James Simmonds

Hurrah! Version 2.1 of Wolfpack (formally MonitorWang) is released! This release is all about " Build Analytics " - a new set of plugins allow you to monitor the state of a TeamCity build configuration and then once this is complete it can extract stats from any* build tool run as part of it. * When I say any I mean it supports NCover, SpecFlow, StoryQ reports but as usual with Wolfpack it is easy to create your own parsers to extract from any tool you might use, eg: NDepends, FxCop. It is also simple to extend it to cover other build systems like TFS, CruiseControl. The final piece of the puzzle of to visualise this information and the Wolfpack Geckoboard Data Service does a great job of this - it allows you to display these stats directly in your Geckoboard .

So just saw this (via @hugorodgerbrown ) You can upload your data and visualise it - if you use Geckoboard for your business dashboard then how about a mashup - want to map your biggest customers? Order hotspots? you name it - it would now appear possible...just need to work out how to get the Google output into Geckoboard....anyone?

This is a great article by Adam Kleinberg on how a brand and enabling third parties to write exciting applications and mashups targeting new channels via your Api is so important . The resources required to produce a website and accompanying iPhone app can be significant - what if you invested in your business/eCommerce API and a referral/developer programme instead? The world becomes your development partner and ANYONE can start creating applications backed by YOUR business. Take Android as an example - it's gaining market share at such a rapid pace that you will need an Android App soon to stay in the game as it's not a sector you can afford to ignore. Pouring all your money into a specific vendor channel (say iPhone) could mean you are left out in the cold when other technologies/forms/channels become viable. With an API in place it would be a simple, cheaper exercise in creating an Android application on top of the API calls - and the API gives you options in how you...

Big release this.... Added support for SQLite databases Added a check that captures energy usage data from an Owl Energy Monitor Added Publisher Filters to allow you to hook custom logic into the publication process Added support for swapping between data sources for you Geckoboard Data Service Activity Plus a refactor of the internal HealthCheck/Publisher mechanism (now uses the cool Magnum Pipeline components) More details on the v1.0.4 codeplex release page.

So I've been looking at how simple it would be to get Geckoboard widgets up and running to visualise your FreeAgent data....and the answer is, pretty easy really. The idea I had was for a text widget to display your due invoices. The FA api is pretty comprehensive and this data is available via REST as XML - authentication is http basic using your FA username and password. I created a new FA widget user for my account and assigned it permissions up to the Invoicing Level - this protects my more sensitive data. Wrap all this up in a Google-AppEngine (GAE) app and there you have it - your FA pending invoices.... In glorious public view....oh dear Ok, no problem - we use the Geckoboard ApiKey to secure it so that only requests with the correct ApiKey (that we set in the widget configuration) will be allowed access to the feed. Or rather I use my Apikey - it works in my GAE app as I can hard code the apikey check into it...this app instance cannot be used to provide FA data ...

Couple of things I've bumped up against in the last few days that have piqued my curiosity, StoryQ - a BDD framework for .Net. Like all of these things you can't really comment on how good it looks but from what I have read it "looks" pretty good....I'll put it to use on my next home project I think to kick its tyres. FLIT - " (the FLuent Interface Toolkit) streamlines the design and implementation of fluent interfaces in C#. FLIT generates customisable fluent interface code from a simple text-based DSL. FLIT includes a parser, an object model, and a set of starter templates. " - I'm a fan of fluent interfaces as they simplify coding as the code reads better and it is easier to write against (use). This looks an interesting project - again something for the next home project that has a fluent interface. Beautiful Soup - " Beautiful Soup is a Python HTML/XML parser designed for quick turnaround projects like screen-scraping ". I...

v2 is here, now with added colours! This time using the RAG Numbers widget to display your date countdown - as you get nearer the date the number will change from green to amber then red. The new url is: http://geckocountdown.appspot.com/rag/?date=2010-12-25&tz=0&msg=Days+to+Xmas! Note 1: notice the new /rag/ path and the msg querystring param. Note 2: the original v1 url still works To use this on your Geckoboard add a new "Custom Widget/RAG Numbers" widget. By default the number will turn amber at 10 or less days to go and red at 3 or less days to go however you can change these with the querystring (see below). Required querystring params date: " yyyy-mm-dd " format, this is the target date to countdown to tz: timezone offset in hours from GMT that you are in. Can be negative if you are behind GMT Optional querystring params msg: the label that appears next to the number of days (remember to encode spaces as +). The default is "Days ...

So I've just completed my first Google App Engine python app....I can't begin to say how awesome App Engine is...I had the python and Google Apps SDK installed and a Hello World app deployed onto world class infrastructure in about 20 mins flat. Deployment, simple! Management, simple! Python coding...not so simple (yet!). So after seeing how awesome it was I put it to good use and implemented an idea I had for the Geckoboard Number widget - a day countdown. I've already implemented this in MonitorWang so if you use this (does anybody? I've had nearly 200 downloads but not a single comment about it, not a single one, good, bad or indifferent!) you can plug your Geckoboard into that. However a conversation with Hugo the other day piqued my interest in Google App Engine and this seemed the ideal thing to use it for. Very simply you put the date to countdown to on the querystring and it returns the Geckoboard Number widget XML containing the number of days to go. T...