08.25.08
Posted in General Rant at 3:58 pm by Administrator
I took most of the day off on Friday - I definitely needed a “mental health” day (or more than one!) - and took a day-long ride on my motorcycle. Now, as you probably already know - I recently bought an iPhone - so I thought that I’d use nothing but that to run my whole day. And here’s what happened:
I started off checking the weather in various locations - trying to decide where the best place would be (not too cloudy or hot). I used the default app - but then I also downloaded a free app called WeatherBug. It allows you to get all the weather data about a particular place - more than you’ll actually ever need.
Then I fired up the browser and Google Maps to plan my route. I decided that I would go from Moorpark to Valencia on the 126, then up the 5 freeway to Fraiser Park, then over the mountain to Hwy 166, into Santa Maria, and then up the 153 into Santa Barbara, then back up the 101 to the 126 and back to Moorpark.
Once on the road I stopped in Valencia to get some water (it was 95 degrees - 3 degrees hotter than the weather thing said). I checked my email while in line (only junk), checked myvoicemails (I don’t listen to music or phone when riding - it’s too distracting) and then hit the road again.
I stopped again in Fraiser Park for gas and some junk food. When the service was unbelievably slow at the Jack In The Box I went to - I fired up the phone and used Twinkle to post to my Twitter account. It’s really a great (and free) application.
While eating, I was listening to some streaming music from Pandora.com via their native iPhone app. Because Apple won’t allow any background processes to run (except the iPod music?) - every time I wanted to do something else the stream stopped. After a while, I just put on the tunes from the local device, and headed over to myFacebook and LinkedIn accounts - also via their native iPhone applications - to check what was going on.
At various places I was able to take photos and email them to friends - documenting my progress for future posterity. As I rode down into the HOT valley betweenFraiser Park and Santa Maria on the 166 - I was thinking about my upcoming ServoyWorld sessions and made some mental notes.
When I stopped in Santa Maria - I used the SpeakEasy voice recorder to capture my ramblings on ServoyWorld, consulted the Google Maps application (to make sure I hadn’t passed the turn off for the 153 already), then checked the traffic in Santa Barbara (heavy on a Friday, but only for 2 miles). Then I did a quick check of theServoy official blog using WordPress - and headed out for the last leg.
The traffic updates from Google were correct - there WAS traffic right where it said - and it really was only 2 miles long (seemed much longer at the time).
I have to say - that all in all - the iPhone performed above my expectations. I was able to have some fun while staying connected to the data I needed where and when I needed it. I didn’t have any problems with the 3G reception (unlike a lot of other people) - but the battery life was a bit on the “suck” side.
I even turned off the 3G radio and used the Edge network - which I found to be relatively fast - almost as fast as the 3G network most of the time. Using the Edge network also increased the battery life by almost 50%.
For me, the iPhone honeymoon continues…
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08.23.08
Posted in General Rant at 7:31 am by Administrator
Social network giant Ning has suddenly pulled the plug on one of the biggest plug-in developers - WidgetLaboratory. They just summarily removed all of WidgetLaboratory’s widgets from every single user’s site - leaving a smoking pile of twisted debris in their wake.
Let’s just say that the folks who had spent (literally) hundreds of hours perfecting their vertical social networks found themselves with sites that didn’t work, or had big, gaping holes where there was once functionality.
All of this happened overnight. Without any warning from Ning to their members.
Ning says that WidgetLaboratory violated their Terms of Service. They haven’t specified exactly what TOS they violated - but hey, nice job in blowing up a large portion of your user’s sites!
The folks over at WidgetLabs haven’t taken kindly to getting the boot. In a recent blog entry - they went on the warpath and decided to just totally open source all of their widgets so that their customers could get their sites back up and running. Considering thatWidgetLabs was actually being paid for each widget (usually on a monthly basis) from each customer - this is a very big move that is a clear case of doing the right thing in the name of customer service.
Opening up their code should also put Ning in a bind. If Ning continues to ban the WidgetLabs software (which the users paid for and uploaded themselves to their own private site), then end users can just skim through the code and either re-create their own widget. IfNing allows the widgets to stay, then the “network degradation” issue they sited as the reason for the ban - is just a smokescreen.
Ning claims that they were just “protecting their network” in this Friday post. In that post one of Ning’s controversial founders, Gina Bianchini, keeps talking in circles while she fails to mention anything of substance. What is interesting, however is this statement: “If we could fill these holes today, we would. We will start this effort shortly”
Something stinks in Denmark.
I wonder if it’s nothing more than greed. Maybe WidgetLabs had been getting too successful? Did Ning sense a revenue opportunity? Or did WidgetLabs simply piss the Ning folks off?
Ning is in the wrong here. Providers of infrastructure shouldn’t just pull off a third-party developer’s content (used on hundreds if not thousands) of sites - with zero notification. There’s no reason in the world whyNing couldn’t have given people 30 days notice or something. I mean, it’s not like we’re in China or something…
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08.21.08
Posted in General Rant at 6:15 am by Administrator
The free internet streaming site Pandora - may shut itself down. This service, which I just recently “discovered” as an iPhone application (btw: it’s one of the top 10 most downloaded apps - about 40,000 per day) - allows users to set up radio “channels” based on a song or artist they like.
The service then uses the Music Genome Project to make educated guesses on other songs you might like based on the characteristics of the song itself. Every user can have an unlimited number of “stations” that plays similar music. So, whether you’re into polka but have a Van Halen bent - Pandora’s got you covered. The service serves about a million listeners per day.
And now it looks like they are going to shut it down. Why? Greed. Stinkin’ record company greed.
Back in March, 2007, the Copyright Royalty Board (CPB) decided to drastically raise royalty rates (including 17 months’ of retroactive payments) for streaming Internet radio. Not only that but they changed the entire model froma percentage of revenue to a per-song, per-listener fee.
It seems that the copyright holders (in most cases they’re record companies) - have had their panties in a twist ever since the death of the LP and this whole “digital thing” came to be. So, basically, they pressured that obscure federal panel to ratchet up the fees paid by webcasters. Only webcasters.
“Real” radio stations pay ASCAP or BMI for the compser royalty. But the webcasters are being held up to pay a sound recordings royalty as well.
The problem is that for Pandora the increased fees will amount to over 75% of their yearly revenue of $25 million - up from 12% under the recently-expired royalty agreement that the RIAA had negotiated in 2002.
Basically, for providing a great, customized, unique service - they are being punished and are losing money.
As a last-minute attempt to keep things going Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.) is trying to broker a last-minute deal between webcasters and SoundExchange (the fascist front organization that represents artists and record companies). The hope is that Mr. Berman can ram some sense into negotiate a deal that would reduce the per-song rate set by the pencil pushing lobby money taking federal panel CPB last year.
Fingers crossed here!
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08.19.08
Posted in General Rant at 3:40 pm by Administrator
JavaScript - better known by it’s official name ECMAScript - was due for an overhaul (ECMAScript 4) - which was to be named JavaScript 2 - but the ECMA International Standards body decided to scrap that effort.
So, what’s up with that?
It turns out that they are working to ratify a 3.1 specification that will have some “bug fixes” in it - and then are planning to take a whole new look at it in a project code named “Harmony.”
Tell that to Adobe. You see, the basis of JavaScript 2 ECMAScript 4 was to be based on Adobe’s ActionScript 3 (yes, the thought of that makes me shutter as well). Since they’ve decided that the name “JavaScript 2″ is dead - so is the thought of basing it onActionScript (thank goodness!).
So with Microsoft and Yahoo on one side and Adobe, Mozilla, Google and Opera on the other - “Harmony” is meant to split the difference and see if they can come to some common ground. All of this, of course, is after they get the 3.1 version out the door.
“First, the difference between ECMAScript 3.1 and ECMAScript ‘Harmony’ should be made clear. 3.1 is a ‘bug fix’ for the current JavaScript,” said Alex Russell, co-creator of the Dojo Toolkit and a member of the Ecma technical committee working on the specification. “Harmony will pick up from 3.1 and try to introduce many of the types of features that were slated for ES4 but with different syntax and from a different approach. This is great news for everyone since it means that the standards body is going to be working toward a future [that] is deemed ‘good’ or ‘bad’ based on what’s good for the language as it will exist in Web browsers. There is likely a mandate for the language outside of the browser environment, but designing the next language in a vacuum of real-world users of new syntax was going to hound the ES4 effort. That risk is now gone.”
So, where does that leave us? It’s sort of hard to tell. Microsoft still has 3 different implementations of JavaScript that can run in a browser: JScript (via Windows Scripting Host), JScript.NET and JScript for the DLR [Dynamic Language Runtime] (via Silverlight).
And Adobe isn’t going to change or kill their ActionScript 3 either as expressed by Mike Chambers, also an Adobe engineer. He blogged that “ActionScript 3 is not going away, and we are not removing anything from it based on the recent decisions. We will continue to track the ECMAScript specifications, but as we always have, we will innovate and push the Web forward when possible (just as we have done in the past). ActionScript 3 isn’t changing and we are not going to dumb down future versions of ActionScript,”
So THERE! I still believe it will be another two to three years before we can get all of those players to play nice together and to finally agree on a single implementation in a Harmonious way. Until then - we’ll all still have to live with all the nuanced “versions” of JavaScript and all the various implementations and “extensions” to the language. *sigh*
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08.18.08
Posted in General Rant at 11:27 am by Administrator
So, what if you could instantly increase your laptop battery life by 80% - AND still be able to access the web, instant message? Oh yeah, and be able to have your computer come on instantly…
Yeah, baby!
Well it seems like Dell (taking a cue from the “nettop” sub-compact notebook makers Eee PC, et al) is making it a reality on their newly announced Latitude E4200 and E4300 notebooks.
The magic comes by way of a fully-dedicated, Linux-based system-on-a-chip. This low-power ARM processor and flash memory compbo run completely independently of the main CPU and storage. This means you don’t have to wait for your computer to go through a 5 minute boot process just to surf or have a quickIM!
The embedded OS is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 and has a built-in Firefox-based browser and customer email, calendar and contacts application, a PDF viewer, a MS office document viewer and the drivers that are needed to use the wireless radio.
There is also talk of getting an IM client and making Flash and Java work in the browser - but that may come in the next release.
I think this is one more nail in the coffin in the long-term prospects for Windows as we know it today. If this concept catches on (and I really can’t see why it wouldn’t) - people would be getting a free test drive of Linux and I’d bet that people would use this type of browse-only functionality (if they make it EASY to boot) about 30% of the time - maybe even more.
That means as people get used to using Linux, and have confidence in it, they may just opt to give it a try on the desktop as well.
That would mean you could actually USE a computer with Vista on it…
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08.15.08
Posted in General Rant at 12:50 pm by Administrator
The Washington Post reported that Vongo, the all-you-can-view movie site run by Starz, has gone out of business. Well, really, technically, not out of business, they are moving all the content over to the Verizon service called Starz Play.
Which is fine - IF you’re a Verizon customer. If you’re not - you’re S.O.L. after September 1st.
That means that all the movies that you may have paid for with your $10 per month subscription will no longer be viewable. OK - so it’s not like havingSalesforce or Google go belly up and taking all your data with it - but still, I think it’s the “shot across the bow” that will wake some folks up to the realities of life in the cloud.
With all of these hosted solutions there’s no warranty, no SLA, no guarantee about data loss, no language about what happens to your data if they just turn off the DNS.
What would happen to your data if one of these services just folded up? Presumably there would be dozens (hundreds?) of servers full of hundreds (thousands?) of companies data, email, spreadsheets, documents, memos, etc.
Who owns that data? The customer? The provider?
What if the provider just sells the entire data center full of servers to a third party - and doesn’t bother to wipe the drives? And what happens if that third party then takes sensitive information and sells it or exploits it?
Who is liable?
As it is - you’re responsible to back up your own data (even from a cloud provider) - but do you really do it?
I think as we go along the PaaS road - these questions will inevitably be answered - hopefully in the “right” way. Perhaps there is some room for a third party to come up with a solution to create a product that would allow companies (and individuals) back up their data in a painless, seamless way - for all of their cloud data.
One option that I think we’ll see as a sort of stop-gap measure is that these types of applications will support a true disconnected model - by storing the data on the local drive in a lightweightSQL database that would then synch back up with the “main” cloud data store.
In case you get inspired and start writing a cloud backup application - contact me for wiring instructions…
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08.14.08
Posted in General Rant at 6:49 am by Administrator
I was thinking about virtualization - as it seems to be all the rage. Companies both big and small have made the move to reducing the number of physical servers in their IT departments to save on cost, cooling, maintenance in a bid to save money and appear more “green.”
So what about desktop virtualization? What’s up with that? It makes sense that if servers can be virtualized, then desktops should be as well (there are several technologies that will allow this today).
If the tech isn’t an issue - what’s the deal? Why have people (and companies) been slow on the uptake in terms of virtualizing everything?
I think the issues are more social and economic than linked to technology:
IT Folks - They are already overworked. They have tons of “initiatives” on their plate - and with a slow economy everyone is in the “cost cutting” mode. In addition, although they would love to “control” everything - that brings on the horror of having additional support issues (”I can’t get to my desktop from this Internet Cafe in Bornio”).
Cost - More servers cost money. Getting people with expertise in those technologies also costs money. Updating and/or replacing hardware on the use side - also costs money. IT investments are generally looked upon as “what have you done for me today” type of expenses. Those budgets are rarely increased in economic slow downs - and are almost always frozen (if not cut).
Licensing - This is where things get a little tricky. Just because you have multiple OS licenses for individual workstations - does that mean you can just aggregate them all on a single set of servers? How about the productivity apps that everyone uses (and guaranteed there is someone that uses some weird-ass, one-off app that no one’s even heard of). Who’s going to maintain compliance on all those licenses? How are people supposed to learn what the license terms are for the software they have purchased. Clearly, there needs to be an industry-wide initiative to make this a standard part of pricing/licensing.
Change Itself - Try to explain the benefits of having a virtualized desktop application to a person that enters orders all day. Or to someone that doesn’t spend 1/2 their life on the road. I don’t think they’ll see this as the automatic answer to all their problems. Why should they learn something new - when what they have (in their mind) isn’t even broken (that badly)?
Overall, I don’t think we’re quite ready for the “Thin PC” vision of Sun. People are still attached to their laptops and are used to having the freedom to install crazy apps (where permitted). With the rise of PocketTop computers ™ [!] - like the Eee PC and iPhone (and more to come, no doubt) - it might gain some traction.
For now, it seems like a solution in search of a problem to me.
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