rwandering.net
The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson
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January 7, 2007 at 10:17 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
I saw this on Nima’s blog, Windows Home Server is coming. Bill Gates announced this today (see Bill Gates keynote – Engadget).
I can see the niche for this product, except I don’t really want servers in my house anymore.
It seems like most of the market for this product will be covered by LiveDrive. Instead of Windows Home Server, I would have loved to see:
- LiveDrive announced ready for the Vista launch.
- LiveDrive free with Vista. Of course, maybe it’ll be free for everyone.
Not to bash Home Server. It is probably cool, but I don’t actually want more hardware and OSes in my house. I want fewer.
[tags]LiveDrive, Vista, Microsoft[/tags]
Tags: LiveDrive, Microsoft, Vista
January 1, 2007 at 9:15 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
It is going to be a great one.
Backdating blog posts is even easier than backdating options.
December 29, 2006 at 7:18 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
When I saw Jim was bitten by the Five Things tag (see The Curse of Being Demonstrative) I had a sinking feeling. I read his post slowly to stave off what I felt certain: he tagged me.
I could be a curmudgeon and ignore it, but I’ll go with it.
Five Things You May Not Have Known About Me:
- I sing around the house almost constantly. The louder the better. My kids ask me to stop. Unless they’re both around, in which case one asks me to stop and the other asks me to continue.
- Perhaps the most incredible sites I’ve seen is the tomb of Nefartari in the Valley of the Queens. The beauty of it moved me deeply — more so than any other art (visual, aural, etc.) that I have experienced.
- My first published writing was in 1985 for 80 Micro on how to produce tones from a TRS-80 speaker using a mix of BASIC and assembly with poked machine code. They paid me $125!
- I lived in the co-ops at Berkeley. My buddy David says that it was basically a fraternity for hippies, but he was a bit off. One of the worst things you could say about someone in the house was that he or she was being “uncooperative.” That word was not used lightly.
- I used to have quite long hair — down to the middle of my back.
And now to share the curse: John T. Powers, Steve Gillmor, Cori Schlegel, Chad Williams, Savas Parastatidis.
[tags]Five Things, Chain Letters, BASIC, 80 Micro, TRS-80, Hair, Nefartari[/tags]
Tags: 80-Micro, BASIC, Chain-Letters, Five-Things, Hair, Nefartari, TRS-80
December 22, 2006 at 9:10 am · Filed under Attention, Web 2.0
Steve breaks radio silence and admits he is a pooka (from Bad Sinatra).
A lot of good stuff in this post, but I want to highlight one part.
I posted the other day about the deprecation of the Google API. My take: good for the Google; bad for the gaggle (i.e., the application developers). Fun to talk about, but there are pragmatic solutions to this. Something to be scared of? No.
We (the users) needn’t be scared of vendor choices like this. Why not? Because nobody is forcing us to use these services. As Steve says:
Who am I supposed to be scared of? Google? Nope, if the Ajax API and the terms of service around including unaltered adsense are so counter to user interest, that will precipitate a decline in usage and therefore less adoption of Google properties. Seems self-correcting to me: user votes, user wins. Why do we need saving here?
Exactly.
[tags]GestureBank, Gillmor Gang, gillmor, Pooka, Google, APIs[/tags]
Tags: APIs, GestureBank, Gillmor, Gillmor-Gang, Google, Pooka
December 21, 2006 at 12:38 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
It looks like Dan Ciruli has decided to challenge a whole slew of bloggers. The challenge? 66,795 pushups and crunches next year.
Savas and Pirillo: I know you both lost a lot of weight in 2006–maybe you’re looking to firm up those newly svelted bodies? Shahar – how about getting the Excel Services team on board? Jim Benson, your cousin Robert sure did a lot of pushups this year; think you can top him next year? Brad Feld, you certainly know a thing or two about athletic goals (50 marathons in 50 states before he’s 50), I’m sure you could do this without sweating. Carl Franklin, you think .NET rocks, but did you know that pushups rock? Dan Fay, Joe Duffy, Mark Schmidt, David Gainer: they won’t be calling you Microsofties in 2007. Jason Follas, think you can manage 19 pushups the second day of CodeMash? Nick Carr, IT may be dead, but calisthenics are alive and kicking! And of course: Scoble made some big changes in 2006–how about making some more in 2007?
What’s next? An arm-wrestling match?
[tags]pushups, crunches, resolution, blog[/tags]
Tags: blog, crunches, pushups, resolution
December 21, 2006 at 9:35 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
The GestureBank beta 2 went live yesterday. This beta is open. Go to http://attentiontrust.org/gesturebank for more info. Special thanks to Cori Shlegel for his work to get this done.
The GestureBank will be rolling out new Affinity Service capabilities next. This is where it will start to really resonate.
By the way: IE is not supported in this beta (as it was previously); it will take a bit of effort to get a new IE port. This is because managed extensions are kind of a dead-end for IE. So the existing managed port will be discarded in favor of an (eventual) unmanaged one written from scratch. See this (techie) thread for more information: Create a Shell Extension Handler thumbnail extractor with .net?. In this thread you can think of the words Explorer, Shell, IE, IE6, IE7, and Excel as synonyms.
[tags]GestureBank, AttentionTrust, AT, Firefox, IE7, BHO[/tags]
Tags: AT, AttentionTrust, BHO, Firefox, GestureBank, IE7
December 21, 2006 at 2:18 am · Filed under Web 2.0
Two guys who know a thing or two about web services and APIs think the new Google Search API is a step backwards. I agree.
My guess is that some high up at Google thinks of it as a step forwards. Perhaps someone asked the question:
Why are we providing search results into arbitrary applications, when in fact, we are in the business of serving ads on Web pages?
An AJAX-only API is a fine way to do just that; but like Don Box says:
No matter how you define “web service,” I don’t think this newest offering qualifies.
I’m hoping this is just an anomaly and not a trend, lest we all fall back into the world of opaque/closed protocols.
Google doesn’t have to provide open and interoperable APIs to the world; but, I bet others will.
[tags]Google, AJAX, Search, APIs, Web Services, XML, SOAP[/tags]
Tags: ajax, APIs, Google, Search, SOAP, Web-Services, XML
December 18, 2006 at 8:51 am · Filed under .NET
Jamie Cansdale, author of the excellent TestDriven.net, has organized several charity auctions to help people in Malawi. In his words:
I have decided to organize a charity auction of a number of licenses for .NET developer tools. All proceeds of the auction will be given to Wells for Zoë, a charity dedicated to increasing the availability of safe drinking water and water for irrigation in rural areas of Malawi. You can read more about the project on their website or blog.
One unusual thing about this charity is that all travel and admin expenses are paid by the charity’s founders themselves. Therefore all donations go directly to sourcing the much needed equipment on the ground in Malawi. You can find out more about the equipment that is needed on the donation page here.
The software is being auctioned on eBay (they complete at the crack of dawn Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday):
If you want any of these excellent products, bid away!
[tags]Testdriven.NET, MSDN, SourceGear, TypeMock, CodeRush, DXperience, MegaPack.Net, Thycotic, C#, .NET, .NET3.0, VS2005[/tags]
Tags: .NET, .NET3.0, c#, CodeRush, DXperience, MegaPack.Net, MSDN, SourceGear, TestDriven.NET, Thycotic, TypeMock, vs2005
December 17, 2006 at 7:02 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
A few things:
- VS2005 SP1 is out. I am pleased with how quickly this turned from a beta to a release. Good job guys.
- VS2005 SP1 for Vista Beta bits are out now. Good news.
- I’m hoping that the Vista beta bits turn final soon too.
As is probably clear, I’m waiting for stability here before I go to Vista. This time I can’t help with the beta testing, so thanks to those out there that have taken one for the team.
[tags]Vista, VS2005, SP1, Microsoft[/tags]
Tags: Microsoft, SP1, Vista, vs2005
December 11, 2006 at 9:29 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
If you are in Redmond and want to learn about Digipede (from John):
Digipede Evangelist Kim Greenlee will give a presentation on Concurrent Software Development at the .NET Developers Association meeting on Monday, December 11. The meeting is on the Microsoft campus – in Building 40, the Steptoe Room (#1450). She blogs about it here; be sure to bring this meeting announcement with you, or Microsoft security may stop you.
Come early for the free pizza — stay for the demo of the Digipede Network.
[tags].NET, GRid, digipede, Excel[/tags]
Tags: .NET, Digipede, Excel, grid
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