Disqus - Latest Comments for paulhart

Re: Dealing With SOAP APIs In Node.js

paulhart — Fri, 07 Aug 2015 16:11:56 -0000

The example I'm thinking of is the Midcontinent ISO (they manage the transmission network in a significant portion of the US). Unfortunately the service described here is private - you need all sorts of credentials in order to access.

Soap4R has a wonderful (if slightly buggy) tool that consumes an XSD and outputs a couple of ruby files that allow you to build a request and parse a response. I think the only things it doesn't know are the URLs (endpoints in SOAP parlance?) of the services.

Their XSD file is available here: https://www.misoenergy.org/...

A PDF describing the API is here:
https://www.misoenergy.org/...

Re: Dealing With SOAP APIs In Node.js

paulhart — Fri, 07 Aug 2015 10:41:17 -0000

How about working with SOAP where you *don't* have WSDL? I have a circumstance where I'm working using an XSD file instead. I'd like to port some Rails code that's getting old into node, but I haven't found any "simple" way to use the XSD in a SOAP context.

Re: Android

paulhart — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 11:10:13 -0000

Apple has the hardware specialization opportunity - they have the connector on the bottom of the device. However, the anecdata suggest that Apple is tough to work with if you want to play in the hardware arena.

I'd be interested to know if the commodity discount of buying an iPod Touch as the "core" of a vertical solution would be enough to offset the niche costs associated with developing a solution for a size-constrained market.

Re: Shoestring budgets & sponsorship

paulhart — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 18:36:17 -0000

David, that was a great show, thanks again for setting it up. We have an awesome group of people here in the GTA doing amazing things.

Re: Demo Camp Toronto

paulhart — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 13:52:26 -0000

Looking forward to meeting you too!

Re: Twilio Shows Power of Cloud

paulhart — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:03:10 -0000

The latest Twilio competition is great - I'm already working on something, but it's a serious kick-in-the-pants opportunity to get it done enough to demo in time for the contest close.

Re: Social Warfare

paulhart — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 10:11:52 -0000

Interested that you're looking at Landmark... keep your Zen head screwed on, you may want your observer at the ready.

Re: When Police Lie

paulhart — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:54:24 -0000

If it'd just been the five metre thing, that might've just about passed (though the spokesperson's view of the public being misinformed as being "unfortunate" showed how little regard they have for the people they claim to serve). However, the weapons things was so obvious it hurt! The semi-backpedal of "not those but everything else" is a little weak in the situation.

Obvious question at every future presser: "Why should we believe you when you've shown yourself to be untrustworthy in the past?" Game over.

Re: How the Oil Spill is Killing the Tea Party - Politics - The Atlantic

paulhart — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:34:30 -0000

You're asking a lot of their viewership to remember that particular civics / history lesson.

Re: The Panel Pile Up

paulhart — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:36:40 -0000

I was thinking about business cards too. Surely an entrepreneur should be prepared for the mass of people that will mob a "celebrity" VC. Part of that preparation should include having the key details written on the back of the card.

Front of card: corporate tombstone info. Back of card: value proposition etc. Follow it up with an email regardless.

Oh, and as the one initiating the conversation, I likely don't *need* the VC's card, I should be able to figure their deets out independently.

Re: “No.”

paulhart — Tue, 18 May 2010 20:42:11 -0000

I was very fortunate to get some coaching a while ago from a boss who instructed me to deploy 'no' to a vast array of people within a client organization, bcc'ing him at every turn.

It's the most liberating word in my vocabulary.

Re: Multi-Function Printer Follow-up

paulhart — Sun, 09 May 2010 09:06:30 -0000

I'm sure the up-front effort of making a selection pales in comparison to the time lost to problematic hardware and the frustration that comes along for the ride with that.

Re: How A Little Hack Can Be Lifechanging

paulhart — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 09:28:31 -0000

Sometimes the smallest ideas make the biggest impact.

Re: Booted Out of Bootup Labs

paulhart — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 08:40:09 -0000

Danny, based on the rest of the comments etc, are you saying that the $6k that were "received" was per the $100k (or $150k) plan? because 25% of either of those numbers is a lot more than $6k.

Legal fees for getting set up should be no more than $2k tops, given that setting up a provincial or federal corporation in Canada is really simple (I've done it myself online for a federal corp, just paying the filing fees - they even provide sane default values for everything!). Even if two months' rent (home + office) is $10k in Vancouver, I don't see where the remainder disappeared off to.

Re: Booted Out of Bootup Labs

paulhart — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:27:23 -0000

That's crazy. I'm very curious to see a response from Bootup Labs. AFAIK they are the first Y Clone-binator to flame out, based on your description of events.

Re: Remembering How We Got Here

paulhart — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:23:21 -0000

Oh man, I have to laugh at myself, I've attempted to write something twice now and closed my self [sic] down both times. I'll leave this comment as a marker to myself though, it has slightly more permanence than me just closing the window.

Re: Yochai Benkler on The Broadband Plan

paulhart — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:40:22 -0000

A process similar to electricity deregulation needs to take place. Looking at Texas as an example (because it's the one I'm most familiar with, even though I live in Ontario Canada), the companies that maintain and develop the transmission grid are somewhat separated from the retailers that sell electricity service to the general public.

The "incumbent providers" in Texas were barred from undercutting the price of the new competitive retailers for several years, to enable the creation of a thriving marketplace. Today full competition exists, but the jumpstart period was necessary to make sure that happened.

Today, the internet is as much a public service as electricity, and a similar structure should be investigated. Government's job is to define the bounds within which a market operates, and then let the participants get on with it.

Would this survive the concerted lobbying war against it that the telecoms companies would wage? Depends on how badly you want true competition.

Re: AVC Redesign

paulhart — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 10:15:09 -0000

I appreciate being able to read your full articles via RSS; if I have something to say (like right now!), I'll click through and leave my comment.

Thanks for soliciting your readers' input!

Re: My Ideal Phone System

paulhart — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:53:05 -0000

If I wasn't already working on a twilio-enabled app, I'd ask for a specific feature set.

Re: My Ideal Phone System

paulhart — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:43:59 -0000

While you're looking for your solution, you can port them over to, and set up a relatively simple forwarding solution, with Twilio :) Eating dogfood is always fun.

Re: Thoughts on Blackberry Fail

paulhart — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 08:59:42 -0000

From a network perspective it may be suboptimal, but from a business plan perspective it's crucial. RIM supplies the hardware to the carriers, but it also provides a huge amount of infrastructure so those carriers effectively outsource to RIM (and of course RIM charges a pretty penny for this).

RIM has figured out a nice way to generate revenue on both sides of the deal, and the recurring revenue from each hardware sale is probably a lot more valuable than the subsidized hardware price. In fact, RIM is playing the carriers in the same way that the carriers play their end users. Given the prevalence of RIM handsets globally, the carriers love it.

All the hardware manufacturers have some kind of carrier-side deal going on. Most of them are selling the infrastructure hardware. RIM is selling a service, which has that useful characteristic of non-linear growth potential.

Re: Upgrade Path for cocos2d 0.9.0-alpha

paulhart — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:40:40 -0000

You'l like the post I'm about to publish ;)

Re: Upgrade Path for cocos2d 0.9.0-alpha

paulhart — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:17:39 -0000

You bring up a very good point. I haven't yet set up any source control on this project, which is a very bad thing. If I was being more conscientious about things, I would've already done that, and then made a branch.

Maybe that'll be today's post :)

Re: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs : Developers only now realizing that Android is not a platform

paulhart — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:19:06 -0000

Preach it, (fake) Brother Jobs.

Re: The Power Of Instant Approval

paulhart — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:19:55 -0000

Dan,

Agreed, I don't think that Apple *needs* to do anything - from an end-user perspective everything meets their "just works" criteria.

Some developers would take advantage of the ability to get their app into a distributable state more quickly. However, the App Store is the holy grail for distribution, warts and all, and the majority of developers will still want to get in there.

In theory creating an external-to-Apple distribution channel would be a loser from a revenue perspective, but there are ways to limit the allowed functionality of those apps such that the App Store would be the channel of choice for most apps.

So: ROI may not be measured in dollars but in happy devs sticking to the platform. I know that doesn't really fit into a 10-K, but there it is (and halo effect of having more apps to push hardware sales is always nice).