James Simmonds

It's taken a while to get this one out - mainly due to a combination of sunny weather and a series of Bank Holidays (and the odd beer festival!). MonitorWang v1.0.8 is released! This is a big release - several bug fixes and rebuilds against the latest 3rd party libraries, Magnum, TopShelf and NServiceBus plus a major new feature - AppStats  (all the details here including the Etsy inspiration behind it). Comments and feedback welcome (via the codeplex discussions page)

...then you need a FlyNano in your toy garage (to compliment your Seabreacher X )

Podio  - currently being wowed by this web application. It's a highly customisable collaborative "space" for your team to manage there activities. Essentially you create a "space" then populate it with the apps (widgets) that have the greatest affinity with what your "space" is about. So if you were collaborating on a new website then you will use apps from the software development pack (suite of apps) but you can mix and match apps from any category to provide a completely customised environment to manage your work & team with. This concept is excellent as I've used many "management" type sites, must notably (and well known) being Basecamp and found it good but not great - its suitability & popularity varied between project/client - with Podio you can tune the environment to ensure that you only have the features you need and even better you can create your own apps if there is nothing suitable available; I've not tried this ...

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?

Another roundup post to cover a few things of interest I've discovered lately.... (via Automated Home) comes the HDMI hacker box from Kwikwai - it allows you to bridge home automation systems into AV equipment, eg: send a text string to your TV OSD! CEC is an optional command channel built into HDMI that allows commands to be sent from one device to another - eg: when you turn your TV off it sends a turn off command back down to your DVD player connected to it. This box allows you to sit in between devices and fake commands or just discover (sniff them). (via HRB/JasonFried/Twitter) Great post on un-managing your team to unlock potential from a guy at 37signals (basecamp). Superb post - a must read! 37signals are rewritting the development team book!

Just seen a post by Udi Dahan about NServiceBus (NSB) licensing and companies that participate in Microsofts BizSpark program (which I/mine does :-). Essentially... " So, if you're company is in  BizSpark, in addition to all the software you're getting for free from Microsoft, I'm happy to offer you a free NServiceBus Foundation license or $1500 off a Standard license. That includes support ". The new NSB licensing model is pretty well thought out but still restrictive in terms of physical layout of applications - the community license (and even other licenses) only allow it to run a single machine - if you want to use it across machines then it's big bucks (as far as I understand it). Anyway - if you are in BizSpark, check the link out to benefit from Udi's/NSB Limited generosity.

I recently posted about Brands and API's and in it I mentioned the rise of Android and this new article on mashable confirms things.... Some great stats in the article if you are interested in the smartphone market. Ok, - it is from a single company but I think it shows the general trend - Android is big and getting bigger, fast....now, how's that app coming on? ;-)