Lightroom 2 has helped my work-flow immensely since I began using it a few months ago. The learning curve is a little steep at first, but with a good book to go along with the software, much of the mystery goes away rather quickly. What Lightroom lets me do is sort through a photo set in stages, screening out the best candidates for further refinement and then handling all of the common tasks with a very coherent and intuitive interface.

In the future, I’d like to see a much better web gallery editor included in Lightroom. Other than that, I hope Adobe doesn’t try to soup it up with an of the latest fads like face-detection. Keep is simple and solid and I will be a repeat customer.

1. Select “Thumbnails Only” preview mode using the button on the upper right of the main toolbar.
   
2. Select multiple RAW files by holding down the SHIFT or CTRL button.
   
3. Click the RAW->Output toolbar button.
   
4. Adjust the output RAW processing method, the output data format, the output file folder, and the file naming convention using the Output dialog and click “Save”.
   

This batch processing capability makes it easy as pie to get JPEG’s from several RAW files as long as you don’t need to make lots of different white balance or other adjustments.

For anyone who bought a Sony alpha-series DSLR in the past year or so, there are now updates available for most of the software that ships with the camera. Check the Sony support site to get your updated software.

• The updated RAW driver allows thumbnails of Sony RAW files (.ARW) to be displayed in the Windows shell.
• Sony’s Picture Motion Browser is now up to version 3.3. It’s a major upgrade feature-wise and performance wise from the version 2.0 that shipped with my camera.
• The Image Data tools (Image Data Lightbox and Image Data) also have major upgrades.

Here is my attempt to play the Amazing Criswell and offer up some predictions for this new year. Can your heart stand the shocking facts of the true story of 2009 Technology Predictions?

10. Web 3.0 will begin to be used as a standard marketing term. The real question is what will it mean? There is so much potential for tech breakthroughs in software and web technologies, but the reality will likely be less smart technology and more media saturation.

9. Internet-based bartering will take off. With the economically uncertain times, more and more people will turn to internet-based bartering to trade goods and services instead of using cash or credit.

8. Adaptive fuel optimization software will lower fuel consumption by up to 25%. New cars and trucks will benefit from breakthrough fuel optimization algorithms. While this may only see light of day in some prototypes in 2009, it will become standard very quickly.

7. Broadcast Digital TV will be a huge success. It will be so successful that cable and satellite companies will take a huge hit in their market share starting in 2010.

6. Massive neural networks will make breakthroughs in identifying terrorist strongholds. With the help of immense data sets, terrorist strongholds will be sniffed out by using massive neural networks. SETI-type distributed computing will allow ordinary citizens to contribute to the fight against terrorism.

5. Next-generation regulation of pharmaceutical companies. New, progressive restrictions will be placed on how drugs are approved for market and on how intellectual property can be hoarded by pharmaceutical and medical research companies.

4. Super-exponential growth will be seen in solar, wind and geothermal energy industry. ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP are going to miss out on the biggest growth industry since the oil boom.

3. Federal stimulus for organic farming and local food markets. An emphasis on sustainable land use, reduced fuel dependency, and higher quality whole foods will double the number of small, organic farms in five years.

2. Open-source voting software will be adopted by 10 states. After congressional investigations of election-stealing and voter fraud, ten states will adopt open-source voting software by 2010 elections.

1. Carbon emissions reinjection technology will be made standard by adoption of new computer models. The new models will allow accurate determination of stable sites for reinjection of carbon emissions in both ocean and subterranean environments.

It’s information that drives the life of an organization. If your company has an internet site, chances are that the public face of your organization rests on a much larger body of information that is not readily available to the general public, either because of proprietary concerns or because it’s just not ready for public consumption. The image in my mind is like a tree with a complex subsurface root structure or an iceberg where only a small percentage of the total mass is visible above the surface. Having any kind of structure at all to your intranet data can go a long ways toward improving your business processes, making information more persistent, easier to access, and faster to communicate between individuals.

Killer Apps of the Future: Knowledge Management Systems

There’s an up and coming genre of software applications called “knowledge management”, and I’m excited to watch what happens in this field over the next few years. The promise of a single software system to manage all of an organizations accumulated knowledge sounds like a Holy Grail of sorts. If it’s ever achieved, the solution for organizations to manage their intranets will be easy. 

Boost Libraries

The Boost libraries are a great resource for C++ developers and are distributed under a very liberal open-source license, friendly to both non-commercial and commercial projects. While the scope of the Boost libraries goes far beyond numerical methods, there are some very useful elements that are very helpful in this context. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Boost Function:  This set of classes provides generic function object wrappers. If you’ve ever needed to pass around a generic function, not knowing if the original function is a stand-alone function, a static member function, or a member function of a class instance, this is the solution for you. I use Boost Function objects anytime I am working with functional operations such as numerical integration, optimization, etc. This way, I can pass functions as arguments to my interfaces and store the functions as member variables for later use.
• Boost Multiarray: This package provides generic template classes for storing and operating on multidimensional arrays. In C++, it can quickly become tedious to construct vectors of vectors of vectors to deal with arrays that have multiple indexes. The Boost Multiarray class provides a very concise and elegant syntax for handling this situation.
• Boost uBLAS: The uBLAS package provides linear algebra operations for C++ at the BLAS levels 1, 2 and 3. Use this library, and you’ve got a generic way to do most standard linear algebra operations for one- and two-dimensional arrays.
• Boost Random: This library provides extensive pseudo-random number generators for statistical calculations, Monte Carlo simulations, etc. The thing I really like about the Boost Random library is how easy it makes it to swap different random number algorithms. I also like the clean interface.

Blitz Libraries

The Blitz libraries provide high-performance scientific computing functionality to C++ on a level with the performance of FORTRAN 77 or FORTRAN 90. The Blitz library is distributed under either GPL or the Blitz artistic license, similar to the PERL license. The user gets to choose the license terms. The library provides classes to handle multi-dimensional arrays, a tiny vector class to handle arrays of size known at compile time, random number generators, and a variety of IEEE/System V math functions.

Muparser library

The Muparser library provides a way to parse and evaluate mathematical expressions typed in by a user. This is a very handy resource for interactive math applications.

Configuration management

In the context of software development, configuration management means keeping track of changes to the software during development. Revision control is a subset of configuration management and is the most important part of the process. Fortunate for software developers, this is now quite a mature field, and a wealth of software programs are available to assist with configuration management. Most effective tool I have found is Subversion, an open source application that runs on Windows, Linux, and other operating systems. Subversion gives you a powerful history over changes so source files and directory structure. It is the latter functionality that really sets Subversion apart from most competitors. For Windows, there is the excellent TortoiseSVN that serves as a front-end to Subversion and integrates tightly with the Windows Explorer shell.

Feature/defect tracking

The importance for feature and defect (aka, bug) tracking should be readily apparent. At any point in time, a development team will want to know what features have been implemented or are awaiting implementation, as well as what bugs have been found and are awaiting correction. While this fields seems like such a fundamental core functionality to possess, the availability of universally good third party applications is not as good as for configuration management tools. Bugzilla is a leading open source application for defect tracking, but it is designed so specifically for bug reporting and tracking that using it for tracking new features is a little out of its scope. I have used the open source application Redmine to good effect, which provides feature tracking and more general project management functionality. Sometimes, for small projects, a custom spreadsheet is sufficient. Needless to say, it behooves the software project leader to come up with a solution for bug/feature tracking for all but the smallest projects.

Unit testing

Unit testing means writing code to automate the testing of individual components/classes in your software application. The theory is that the production and regular application of unit tests lowers the risk of hidden bugs showing up in your application. In my experience, the small extra effort required to produce and use unit tests pays off big time as the size of your project grows. It can give you great peace of mind to know that a large section of complex code is passing all of the unit tests written for it. There are various unit testing frameworks available to provide some uniformity from one project to the next and to minimize the total amount of code you need to write to implement unit tests in your project. Specific frameworks are usually specific to a language, for instance, in Java there is JUnit, in C++ there is CppUnit, in .NET there is NUnit, etc. The scripting language Ruby comes with a built in unit-testing mechanism, one of the reasons why Ruby is such a great language to program in and why its popularity is growing so quickly.

The basic process of converting a sole proprietorship to a single-member LLC

There were essentially five steps involved in my case:

1. Fill out Articles of Organization and submit via US Postal Service to the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission along with $50 filing fee. In order to complete this step, you have to search and make sure the name you are choosing is available. Note that the form linked to above is really two separate forms, the Articles of Organization and a statement of acceptance of appointment by the initial registered agent. There are only six Articles in the Articles of Organization, so it’s not complicated. However, you have to make some decisions, such as whether the duration of the organization is permanent or of limited duration, whether you will serve as the initial registered agent, and whether the management will be member-managed or manager-managed. It took less than two weeks for me to send the completed forms and check to the state of New Mexico and for them to send me an approval in the form of a Certificate of Organization.
2. Get a new IRS employment identification number (EIN). This step may not be strictly necessary — it is still cloudy in my mind exactly when you must get a new EIN. But, it certainly allows for a clean distinction between the operation of your business as a sole proprietorship and an LLC. It was helpful to have the new number to proceed to the next steps as well. Note that you should wait until after your LLC Articles of Organization are approved by the state before attempting this step in case there is some glitch such as a name conflict. At this point, it is also a good idea to draft a formal Operating Agreement to give your LLC a well documented foundation. In New Mexico, the Operating Agreement does not have to be filed with the state, but it is still a good idea to have one to show other business entities if they ask. I used a template from this book.
3. Get a new bank account for the LLC. Once you have your new EIN, you can proceed to get a bank account solely for the LLC funds. You can transfer all of your sole proprietorship funds to the LLC at that point, or a portion, whatever is appropriate for your situation.
4. Get a new state Tax ID (CRS) number.You can theoretically register your business online, but I actually went down to the local office of the New Mexico Department of Taxation and Revenue. This was convenient because I could ask the representative to close my other CRS registration while I was there.
5. Update your business registration with your local city or county government. After less than an hour at the NM Taxation and Revenue Department, I had my new CRS number and could proceed to the last step. For me, it was a quick trip to the Albuquerque Treasury Offices. I showed them my new number, and they updated my records while I waited.

Well, I hope that this quasi-checklist can be helpful to some folks trying to get their business going. I found some helpful websites along the way that were very useful to me:

• Instructions and Forms for Registering a Business in Albuquerque.
• A good blog entry
• Requesting and EIN for an LLC.
• Updating your EIN to reflect a single member LLC.

Also, here are some books that I found quite helpful. Click on the images to take you to the books entry on Amazon.com

Wishing you all the best!

–Shawn

One large risk with software development is the possibility that the end-product does not really solve the problem the customer needs. It is effectively impossible for a software developer to know and understand all of the requirements that the final application should satisfy for the customer and end-users. Iterative development models, like Agile, admit this fact up front and require the developer to get frequent feedback from the project stakeholders by showing snapshots of the development along the way. For this to work, it is important for the developers to produce quasi-stable applications early on and have testable product versions available at frequent intervals. A typical interval is every two to four weeks, although it should vary according to the project and the development team.

A second major risk for software development is the possibility that major changes to the architecture need to be made late in the project. As any seasoned developer knows, this is a scary prospect, as changes in the core architecture can propagate through the system producing hard to find bugs. Iterative development schemes aim to identify high-risk components and develop these along with the core architecture components during early iterations. This way, higher-risk activities are undertaken early on, and consequences of any complications can be dealt with early rather than late in the project life. If something does not go right, or if the complexity is much greater than originally anticipate, it is much better to know early in the project.

One of the best resources for Agile development out there is Scott Ambler’s website. In particular, his material on the Agile Unified Process, a modification of the well known Rational Unified Process is a must read.