Internet 2007 predictions in a Metro map

Posted on June 10, 2007 by

Internet 2007 Predictions? Ok ok , I know it’s almost halfway 2007 as I write this but I just recently stumbled upon this online article from iA. The presentation of these predictions is just great.


webtrends2007 - click to see a larger image


“The iA Trend Map shows all the big players, the current Internet trends and how they’re connected, using the Tokyo Metro map. It’s totally unscientific and almost useless, but definitely fun to look at.” [Download iA’s 2007 Web Trend Map in postcard format, DIN A4 and DIN A3]


The map is the part that got the most attention on the web. Still the article itself is good reading. The topics covered are the battle between the big players, trends, online advertising and digital identity.


Two things definitely worth looking at are the “Trend Blend 2007+” map and Dick Hardt’s presentation on Digital Identity.

Posted in Web 2.0 | Comments Off

Popfly, mashups without writing code

Posted on May 22, 2007 by

Last Friday Microsoft announced a new mashup tool called Popfly. With this tool it’s possible to create web mashups by dragging and clicking. This online tool is simply amazing (see the screencast). For programmers it’s almost scary how easy mashup applications are being created. This way even my mother-in-law can build a mashup (just kidding mom). 


Popfly has three key features. The mentioned mashup creator, a web page creator and last but not least Popfly Space.
Popfly Space is an online community where the mashup creators can meet and show their creations to each other. 


The technology behind Popfly is Silverlight (formerly known as WPF/E). Silverlight is sometimes seen as the Flash “killer” app. Is it going to be a killer? I’m not sure but a competitor? Absolutely. Silverlight sure has the potential to become widely spread (via Microsoft update?). The only question is if the designer community is going to pick it up.
For the alpha-geek developers it has potential enough. CLR and DLR cross browser and cross platform. The choice of using your favorite programming language independent of the browser or platform. The first demos were already shown on the MIX 07 conference using C# in a browser on Mac OSX.


I watched the Popfly screencast and signed up but unfortunately there is a waiting list. Popfly is still an alpha release. Silverlight 1.0 is beta and Silverlight 1.1 (with the cross platform CLR and DLR) is still in alpha. 


The Silverlight technology is still in a very early state of acceptance but with tools like the Popfly mashup creator it shouldn’t be a problem to convince a broader audience in using the new Silverlight technology.

Posted in Innovative, Web 2.0 | Comments Off

Google Geo Developer Day

Posted on April 4, 2007 by

Google collects not just the bits and bytes on the internet but it also  publishes a great deal of the data collected in the real world. This so called Geo data is used in applications as Google Earth, Maps and Sketchup.


Last Thursday Google organized the first Dutch Geo Developer Day. I attended this Geo Day together with 250 other “Geo Developers”. During  this day we heard more about the new features in the Google Maps API. and other Geo applications.


In the morning we had a presentation from Bernhard Seefeld, Tech Lead Manager at Google. The essence of his presentation was that with the “basic” maps provided by Google we are only half way there. The maps are a good foundation. The maps only become useful after we add additional information to it. What they are actually saying is that Google provides the base ingredient for a mashup. As an example misdaadkaart.nl.  


 


Two other things worth mentioning were Google’s mission: “To organize the world’s info and make it universally accessible and useful.” and a quote on visualization: “The web is about opening access to information. Some information works much better with the right visual context.“


The Google Geo-team added two new features to the Google Maps API. The Google Maps API  is the programming interface developers use. The new features are:



  • GeoRSS, GeoRSS can be used to add location information to objects or events. You could read about a political conflict in some unknown banana-republic but with the help of GeoRSS you can plot the news item on a map.
  • KML support, KML is a file format used to display geographic data in an Earth browser, such as Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Maps for mobile. KML uses a tag-based structure with nested elements and attributes and is based on the XML standard. With KML it is possible to load dynamic data as an overlay on a map.

The next speaker was Brandon Badger, Product Manager at Google. He again stated that Google Maps is a blank canvas and that users (you, me and the other 499.998 users of Google Earth) should fill the gap with interesting geographical information.


The Maps API is free to use and on the question if the Maps API will remain ad-free the answer was: “we will not disappoint our 30.000 users”. However there is a 50.000 API request limit per day.


The name KML comes from Keyhole Markup Language. Keyhole is the name of the digital mapping company Google acquired in 2004. KML support used to be only available for Google Earth users but since two week it is also available in the Maps API.
KML files can be exported from Google Earth but also from Picasa. What? Picasa? Yep that’s what he said Picasa supports geotagged photo’s. Imagine what you can do with your vacation photo’s.


The third speaker was Remco Kouwenhoven. A city counselor in Groningen and owner of the Nederkaart mashup site.


His presentation was a walkthrough of some interesting Dutch mashups:



His future expectations:



  • still in an early stage, too much gimmick like
  • the future as marketing instrument is promising
  • interaction between projectdevelopers, architects and the public cab on development plans

In the afternoon there were three workshops:



  • Google Maps API
  • Google Earth
  • Sketchup

The workshop on the Maps API was more a Q&A session. The assignments and the workshop are on-line available.


The Sketchup workshop was more like a hands-on presentation. In less than an hour a house was build complete with views from different angles but also with different lighting. How is the light going to be in summer? Or at noon on a winter day? Sketchup makes it possible to look at your creation under these different circumstances. Pretty amazing. Needless to say that I was impressed by Sketchup as a sketching tool. The features shown in this product will have a big influence on other modeling tools.


 


Some links from my notes:



 


All in all it was an interesting and inspiring day, for homework I have a couple of ideas to work out …

Posted in 4 Developers, Web 2.0, Web development | Comments Off

Virtual PC 2007 deletes your saved state

Posted on February 26, 2007 by wpadmin

About.gifThe next version of Virtual PC is released.


Important advice for those of you who already clicked the “download” button. Before you upgrade to Virtual PC 2007 make sure you have turned your virtual machines off.


Saved states are not compatible.


I uninstalled VPC 2004 SP1 and installed VPC 2007 and made the mistake of not reading the release notes. Well mistake, a link to the release notes, was only available after installing. ;-(


ErrorVirtualPC.gifThe first virtual machine I tried to open popped up a warning screen with the message: “Virtual PC was unable to registyer this virtual machine configuration file. The saved state assiciated with the virtual machine is not compatible …”.  If you happen to run into this screen and you have important changes in your saved state machine then there is still a fallback scenario:



  1. Keep the Error dialog open.
  2. Go to the directory with the files of your virtual machine.
  3. Rename the .vsv file.
  4. Open the virtual machine in Virtual PC 2004 SP1 and turn it off
    (You might have to reinstall Virtual PC 2004 SP1 for this step).

Another piece of good advice from the release notes:
ReInstall the “Virtual Machine Additions”. That is uninstall the “Virtual Machine Additions” from the previous release and install the “Virtual Machine Additions” from the 2007 release. I haven’t encountered problems yet but it is supposed to keep you out of trouble when you use “drag and  drop” between the virtual machine and the host.


New and improved in Virtual PC 2007:



  • Support for x64 Windows as a host operating system.
  • Support for hardware virtualization support.
  • Support for Windows Vista as a guest and host operating system.
  • Support for PXE network booting of virtual machines.
  • Support for the use of fullscreen virtual machines on multi-monitor systems (VM still stays on just one monitor though).
  • Improved performance compared to Virtual PC 2004.
  • Improved support for use on Laptops.

BiosGuid.gifFor a recent project I needed to boot a machine with a specific UUID. I could not use Virtual PC because it had no support for it so I had to use VMWare. With this new version of Virtual PC this has changed. I compared the contents of the virtual machine configuration (.vmc) file and one of the new settings is the “bios_guid”.
After creating a new virtual machine the settings are not yet available. Only after an initial run these settings appear in the .vmc file. This is the same in VMWare. Different though is the format of the GUID. VMWare uses an own syntax for storing the GUID while VPC uses the format as it is stored in the BIOS of a machine.


After the first test I found out that the bios_guid and the UUID from the BIOS are not exactly the same. The first half of the UUID found in the BIOS should be swapped pair wise in the .vmc file. I’m not sure what the reason is for this “swap”, Big Endian, Little Endian conversion? Whatever. Just follow the swap scheme below and you’re done ;-) .
The first line displays the UUID from the BIOS, the second line displays the bios_guid in the .vmc file.  
BiosGuidSwap.gif


Overall I’m very pleased with this new PXE boot feature. Now I can stick to one virtualization application per platform. Parallels on my MacBook and Virtual PC on my Windows machine ;-)

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The 8 basic principles of Web 2.0

Posted on February 26, 2007 by wpadmin

Web20Logo.jpgWhat is Web 2.0? Is it the ”read-write” web, the mash-ups or is it just a collection of fancy colored applications?


The name Web 2.0 is already two year old and is “invented” by O’Reilly Media. Just recently they (re)published a report where the Web 2.0 definitions are updated. The report  “Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices“ describes 8 basic web 2.0 principles. It is written by John Musser, wellknown from his Programmable Web site.


Unfortunately I haven’t been able to read the full report but thanks to Dion Hinchcliffe’s post on the subject here an abstract of the 8 principles:


Harnessing Collective Intelligence:
Sometimes described as the core pattern of Web 2.0, this describes architectures of participation that embraces the effective use of network effects and feedback loops to create systems that get better the more that people use them.


Data is the Next “Intel Inside”:
A phrase that captures the fact that information that information has become as important, or more important, than software, which has become relentlessly commoditized.


Innovation in Assembly:
The Web has become a massive source of small pieces of data and services, loosely joined, increasing the recombinant possibilities and unintended uses of systems and information.


Rich User Experiences: 
The Web page has evolved to become far more than HTML markup and now embodies full software experiences that enable interaction and immersion in innovative new ways.


Software Above the Level of a Single Device:
Software like the horizontally federated blogosphere (hundreds of blog platforms and aggregators) or the vertically integrated iTunes (server farm + online store + iTunes client + iPods) are changing our software landscape.


Perpetual Beta:
Software releases are disappearing and continuous change is becoming the norm.


Leveraging the Long Tail:
The mass servicing of micromarkets cost effectively via the Web is one of the primary “killer business models” made possible by the Internet in its present form.


Lightweight Software/Business Models and Cost Effective Scalability:
Everything from Amazon’s S3, to RSS, to Ruby on Rails are changing the economics of online software development fundamentally, providing new players powerful new weapons against established players and even entire industries.
 
Dion tries to clarify the 8 principles in a drawing but that wasn’t really succesfull. On the other hand the description of the principles gives a very complete picture of what is ment by Web 2.0 now. I emphasize on now because in the original article by Tim O’Reilly the principles were described slightly different.


New in this description is the principle ”Rich User Experiences”. Not being in the original document was a surpise to me. I thought user experience was one of the key principles of Web 2.0. Ah well, it just caught up in this version ;-) .


A while ago I was talking to Alex Thissen about Web 2.0 and it was surprising that we both were describing different parts of Web 2.0. We were both incomplete but still more accurate than Dennis van der Stelt in his blogpost.
I’m glad John Musser wrote this article it gives a complete picture of the current Web 2.0 but I wonder if we will be calling it Web 2.0 two years from now …

Posted in Web 2.0 | Comments Off

TechEd 2006 Day 3

Posted on November 10, 2006 by wpadmin

My TechEd day started with Carl Franklin a speaker I knew only from the podcasts, .NET Rocks and Hanselminutes. He talked about RSS, podcasts, IE7 and IE7′s powerful RSS API.

One of the online tools Carl used was shrinkster.com. I heard about shrinkster.com in Scott Hanselman’s podcasts but now I finally saw the light.
While I was making notes he would refer to a URL by mentioning just the three characters to use on shrinkster.com . For example the shortcut for all the URL’s in this presentation is F47.
Now if you go to http://www.shrinkster.com/F47 shrinkster redirects you to the right page, et voila, all the session links appear in your browser.

At the end of the session there was still time to ask some questions. On the question “what to expect from the Microsoft’s Zune” he gave this answer: “Microsoft is not hip. Microsoft is like your grandmother. While Apple is more like Elvis”. Since I’m writing this post on my Mac Book I can only agree ;-) .

After Carl it was time again for the clowns of the TechEd 2006, Clemens Vasters and Steve Schwartz. This time the talk was about security. In the first half they explained the common patterns. In the second half they showed where these patters applied in applications you use daily. I must say this is a very clever approach. During the second half I had several “aha” moments.

The second session from the “guys” was about the futures:


  • Vista
  • Orcas the new version of Visual Studio
  • Longhorn the next version of Windows Server
  • BizTalkServer 2006 R2
The new .NET Framework wasn’t mentioned here since it was already released.

BizTalk Server 2006 R2 is based on the WCF Channel Architecture. WCF is message based. This combination gives you a very powerful Service/Message bus. Watch out Tibco, BizTalk is on the move!
The next version of Orcas will have support for ASP.NET AJAX and CardSpace. WF and WCF fully integrated. The mentioned that Orcas was just a small release between big ones. I wonder what they are not telling us with that …

Longhorn will bring us transactions:


  • Transacted File System
  • Transacted Registry 
  • TRANSACTION command in cmd.exe
They ended the session with looking into their crystal ball. Interesting but still a bit to vague for me.

The last real session of this day was with Scott Hanselman. A great session, I read his blog and listen to his podcasts for quit a while now so it was not a real surprise. Nevertheless a very useful session. The takeaways of this session:


  • I you have a problem add a layer.
  • A dataset is just a bowl, you still don’t know what is inside. 
  • Don’t store interface contracts in Word files. 
  • Automate as much as possible; code generation, check code on coverage, metrics and duplicate code.
After the TechEd we went to a special session with Miguel Icasa. Mr MONO himself. MONO lets you run .NET applications on Linux and Mac OSX. It is open source but sponsored by Novell.

I must say it was an eye opener. Creating a .NET application in Visual Studio 2005 copying it to a Linux machine and actually run it without recompiling it.
Just today version 1.2 was released. It supports C# generics and Windows Forms. Cool stuff!

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TechEd 2006 Day 2

Posted on November 9, 2006 by wpadmin

The weather is great here it’s a shame we see so little of it. Outside it’s close to 20 degrees Celsius and inside you almost need a sweater, a real TechEd day ;-) .

No boring speakers today only very inspiring ones.

Today’s highlights:

BizTalk Server 2006 R2:

  • BTF + WCF = BTF R2. The R2 release is built on top of the new Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).
  • With WCF there will be new Adapters; BasicHTTP, WsHTTP, NetTCP, NetMsMQ, NetNamedPipes and a very powerful Custom Adapter.
  • The possibility of having web services without using IIS (NetTCP adapter), although just a demo it does show some of the new possibilities.
  • Full WS* support.


Two sessions with the comical duo Clemens Vasters and Steve Schwartz. These guys are constantly making fun of each other but between the jokes these guys have a very clear and analytical view on software architecture.

Takeaways on Data:

  • Not all data is equal.
  • Like logic, data access can be broken up into simple patterns.
  • Correct Data Architecture is the Ultimate Performance Optimization.


Takeaways on Presentation:

  • Connected Client Technologies open new opportunities.
  • You have more options that you possibly take advantage of.
  • Choose the right option for each task.


For both Data and Presentation the complex things were broken down to simple patterns. Very refreshing!

Then there was this session with Chad Hower (aka Kudzu). He talked about Mobile Agents. Mobile Agents are pieces of software that can move between machines. Huh?
At first it seemed a bit Academic but on second thought the are situation where this could be very useful.
One (working) demo showed a validation of a telephone number. The actual validation code was not present in the local application. At runtime the agent-code was fetched – from a so called hive – and included in the program.

For his demo he used the Indy Mobile Agents (http://www.indyproject.org).

The last session today was a raging Ted Pattison on the redesign of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.   
One of the big improvements is that everything is handled by ASP.NET.
Bye bye ISAPI filter, hello ASP.NET.
The concept of masterpages is implemented. So it’s reasonable easy to change the look and feel of a complete (sub)site. There are still some caveats but overall it is a big improvement.

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TechEd 2006 Day 1

Posted on November 7, 2006 by

The TechEd 2006 is different this year. This year it’s split up in TechEd  Developers and TechEd IT Forum. I don’t think that is a good thing. I liked the combination as it was. Software development mixed with the server technology.

On the other hand there are some advantages as well. Due to the size there are less sessions to choose making life easier ;-)



Highlights of the day:

  • An 11 year old girl from Pakistan who was already Microsoft certified.
  • All native servers are going to offer web services. Exchange 2007 web service is already implemented.
  • ATLAS is dead, long live ASP.NET AJAX check http://ajax.asp.net/ it’s a hot topic here. Beta 2 is recently released the RTM is expected to ship around the end of the year.
  • LINQ, Language Integrated Query, new functionality implemented in C# 3.0. "If Ienumerable is implemented then you can query it"
  • Vista and Office 2007 are RTM (Release To Manufacturer) meaning the bits are ready no more changes before launch.
  • Vista only: PeopleNearMe API.
  • WCF, Windows Communication Foundation is a part of .NET 3.0 the next step in the Application Services Evolution. WCF also the next evolutionary step in Communication Technology. First MSMQ then DCOM and the SOAP Toolkit and now WCF.   
  • WF, Windows Workflow Foundation is lightweight BizTalk like technology. Really powerful stuff.
  • WCF was built with interoperability in mind.
  • Expression WebDesigner, the bridge between web designer and developer.



I realize that for non developers this stuff is a bit abracadabra and even for the developers it’s a bit cryptic but it’s kind of impossible to put all stuff I’ve seen today in this post. I hope I have time to examine and write about the separate technologies in more detail later.

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TechEd 2006 Pre-conference day

Posted on November 7, 2006 by wpadmin

TechEd day 0, Pre-Conference day, today four sessions:


WCF, Windows Communication Foundation


Aaron Skonnard talked about the WCF.
My notes:


  • WCF: it’s all about messages
  • representation on the wire is not pre-defined
  • definition in contracts:
    • data contracts
    • behavioral contract
  • code sample where the definition of the communication layer was in a configuration file
  • configuration wizard in WCF
  • duplex contract was only mentioned briefly but it did raise my eyebrows so I have to check his weblog on that subject
  • nice detail of the presentation: Aaron was running the presentation from a virtual machine on a Mac-book Pro ;-)




WF, Windows Workflow Foundation


It took Keith Brown about half an hour to get to a point where it became interesting. But despite his presentation skills I picked up the following:

  • the WCF and WF teams are working together on “Silver”. Silver combines WCF and WF
  • State management in WF is cool:
    • Long running session- or “idle” session states can be stored a database.
    • After a certain event the session is restored and the session continues.




WPF, Windows Presentation Foundation


Ian Griffiths explained the need of this new extra layer on top of DirectX. Resolutions are changing, dots per inch the dpi value of the screens is rapidly changing it used to be 72 dpi for a CRT monitor it’s now possible to have LCD displays with a dpi of 200.
There were some demo’s of rotating buttons with changing text. Not really usable but nevertheless very entertaining.
Oh and not to forget XAML. The demo’s were written in his XML language. Really powerful stuff.
  


Running projects using SCRUM in Visual Studio 2005 Team System


Roy Osherove talked about agile development. The most striking thing he said was not to use the term “XP-programming”. The “X” stands for extreme the “P” for programming. So what’s wrong with the “X”? It gives managers the creeps. So instead we talk about SCRUM.
SCRUM is stand-up team meetings in the morning. It’s about leaving the developers alone when the specs are frozen. Specs are frozen for blocks of two to four weeks.
One other important thing: the method has to be adjusted to the people who have to work with it.

 

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Amazing photo

Posted on November 5, 2006 by wpadmin

Barcelona, getting ready for TechEd 2006. A day of travelling and waiting, we arrived in the afternoon. So we still had some time to spend in town.
While enjoying our tapas there were artists and acrobats performing. I didn’t expect much of the photo I took but the result is great!



Have you guessed what the photo is about?
What you see are two giant soap bubbles and some tourists admiring them.

Posted in TechEd2006, fun | Comments Off