10/2009 |
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 03:33:29 PM On 06/10/2009 |
Posted by JP Liggett At 09:53:59 AM On 06/12/2009 |
Thanks Dave Leng
HEAL
admin@heal-ltd.com
Posted by Dave Leng At 03:14:32 AM On 07/30/2009 |