Is Acrylic going to be PhotoShop killer from M$? Acrylic is based on Expression, the graphics application Microsoft acquired with its 2003 purchase of Hong Kong company Creature House. You can download an evaluation version here...
The expanse of white space at the bottom of Google's main Web page, possibly the most valuable undeveloped real estate in cyberspace. Not anymore...
Couple of articles on Google Fusion:
1. NY Times
2. eWeek
An in-progress collection of AJAX patterns being collected and discovered by Michael Mahemoff
In March, the Federal Communications Commission took a significant step toward breaking an industry deadlock over setting a single standard for a new wireless technology called ultrawideband, or UWB...
“While traditional radio technologies have transmitted and received analog signals only on specific frequencies, UWB uses inexpensive computing power to send short radio pulses across much of the radio spectrum. Because it does not use a single frequency, UWB offers several advantages, including the capacity to send high volumes of information quickly and the ability to share frequencies and resist interference. It's like breaking a truck's cargo into loads small enough to be carried on bicycles that can weave through a traffic jam.”
[Via NY Times: Requires Free Registration]
On Monday, Microsoft announced 'Metro', a new document management technology that will be a part of its Longhorn OS. Xerox has also announced support for Metro, which is an open format that allows users to share, print and archive paginated-layout documents and used in document workflows.
Looks like Google is planning to take on A9 heads on with its own book search feature called Google Print.
Well, the more the merrier, right?
Amazon is taking on Google with a new search site called A9.
While Google concentrates on simplicity and delivering the most relevant search results in the shortest possible time, A9 is adding the experience face to the process of conducting a web search by providing various facets like related movies and books.
While A9 still relies on the Google to provide its basic search results, integrating it with Amazon's 'Search inside Book' feature, has made this into a really powerful search engine. While Google still relies on the Internet for data, A9 is also supported by the written word. Also some of the nice to have features like 'History' and 'Bookmarks' make this an instantly likeable site...
Also read this NY Times article for more insight…
PS: I just noticed that A9 recognizes your Amazon ID...
Slightly old news, but here are a couple of links that looks into the added interest RIAs have developed as a result of this news:
BEA Alchemy is an IE (browser) plugin that is being developed as a way to deliver rich data to thin clients and also help them work in an 'Occasionally Connected' mode. Jon Udell in this article says:
“The caching scheme is the heart and soul of Alchemy. Current approaches to taking browsers offline typically queue messages that later update in a server-based data model. An Alchemy application, though, always works with a genuine local data model that it stores as sets of XML fragments and navigates in a relational style. Bosworth’s hunch is that a Web-style thin client, driven by a rich data model intelligently synchronized with the services cloud, could do most of what we really need — both offline and online. ”
Looks like Alchemy in combination with Liquid Data is going to give Macromedia Central and Flex a run for their money....
Somewhat old news, but I'm still catching up these days ;)
According to this article the latest update to Windows will be available to all users - including those using pirated copies of its Windows XP software. Is it really altruism that prompted this move? Hmn...
Postscript: In comments Dominic points out another article which clarifies the MS position - More MS like - "Microsoft Corrects: No XP SP2 for Pirated Copies"
Random surfing can at times reveal some good links. Today I found a link to this introduction to CMMi via Rob Grzywinski's site.
The CMMi is a model for improving and appraising the performance of development organizations. It stands for “Capability Maturity Model Integration”. At Digité, we have a tool that helps organizations gain visibility into their projects and processes. Worth checking out if your organization is following CMMi or any other process, if you are interested in knowing more read this whitepaper.
Brendan Eich had written some time back that Mozilla was looking to forge alliances with GNOME and other Open Source Projects to combat Longhorn. So looks like a meeting was held and the opensource community is gearing itself to combat Longhorn.
This news comes a bit too late, but I'm posting it in any case.
Jeremey Z in this post talks how Orkut is strategically important for Google
Makes a lot of sense...
OK now the extension. With GMail in the picture, now you can easily use the Orkut network for populating address books. And come too think of it, that is a lot of behavioral information that Google could potentially have access to.
All this of course translates to a whole lot of advertising $$$.
Hmn... so when are they going IPO?
Macromedia’s server-side products have never quite enjoyed the same kind of success that it’s desktop applications have (the exception being Cold Fusion, but then it was already quite successful before it became a part of the Macromedia stable.)
So with the release of Macromedia Flex, is this equation going to change?
Not sure.
Firstly, there is a very similar product in Laszlo Presentation Server that has been around for a while. But despite its potential, I’m not sure if Laszlo has made quite the impact it was hoping to. Flex is definitely has a advantage in Brady (the MXML editor) but the real challenge for application developers would be to justify the cost of an additional application server just to render the UI which in turn requires a plugin on the client.
Somehow, I’m finding this a little difficult to justify. Had the same problem justifying Generator development about four years ago. But then that was the dot.com boom time, and funding an ambitious online application was slightly easier than it is now. So the question is, will Flex go the Generator way?
Found this via Rajesh's site. Interestingly the headline says 16 hard truths but lists 18...
Cringely believes that obfuscation is the key to .NET’s survival and an Euclid, Ohio based company called PreEmptive Solutions holds the key to the technology. Interesting thoughts, and the technology behind the ‘morphing’ lines of code does look very interesting. If Cringely is to be believed, there may be a gold rush on to own a piece of PreEmptive…
Don Park's Daily Habit: Longhorn Aero UI Sampler
I just ran across this nice set of Longhorn UI related articles, officially titled Aero User Experience Guidelines: Sampler for PDC 2003. Links to the meat are under What's Inside? heading. Some good ideas, some questionable, but all good looking. I am starting to get a little sick of all the gradients though and the huge titlebar seem wasteful. I wonder what usability tests caused them to make the title bar much bigger?
Read Complete Article
Category: Technical
The two main predictions according to this report are that 1. Standards and service-oriented applications will permeate IT and 2. Web services will allow enterprises to improve the way they interact, and develop, sell and support products. Also in the report:
“By 2006, Web services will take hold as a competitive differentiator in business relationships and product innovation. Enterprises that want to remain competitive will need to use Web services to provide commonly requested data to their partners. It is imperative that enterprises develop a strategy for how to use Web services to develop products, including hard goods, digital goods and services.”
In this Infoworld article Ephraim Schwartz looks into the challenges of managing outsourced development and how companies will have to develop new roles and new processes that help manage these outsourced initiatives. Quoting the article:
“Long term, IT will need to change its research and development and PLM (product lifecycle management) processes to adapt to this outsource model, say both Kelly and Murphy. IT will need to refocus its skills on business analytics and strategy.
The ability to negotiate a change request will be of equal importance to technical skills, if not more so. And, though ultimately you may want to treat the outsource firm as your engineering team and you may want that process to be transparent, there will be new tasks to delegate, with time zone and language barriers thrown in for good measure. If you can’t walk down the hall, you need new processes to make sure things get done. From what I can tell, this is not something the computer science schools currently focus on. ”
This is exactly what we are tackling at Digité. Our platform allows enterprises to gain complete visibility into all their outsourcing initiatives while allowing them to adapt different processes with changing business needs...
Scoble points out to a Longhorn Demo that takes you through a sample Real Estate Application using Avalon (the vector based renderer) Indigo (reliable Messaging) and a host of other web services which form the basis of the Service Oriented Architecture behind longhorn. All this is quite exciting in terms of technology, but it is introducing the same kind of challenges that Flash had during its early days with respect to consistent user interfaces. The zoomable map using a magnifying glass that enlarges the area underneath it, reminded me of so much of the early Flash days, when such effects were considred cool. Avalon might go though a similar phase where developers will be so much in awe of what is possible that they might go ahead a design interfaces without actually thinking whether the interfaces are actually usable. By the way, couldn't the Linux/J2EE group use a combination of Flash and Webservices (read Central) to achieve what Longhorn is aiming to do without having to re-write anything?
MetaFilter: I (can see into the future), Cringely
Robert X. Cringely's Predictions for 2004 : first he updates readers on his 2003 predictions (80% accuracy) and then dishings 15 new techie prophecies.
Read Complete Article
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/30514
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can manage your account by logging into http://rss.blogstreet.com
Scoble believes that Longhorn is going to be such a radical paradigm shift, that Microsoft cannot call it Windows. After all it has a brand new UI, it is completely SOA, and most importantly, apps designed for Longhorn will not be backward compatible (though if the app is built using .NET, should it not run on XP with some small tweaks or run-time engine? Not sure...)
In any case, Scoble is also looking for a new name for this OS. Care to contribute?
Tomalak's Realm
WIRED: 101 Ways to Save the Internet. Paul Boutin. Desperate solutions range from abandoning email to requiring a license to log on. Halt, fools! The Internet's problems stem from the same virtues that make it great: open architecture, the free flow of information, peer-to-peer cooperation, and a bias for linking strangers, not disconnecting them.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can manage your account by logging into http://rss.blogstreet.com
E M E R G I C . o r g: Mozilla as Platform
Linux News writes:
With user clients like e-mailers, HTML composers, calenders, debuggers, chat applications and address books, Mozilla must be far more than just a Web browser. And it is. The Mozilla Browser is built on top of the Mozilla Platform.The Mozilla Platform itself is a set of programmable objects and XML processors bound together into a single program. Applications that exploit this platform consist of images, XML and text files that are interpreted at runtime when the platform starts.
You can buy the O'Reilly book from Amazon, or just get the entire book in a zipped version from Micah Dubinko's site. In either case, I think this would be an essential read...
Tomalak's Realm
SJ Mercury: The year's lowlights and highlights in technology. Dan Gillmor. Human beings make some terrible decisions, and the malevolent among us do enormous damage, but somehow the species seems to muddle through and even make progress. That's how it looks from here as I look back at the last 12 months in technology, tech policy and overall economic matters.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can manage your account by logging into http://rss.blogstreet.com
O'Reilly Network Articles: O'Reilly's Best of 2003
This year we published nearly 100 feature-length articles by O'Reilly book authors. Based on visitor statistics, we've come up with our top 10 most popular articles of 2003. But wait, there's more. We've also gathered our favorite tips pieces of the year. And where would we be without the books themselves? So we've also compiled a list of the year's top-sellers. What's wrong with a little shameless, year-end promotion? Enjoy.
Read Complete Article
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/news/2003/12/19/bestof2003.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can manage your account by logging into http://rss.blogstreet.com
The guys who invented JSP are now playing around with a new technology, that looks very promising. XAML is the MS implementation of an XML based UI definition (there are others ranging from XUL to WSUI) and since it will be packaged into Longhorn, it could change the way application UIs will evolve over the next few years. Xamlon is a runtime library that executes XAML for the .NET framework. Although not 100% XAML compatible, I think there is potential here.
I'm not to sure how web applications will evovle over the next couple of years now that technologies like XUL, Flex/Laszlo and XAML are making their presence felt. Does this mark the beginning of the end of the DHTML based Web Application?
[via Jeremy Allaire]
Tomalak's Realm
Fast Company: 5 Tech Innovators. Scott Kirsner. They work in fields as diverse as portable power, biotechnology, and information visualization. Who's working on something really new? Here are five compelling answers.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can manage your account by logging into http://rss.blogstreet.com
O'Reilly Network Articles: JPEG2000: the Killer Image File Format for Lossless Storage
Is JPEG2000 the killer image file format for lossless storage? Ken Milburn thinks so. In this article, Ken details the options available in the JPEG2000 plug-in, which have been designed to help photographers losslessly compress and store the highest-quality images as efficiently as possible. Ken is the author of the upcoming Digital Photographer's Handbook.
Read Complete Article
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2003/11/14/digphoto_ckbk.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can manage your account by logging into http://rss.blogstreet.com
Big Mac, the terascale cluster built entirely out of Macintosh computers is officially the third fastest super computer notes this Wired article.
However its 10.3 teraflop speed may soon be eclipsed by a dishwasher sized super computer being built by IBM which may clock up to 360 teraflops. By comparison, the fastest machine today clocks just 35 teraflops and is the size of four tennis courts. And it is expected to run on Linux…
Came across this old article by Jon Udell on Infoworld, that calls to elevate scripting languages like ActionScript, JavaScript and Python to a more respectful level.
“I am not only saying that you can do what used to be called "systems programming" in what used to be called a "scripting language" -- although you sometimes can. Nor am I merely lauding Python as a spectacular implementation of a first-class scripting language -- although it is one. My point is that languages like Python, but also Perl, Ruby, and JavaScript/JScript/ActionScript/EcmaScript, are strategic in ways that we don't yet fully acknowledge.”
I do agree they really do deserve more importance in the development process but the idea of using prototypes as final products does seem a bit too revolutionary.
They are very useful if used in pilot studies, and should be built in such a way that most of it can be leveraged. It still may not be possible with current development tools, but it would be great to have one like that. Develop in a scripting language and deploy in Java/C++.
E M E R G I C . o r g: Best of 2003
Popular Science has the 10 best innovations/inventions of 2003. Among them: 802.11g and the Mitsubishi MegaView Wall.
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 . . .
Read Complete Article
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/29191
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can manage your account by logging into http://rss.blogstreet.com
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 ;)
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.
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.
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...
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]
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
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.”