Neil Roodyn: English born, Dr. Neil travels the world working with software companies. He loves Australia, where he spends the summer enjoying the Sydney lifestyle and helping software development teams get more productive. Dr. Neil spends his other summer each year flying between northern Europe and the USA working with software teams and writing about his experiences.
Over the last couple of decades Neil has worked with a variety of companies including Synon, ComputaCenter, SLK, EDI, Citect, Microsoft and Rogue Wave. Neil has also been involved in the formation of several software start-ups. Neil brings his business and technical skills to the companies he works with to ensure he has happy customers.
Dr. Neil has been closely associated with leading edge technologies for the last ten years. This started with adopting, using and then teaching C++ in the early 1990’s. Then in 1995 getting to grips with the details of COM and travelling around Europe teaching and mentoring development teams. Since 1999 Neil has been involved with the agile development movement, especially eXtreme Programming, which he has been using to help teams get more out of their development lifecycle. In the last 3 years Neil has been leading the push to .NET, by running several .NET projects and teaching .NET courses. Dr. Neil’s mobile lifestyle has lead him into the realm of mobile platforms and in the last couple of years Neil has been helping developers with mobile related development, including the Tablet PC, Pocket PC and Smartphone. Neil studied Software Architectures for Real Time Systems at University College London, for which he received a PhD.
TechTalk
12 Jul 2010
Windows 7 Touch or Microsoft Surface
Neil Roodyn writes
"...the objective is really to get multiple people engaged then Microsoft Surface provides a far superior solution. For a single user touch experience go for Windows 7...while the touch is getting better in Windows 7, the shell in Windows 7 is not designed to be 100% driven by touch, whereas the Microsoft Surface Shell is designed for touch from the ground up. With Windows 7..."
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TechTalk
22 Mar 2010
The Quick Litmus Test for a Good Surface Solution
Neil Roodyn writes
"...Surface applications are still failing to meet the basic criteria of what it takes to be a great Surface application...A very quick litmus test to determine if an application is a good Surface application can be achieved by deciding if the application does anything that cannot be done on a vertical touch screen...If developers and designers can..."
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TechTalk
03 Mar 2010
Diluting the Value Proposition for Microsoft Surface as a Brand
Neil Roodyn writes
"...It astounds me to watch a company that employs so many really intelligent people repeatedly make the same mistakes around something simple like branding...When Microsoft themselves allow research projects such as the Mobile "Surface" and SecondLight projects to use the Surface brand it dilutes the message...To make matters worse..."
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