I’m happy to inform that I have a new job at Microsoft. Effective January 2008 I work as a Technology Solution Professional for SOA & Process Platform based in Mexico City. I’m very excited about this new challenge in my professional life since I’ll get to know new technologies and products. I’ll be primarily focused on technical presales for Biztalk.

Just as a reminder, all views and opinions expressed here are my own and not my employers.

In some of my previous posts I mentioned that I was working on a full redesign for my site during 2007. Well, 2007 is over and I am glad to inform that the redesign is almost complete. It has been a three step process: graphic design, CSS layout and Wordpress template coding. The graphic design and CSS layout are done (except for very minor details), and I’m currently working on the Wordpress template. I plan to release the new site as soon as the template is done and I have tested it in the most popular browsers. I will no longer support Internet Explorer 5.x on Mac or PC. The blog content will be available on the new site from day one, but I will incrementally work on the rest of the site. I’m very pleased with the final results and hope to finish quickly. Stay tuned!

Just posting an update about my experience with Mexico’s Online Apple Store. I ordered two keyboards and Leopard on Monday, November 19. The following day I received my UPS tracking number. I was a bit surprised that the packaged was coming from the US, since it has to go through customs when arriving in Mexico. Anyway, here’s the route:

Overall very good service. Everything arrived in a huge box within a week of ordering.

If Amazon could deliver to Mexico City this efficiently and at this cost (free!) I would certainly buy more from them.

It’s been a while since my last post. As a brief summary, here’s some of what I’ve been doing:

• I was involved in a huge Proof of Concept, focused on WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Business Monitor
• I did some remodelling at home, and had to rearrange everything and get rid of a few things.
• I got an iPhone, and after going through the unlock procedure it’s working with the Telcel network. The only issue so far is that SMS messages from Telcel or from my bank appear empty or garbled.
• Upgraded to Leopard.
• Been playing The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for Nintendo DS, as well as Bioshock on Xbox 360, and Mario Galaxy on Wii

The point of this post was to note that finally some California based companies are finally turning their heads to Mexico.

The first case is Google Maps, which now includes street level maps for most of Mexico. Some rural areas are still not mapped, and as of this post address search is not working. You can search for a business and if you’re lucky enough someone might have added it. Because of this, I decided to add a new geolocator to my custom implementation of Google Maps. I found a geolocator with pretty good results at map24. I added a new control to my map to select a geolocator, and the results are pretty accurate. Try it out by typing address, zip code and city into the query field (comma separated works best), selecting the map24 geolocator and pressing on search maps:

Global Access Maps Now with map24 geolocator! (but still alpha code)

The second case is Apple that finally opened an online store for Mexico. This is great news for all Apple fans in Mexico. Prices are much more reasonable than what you’d find in any physical store that carries Apple products. There’s also much more variety, for example, I wanted to buy a new Apple Keyboard with Spanish layout and had been unable to get one so far. The other great feature is build-to-order, which until now was impossible in Mexico. All prices appear in Mexican Pesos and with tax (IVA) included. I made an order today, and I’ll update this post with any additional details once it ships.

Apple Online Store Mexico

My guess is that the iTunes Online Store should follow sometime soon.

I have finally finished selecting photos for my Canada albums. With the release of iWeb ‘08, I decided to reorganize my whole gallery.
Here are four brand new albums:

Toronto

Niagara

Kingston & Thousand Islands

Montréal

The photos are now grouped by year, and there’s an index page for each year. Comments can be added on a per photo basis. Finally, an RSS feed is available for each album and for each year.

Since this was a huge update, all the links have changed, so I have updated them in their respective posts. Here’s a complete list of all my albums available today:

2007 :
Toronto, Niagara, Kingston & Thousand Islands, Montréal, Santiago, San Francisco, Puerto Rico, Anaheim, Monterrey

2006 :
New York, Montréal, Québec, Ottawa, Miami, Culiacán, Dallas, Las Vegas

2005 :
Chicago

Being the administrator and active user of my highschool’s alumni website, masalumni.org I have noticed that the most active post in the forums is regarding book recommendations for the literature class. As anyone who has been paying attention to my sidebar knows, one of my hobbies is reading books (just finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ). Given this background, I decided to create a specific site to list all the books that have been mentioned in this forum (restricted registration required).

Here’s the link, for those of you who can wait to finish reading:
http://mas.gbtopia.com/books

Books site screenshot

I used the same Wordpress plugin that powers my sidebar, called Amazon Media Manager. I had to make several changes to add support for ratings, comments and dynamically retrieving book descriptions. The result is an AJAX application that displays a list of books, allows users to rate them and add their own comments. Users can also filter the list to display only the recommendations made by a particular user. I had to brush up a bit on my PHP skill. It was rather easy, and was ready in about five days during my free time.

Update (2007-08-25): Now you can sort the books by different criteria. Added screenshot.

I've been a bit busy working on the redesign of this site, the pressure is growing, since I intend to have it done during 2007. I am also preparing some photos and panoramas that should be available sometime soon. To compensate for the lack of updates I decided to share this exclusive photo of the much rumored "mythical" Google phone. Enjoy!

P.S. People who scrutinize this photo may notice that it has been Photoshopped. I assure you that it is real, and it was slightly blurred, cropped and resized to protect my sources.

After the series of photo galleries it was time to post some labs for my technical readership out there. I’m pleased to present this lab that explains how to start a BPEL process using an Xform developed using Workplace Forms. It’s just an additional option to create the user interface for a Business Process. The lab is in Spanish, so this will be another bilingual post. Enjoy!

Update (2008-01-06): I am no longer working for IBM and won’t be able to continue distributing these materials on my site. If you have any questions on how to obtain these materials you may contact me or any IBM representative. IBMers should be able to find these materials on the Xpertise Library.

And now in Spanish…

Después de una serie de galerías de fotos ya era justo publicar algunos laboratorios para mis lectores técnicos. Se trata de un laboratorio donde se explica como arrancar un proceso de negocios BPEL utlizando una forma creada bajo el estandar XForms con Workplace Forms. Se trata de una opción más para crear la interface de usuario de un Proceso.

• Laboratorio: Integrando Workplace Forms y WebSphere Process Server
• Artefactos (PoTForms)
• Soluciones

Actualización (2008-01-06): Debido a que ya no trabajo para IBM, no podré seguir distribuyendo estos materiales en mi site. Si existe alguna pregunta sobre cómo conseguir estos materiales pueden contactarme o buscar a algún representante de IBM. Los empleados de IBM podrán encontrar estos materiales en el Xpertise Library.

I recently updated my J2EE workshop material to support Rational Application Developer 7, WebSphere Application Server 6.1 and DB2 9 as the underlying database. These materials include presentations and hands-on labs. Some of them are exercises, where the student must work on a solution by himself or herself. The following topics are covered:

Presentations:

• Introduction to Java Programming
• Introduction to J2EE

Hands-on labs:

• Rational Application Developer 7 (RAD) installation
• Java beginner exercises
• Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) installation and basic configuration
• Creating a project using RAD
• Configuring a datasource for IDS in WebSphere Application Server 6.1 (WAS)
• Using JSTL (Java Standard Tag Library)
• Developing Custom Tags
• Introduction to JDBC
• Introduction to XML, XML Schema and XSL
• Use Java code to transform an XML document into HTML using XSL
• Creating a Web Service client using Java Server Faces (JSF)

Update (2008-01-06): I am no longer working for IBM and won’t be able to continue distributing these materials on my site. If you have any questions on how to obtain these materials you may contact me or any IBM representative. IBMers should be able to find these materials on the Xpertise Library.

And now in Spanish…

Recientemente actualicé los laboratorios de mi taller de J2EE para soportar las nuevas versiones de los prductos: Rational Application Developer 7, WebSphere Application Server 6.1 y DB2 9 como base de datos. Este taller consta de varios laboratorios y presentaciones. Los laboratorios explican paso a paso como desarrollar la aplicación y en algunos casos contienen ejercicios que deben ser completados por los estudiantes. Las presentaciones contienen conceptos importantes para entender como operan los componentes desarrollados y sirven como introducción a las tecnologías exploradas en el curso.

Presentaciones:

• Introducción a Java
• Introducción a J2EE
• Custom Tags (Referencia complementaria)
• Introducción a XML (link externo)

Laboratorios:

• Laboratorio 1: Instalación de los productos
• Laboratorio 2: Introducción a Java
• Laboratorio 3: Creación de un proyecto en RAD y Configuración de un Datasource en WAS
• Laboratorio 4: Programación con Custom Tags
• Laboratorio 5: Introducción a XML, XML Schema y XSL
• Laboratorio 6: Creación de un Web Service
• Laboratorio 7: Cliente de un Web Service con Java Server Faces
• Laboratorio 8: Message Driven Beans

Archivos referenciados en los laboratorios:

• Artefactos v2
• Guía del programador de Instant Portal

Actualización (2008-01-06): Debido a que ya no trabajo para IBM, no podré seguir distribuyendo estos materiales en mi site. Si existe alguna pregunta sobre cómo conseguir estos materiales pueden contactarme o buscar a algún representante de IBM. Los empleados de IBM podrán encontrar estos materiales en el Xpertise Library.