Monday, February 09, 2004

LaundryView helps students schedule clothes washing. Roland sez: "It's Sunday and you realize that all your clothes are dirty. If you're a student, it's time to go to your campus laundry room. But wait, you might be lucky enough to plan your laundry in advance. In this article, the Boston Globe reports that it's now possible in some colleges and universities in the U.S. "to go online to check all laundry rooms on campus and see which washers and dryers are open, occupied, or broken; how long until a machine completes a cycle; and how many others are waiting." Users of the LaundryView system "can arrange for an e-mail to alert them when it's time to put clothes into the dryer or rescue their wardrobe and fold it." This overview contains more details on this 'Web service' and includes a screenshot of what students can see if the LaundryView system has been installed on their campus." [Boing Boing Blog]

Looking at Longhorn vs. Web is a wrong way to approach Longhorn. Another of my VBITS speakers (I used to help plan the VBITS/VSLive series of conferences), Rocky Lhotka, is blogging. He is trying to figure out what XAML/WinFX in Longhorn means for developers. First of all, Longhorn isn't going to get here anytime soon. That needs to be said over and over again. Second of all, he totally misinterprets what Microsoft's trying to do with Longhorn. He assumes Longhorn technologies are going to be used instead of Web technologies. There is absolutely no way that will happen. To think Microsoft is trying to do that is to TOTALLY miss the point of Longhorn. Longhorn is all about opening up the potential for new kinds of Windows applications to be built (and reducing the cost of developing existing style Windows apps). Emphasis on Windows. There will always be room for applications to be built for just one platform. Why? Look at Flight Simulator. Do you EVER think something like Flight Simulator could be built for cross-platform, Internet usage? I don't see it. It's too big to transport for even broadband users. (Or, look at some of the apps Apple is building for the Macintosh platform -- many of those will never be ported to Windows either -- the cost vs. the return on investment is simply too high). Go back and look at Joel Spolsky's arguments about why he won't use .NET: he's concerned about a 25MB runtime. Flight Simulator is HUNDREDS of megabytes. Second, Flight Simulator needs a ton of technologies that only exist on Windows. DirectX. Etc. To build a version of Flight Simulator that'd run on Linux, Macs, and Windows, would mean building a DirectX platform for both of those (or, better yet, rewriting Flight Simulator to run directly on those platforms). That's not likely to happen. Why not? Flight Simulator doesn't sell enough copies to make that worth the effort. So, instead of looking at Avalon, er WinFX, and XAML as something that'll compete with browser-based things, let's rather look at the world as "rich" vs. "reach." There will always be a "reach" world. You know, one that works on Linux, Solaris, Macintosh, and all the versions of Windows (you'll note that not everyone on the Windows side of the fence automatically upgrades to the latest OS, no matter how compelling we make it). The Web today (and I theorize tomorrow too) is "reach." The confusion comes because Longhorn apps can run inside the browser Window. Imagine Flight Simulator playing inside of the browser Window instead of taking over the entire screen. Does that mean that Flight Simulator is all of a sudden a "Web" or a "reach" application? Of course not. If you're eBay or Amazon, you'll always need to do a reach solution (translation: something that'll work on Web browsers on all OS's). XAML and WinFX won't change that (no matter how good us Longhorn evangelists do our jobs or how much hype Microsoft stirs up). At least not for a LONG LONG time. The probabilities are high that I'll be dead long before XAML and WinFX will be used for a reach solution. But, let's say you have a project where you need to turn up the "richness" knob a bit. Today you might consider using Flash on the front end. Or, DHTML. Or, Java. All of those technologies reduce your "reach" a bit. Not every browser in the world can use these technologies. For instance, today you see very few sites that do only a site in Flash. Why not? Because that's a "rich" technology today, and not one with maximum "reach." (Another way of looking at it is Google only looks at HTML, not inside Flash movies or Java applets). But, even with these technologies, the "richness" isn't good enough for some applications (Amazon and Adobe and Merck were on stage with us at the PDC showing off some potential new applications that are impossible in today's "rich" world). Plus, tomorrow's systems will have new capabilities that today's systems simply don't have. Why do I say that? Cause I've been inside Microsoft's Research labs (just last Friday Kevin Schofield gave me an amazing tour). I've seen what they are thinking of doing with 3D hardware like that from ATI and nVidia. I've seen what they are thinking of doing for multiple and large-screen monitors. I've seen what they are thinking of doing for hard drives that are terrabytes in size. I've seen what they are thinking of doing for screens you can write on and computers that you can talk to. That new world is rushing at us and the hardware to enable new scenarios might be here before we can get Longhorn out the door (translation next two or more years). WinFX and XAML and future versions of .NET will enable a whole new kind of application. One that simply isn't possible today. Now, can you deliver a new app that requires a new OS and a new API set down to other OS's? I have looked at it, and I don't think so. Imagine trying to deliver something like Flight Simultor into HTML. What use would that be? And, try to imagine delivering the current version of Flight Simulator back in 1995. Couldn't be done. The hardware and software capabilities keep advancing. The 2010 version of Flight Simulator will be far more advanced than the one that can be delivered today. Could Flash or Java be used for Flight Simulator (even four years from now)? Certainly not that I can see. But with Longhorn it will be possible to build new kinds of apps that get close to today's Flight Simulator with far less effort than the Flight Simulator team had to go through to get where they are. Translation? Longhorn won't make people or companies give up the Web, any more than Flight Simulator does. So, how should you look at Longhorn? It extends the way .NET gives developers a more productive and more elegant development system. Look at Charles Torre's post. He's a coworker of mine who loves working in .NET (employees at Microsoft call this "managed code") instead of Win32. He compares managed code with old "C" style Win32 commands. Even I can see that it's easier to understand and write managed code and I'm not even a programmer. One last point. Am I saying that only games will be written in Longhorn? Of course not. Carter Maslan just released a video of a potential health care application and a real estate application done on Longhorn technologies. And he's working with the PDC builds of Longhorn -- there's still a lot more to come as the Longhorn team reacts to what they learned from attendees at the PDC. [The Scobleizer -- Celebrating the Geek lifestyle]

Cool calendar app. DateLens is a cool app for those of us who use PDAs to keep track of our schedules. [The Scobleizer -- Celebrating the Geek lifestyle]

Useful thoughts on Smart Clients. David Hill has an insightful article on "what are Smart Clients?" Useful in the context of my Longhorn rant below. [The Scobleizer -- Celebrating the Geek lifestyle]

Creative Commons Includes GPL And LGPL Metadata [Slashdot]

Steve Gillmor: "Today Kan is dead, Joy is retired, Napster is a brand name, and Ozzie's biggest client is the Department of Defense." [Scripting News]

Gnome's Nice Little GUI Perks [Slashdot]

New twist in Bikram Yoga copyright feuds. Bikram Choudhury, the eccentric Beverly Hills yoga master who once said in a Business 2.0 interview, "I have balls like atom bombs, two of them, 100 megatons each. Nobody fucks with me," has been suing practitioners he accuses of illicitly teaching his particular style of yoga (26 postures, done twice each in a >105-degree-hot room). Now, one group of yoga enthusiasts is suing back. Choudhury, America's best known and most controversial yogi, opened one of his first yoga schools in San Francisco in 1973 and now boasts 900 studios worldwide. He copyrighted, trademarked and franchised his poses, breathing techniques and dialogue, creating the first chain of its kind. He also hired lawyers who set loose a flurry of cease-and-desist letters warning yoga teachers in the Bay Area and beyond not to teach his yoga or anything "derivative" if they haven't graduated from his $5,000-per-person training program and are not paying a studio franchise fee. His letters threaten a penalty of $150,000 per infringement. Now, a San Francisco nonprofit organization of yoga enthusiasts from San Rafael to Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., is countering with a federal lawsuit attacking the guru's claim that yoga is proprietary. They say that yoga is a 5,000-year- old tradition that cannot be owned. The suit is asking the judge to determine whether Choudhury is entitled to copyright and trademark his material under federal copyright laws. A trial date has been set for next February. Link to SF Chron story, Link to Reuters story [Boing Boing Blog]

This is where I have been. I need to visit Africa (never been!), Asia (only been to Turkey, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore) and Central (never been!) and South America (never been). Miles to go before I sleep! create your own visited country map or write about it on the open travel guide [Roland Tanglao's Weblog

If you want to understand what really went on with the CIA, Iraq, WMDs, and the Bush Administration read (or reread) Seymour Hersh's "The Stovepipe" in The New Yorker. [John Robb's Weblog]

Dell's Linux Blog. Genuine, honest-to-blog corporate weblogging from a Fortune 500? Dell Linux engineers speak freely in this collaborative online journal, which consists mostly of software update news, patch pointers, and other deeply geeky stuff: Link. Also available in tasty, low-carb RSS. [Boing Boing Blog]

More on Kahn (the head of the Pakistani nuclear proliferation ring): As for Pakistan's enemies, Mr Khan claimed to have beaten them single-handedly. "I made all their policies go to waste. A single person destroyed all of their intended planning for the next 25 years," he said. He revels in his hatred of the West. "I want to question the bloody holier-than-thou attitudes of the Americans and the British," he has written. "Are these bastards God-appointed guardians of the world?" In one interview, he said: "All western countries, including Israel, are not only the enemies of Pakistan but, in fact, of Islam." Mr Khan believed that helping two Muslim powers to acquire the bomb would create a counterweight to American dominance. From 1998 until about 2000, Mr Khan oversaw the transfer of centrifuge technology to North Korea. This was a straightforward deal under which North Korea gave Pakistan long-range missiles in return for nuclear know-how and materials. "America, Israel and India want to destroy our bomb," said Hussam ul-Haq, whose brother, Islam ul-Haq, worked as Mr Khan's principal secretary and is now in detention. "That is what this is all about. They are the axis of evil in our minds." Given Kahn's megalomania, penchant for independent action, and apparent hostility to the West, the big question is: did he outfit Osama with a bomb (or rework a Soviet model for him)? We may have been spinning our wheels in Iraq while Osama was covertly maneurving, with careful steps, his limited nuclear arsenal against us. [John Robb's Weblog]

New Don Norman book. Christmas cheer. Don Norman has a new book - Norman, D. A. (2004). Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books. Excerpts at www.jnd.org and he also pointed to this site: http://www.ok-cancel.com about usability/interface design. Would that everybody read it! This all came from a discussion about human factors: The human factor *is* the problem in most disasters, but it is the human managers, policy-setters and designers, not the human users, who are at fault. Go forth and sin no more! and have great holidays! [EDventure] Coolio! Esther gets a real blog going (on blogware!) and Don Norman (my hero) puts out a new book. Double blessings - a sort of post-Chinese New Year gift. [Marc's Voice]

Toronto Star. Arafat as mafia don. This article highlights how crime and terrorism are melding together to form a self-sustaining and violent syndicate that thrives in failed states. The question we need to answer: will terrorists find a way to manufacture failed states in order to profit from the outcome? If they do, how do we deal with this without overextending ourselves? I think the answer to both questions is yes and yes (caveat: only if we adopt the correct strategies). [John Robb's Weblog]

Don Hopkins thinks MSIE should have pie menus. [Scripting News]

Expression Engine. The folks at the AlwaysOn Networks use pmachine. I wonder if ther they're gonna switch to to this. I've heard about this new thing and it sounds pretty good. PMachine is now Expression Engine. Given that MoveableType has become the virtual gold standard in the world of blogging, the release of any new CMS hardly merits much attention. However, there is this new blogging software, Expression Engine, that has been released by the same team that brought to us PMachine. Infact, as Rick Ellis, the brains behind this effort explains it, this is the next generation PMachine. Now like I found that PMachine was a bit difficult to use, and moreover tough to customize from a design perspective. MT in comparison, once you got over the installation hassles was a breeze to do design mods. I have been playing around with the beta software of Expression Engine for a while, and I have to say, this one is easy as it gets. While it is not for most of us who use TypePad, but it could be the low cost option to people with high end content management needs. Why? because it already does a lot of things MT 3.0 hopes to do. It has built in RSS feeds, email posting, moblogging features, Multiple categories (for multiple weblogs, where each weblog can have its own independent set) and it allows you to create editorial workflow. (Define statuses like “first draft”, “pending”, “revision”, “final edit”, etc, in order to enable multiple authors to contribute to content.) Many pro-users would love this CMS, I am pretty sure of. Here is a tiny interview with Rick Ellis, the man behind PMachine, which is now based in my second favorite American state, Oregon. (This article contains extended text.) [Om Malik on Broadband] [Marc's Voice]

Why Open Source Makes Sense For Handhelds [Slashdot]

OpenMute - free wiki and blogs for users AND free open source Wiki and blog tools for developers. (via "wirearchy") - Sounds cool. Gotta check out how good the blogs and wikis are . Wonder what the business model is, of course, but one can always use a good free blog and wiki! [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]

Open Video Toaster. Talk about a blast from the past. I always wanted this program back in the 90s but I was too cheap to buy an Amiga! And back then I was going through my 'I-am-not-going-to-hava-a-computer-at-home' phase! [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]