Wednesday, October 23, 2002

Drool! I believe the Logitech io digital pen is using an implementation of a patented dot distribution pattern from a few years ago. The business model is interesting: not only do you have to buy the pen, but you also have to buy the special paper to write on! Nevertheless, I WANT ONE :-) My office mater Tim suggests that this could tie in nicely with InkWell, the handwriting tecognition built into Jaguar. I could take notes at a meeting with my Logitech io pen and notepad, come back to my office, pop the pen into its USB cradle to transfer all my handwriting to my Mac, then let InkWell tag all the ink with the text recognized in the ink. Then I could search for the text, and see my original notes! 11:57:19 AM

?What's your Google URL? - Mine is "ernie attorney".  Oh, what's a "Google URL" you ask?  Click here for . [Ernie the Attorney] Ah, the joys of a GUID! Just type "deeje" into google to find all of me... 11:28:11 AM

Visual Studio Magazine has an interview with Alan Cooper. An excellent read, Alan talks about the differences between engineers vs. craftsmen, the role of software architects, XP vs. RUP, and his opinions of the .NET platform. Highly quotable: The role of architects: "Architects synthesize people, purpose, and technology. If you just take people and technology, you have art[~]entertainment. If you just take technology and purpose, it's engineering. And people and purpose without technology is psychology." On complexity & components: "Software construction has often resembled digging the Panama Canal with a teaspoon. You can make the walls of the canal perfectly straight, but it takes forever." How .NET provides portability: "... by providing cleavage planes. It's like cutting a diamond. You can't just cut one; you search for the natural cleavage planes in the diamond's crystalline structure. Likewise, you have to find the cleavage planes in the software and break it in two. Those cleavage planes, of course, are APIs and the CLR." On competition: "A Microsoft API such as the CLR allows an opening for other language vendors, as does offering Web services through XML. It means the days of getting all your services from one vendor[~]or even a single app[~]are numbered." [Peter Drayton's Radio Weblog] .NET only runs on Windows. Is this a new marketing spin, to say something is portable when it only runs on one single platform but you can access the code from a few different languages? Interesting mix of insight and drivel... 11:23:28 AM