July 6th, 2008 § 0 comments § permalink
I saw an article today about voicemail being dead and I have to agree. It’s time to let it go, with IM, SMS and Email, who needs it really? It’s an archaic form of messaging and it’s time for it to go.
Do you agree? Do you think good old voicemail should give up the ghost?
June 27th, 2008 § 3 comments § permalink
From So Long, Bill Gates, and Thanks for the Monopoly By Dylan Tweney In fact, the monopoly that Microsoft once had on computer operating systems was essential to the development of the computer industry, enforcing a de facto standard that permitted thousands of software and hardware companies to blossom.
The Microsoft monopoly was one part luck, one part business acumen. The lucky part: When IBM asked Microsoft to provide an operating system for its new personal computer in 1980, Gates got the contract, even though he didn’t have an OS to sell.
No problem. Gates immediately bought the rights to another operating system, QDOS, which he then recast as MS-DOS and sold to IBM.
The savvy part: Gates’ fledgling company was able to retain rights to the new operating system, securing Microsoft’s place at the hub of the PC industry. Later, Gates leveraged that monopoly into such complete dominance of the PC industry that Microsoft was able to collect payments from PC manufacturers for every PC they sold — even if those PCs didn’t carry a Microsoft operating system.
That monopoly was bad for competitors who had arguably superior operating systems — including, later, IBM’s OS/2. And it was built in large part on appropriating the best ideas of other companies, from Gary Kildall’s CP/M to Apple’s Macintosh.
But the upside was enormous because the monopoly created a stable environment where entrepreneurs could develop new companies and new products around a common platform.
Without that standard, the computer industry in the 1990s would have resembled the web today: diverse, vibrant and flowering with abundant innovation, but also frequently broken because of the inability of disparate products to make the most basic connections with one another.
"Unlike oil, pharmaceutical or steel, monopolies are a necessary ingredient in the technology business," Forrester Research founder George Colony wrote in a recent blog post. "It’s only when de facto standards like Windows or de jure standards like HTML become dominant that usefulness soars."
Contrast that to the state of the internet today. While the web abounds in standards, a frequent problem is that companies don’t hew to them (and since 1996, Microsoft has been guilty of this behavior too). Having trouble syncing your Google calendar with your Yahoo calendar? Wondering why your camcorder won’t upload to your new Macbook, your iPod can’t share files with your friends’ MP3 players and your mobile phone can’t display webpages properly? All of these problems are traceable to a lack of widely supported standards.
Just imagine if the same chaos had reigned throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Hardware manufacturers like Dell, Hewlett Packard, Compaq and IBM would still be battling it out with incompatible systems. And software like Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect and yes, even Microsoft Office never would have achieved widespread success.
"[Bill Gates] made an unbelievable contribution," said Netscape, Opsware and Ning founder Marc Andreessen, while speaking at a keynote with John Battelle at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco earlier this year. "It’s hard to conceive what this industry would look like today if Microsoft hadn’t standardized the OS … I think the industry would be much smaller if that hadn’t happened."
Of course, success breeds resentment, and Gates’ aggressive business practices — and less-than-polished personal style — made him many enemies.
"The problem is when you’re the biggest sequoia in the woods, everyone wants to cut you down," said Paul Santinelli, a general partner with North Bridge Venture Partners, a venture capital firm.
Gates didn’t help matters by overreaching once his company’s monopoly was firmly established.
"Gates became kind of a Godfather figure in the industry, demanding tributes from his partners and whacking those who threatened his power," Carr said. "So Microsoft deserves both praise for stimulating innovation and criticism for stifling it."
And then there was the problem that many of Microsoft’s products simply didn’t work that well. Indeed, as the chorus of complaints about Windows Vista grows louder day by day, it could be said that Gates is leaving Microsoft at exactly the right time, before the company’s long decline sullies his reputation.
"If all that stuff worked right out of the box, we’d all be out of a job," said David Strom, an independent technology consultant and speaker in St. Louis, Missouri. Strom has a speech praising Gates for, among other things, effectively guaranteeing full employment for IT people called in to make Microsoft products work properly.
But while technologists may curse Gates’ aggressiveness and the bugginess of Microsoft software, they should also raise a glass to toast him as he departs the computer business.
"He didn’t have the zest of a Philippe Kahn, or the elegance of a Steve Jobs, or the stage presence of a Larry Ellison. But the guy revolutionized the PC industry, and that’s what people need to remember," said Santinelli.
June 25th, 2008 § 1 comment § permalink
I have gone through many changes with this blog, and one reason I don’t update it as much as I would like to is that I try to keep this thing a constant topic (or group of topics) that draw a particular type of user. Now, I love blogging, and I will continue to, but just like my wife, I find myself struggling with one thing. There are often blogs that I want to write, and should write, but I don’t because they aren’t quite appropriate to my blog.
I am pretty sure I will never be a professional blogger, and if I become one, then I will have made many more changes than this to get there, but as far as that goes, I am going to start using this blog a little more like a journal in addition to technology articles. Some of the things I would like to add are photo-a-day type blogs where I post cool photos I take and the story or inspiration behind them, stuff about music I am listening to or movies I have recently enjoyed and just general life stuff.
I won’t be on here whining about stuff or blabbing out personal information, that’s still not an appropriate use of my blog, but as I have so many friends I have made through this blog that follow it (and often ask why I don’t post as much) I will try to make it more active.
Sometimes writing long posts on technological topics takes time and it makes for a slow blog, so with that, I’ll pick up the pace a bit and start writing more about things that may or may not always be of interest to you.
I’ll be sure to organize my feeds in such a way where you can subscribe to just the tech articles if you want, if not, get ready, hopefully it will start as a trickle but end up as a flood of information that you might find interesting.
June 10th, 2008 § 3 comments § permalink
If you or your organizations are interested in podcasting, have SharePoint Server 2007 deployed and about to develop your own podcasting solution then look no further. PKS will save you time, reduce your risk of developing a solution ground-up, and of course will save you money. Moreover, you will find on codeplex a vibrant community of people, organizations and partners who are available to help you, and share with you their own experiences. We strongly recommend that you work with an integration partner for the deployment and maintenance of your own PKS environment. We have listed several partners that we know, but you could just ask your local partner or IT departement to help you out.
PKS is not a traditional Microsoft Product in a sense that it is distributed with its source code, using the Public License license and free of charge (if you already own SharePoint Server 2007). It is not supported by Microsoft, and we recommend that you ask your integration partner for such a support. Since the PKS’s code is distributed any partner who understands development for SharePoint 2007 will be able to deliver this support for you.
PKS Detailed Overview Slide Deck
Silverlight 2.0 Playback Demonstration (1 minute podcast)
Silverlight 2.0 Reliable Upload Demonstration (2 minutes podcast)
Filtering in PKS (39 second podcast)
Change Values in Taxonomy (2 minute podcast)
Add Your Own Categories (3:25 minute podcast)
June 5th, 2008 § 1 comment § permalink
I am designing what I want my next step of my application to look like and do and two things occurred to me that I want to cover.
With those two features in mind, here are my ideas I will start on tonight and probably not have a working mock up till after the weekend.
And now things get hard…
Gosh, this means I will have to put more thought into how it works. I have quite a few ideas on this short list (which isn’t short at all) and Photo Transfer is going to grow from a file copier to a real photo transfer, sorting, backup and meta-data management system.
First I want to add a filmstrip metaphor at the bottom of the screen that you can use to multi-select or single select the photos that you want to manage.
In keeping with this concept, many photographers like to sort photos in a rating system (e.g. keeper, trash, 1-5, etc.) so it would be nice to be able to sort the work and archive files into that type of file system. That means a big preview screen to make snap judgements on things like focus, exposure, etc.
It also means actual RAW file support which to me means this app has now become Vista only (or XP if you have the right stuff installed) as I will most likely use Windows Presentation Foundation.
Stealing a bit from the iTunes metaphor for managing mp3 meta-data, I want to be able to assign tags, sub-folders and even possibly comments to photos one or many at a time. This means adding EXIF support and a UI for managing a default tag list and a session tag list, also managing the tags currently used on the photos you are working with.
Another gimme’ with adding bulk-edit would be the ability to name and auto-generate named sequences for groups of photos. (laketahoe1.jpg, laketahoe2.jpg, etc.) Again helping file system search capabilities.
I intend to leave real after the fact management to programs like Microsoft Expression Media, but we all know it’s garbage in, garbage out, so if the process of importing your photos cleans up your meta-data, you are better off, also at this point those of us that import to a laptop on the road, then merge to a master archive after the fact get the benefit of keeping it all consistent.
Looks like there is a lot of work and learning ahead for me, and I will likely re-write most of what I have done so far to make it more stable and efficient so I can just plug it into this new UI framework and bolt on features as I go.
Keep an eye on the blog, it should be an interesting ride.
