Simon Fell corrects me: there is no .NET CF for the SmartPhone. That really sucks.

Ahh, I see what Ole is having trouble with. He's having trouble understanding .NET. He ain't the only one, believe me.

The problem is .NET actually means several things. I'll try to give my take on it, and see if anyone (Steve Ballmer, are you out there?) can help explain it further.

.NET IS

1) .NET is a programming platform. You remember how you used to build apps for DOS? You'd write a little assembly code or C code. Compile it into a .EXE and then you could run it by typing C:myappmydosapp.exe. Real simple, right? Well, in Windows programs got far bigger so they needed to be broken into pieces. If you look into any standard Window app you'll see .DLLs, .OCXs, and .EXEs, among others.

These components were great as long as a user was running a standalone system. Let's look back on my first Windows machine. It had no network. There was no real concept of the Internet or the Web.

Today's Windows apps needed to be partitioned for use over the Internet. For instance, look at my weblog. See those links over to the right. Did you know that those are coming from a completely different computer than my weblog is?

So, in addition to the components of yesterday's Windows apps, today's Windows apps needed to be "Internet aware." That is, I needed to run a component (er application) on one machine that worked with a component (er application) that runs on a totally different machine.

Microsoft's name for those components (er Web services) is ".NET." Yeah, it's a stupid name. But, then, is OLE Custom Control any better (AKA .OCXs, or the predicessor to Microsoft's .NET Web services).

So, how do you build a .NET app? You use the .NET Framework and the .NET Common Language Runtime. I have the runtime loaded on my system. You can compile a .NET application/component/webservice (they really are pretty much the same thing) and I can run it here.

By the way, many of the geeks also talk about "managed" vs. "unmanaged" apps. Managed apps are those that run completely inside the .NET system. It means that app only uses APIs and memory management that's built into the .NET Runtime and doesn't ever get outside of the .NET system. So, if you want really truly totally .NET apps, make sure you get a .NET Managed app that has no "unmanaged" code in it. Unmanaged code is code that needs to jump outside of the .NET system and talk to Windows directly.

For the non geeks who are still with me, .NET is cool. It lets developers write Windows apps in 10% to 25% less time than those folks who are still using old-style development tools.

For the geeks: if you want to build apps for the next versions of Windows, you'll want to get into .NET. The world is about to shift and you'll want to be on the right side of that shift.

.NET is the new way to build applications for Windows (and, possibly other operating systems as well -- search Google for MONO to see how to build .NET apps for Linux, for instance).

2) .NET is a set of protocols. OK, Microsoft worked with two guys: Don Box (who now works at Microsoft) and Dave Winer (who weblogs over at scripting.com) to come up with a protocol that would allow components/applications/web services to talk to other components/applications/web services. That protocol is SOAP. Any component/application/web service that runs on Windows that is SOAP compatible can be said to be a .NET app. I'm sure some Microsoft folks will bug me for saying that, though, because the developer group seems to be saying that only apps/components/web services that run on the .NET Framework can be seen as real .NET apps.

3) .NET is marketing. Microsoft put the name ".NET" on a few things that weren't SOAP-compatible and that weren't built on top of the .NET Framework. Are they also .NET? That's what Microsoft said a year ago. That seems to be changing.

Why did Microsoft use the name ".NET?" I don't know. I think they wanted to pick a name that Google would have a hard time with. I can't find any other reasonable explanation, although I'm sure that my Instant Messenger will light up in the morning with plausible explanations from Microsoft's PR firm.

Keep in mind that Microsoft spent something like a billion dollars on developing .NET, so there's no way I'm gonna do the topic justice in a single weblog entry. Hopefully folks will help me out by clarifying my points in their own weblogs or in the comments on my weblog.

Ole Eichhorn asked his readers to click on a link to me so I'd see his referer in my referer log. Well, it only took 36 hours for me to figure out he was trying to talk with me. Sorry about that. Heh, he thinks I'm a heavyweight when compared to David Coursey. Wow. That's a really nice compliment. By the way, lots of folks keep trying to figure out how to email me. I'll give you all a little tip. See that envelope over on the right side of my page. I read every email sent to me. (This is a feature of Radio UserLand, by the way. Anyone who uses Radio UserLand will get spam-free email capability built into their weblog).

Dwight Shih says I shouldn't be suprised that Microsoft isn't successful with its Smartphone.

Thomas Lewis has some good ideas for potential book authors.

.NET BLOG CHALLENGE: someone I know wants to get into weblogging. He's really excited, but he wants to make sure he chooses the right tool. One thing he needs to do is be able to post from his Microsoft Smart Phone, so he needs a .NET CF client -- this person might even be able to whip up his own, as long as the interfaces are straightforward (I'm looking at Erablog.net, and see that that system supports SOAP, XML-RPC, and the MetaWeblog APIs, among others). Plus, he would like it to run on .NET, if possible and he'd like to host it on his own machine (sounds like EraBlog is best here too -- am I missing other .NET-based weblog systems?). He's considering Radio UserLand, Moveable Type, EraBlogs, among others. Yes, this person works at Microsoft.

Oh, and it needs to support SSI (Server Side Includes). Whew, anything else? Oh yeah, he wants to include Windows Media Files in his blog, but that's a client-side thing, so any blog tool should work.

I'm wondering about this myself since so many people from Microsoft have all of a sudden started asking me which weblogging tool I should choose. Any feedback?

Ahh, Haloscan wrote me a nice note apologizing for the troubles with their comment system and said that things should stay up now.

Sean Alexander, of Microsoft, passed me another contest where you can win an insider tour of Microsoft. Hey, I've had that tour and it's pretty awesome. Do they let you sit at Bill Gates desk and let you tell Steve Ballmer to get you some coffee?

Whew, it only took a week, but now I got all the components of Office 11 downloaded. Seems my wife would stop the download to play Solitare. Heh. I'm off to play.

Oh, oh, I cost Scott Johnson some sleep. He's the guy who wrote the awesome Feedster, which lets you search RSS feeds.

Are you blogging from a conference or an event somewhere? Doug Fox has started a place to let folks know about it.

Watching a war start is a sobering experience (I watched the start of the latest one on CNN). Good luck to all of our troops and to the Iraqi people too.

Hey, if comments are down, why is that stopping you from commenting on your own weblog? It didn't stop Brad Wilson from commenting about my point of when the war will start and what we should do with Iran once we're done with Iraq.

Yes, my comments are having troubles. Haloscan is the system I am using and it's been up and down lately. Not good. Feel free to send me email at robertscoble@hotmail.com instead.

Robert McLaws reacts to Scott McNealy's comments on news.com. Scott called .NET a joke.

My comments? Well, if .NET is a joke, Sun is a tragedy. A Silicon Valley tragedy. Why Sun's board of directors doesn't get someone with vision and the ability to save Sun is beyond me. (Did anyone notice that Sun's stock and prospects are in the toilet?)

Since Scott is hopeless, let's all learn from this. Every news.com interview should be seen as an opportunity to tell the world your vision and to try to get more customers to come to your side. Now, I dare you, find one bit of innovation being discussed by Scott in this interview. One thing that'll help Sun's customers. One thing that will result in Sun improving its revenues. One thing that'll keep Sun from losing market share to Linux (Linux is really hurting Sun more than .NET is). One thing to get excited about. Nah, I heard Scott give this speech three years ago at Comdex. It turned me off of him then. It just shows that he's unable to change strategies now, even as his company teeters on the brink of financial ruin.

And people wonder why I support Microsoft? Listen, if Microsoft had any competitors doing anything interesting I'd support them (I was the first to support ICQ, for instance, and was 29 months ahead of Microsoft coming out with a product in that space). Is this the best that Silicon Valley can do? If so, the Valley's days of technology dominance are over.