Updated: 10/3/2002; 2:02:39 PM.
P@'s Radio Weblog
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Tuesday, September 24, 2002

Sun's desktop offering: not revolutionary enough


Sun Needs To Redefine, Not Duplicate The Desktop by Timothy Appnel, about how duplicating MS desktop with a lower price tag is not the way to go.

I couldn't agree more. It's been a while since I haven't experienced exciting changes in the desktop. Sun should dare experiment in this area. With "The Network is the Computer" we had a world changing metaphor motto: now we should extend it to the desktop part of "the computer", which has not changed much in the past 10 years.

Mozilla with its UI framework and SOAP layer, could be the foundation on which to build a radical new network oriented desktop. This was the dream we had at Netscape when MS squashed us. Mozilla is now the development platform that Netscape had dreamed about 6 years ago. Sun should finish off the work and go all the way to a network desktop based on Mozilla.


4:08:27 PM Google It!      comment []

O'Reilly in Nature: Information wants to be valuable


Information wants to be valuable by Tim O'Reilly in the scientific magazine Nature, about how the internet pushes the publishers to really add value as intermediaries, if they don't want to be disintermediated by /. or weblogs. The title is Larry Wall quote.

In the same vein, Is O'Reilly a "free software business"? gives some examples of how they apply this philosophy.

O'Reilly & Associates really practice what their boss preach: I wish them good luck, I've learnt most of my skills in their books :-)

 


4:01:24 PM Google It!      comment []

XML complexity as war of attrition


XML complexity as war of attrition, by O'Reilly blogger Simon St. Laurent, about the dangers of the current XML complexifications.
URL: http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/xml-dev/1369293

Ari Krupnikov sends a warning about the dangerous consequences of the ever-growing complexity of the XML family of standards

I kind of agree with his conclusion:

As people turn to tools, they lose sight of the capabilities that were available in the simpler specifications, trapping themselves ever deeper in the webs of features cast by companies with a clever business plan. Larger webs catch more food, and may overshadow and starve out smaller webs.

It's not only true with XML, but with J2EE as well. You can see that strategy in action today with the big guy's strategic push on their IDEs: BEA Weblogic Workshop, IBM Eclipse, Sun NetBeans, and last but not least, Microsoft Visual Studio.


3:53:47 PM Google It!      comment []

Negroponte on Lilies, Frogs and the Wi-Fi revolution


Being Wireless, Negroponte's enthusiasm is always refreshing in these times of tech slump

Nicholas Negroponte explains why Wi-Fi "lily pads and frogs" will transform the future of telecom


3:45:16 PM Google It!      comment []

I'm glad we're back to France


More good news from the Bay Area. Ugh. That title is some serious sarcasm. I just saw this on Scott Loftesness' blog:
San Francisco Chronicle: Job market collapse has people packing

This morning's San Francisco Chronicle has a story by Sam Zuckerman, Economics writer, about the very weak job market in the San Francisco Bay Area. What is pushing people out is the collapse of the job market -- approximately 180,000 jobs have disappeared from the regional economy in the past two years -- plus a cost of living that remains in the stratosphere. Workers both in tech and out are fleeing the region by the tens of thousands, seeking opportunities elsewhere, economists and demographers say.

"I would not be surprised if 50,000 people have left the Bay Area because of the economy," said Ken Rosen, an economist at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

Here I am plotting my return and all I keep seeing is reports like this. I still have friends on the ground in San Francisco who can tell me how the local climate really is, but wow, stuff like this makes my eventual return seem very far away.

Hopefully it's starting to hit bottom - or even better yet, has hit bottom already. Ana and I are starting to think about the next year. We need a new apartment and we're thinking about a car. I can't imagine me EVER agreeing to buying someplace permanently here in Madrid. The weather is already changing here and I know what the next 6 months are going to be like. God... and this is Spain. Thank goodness I don't live in any Northern European countries, I'd go psycho. I'm get serious SAD. I HATE winter. All I can think about when it comes is how I can escape it. Ugh.

We're starting to think of options - somewhere else in Spain (they were hanging out on the beach yesterday in Valencia), Lisbon (beautiful city, really... though a bit run down. Portugal's economy needs to improve some) or somewhere in the U.S.: Bay Area, LA, San Diego or maybe even Miami. But crossing the Atlantic again is a BIG DEAL, so I'm not sure what we're going to do.

Well, for now, it looks like I have to live through one more Madrileñan winter... wwaaaaaahhhhh.

-Russ [Russell Beattie Notebook]

Wow, I'm glad Dorothee and I are back in France.

I hate winter too, but ... I love Paris in the autumn, I love Paris in the winter....


9:47:55 AM Google It!      comment []


Social Network Visualization rides again.

Alex Wright (whose weblog I can't figure out how to subscribe to) points to some recent discussion on social networks and several weblogs I'll have to get back to.

8.23.2002
social networks - believing the hype
There's been no shortage of high-minded blather lately about social networks as being the new new thing in the software world. Rick Rashid talked about Microsoft's vision for a
futuristic social operating system at ETCON; Peter Morville, Peter Merholz, Howard Rheingold and other smart folks have also been writing along these lines lately. All this grand theorizing is, of course, running at least several paces ahead of reality, but I've been pleasantly surprised to discover a few actual, working examples of real software projects out there that seem to validate at least some of the hype.

Which stimulates me to collect pointers to my own experiments on social nework visualization.

Macroscope Manifesto (not just social networks, but the the most substantive piece of work).

BlogThread Visualization (start here and work back if you like.)

A prototype visual social network explorer derived from blogdex data.

Wiki-Structure visualization and this

Jon Udell's blogroll network


[Jon Schull's Weblog]
9:41:02 AM      comment []


© Copyright 2002 Patrick Chanezon.
 
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