He watches MST3K

BOLD. ITALICS. !!!!!!!! GAME JAM GAME JAM GAME JAM. Who is excited for it? Team Firebelly is headed to the Global Game Jam in San Francisco to pump out a really pointless game in 48 hours. There will be sweat, there will be hipsters, there will be most likely be a fixie or two. Lets JAM.

I’ve had my Surface RT for a day or so now. I’ve been using Windows 8 for almost a year now (really? ok.) so it wasn’t a jump for me. Basically just a smaller form factor. One thing I wasn’t ready for was the lack of desktop. I figured it would be really simple. Just hide the desktop icon and don’t let the user dive into it. It would essentially be an iPad. Only full screen apps and some multitasking. What greets me as soon as I set up the tablet? Office 2013…desktop version.. But not desktop. It’s the Tablet version? Or is it? Why can I open desktop? Why can I run Desktop Office? Why can I run Paint? Notepad? Control panel? All from the desktop…but I can’t install Notepad++ or Sublime Text. This is going to confuse the hell out of people. It confused the hell out of me. If you make a device that can only install full screen apps, don’t bundle it with a Desktop version of Office.

Next question is this, how hard will be (or long) before we start seeing apps pop up for RT. I’m assuming what the OS is doing, is grabbing the machine type from the binary and if it doesn’t match the host system you get the “This is RT, you can only install blah blah”

I’m sure there is a second layer, where it checks some key in the binary for signing, but these things can be worked around.

My point is this. RT has a desktop, it can run apps on the desktop, it is confusing, and now I wish I had a Pro. Microsoft’s grand plan?

Microsoft posted a list of changes a while ago for new/removed features in SharePoint 2013 and FAST Search 2013 here. The bigger changes to FAST are in there. You should really pay attention to it. Why aren’t you reading it now? Want to see a list of things I care about? Of course you do. Read on.

• Enterprise Crawler is removed, the new one inside SP does not support JavaScript or Java. So dynamic crawler is out. WHY? I have no idea. This seems insane in this modern world. Migration Path: Don’t use javascript, java,python, ruby or any dynamic content on your page.
• JDBC Connector is out the door too. This is ok I think. I know a lot of people use this, because it is super simple. Point at DB, and crawl. This was a band aid that needed to be yanked off. Migration Path: USE BCS LIKE A BIG BOY.
• FQL Changes: These seem to be fine, but obviously might break things if you use it now. They also removed SQL queries. Migration Path: Don’t use SQL and Fix or improve your FQL.
• Shallow Refiners Gone: I am kind of happy with this, as most clients never wanted Shallow Refiners in the first place, more time was spent forcing Deep Refiners to kick off. Migration Path: Make sure your app doesn’t break when your refiners come back as Deep rather than Shallow.
• Lotus Notes Connector Gone: Hahahha GOOD RIDDANCE! j/k sort of. I feel the pain of a thousand devs who were forced to build FAST connections to crawl Lotus Notes due to legacy data in 30 year old applications. Migration Path: Use BCS Version for Lotus Notes or 3rd Party plugin.
• Query Web Service gone: Ouch, this one is going to hurt right in the feels. Your old friend, Query, is headed out to pasture. It’s ok, his new, cooler friends CSOM and REST Services are here to hang out with your enterprise app. Migration Path: Change your code to use the new REST web service or use the SDK to access it.