Software Development in the Real World

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack

Since the release of Office 2007, more and more people are sending around docx and other Office 2007 files.  While it is better to have Office 2007 so you can edit all the new smart objects and other neat things, you can use the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack to at least read them and perform some basic changes to the files.

The 2007 Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack lets you open, edit, and save files in the new file format used by the 2007 Office system. Even if you haven't upgraded to the 2007 Microsoft Office system yet, you can enjoy some of the benefits of the new Open XML Format including:

• Smaller file sizes
• Improved file recovery
• Direct access to file contents such as charts and comments

The Compatibility Pack lets you exchange files easily between different Microsoft Office releases including Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office 2000, and Microsoft Office XP.

http://www.microsoft.com/canada/compatibility

You can also download the Compatibility Pack directly from Microsoft here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941B3470-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en

Headed to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco

The Web 2.0 Expo is coming!  If you are in the San Francisco area the week of April 21st, 2008, make sure you ping me and come check out the Web 2.0 Expo.  The Web 2.0 expo is a combined conference and tradeshow.  Last year's event drew over 8,500 people.  This years event promises to be even bigger.

There are nine different tracks you can choose from in the conference including:

• Strategy and Business Models
  Marketing and Community
  Design and User Experience
  Fundamentals
  Development
  Focus on Mobile Web
  Focus on Web Operations
  Focus on Social Platforms
  Sponsored Sessions

What really sets this expo apart besides all the different tracks, is the level of interaction you can have with everyone at the event.  It also has vendors and companies from all different platforms, which makes this conference so appealing.

You can check out all the speakers, join the facebook group, join the crowdvine, and download the Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco Brochure.

Conference Speakers I Will Not Miss!

Marc Andreessen - A Conversation

Multi-millionaire software engineer and Silicon Valley "whiz kid" entrepreneur best known as co-author of Mosaic, the first widely-used web browser, and co-founder of Netscape Communications Corporation. He was the chair of Opsware, a software company he founded originally as Loudcloud, when it was acquired by Hewlett-Packard. He is also a cofounder of Ning, a company which provides a platform for social-networking websites.

Max Levchin - A Conversation

Max is the visionary behind Slide, the largest social software company in the world. He is also renowned as the co-founder of PayPal, an expert in combating online fraud and one of the hardest working entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Before starting Slide, he incubated several other start-ups, including Yelp, where he currently sits as Chairman of the Board. Max started PayPal in 1998, immediately after graduating from college, and sold it four years later to eBay for more than $1.5 billion at the age of 26. Originally from Kiev, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union), Max moved to Chicago at the age of 16 and later received his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Max sits on the board of several other companies and trains for triathlons when he’s not obsessing over Slide’s business.

Rob Bagby - Building a Microsoft RIA from the ground up

A Developer Evangelist for Microsoft. Rob works with customers, as well as delivers presentations at numerous regional and national conferences, to illustrate how to take advantage of Microsoft’s developer technologies to deliver performance and secure applications faster. Rob bases his discussions on over 10 years of consulting experience, along with a Masters Degree in International Business from Thunderbird.

Mitchell Baker - Opening the mobile Web

Chairman of the Mozilla Foundation and Chairman and former Chief Executive Officer of the Mozilla Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates development of the open source Mozilla Internet applications, including the Mozilla Firefox web browser and the Mozilla Thunderbird email client. Trained as a lawyer, Baker coordinates business and policy issues and sits on both the Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors and the Mozilla Corporation Board of Directors. In 2005, Time magazine included her in its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world and she has been affectionately given the title of "Chief Lizard Wrangler" at the Mozilla Corporation.

Dan Lyons aka Fake Steve Jobs

Dan Lyons is a senior editor at Forbes and the author of the The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. In the persona of Fake Steve he authored “Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs,” a novel. He has published two previous works of fiction, a novel and a collection of short stories. Dan joined Forbes in 1998 and before that wrote for various computer trade publications including CRN and VARBUSINESS. He’s been a journalist for 25 years and has a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Tim O'Reilly - O`Reilly Radar

Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. O’Reilly Media also publishes online through the O’Reilly Network and hosts conferences on technology topics, including the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and the Web 2.0 Conference. Tim’s blog, the O’Reilly Radar “watches the alpha geeks” to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. Tim is on the boards of MySQL, CollabNet, Safari Books Online, Wesabe, and ValuesOfN, and is a partner in O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.

John Allspaw

John has worked in systems operations for over ten years in biotech, government and online media. He started out tuning parallel clusters running vehicle crash simulations for the U.S. government, and then moved on to the Internet in 1997. He built the backing infrastructures at Salon.com, InfoWorld.com, Friendster.com and Flickr.com, where he currently manages the Operations Engineering group.

Ari Balogh - Yahoo! and Open Platforms

Aristotle “Ari” Balogh is currently Chief Technology Officer at Yahoo!. He is responsible for company-wide product development which includes optimizing resources, speeding innovation, and ensuring the quality of Yahoo!’s products and services. He is focused on establishing a common architecture and building blocks to drive development aligned with corporate strategy and on improving the overall effectiveness of Yahoo!’s engineering efforts. All of Yahoo!’s engineering functions, including technical operations, infrastructure, and internal IT support groups, report into Balogh.

Blaine Cook - Building the Real-time Web

Blaine Cook is the Architect at Twitter. He is currently building and maintaining Twitter’s Jabber-based real-time backend infrastructure that tracks and distributes millions of updates every day to users on the Web, instant messaging, and SMS.

 

 

Technorati Tags: web 2.0,san francisco

Used Macintosh Computers for Cheep

Right now I have ten or so Windows based computers sitting around at home that I use for everything from file servers, to software development machines.  One thing hit me the other day however, I don't really have any Macintosh machines kicking around.  With the baby that has just arrived in our house, I was thinking, wouldn't it be a good idea to have a cute little macintosh in the baby room that I could use to play his favorite music, etc.  I was thinking one of those cute iMac's that came out a few years ago.

I started my search by looking around eBay for a cheep Macintosh, but then I found this awesome site that sells used macs for dirt cheep.  I'm talking up to 75% off.  If you look through the selection they have, it's pretty impressive!  I have always wanted to have a few Macintosh's kicking around the office as well to do testing and some software development on, at these prices, I have to seriously consider getting a couple of them.

Anyway so I think I'm going to order a Macintosh from these guys, its only $299 and will look awesome in the baby room.  I might even get an extra one for the kitchen so that my wife can look up her recipes and what not.

Checkout the DV Warehouse Macintosh selection at: http://www.dvwarehouse.com/Used-Macs-c-53.html

Xobni Makes Outlook Better

When I first heard of Xobni through Michael Arrington, I was insanely excited to see a tool with this much power coming out for Outlook!  As a software developer / software manager / software tester / software architect, software visionary, I have an unbelievable amount of email!  And it never seems to stop!  But what emails are the most important to read?  Who sends me the most emails?  Or how about that thing I know you all have asked yourselves at least a hundred times "Hey, didn't you send me that file the other day?  What day did you send it?".

The Power of Xobni

What makes Xobni so powerful (software developers out there, take note!) is that you can continue to use Outlook exactly as you do today, however you get additional functionality and data intelligence added to your user experience.  I've used other tools for Outlook (A ton, like some of you) and I always end up removing them because they slow down my system, or just plain don't seem to add the value for the cost.  Cost vs. Value, that's a great title for another entry later on!  What makes your users switch, upgrade, pay maintenance fees.  I won’t diverge into that topic here.

Xobni focuses on three issues that make Outlook seem ancient.  Fast Search, Finding Attachments Easily, Navigating Outlook by People, and creating Threaded Conversations.

Finding Attachments from someone that sent you a file a few days ago will be as simple as looking to the right of the email, and just finding the file you wanted!  It will literally take you seconds!

Having a conversation about budgets with your boss?  Can't seem to remember who else was involved, and what files were shared?  No problem at all!  Just use the Conversations With xyz option, and watch a whole new world open up in front of your eyes!

Context at Your Fingertips

Even if you don't click a single thing within the Xobni Insight panel, you will love Xobni.  By creating various profiles for all the contacts you have in your e-mail, you finally get fantastic context to all your emails extremely easily.  This is a powerful feature for me.  For example.  I can quickly see what rank a user posses when I get an email from them.  How much weight does this user really have?  And who is connected to this user anyway?  Anybody important?  Maybe I should CC them on the email?  When was the last time we talked about this, I thought we just did last week? When is a good time to send them an email so they read it?  All these questions are answered almost instantly by just glancing over at Xobni Insight's panel.

The Genius Behind Xobni

The real genius behind Xobni is that they realized that they can give users more information, and allow users to interact in whole new ways with their email, without asking them to track any more information at all!  Most new programs you use, ask you to enter more information for tracking purposes.  Applications like Xobni are the way of the future my friends!  I can't believe more people are not jumping all over ideas like this.  Instead of asking users to track more information, do more work, and try and convince them to enter more data up front in order to provide them with new features and reports, why not let them install an application, that analyzes the data, and then gives you a ton of cool features!  What a concept!

This is what Google figured out, this is what Facebook does so well, and this is what Xobni does phenomenally well.  I'm curious how long it will take before the company is snapped up.  Sadly it probably won't be to sell Xobni, it will probably be to acquire the talent behind the tool.  Just look at what Microsoft did with Lookout.  Lookout was a fantastic product, but it has yet to be integrated into Outlook.  Sure we have a new Search option in Outlook 2007, but come on, it is the slowest thing I have ever used.

Xobni is full of so many features I don't even want to get into them here.  If you want fast search, awesome data mining capabilities for your email, Xobni is the tool for you.  I can't remember the last time I used a tool and within minutes ran to people sending them screenshots of my new Outlook Experience!  It definitely lives up to its branding of effortless email management!

If you would like to try out Xobni, visit the Xobni site and sign up for the closed beta.  You will be impressed!  Xobni was founded in 2006 in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Adam Smith and Matt Brezina.

Xobni - It's Inbox Backwards

http://www.xobni.xom

Why SharePoint Portal Server is Terrible

I'm going to start a controversial section to my blog entitled Learning from Failures.  The idea here is the analysis of failed software projects, and how we can learn from them.  The other possible outcome would be that someone from these software development companies and their respective divisions will stumble across my blog or article, and make some changes!  I won’t hold my breath on the last point, but it should make for some interesting articles!

It should be noted (and should be obvious), that the reason I chose to talk about SharePoint is Microsoft HAS learned from their failures/mistakes, and has now shipped a pretty decent version of SharePoint!  The problem I still have with it is the marketing behind it, but hey, marketing is marketing.  That said, the thoughts below are mostly around the first few versions of SharePoint.  SharePoint 2007 rocks!  Try it!

What Went Wrong With This Idea?

First let me say that I think SharePoint is a fantastic idea.  That said, I think it's a fantastic idea that has failed because of four key reasons:

1. Far too complex to install, configure, and customize.  It is not agile.
2. It is being sold as a solution to organize unorganized companies.  It is being sold as a system to add process's to organizations that don't have them.
3. It's rendered HTML is brutal, along with the CSS files.
4. It is one of the most unflexable applications I have ever used.

Have you ever heard the "KISS" theory?  Keep it simple stupid.  Well unfortunately nobody on the Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server team seems to have heard about it.  First off, let me say that SharePoint Portal Server is an awesome tool, in theory!  However, it seems to have been designed by people that thought they were rocket scientists, and expected some massive adoption.  I mean it’s super easy to configure, all you have to do is become a master in:

Technologies You Must Master

1. SharePoint
2. SQL Server
3. Internet Information Server
4. Active Directory
5. File Stores
6. Indexing
7. Software Development
8. Search Engines (To help customize the brutal search built into it)
9. Database Design and Development
10. XML
11. .NET 2.0
12. ISA Server
13. Master Pages

Sure Microsoft will tell you its super simple to configure and set up, but it’s simply not true, which is why hardly anyone to any kind of mass uses SharePoint.

Basic Design Flaws

Another basic rule in Microsoft has again royally broken, is the "Less is more" rule.  Especially when you are dealing with non power users.

All you've managed to do now is install it by the way.  What is next?  Well setting up a process for document management. 

Document Management Process

Why do most SharePoint Implementations fail?  Does it eventually get setup?  Of course, Microsoft will bend over backwards to get someone up and running rather than say their technology doesn't work.  But what happens after?  Nobody uses it?  Why?  Oh lack of training right?  Wrong!  Although, that is another reason it could fail. 

A major reason it fails is because of how they are trying to sell it!  They are basically saying "SharePoint will help bring happiness to your organization by organizing all your documents, enabling tracking of documents, indexing, searching, workflow, etc."  The reality is, this is completely untrue!  What will help you do all those things is good process!  If you do not have good process behind your current file structure even, or an idea of what you will be doing when you want to apply taxonomy, tagging, and other document management principals to your organization, you have no business even looking at software yet!  Especially one as complicated as Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server. 

Wiki's Rock!

This is why wiki's work so great, they are simple places to organize your thoughts and find things!  They are great for places with no processes in place.  Do you know what happens when you turn on workflow features like check in and out, approval paths, etc. in an organization that has trouble enough keeping up with email?  Disaster!

I mean, even if you somehow manage to find a great implementation partner, and convince Microsoft to give you money to use with their partner, what are the chances that the partner has any clue of how to manage documents in a large organization?  What are the chances they will help with the hard stuff, which is not (should not be) the technology? 

Just Try and Change!

So if for some miraculous reason you have made it this far in your SharePoint implementation, I'm impressed.  Now, what happens on patch Tuesday, or any time your IT team decides to upgrade anything that SharePoint talks to.  SharePoint issues galore! 

In Closing

SharePoint is a great idea; it was just built completely wrong.  It's a perfect example of trying to build something that does everything, making the software so complicated that it is so hard to use, that it is useless.  Have they learned from mistakes?  I don't think so!  Instead, they went and integrated Microsoft Content Management Server, which had great potential, and put it into SharePoint.  Ouch.

Will Microsoft ever get SharePoint right?  It's possible, if they start copying Wiki's and other great easy to use software like BaseCamp, Zoho.  If strip away the layers of junk and useless complexities in setting it up (it takes me about 5 minutes to set up MediaWiki, or 2 minutes to setup BaseCamp).   Yes they are vastly different and much less complex, however, the way the marketing is done on SharePoint, if you called your local Microsoft Partner and said "I want a site where I can share documents and edit web pages and have others contribute" the first thing out of their mouths would probably be SharePoint.

What they should do?

I know pro SharePoint people out there will say, SharePoint can't be compared to BaseCamp or MediaWiki, because it’s far more complex!  To which I say, "Exactly".

What should Microsoft do?  I would let SharePoint die, and start a whole new initiative of applications that are easy to use, fast, and efficient.  Applications that can tie into other existing applications that do things better!  Don't try and be everything to everybody.  Let's try and create an action item list for them:

1. Fix your search, it must be better than Google's search, and it is not even close.
2. Get rid of your hierarchy and start teaching people to use tagging.
3. Make installation easier.
4. Make Development easier.
5. Make Training Easier (Better Training, and Easier Product).
6. Create Clean XHTML standard code; fix your 4MB+ CSS files!
7. Make it "Mashable".

What They Will Do?

Microsoft will continue to poor money at it, and put the marketing machine of Redmond behind this product.  Partners will continue to push it because some large corporations are paying huge licensing fees for the product. 

It is possible that one day, maybe in 5 to 10 years, SharePoint will finally be great a few years, since 2007 is actually really awesome! But for a company that has hundreds of thousands of developers at their disposal, thousands of partners, an insane amount of money, and has an operating that is installed on a large majority of the population, isn't it a little ridiculous how long it's taking?

What we learn from Microsoft

If you are trying to make life easier for users by organizing documents, and creating a central place to find things, you need to make software that is easy to use!  You cannot expect users to love something that is harder to use than what they already do!  You can't expect to turn legions of developers into pro SharePoint developers if you make it so complex to write simple search queries and add web parts that do anything besides display the weather.  Here is what we learn:

1. Keep it simple.
2. Your software needs to be easy to install.
3. You need to listen to your users.
4. Developers must be able to easily customize and extend your application.
5. Your application should not rely on certain infrastructure being present, if possible, or at least, very minimal.
6. If your application generates HTML, it better be proper XHTML and not Microsoft HTML.
7. Ensure your application has a very low learning curve.  SharePoint should be included as an example in the dictionary for "Steep Learning Curve"
8. If you have a lot of money, you can sell even the worst application.

Any other lessons to learn, more faults to SharePoint?  Please share below!

 

Technorati Tags: SharePoint, SharePoint Portal Server, Microsoft, Bad Software

Best Web 2.0 Web Sites - July 2007

We have a returning Web 2.0 champion this month, facebook!  We also have a few other awesome web sites that you have to check out!  Improve your web experience today by checking out the top 10 sites, and seeing which ones you love the best!  Let us know your comments by using the comments below the posting!

1. 
   For the second month in a row, Facebook is ranked at number one for Web 2.0 companies and web sites.  With traffic growing at a ridiculous rate, new users signing up by the thousands every hour, Facebook is perfectly poised to be the reigning king of Web 2.0.  While myspace still has the most traffic on most accords, facebook with launching its new development platform has really propelled itself ahead of the competition.
2. 
   

   One of the world's largest social networking sites, Fotolog is an ever-evolving global network where members communicate and connect through photographs.  A simple and fun way for anyone to express themselves on a daily basis, Fotolog allows members to easily publish an online photo diary, or photo blog, and share it worldwide.

   What makes Fotolog special is not just the ability to post photos, but the ability to connect with people. While many people use Fotolog to stay in better touch with their friends and family, others use it to explore the wider Fotolog universe, discover the photos of new people from around the world, participate in group projects and, perhaps most importantly, receive personal feedback on their photos.

3. 
   As flickr's tag lines states, flickr is the best online photo sharing application on the Internet today.  It by far has the best tools for uploading your photos, organizing your photos, and sharing them with your friends and family.  You can use your browser, mobile phone, PDA, and literally any device that can take pictures, to upload your photo's to flickr.  flickr then takes it to the next level by allowing you to share your pictures in a million ways! 
   
   Friends and family can search the pictures on the web, subscribe to an RSS feed to be notified of new pictures, sending emails from the site, and other crazy ways that you might want to suggest!  If you want to share pictures, flickr is your tool!

4.  
   del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website -- the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders.

   You can also use del.icio.us to see the interesting links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return. You can even browse and search del.icio.us to discover the cool and useful bookmarks that everyone else has saved -- which is made easy with tags.

5. 
   In the old days, Google Maps would still be the new kid on the block, however, in Web 2.0 days, Google Maps is ancient.  However, there is no better way to help you get from A to B quicker.  Sure there are other tools on the market, some of which have been around even before Google itself, but they are terrible in comparison to the speed and ease of use!

6. 
   Because everyone shouldn't see everything.  What a great slogan, and a great way to compete with YouTube and other clones.  vimeo is extremely clean and easy to use, and I love it and enjoy the experience much better than YouTube.  If I want to see ridiculous videos, and read comments with people bashing each other, I use YouTube.  But when I want to share a video with my family, I use vimeo.  Check it out today, I guarantee you will love the site and visit it daily!

7. 
   People have known for years that making a list of goals is the best way to achieve them. But most of us never get around to making a list. 43 Things is great for that! Make a list on 43 Things and see what changes happen in your life. Best of all it’s a way of connecting with other enthusiasts interested in everything from watching a space shuttle launch to grow my own vegetables. So the next time someone asks you, “what do you do?” you can answer with confidence, “I am doing 43 things!”.  Check out 43Things.com today!

8. 
   Zillow is an amazing real estate site!  It not only provides you with actual housing value for millions of homes across the country, but it also provides an extremely visual and easy to use interface for finding the data!  With its integrated mapping capabilities, you can even zoom in on the area the house is located in, and see visually the location! 
   
   Zillow really gives you the edge and a great high level overview on homes and their values.  If you are in the market, or just curious to what is going on in real estate, check out Zillow.com.  You won't be disappointed.

9. 
   Chances are you haven't even heard of Farecast.  Too bad.  It's awesome!  Farecast.com is the first airfare prediction web site. They help online travel shoppers save money by answering the question; should you buy now or wait? They offer airfare predictions from over 75 U.S. departure cities to top domestic destinations.  So next time you start wondering, should I buy my ticket now, or later, and what timeframe, just go to Farecast.com!

10. 
    Do you love podcasting?  Do you love finding new and exciting podcasts to listen to?  Are you a publisher of podcasts?  If you answered yes to any of those questions, this is the site for you!  What they are trying to build here is the ultimate podcast center on the Internet, and from the looks of things, they are succeeding!  If you need to find fresh content to listen to on your iPod, or want to promote your own new podcast or music, check out Odeao.com today!

Check Website Uptime Automatically

When you start managing hundreds of web sites, it becomes critical to ensure your web sites are live and performing well.  Even if you only have one Blog that you care about, it's nice to know if the site is actually up and running.  In an ideal world, your data center, or web host would be up and running 100% of the time, and in case of a failure, inform you.  Unfortunately this is not the case.

How much does it cost you to have a site down?  How unhappy do your customers become when they try and access their site, and its down!  One solution is to write a ping tool on your own, and monitor your sites.  This actually works really well, however there are some free tools on the Internet, and some paid services, that actually do a great job these days.

monitorus is a wonderful service similar to pingdom, however it is free!  One plus side to pingdom is the ability to do internal monitoring as well as the external monitoring.  This means you can also monitor disk space, CPU usage.  With monitorus you can also monitor your VoIP Gateway, E-mail servers, and other Network Devices and Servers.

Installing the Smart Agent is extremely easy, simply download from your control panel, and install on your server.  You will be emailed an activation key, which is simply entered into the new system tray application, and you are up and running.

Figure 1 - Install Smart Agent 

Once you have installed the agent, you can easily create reports and tests to run on your server.

Figure 2 - Create Tests

So you now have external monitoring of your site with information on if it goes down at all and its response time, you also have the ability to find out if your memory is running low, or your CPU is being hammered.  There is more!  This package also lets you track your visitors via a basic Web Analytics Package.  Setting it up is again very simple!

Figure 3 - Visitor Tracking with monitorus

monitorus is a fantastic tool, and best of all, most of the features are free!  This one gets my recommendation.

 

Pingdom offers everything from simple to very advanced server, network and website monitoring services. Pingdom offers you the ability to monitor your servers and infrastructure 24/7, all year long. They have a multitude of monitoring servers placed all over the world with just one goal in mind: To alert you as soon as any of your servers, networks or services fail. Pingdom gives you full control over your infrastructure.

The best part about pingdom is it only takes 5 minutes to set up and you're up and running.  Everything is done through their custom interface, and no code needs to be added to your website.  No software is needed to be installed and you will be monitoring your websites instantly.

Unlike monitorus, pingdom is $9.95 per month.  However I find the reports you get from pingdom are much better quality than competitors.

Java Not Worth Building In

"Java's not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain..."

Those were the exact words of Steve Jobs in January of 2007.  You have to keep this statement in context.  Jobs was talking about the portable device market, and the desktop market.  In 2000, Jobs actually made a valiant effort of bringing Java to the desktop with the launch of Mac OSX.  The harsh reality for Java supporters out there is that software developers don't want to write desktop application in Java.

I mean sure they want to write games, and small applications here and there, but for the most part now, desktop applications are ruled by C, C++, or .net.  For every one (1) Java application released, there are 10 .net, C, or VB applications released.

Java does have its place still in the enterprise market, but they have lost the desktop battle.  The only other "desktop-ish" battle they had a chance to win was the browser battle, but on that battle field, Flash is the master, hands down.  Adobe made a brilliant move in acquiring Macromedia.

When the iPhone is released at the end of the month, it will sport the most sophisticated, well thought user interface ever written for a portable device.  It will not run Java.  This will make the device a hundred times more stable as it will protect people from going to download badly written Java applications onto their mobile phones.  It will force anyone that wants to write an application for the iPhone, to go through Apple.  Here is where many will call fowl, however, I call "hurray!".  It will start forcing application standards and performance requirements on people!  And this of course is only if Apple decides to open this up.  And they will, once they own the cell phone market and make it the platform for cell phones.

Listen to the D 2007 Conference and watch Steve and Bill chat.  Steve Jobs knows that the mistakes he made in the past were partnerships, or lack thereof. 

"We weren't so good with partnering with people. Bill and Microsoft were really good at it."

Look at facebook, they own the social network market (There are others, but for usefulness and most avid users, they win hands down), and have now opened up the development via the facebook API.  This was sheer genius on Mark Zuckerberg's part!  This will surely catapult facebook into the stratosphere!  Steve Jobs will make the iPhone the cell phone.  Sure there will be others, but the iPhone will capture market share you would not believe when compared to other phones.

 

At the end of the day, people want great software that is fast, easy to use, and performs the way they expect it.  The iPhone will do this, as the iPod did. 

Now what if Apple decides to sell the iPhone "Operating System" to phone companies once they smell defeat...  This could be Apple's chance to take a road that was once not taken, and saw Microsoft become what Apple could have been.

Top 10 Reasons Silverlight Will Change the Web

Microsoft Silverlight is a XAML based WPF technology for vector graphics, video, design, and development of applications for the desktop, as well as the web.  It is cross-browser, cross-platform browser plug-in that is less than 2 megabyte in size!  It will change the web as we know it, finally creating a feasible, professional platform for building the most rich user experience websites out there.  Silverlight is not a competitor to Flash as some would have you believe.  In fact, Silverlight and Flash work extremely well together!  Here are the top 10 Reasons Silverlight will change the web!

1. Highest Quality Video Experience
   Prepare to see some of the best quality videos you have seen in your life, all embedded in highly graphical websites.  The same research and technology that was used for VC-1, the codec that powers BluRay and HD DVD, is used by Microsoft today with its streaming media technologies. Video overlays, custom menus, all become possible!
2. Cross-Platform, Cross-Browser
   Finally build web applications that work on any browser, and on any operating system. At release, Silverlight will work with Mac as well as Windows!  The Mono project has also already promised support for Linux!
3. Developers and Graphic Designers can play together!
   Developers familiar with Visual Studio, Microsoft.net will be able to develop amazing Silverlight applications very quickly, and they will work on Mac's and Windows.  Developers will finally be able to strictly focus on the back end of the application core, while leaving the visuals to the Graphic Design team using the power of XAML.
4. Cheaper
   Silverlight is now the most inexpensive way to stream video files over the internet at the best quality possible.  Licensing is dead simple, all you need is IIS in Windows Server, and you’re done.  Currently if you want to stream Flash video files, you would need to purchase Flash Media Server and license a few components.
5. Support for 3rd Party Languages
   using the power of the new Dynamic Language Runtime, developers will now be able to use Ruby, Python, and EcmaScript!  This means a Ruby developer can develop Silverlight applications, and leverage the .net Framework!
6. Cross-Platform, Cross-Browser Remote Debugging
   If you are in the need to debug an application running on a Mac, no problem!  You can now set breakpoints, step into/over code, have immediate windows, and all that other good stuff that Visual Studio provides.
7. The best development environment on the planet
   Visual Studio is an award winning development platform!  As it continues to constantly evolve, so will Silverlight!
8. Built to allow Mashups
   Microsoft spent a lot of time enabling Silverlight to easily consume web services, and easily consume various services and data from around the web.  Silverlight supports LINQ and LINQ-to-XML.  All of this data can be easily accessed via RSS, POX, REST, and JSON.
9. Silverlight offers copy protection
   Have you noticed how easy it is to download YouTube videos to your computer, and save them for later viewing (If not, read here.)?  Silverlight will finally have the features enabling content providers complete control over their rich media content!  Streaming television, new indie broadcast stations, all will now be possible!
10. Extreme Speed
    There is a dramatic improvement in speed for AJAX-enabled websites that begin to use Silverlight, leveraging the Microsoft .net framework.

Silverlight is the biggest launch since Microsoft .net 1.0.  My guess is a lot of people will take it as a Flash clone, and not understand its true power until it takes over the web.  This is not a Flash clone at all.  This is the new web development platform for a whole new era of Web Applications.

Best of the Best Web 2.0 Web Sites

Web 2.0 sites are cropping up all over the place!  From Social Bookmarking Sites, to Real Estate sites, this list has only the best Web 2.0 Sites available today!  What makes a site a Web 2.0 Site?  Web 2.0 is the second coming of World Wide Web. New and improved sites that make the web their platform, provide users a way of interacting with each other, and organize and categorize their content are perfect examples of Web 2.0.  Below is a list of web sites that are the best of the best!  If you would like to see some added to the list, please comment below!

Best Web 2.0 Guides - July 2007

Best Web 2.0 Guides - June 2007

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Social Bookmarking Sites StumbleUpon del.icio.us wobblog blinklist shadows clipmarks Simpy Furl Spurl Rollyo Squidoo RawSugar Kopikol SurfTail beststuff TagTooga Eioba Listal diigo Mister-Wong ho.tli.st favoriting sidereel Social Communities MySpace facebook Orkut LinkedIn otavo consumating Flingr MyWallop OpenBottles CollectiveX BakeSpace Rank A Movie reunion Start Pages Netvibes excite mix uk excite mix it Protopage Windows Live Start PageFlakes Google Ig LinkFeed eskobo MyWebDesktop PopUrls XMLHTTPRequest YourBubblez Zude To Do Lists Ta-Da Lists Remember The Milk GooTodo FlexLists LifeTango MonkeyOn StickyTag People News Production diggdot Reddiggulo.us gabbr reddit Shoutwire Millions of Games Rojo Last.fm Pandora WikiCompany Glypho Yazai digg BlockRocker Wists SpinSpy NowPublic Odeo WebJay 180 Degree News Quimble Riffs ButterFly Bandnews ContentPop FeedTheBull News Sites newgie news.google touchstonelive Spotback newsvine Buzzoo Image Storing and Sharing flickr zoto glide effortlessly Shutterbook Fotolia iStockPhoto PhotoBucket fotki BubbleShare File Storage openomy xdrive omnidrive Allmydata Avvenu SendSpace eSnips StreamLoad Wiki upload Pickle Video Storage stickam brightcove fireant iFilm videobomb YouTube eyespot dailymotion metacafe blinkx myfilmz.net Ourmedia Peerflix videobomb Videoegg Vimeo vSocial Revver SevenLoad Blog Filters technorati memeorandum Findory Topix blogniscient TailRank Bloglines Word Processing Google Docs & Spreadsheets writeboard Rally Point zohowriter JotSpot Live Webnote Calanders CalendarHub kiko HipCal AirSet zEvents EventSniper spongecell Google Calendar timashr Classified & Business Directories craigslist Judysbook PageBites Blockrocker jobazaar lopico wuraweb Yellowikis Karslist Yumtum MyAdSource TooleAds matchbin WorldWideMega DormItem Online Dating YesNomayB MatchActivity verbdate PodDater Collaboradate Cybertub Plentyoffish Financials Google Finance InstantBull DimeWise BillMonk Structured Futures Buxfer BlinkSale BillSter StockPickr SeekingAlpha StockTickr BarChart EditGrid Scientific Research Fittest Model Web 2.0 Development Nenest creatr.cc Advice BitWine Mobile Web Communities zinadoo

Project Management and Team Collaboration Basecamp CentralDesktop Planzo Backpack Zimbra ProjectPlace Doodle ZohoPlanner vyew norada stikipad 30boxes near-time shortText Project360 Thinkature ThinkFree SlimTimer Content Filtering Techtiki ScoopGo Filangy Mash-Ups Ning FlickrMap LivePlasma CoverPop Qube Kayak toEat AlexaDex trulia Aggregators Google Reader SuprGlu PBwiki Attensa fluctu8 NewsMob Blummy Fluxiom MeFeedia Web Site Analytics Measure Map Google Analytics E-Mail and Communication Meebo GMail myemail Tempinbox Citadel Bluetie Mapping Google Maps Yahoo! Maps / Yahoo! Maps Beta MSN Maps Wayfaring Parts TinyMCE RSS2PDF ZohoChallenge World Improvement Knowmore.org booksforschool 43things bmindful SugarStats DailyVitamint ChangeThis BitWine Mind Petals funadvice Business Software FreshBooks NetWorthIQ ThinkFree CampaignMonitor CogMap billhighway nameourapp Command Line YubNub Ambedo Validator Web 2.0 Validator Jobs and Work Voices Wiki wikispaces wikidot Wetpaint jot pbwiki wikia Shopping crowdstorm threadless wists etsy Earlymiser GuideBuy modoshi riya Search Google Desktop gravee Blinx Alexa Swarm MedStory Trusted Search Rollyo.com swicki truveo Real Estate zillow hotpads Suburbview Music Podbop Songbird Jamendo liveplasma webjay pandora ilike Last FM OnTour Travel 43places couchsurfing dohop Jumpclaimer Kayak TripMates Travbuddy Tripmojo wayfaring Mobissimo TravelPost Travelistic momondo Trabber geobeats tripadvisor Events eventful Zvents evie upcoming.org BusyTonight socializr evite Education / School Life mynoteIT NoteCentric CollegeMedium OttoBib MetaGlossary DormItem Art imagekind TheBroth Quotes Quotiki Karaoke kSolo SingShot Movies Rank a Movie Social Productivity Cylive Ring Tones mymp3tone Web Site Ranking Compete Entertainment Recommendations Grepr Mature Content ScrewTube

Social Bookmarking Review - dzone

  As a software engineer and software architect myself, I find myself constantly trying to find new information on the Internet on best practices, patterns, tools, etc.  I recently started using other social bookmarking tools, but became irritated at the growing number of stories that I felt made no sense, being ranked extremely high.  Certain features such as previewing the page, showing number of clicks vs. the number of votes, displaying "complaints" live for a vote seemed missing (some sites have this, but have a proprietary system that is undisclosed to serve as the banning mechanism for entire domains, which is scary if we are trusting these companies to make news "free" and selected "by the people).

dzone is a great example of social bookmarking done right!  A really nice feature I love is the ability to see a Ajax preview window pop up on each story that is being voted on.  Also, with each story you have the ability to "tag" stories with keywords, similar to tags on blog's.  This gives users the ability to view upcoming links based on tags!  As an example, someone submitting a story can tag the story with certain keywords, and a voter can then add their own tags to the story.  This gives stories that might not have been tagged properly, or missing certain tags, to be "re-classified" under another section.

Another great feature is the "You might also like" feature.  This lists stories that the user might like, if they liked the current story they are looking at.  Also a "Real Time Spy" allows you to view what users are doing in real time.  This can be anything from stories that are currently being voted on, to what users are clicking, or even commenting on.  The filters are very nice!

I also love that the dzone is tailored to developers.  All of the links are very pertinent to software developers, and the community here has really formed around them.

If you are a software developer, you will absolutely love this site, as it has more functionality than any other social bookmarking site out there.  I hope to see a new version of the site tailored around technology, and then maybe expanding into other areas.  The overall architecture of this site just seems so much more flexible and responsive, vs other sites.

PopUrls.com has recently noticed dzone as well and added them to their list of social bookmarking web sites to display.

Check out the dzone!