With Google going IPO soon the NY Times looks at a possibility of a Microsoft takeover of the web search company.
“According to company executives and others briefed on the discussions, Microsoft - desperate to capture a slice of the popular and ad-generating search business - approached Google within the last two months to discuss options, including the possibility of a takeover.”
So you reckon Google could go the Netscape way if big bad MS becomes its rival?
Read Regular is a font designed with an individual approach for each of the individual characters and it is supposed to aid dyslexic individuals.
“Many of the difficulties that occur with dyslexia result in a barrier. Even though the symptoms can vary over an enormously wide range per individual. The difficulties do result in similar patterns of problems. Read Regular is aiming at these similar patterns.”
A great multimedia presentation, made using Macromedia Breeze about using RSS and blogs for distributing and finding Learning Objects in education...
[Via theOTHERblog]
MetaFilter
Apple: Innovator & Oppressor of Independent Software: As they once did with Karelia's Watson software and, to a certain extent, Panic's Audion, Apple has "borrowed" a concept from an independent, third-party developer without credit or compensation. It would seem that Steve Jobs is not as far removed from Bill Gates as he would like the Mac faithful to believe . . .
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Now here's a really useful site. Web Design Practices deals with patterns and practices that are prevalent in web design. Not only does it give you statistics and looks at various patterns it also gives you links to studies on the subject. I was looking for some information on breadcrumb navigation, and lo the site has some good links and patterns there. Very cool. [via Digital Media Minute]
Another similar resource is Martijn van Welie's collection of Interaction Design Patterns
“Lumpy cows and dinosaurs, nerds wearing glasses and women with big hair abound in this hefty two-volume slipcased compilation of Larson's twisted and beloved single-panel comic. Complete with every syndicated Far Side cartoon arranged chronologically by year of publication, in addition to 19 that were created after Larson's retirement in 1995, this deluxe set features chapter introductions by Larson as well as letters from fans and puzzled readers.”
I'm already saving for this one...
Diwali is the Indian New Year. The festival of lights and a time to deck yourself in the very best. So, I could not think of a more apt time to give this site a makeover (not to mention the fact that it is also a long weekend.)
Let me know what you think of it. I may have missed out on a few styles and templates since this is a semi-rush job. Also, to everybody, a very happy and prosperous Diwali.
Robert Cringely looks at how Microsoft has consistently failed to understand the meaning and the power of open source software:
Will it be too late by the time realization strikes? Or is it too late already?
[via Slashdot]
Wifinetnews notes that Dal Lake is soon become un-wired:
Edit: As noted in the comments, a Shikara is a Kashmiri Houseboat and Dal lake used to be a tourist hot spot till terrorism became an issue in Kashmir. Also it is interesting to note that cellphones became legal in Kashmir only a few months ago...
Virginia Tech is combining the power of 1,100 Apple computers, the Terascale Cluster project is bringing Virginia Tech to the forefront in the supercomputing arena.
Read the NY Times report about it.
Adam Bosworth explores the various ways in which occasionally connected devices and programs can work while delivering an agreeable user experience.
I think there are loads of good ideas there for building Central applications. Also I think Central should be available for PDAs as well as this is where occasionally connected computing really comes in handy...
PS: He asks where do expert bloggers find the time to keep posting daily...
Frankly, I've no idea ;)
I'll be watching this closely as Sean Viosen is currently working with a team building an enterprise level application in Flash. At my company, I've had the opportunity to decide upon the technology to go with and decided to stick to a traditional HTML/CSS UI. You can call it chickening out/prudence or just simply a measure of the paucity of good Flash Developers (I don't want to be the only developer on an Enterprise level application!!) I sure do hope Sean blogs about the progress of his company. I would certainly like to know...
theOTHERblog: Trash Your Desktop
Mitch Kapor's new, more intuitive computer interface puts all the information we need to manage our digital lives at our fingertips, no matter what form it's inAll about the open source email cum calendar cum everything tool called Chandler (which although runs on Mac OS X is missng a few features apparently). One to watch. ...
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This NY Times article points to the new range of N-Gage phones from Nokia
When those cool gizmo digital watches were release in the late 70s, it seemed like that is what people in the future would want (calculator watch, anybody?). Look at your wrists today, how many of you wear those watches? Will the phones have the same fate? Now I'm not suggesting N-Gage is doomed. In fact I think it is a cool gadget, but sell it as a game, don't include the phone in it.
The Directorate of Audio Visual Publicity (DAVP) in India is known for coming out with some of the most drab advertising in the country, so when recently it started releasing Full-Page Color ad with the 'India Shining' theme, it did look like some other creative minds were at work. According this report, the ads were developed by Grey Worldwide. Nothing brilliant about the ads, but it's certainly refreshing to see them, nonetheless (personally I like the Indian Oil ads more - reads like Agnello Dias' copy, not sure though.)
Rajesh also points to a NY Times article about the Indian Economy and how ten years after the de-centralization, the results are showing...
In this List-Apart article, John Allsopp looks at web-design today and its roots back in print. The article underlines the following message:
Couldn't agree with him more...
Jon Udell looks at what the implication of getting richer UIs on applications means. He talks about his user experience with Windows 2003 as an example
<quote>
Jon is right to some extent. We desperately need to simplify the interactions. This would call for newer UI paradigms. Some that are much simpler and can effectively display information and expose functionalities. Jon gives Sam’s Fisheye Menu as an example. The disadvantage of introducing new interactions for existing functionality is that people need time to get used to them. And the best way to get used to them is if the interactions are present in the OS itself. Apple has been leading the way on this front. I and certainly wish for Apple to separate the OS and the hardware or at least, there should be an alternative to the MS OS (I know, I know, Linux) that can really lead the way with pioneering interaction design.
A nice site that gives you a tool to generate color schemes and even see how the colors will appear to visually challenged people. There is also a Flash version that I'd blogged about some time back but this is much better...
Apple just announced a Windows version of their iTunes music player. This is great news. One of the main reasons behind doing this of course would be to open up the iTunes Store for PC users. Anyway, I'm just downloading the player. Will let you know how good it really is after I've played around a bit...
MetaFilter
My greatest mistake. As Thomas Edison said, "I've failed my way to success"; here a cross section of British great and good confess their greatest mistakes. So, come on then - what's yours?
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This NY Times article explores how people are buying gizmos they never use. I've done it myself. My list includes my iPaq, a 20G removable hard drive, an extra webcam and my MP3 player (to a small extent - since I'm mostly on my computer anyway) And by the way, I'm really conservative in what I buy and also use a lot of gizmos on a daily basis, but I know a few people who just have tons of such stuff just lying around. Are you one of those?
CNET News.com - Enterprise Hardware: EMC to snap up Documentum for $1.7 billion
The storage maker announces plans to acquire the content management software maker in a deal set to close in early 2004.
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Category: Enterprise Hardware
Guid: http://rss.com.com/2100-1015_3-5090725.html
PubDate: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 09:00:00 PDT
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Boxes and Arrows: The Devil's in the Wireframes
Wireframes: At once a singular composition and a collaborative expression, communicating the vision of both an individual and a team. As a result, they can be stacked with an enormous amount of detail. Are we becoming victims of information pollution in our own wireframes?
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It's probably the most ill kept secret that Microsoft are trying to spread beyond computers by becoming the de-facto platform for everything from PDAs, Phones to TV. And as per this NY Times article, the industry is watching to see whether Microsoft, as it enters middle age, can be innovative enough to compete effectively in software platforms beyond the personal computer.
One example is a TV delivery service based on Internet standards that allows carriers to deliver new pay TV services over existing high-speed Internet connections. An experimental model of the system will be on display for the first time at the show in Geneva and the technology will be tested by phone companies in Canada and India, said Ed Graczyk, director of marketing for Microsoft TV.
Wonder if the bandwidth in India will be good enough. Reliance, the company which MS has tied up with, is currently undergoing a lot of teething problems. But this is one thing to watch out for.
Researchers at Duke U are doing some interesting experiments with neural interfaces and monkeys:
[via Boing Boing]
MetaFilter
The Open Video Project offers nearly 2,000 videos from various sources and collections, including such gems as 34 reels from the 1930s and 40s in the Digital Himalaya Project, a series of classic television commercials, and, from the Library of Congress, some shorts from the early 1900s, including the popular 2 a.m. in the Subway and A Ballroom Tragedy ("Vaudeville" is a good search term for finding more like this). Also, especially for MeFi, Johnny Learns His Manners.
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I'm not sure how many of you are old enough to appreciate and be interested in vintage computing. But if you are, here is an opportunity you cannot miss. Only 20 protype Commodore 64s were built. This is probably the only survivor. 5 more hours left, then it will be gone...
E M E R G I C . o r g: Entrepreneurial Pointers
Startup Journal has an article by Mark Feffer, where he writes about learnigns useful for entrepreneurs:
- Don't forget how smart you are
- Stay calm
- Stay true to your vision
- Look forward, not back
- Beware of "partnerships"
A Small Business column in the NYTimes has a quote by Jere Ross, a lawyer with Bush Ross Gardner Warren & Rudy: "The inventor always thinks his idea is the best and the world will come to his door and he's going to be rich and famous. What he learns to his chagrin is unless he has the money and strategy to develop the idea into a marketable product or process he won't be able to accomplish anything. If something is selling, it will be knocked off instantly, not just in the United States, but all over the world, thanks to the Internet." Entrepreneurs need to keep this in mind.
Jon Udell at InfoWorld has this interesting article that looks at the pros and cons within Flash, Infopath and Mozilla as platforms for developing Internet Applications. Jon tends to feel Mozilla offers a lot strategically. I tend to agree with Jon. XUL is truly cool and Mozilla Firebird is a great browser, but as long as it does not catch on, I believe Flash is the strongest contender for RIAs
Joel Splosky gives you run down on Unicode and how to develop Intrnational Applications...
Don Park's Daily Habit: Open Source Java Projects
I visit Carlos E. Perez's Manageability blog about once a week because he occasionally posts useful list of open source Java projects along with terse yet revealing comments. I thought it might be useful to list the lists.
Carlos is a bit heavy on the Java cheerleading, but these gems are worth the visit.
Just found this silly Flash thingy via Boing Boing. Get a gossip magazine cover up in no time...
...The I.B.M.-Cisco collaboration, analysts say, is a step toward reducing some of those [IT] costs by introducing technology that can automate the detection, correction and prevention of problems in technically diverse computer systems.
Looks like the commoditization of IT as suggested by Nicholas Carr is becoming a reality...
Just came across Erin K. Malone's blog. Very cool stuff on graphic design and realted stuff. Especially check out the collection of timelines
E M E R G I C . o r g: More on Project Green
News.com writes on Microsoft's Project Green to create software to map out business management applications.
Microsoft is linking the release of major new versions of its business management applications to the debut of the next generation of its Windows operating system [Longhorn, scheduled to ship in 2005].By spending nearly $2.5 billion on buying United States-based Great Plains and Denmark-based Navision, Microsoft set itself up to compete in the market for wide-ranging software packages designed to automate corporate bookkeeping, human resources and other business tasks...While the two major acquisitions propelled Microsoft into that market, they left the company with a patchwork of software products that operate on different technologies and that cannot easily be made to work together. Project Green is designed to meld that patchwork into a single set of interconnected applications, with Microsoft rebuilding the software on its own technology.
In the meantime, Microsoft is readying a slew of new software that's aimed at product manufacturers. One, called Demand Planner, is designed to help companies coordinate their production activity, using sales forecasts and other market data. The software will be available by the end of this year, according to Mike Frichol, a Microsoft Business Solutions general manager.
Also set to debut is Microsoft Business Network, a software hosting service that's designed to help companies shuttle inventory, shipping and order information to trading partners via Internet-based technology.
E M E R G I C . o r g: B2B Update
Forbes has a special report on the world of B2B (business-to-business ecommerce). During the Internet boom era of the 1990s, B2B was the magic wand that would change everything. Then, the buzz faded. Now, it is making a comeback as a "basic business tool". From the introduction:
What many of the early B2B cheerleaders failed to grasp and what the Rayovacs of the world are grappling with today is the fact that pricing is merely one element in the highly complex relationships along supply chains. Reliability, speed and innovation matter too but in as many different ways as there are companies.Make no mistake, though, the B2B revolution is happening just not on the terms originally envisioned. Instead of upstart exchanges taking the ramparts, industry incumbents are leading the charge. Firms like Wal-Mart, Dell and Cisco are nudging, and sometimes forcing, suppliers to make nitty-gritty changes that are glamorous only when they reach the bottom line.
But reach it they can. The technologies that companies install to communicate with their partners can reduce supply chain costs by half, says the Yankee Group. That helps explain why companies are increasing spending on such technologies by 100% to 150% annually even as they cut back on overall information technology budgets. In fact, B2B commerce has actually grown despite the bursting of the stock market bubble that once surrounded it. Worldwide, e-business activity is to grow five-fold in three years to $1.4 trillion in 2003 and then is expected to nearly double again to $2.4 trillion next year, figures e-business research firm Emarketer.
SPB Software house is building a supercomputer using 12 pocket PCs.
Quote:
“The idea is quite simple: there are eleven Pocket PCs that act as nodes of the cluster, and these devices actually perform all the calculations. There is one additional device that is controlling the others, giving them small pieces of information to process, and collecting the results of each node's calculations.”
This is the most interesting blog spam I've seen yet on my blog (check the last comment). I'm going to leave it on for a while just for being creative...
PS: Looks like an infinite number of mokeys got together to type the text out. Perfect... ;)
Matt Stephens and Dough Rosenberg have a bold critique of extreme programming.
Quote:
“There's a lot to be gained from learning about XP, and agile practices in general. However, many feel that XP has taken things too far. By taking things to the opposite extreme, we're just introducing a fresh set of problems. The optimum solution, then, must lie somewhere between these two extremes. That is fundamentally what Extreme Programming Refactored (XPR) is about.”
theOTHERblog: Interview with John Scully
As I look back on things that I wished we would have done differently when I was at Apple, I think one of the biggest missed opportunities, and it was on my watch, so I feel responsible and disappointed that we didn't do more with it, was Hypercard. It was created back in 1987 by Bill Atkinson, Apple's first software programmer. We could never figure out exactly what it was. What it was, was the belief that everyone should be enabled to make the computer do what they wanted it to do... a hugely ambitious aim that seems to have waned lately... ...
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OK, if you've heard this term and are not sure what it exactly entails, you may be interested in this page on the AIGA site which gives you detailed look into experience design.
Also on the same site was this nice presentation that looks into the role definition of an interaction designer.
theOTHERblog: Good Experience - Four Words to Improve User Research
Mark challenges the accepted methods for conducting a usability test, which if I'm right comes down to relying on your intuition, winging it and riding by the seat of your pants, but listening carefully throughout.Which sort of points towards not being able to tell anyone how to conduct tests, which I quite like the sound of, when the methodologies for usability tests are all sorted out, the magic has gone for me. Sometimes I don't like to know how I do what I do, or like being able to guarantee results. Where's the fun in that? ...
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O'Reilly Network Articles: Cooking with ActionScript, Part 2
This week we conclude our two-part series of excerpts from ActionScript Cookbook with sample recipes on pausing and resuming a sound, saving a local shared object, and searching XML.
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E M E R G I C . o r g: SAP's NetWeaver
News.com has an interview with SAP's rising star and possible future CEO, Shai Agassi, who talks about NetWeaver as being the future platform:
I think NetWeaver is our next foundation--just like three-tier client server was our foundation 10 years ago. NetWeaver is our foundation for the next 10 years.One of the things we're doing this time is we're bringing in our technology platform, which is sort of our secret sauce for how the applications are so robust and scalable. But we're opening up the platform so that people can build with it, including other players in the industry, such as integrators or developers.
What's new is we're starting to see the emergence of very few players that have all the integration facets in one platform. It's almost like the car industry. We go from the thousands of players to very, very few--five or six--that can actually put in one platform, fully pre-integrated. And that is a very big change, because when you get to a complete solution, you move from early adopters to people who like to dabble and build to the Main Street--the people who have to have it. And we look at five to 10 times growth in any market when that happens.That means that instead of seeing ERP, CRM, SCM (supply chain management), PLM (product lifecycle management), HR (human resources) and you name it--all these buzzwords in the application space, shipping as separate entities--you will see a collection of services--in the vicinity of tens of thousands of services.
For the techies, this creates a whole new wave of innovation. They can build on a whole new platform. The CEOs are excited for a very
simple reason. It changes the total cost-of-ownership equation. Integration has become the highest cost of IT in most of the companies you see today in any industry. If you can find the formula that actually reduced the cost of operation through preintegration of these layers, then you save a lot in operational costs that you can then invest back into innovation.A lot of people talked about the improvements in supply chain--cutting four of five days out of a 16-day process. But you look at innovation in product definition and product design, and you may actually cut three to six months out of a 12-month cycle. The impact on a company is significantly bigger.
We're moving now into a well-defined process that allows me to do it in a predictable and sustainable way across my businesses, across the world--from the design to the launch of a product, from recruiting people to a postmortem on projects, from premerger deal rooms to a postmerger reorganization. There are all these processes that we've never done before.
The Sydney Morning Herald takes a look at the world's best blogs. How many of them are on your regular read list?
It's going to be a very busy month, and blogging is going to take a back seat for sometime. However every now and then I come across some nice posts that I want to record for later reference, and for that I'll be using the Post2Blog feature that my aggregator offers. I've been using InfoAggregator for some time as my default aggregator and it is really cool. Integrates with my Outlook Inbox and also allows me to post directly to my blog from Outlook. So anytime you find some posts that are mirrors of posts made by somebody else, it's just me recording the post for my own future reference...
O'Reilly Network Articles: Qualities of a Good Middle-Tier Architecture
IT spends a considerable sum of dollars in creating company-wide frameworks as part of building their business applications. This is especially true for typed languages like C++, Java, and C#. The core of this spending goes towards coming up with an architecture for the middle tier. How does one know if the resulting architecture will serve the needs? This article examines the qualities of a good middle-tier architecture and answers how the well known middle-tier architectures that are in vogue today stack up against this analysis. The middle-tier architectures analyzed include stored procedures, SOA, EJBs, COM+, and SQLJ.
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