Category Archives: internet

internet, microsoft, silverlight, web authoring, windows

Mix08: Rich Internet the Microsoft way

I’ve just registered here at Microsoft’s Mix08 conference in Las Vegas. I’ve heard a lot from Adobe recently, with Adobe AIR just launched, so this is a great opportunity to get Microsoft’s angle on the Rich Internet Application concept. Silverlight 2.0 will be prominent, as will Internet Explorer 8. I asked a developer on the plane what he likes about Silverlight compared to Flash. He told me that it is much easier to create Silverlight content dynamically at runtime, thanks to XAML. Silverlight renders XAML, whereas Flex compiles MXML – a significant difference.

In the Mix “Sandbox” lounge I got my first glimpse of Microsoft surface, which looks compelling. I hope to have  a better play later.

This evening O’Reilly is launching a new book by Christian Lenz called Essential Silverlight 2 Up-to-date. It is a new concept from O’Reilly, using a kind of ring binder (not actually a ring, but you know the kind of thing). The book which I saw is 50% blank pages; but the idea is that you will be able to receive or download additional pages and insert them into the book to keep it up-to-date. Not a new concept, but still an interesting attempt to address the problem of technical books quickly becoming out-of-date. It is particularly suitable for Silverlight 2.0 which is not done yet. At the same time, I can imagine this being a considerable hassle, and pages bound like this don’t turn quite as easily. I hope to review the book in due course.

It turns out that the Venetian Hotel and Casino, where Mix takes place, is a Microsoft customer. How do I know? Well, many of the rooms sport screens over the door advertising various hotel attractions, and I spotted one that has a distinctive Microsoft flavour.

Which goes to show that wherever you are in the world, you are never more than 12 screens from a Windows error message.

If you’re at Mix and would like to chat, by all means get in touch.

bbc, internet, web authoring

New gadgety home page at bbc.co.uk

The BBC has a new customizable home page, with gadgets similar to those at Netvibes, iGoogle and elsewhere.

First impressions are mixed. I don’t like it’s large size (1024 x 768), even though this is the trend. This issue is not the size of my display, but that I don’t necessarily want the browser to occupy so much of it. I’m sorry there is not more effort put into web pages that resize nicely – one of the reasons I like Times Reader and its cousins.

Second, I found myself with large blank areas after a quick go at customization. I also noticed that even if I selected many more subcategories for the News panel, it is still much less informative and useful than the old-style (and smaller) News home page, which to be honest is normally where I go to when I visit the BBC. I hope there is no rush to update the News page to the same style.

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internet, security

Google Health, Phorm, where next for your private data?

Let’s look at the fundamentals. Is an advertising company an appropriate place for sensitive personal data like health records? That’s easy to answer, no matter how many privacy assurances Google gives. Google is a specialist at mining personal data; and whenever I read its terms and conditions it is almost enough to stop me using its services. So Google Health? No thanks. Google, if you want to do this, split the company.

How about this idea: some of the UK’s largest ISP’s – Carphone Warehouse, BT and Virgin Media – intend to hand over their users Internet history to an advertising company called Phorm. The Reg has more details – read the comments to get fully spooked. Someone has setup a protest site here.

Phorm says it has strong privacy practices that safeguard user data, audited by Ernst and Young [PDF]. Safeguards include:

  • Deleting raw data after 14 days
  • Removing numbers longer than 3 digits
  • Not storing email addresses or IP numbers
  • Not storing form fields (thus no passwords)
  • Identifying users only by a random number
  • Analysing data only for predetermined keywords

Happy now? No. Some of these protections are weak. For example, the AOL search data debacle proved that replacing IP numbers with random identifiers is insufficient protection, because users can be identified solely by their activity. This applies even more strongly to an ISP’s data, which has everything you do on the Internet, not just your search history. Second, it is an opt-out system – it should be opt-in – and the opt-out on offer is weak; it merely stops you seeing the targeted ads, rather than preventing your data being sent to Phorm. Third, the data to be mined includes all your non-encrypted Internet activity, such as reading Google Mail, and not just URLs visited. While Phorm says it won’t read it, any additional use of this data makes it more vulnerable to interception and abuse.

What’s the answer? Change your ISP, of course; but also SSL, which encrypts your Internet traffic. Passwords themselves are inherently bad enough, without making it worse by sending them in plain text; further, we need to learn that anything we read or send in plain text over the Internet has been potentially been intercepted. This 2005 article spells out what that means. My hunch is that it is little better now. If we encrypt all the traffic that matters to us, then we won’t care so much that the ISP is selling it on.

[This post replaces an earlier draft].

Update: More details at the Reg today, complete with diagrams. Performance impact is also a concern.

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internet, microsoft, silverlight, software development, Uncategorized, web authoring, windows

Silverlight steals the show at Microsoft’s UK Heroes launch

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I attended Microsoft’s “Heroes Happen Here” launch in London yesterday, which overlapped the US launch presented by CEO Steve Ballmer. The launch is for Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008, and SQL Server 2008, though these products are in varying degrees of readiness.

The event was marred by excessive reliance on buzzwords like “Dynamic IT” – someone should tell Microsoft that phrases like this, or “People Ready” which was used for the Vista launch, have no meaning. Dr Andrew Hopkirk from UK’s National Computing Centre enthused about the general benefits of virtualization, which led to a comical moment later. I asked one of Hopkirk’s colleagues what the NCC thought about Microsoft’s Hyper-V or other virtualization technologies. “Oh, we haven’t evaluated it,” he said. “Most people use VMware and they love it”.

I hate to be disloyal, but the US event which was relayed by satellite, and which hardly any of the UK journalists watched, was more up my street. Ballmer didn’t shout too much, and I liked the drilldowns into specific features of the three products.

Still, after several dry presentations the UK event brightened up when Paul Curtis from EasyJet, a UK budget airline, showed us a proof-of-concept Silverlight application which the company plans to implement on its web site towards the end of this year. We saw an attractive Rich Internet Application which was a mash-up of flight routes and fares, Microsoft Virtual Earth, and reviews from TripAdvisor. Here’s a blurry snap of how you might book a hotel in Barcelona. It’s a compelling visual UI which of course reminded me of similar things I’ve seen implemented with Adobe’s Flash and Flex. Behind the scenes the app will use Server 2008, IIS 7.0, and a SQL Server 2008 Data Warehouse, so this is the perfect case study.

I wanted to ask Curtis whether he was happy with Silverlight’s cross-platform capabilities, and why he was using Silverlight in preference to Flash. However, his bio states that he is a member of the Windows Live Special Interest Group and on the Microsoft Architect Council, so I suspect the answer would be, “it’s what we know.” It does support my impression that despite the rise of Flash, there is still a place for Silverlight within the large Microsoft platform community.

Finally, there was brief mention of high take-up for Microsoft Softgrid, which is described as “application virtualization”. I’ve made this the subject of a separate post.

PS: I met blogger Mark Wilson at the event; he has a more detailed write-up.

internet, microsoft, open source

Chris Anderson on Freeconomics

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Chris Anderson, the Wired editor who coined the term “long tail”, has written a lengthy piece on Free – why $0.00 is the future of business, and is writing a book on the subject.

It caught my eye in part because of what Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz told me the other day: the only acceptable price is free.

The idea must terrify Microsoft, which makes most of its money from software licenses, while letting third-parties take the profits from custom development and services. Companies are less vulnerable if they sell both hardware and software, or have strong services departments.

The paradox here is that even when the marginal cost drops close to zero, there still has to be a business model. Something I am still trying to figure out as I give away content on this blog.

adobe, internet, java, silverlight, software, software development, web authoring

Adobe AIR now available; not just consumer fluff

Adobe has released AIR and you can download the runtime and SDK now, as well as FlexBuilder 3, the official IDE for AIR. Just to remind you, AIR is a way of running Flash applications on the desktop, supplemented by SQLite, a fast local database manager.

Among the most interesting case studies I’ve seen is from LMG, which runs loyalty schemes including the Nectar card and Air Miles. The big deal for the retailers is that using your loyalty card lets them identify who is buying what, providing mountains of data which can be mined for trends and the like. I do mean mountains. Nectar is used by Sainsburys. Between 25 and 40 million “basket items” are added to the database each day, and the database holds 2 years of data.

LMG’s Self-serve is an app in development which enables Sainsburys and its suppliers to analyze this data; it could potentially be used by other retailers too. “The application answers questions like how’s my brand performing, who’s buying my brand, what else are they buying,” says Garth Ralston, LMG’s Business Intelligence Development Manager.

Self-Serve is built with AIR and Flex. “Excel spreadsheets, which some of our competitors use, and the pie charts than you can create within them, are so 1990’s”, says Ralston. “We’re looking for a little bit more of the Wow factor.”

A couple of things particularly interested me. One is that SQLite is critical for the app, which works by downloading large chunks of data and manipulating it on the client. This means that Self-Serve would not work as a browser application, unless possibly with Google Gears, which also uses SQLLite. Another is the importance of offline working. “The ability to have a user run the app, run a report, download the data to their system, take the laptop on the train and continue to work is an absolute business requirement”, says Ralston.

James Governor, Redmonk analyst, told the press that BMC will be using AIR as a front-end to integrate its mainframe management offerings, and SAP will be using it. “Frankly, I think this will be the front-end for all SAP business applications,” he said. In other words, AIR is not just consumer fluff.

Governor is just back from Sun, as I am, and while I was there I picked up some anxiety at the way Flash and now AIR are doing what Java was intended to do – provide a rich cross-platform client. Has Adobe stolen Sun’s market? “Sun is quite capable of stealing its own market”, he said. “Java just hasn’t delivered the kind of rich desktop experiences that we would expect and hope.” That said, note that FlexBuilder is a Java application, Adobe’s server-side LiveCycle data services are Java, and Adobe’s ColdFusion runs on Java, so there are pros and cons here for Sun’s technology.

Actually, I suspect you could build Self-Serve in Java without much difficulty. The big win for AIR is that it’s home territory for multitudes of Flash designers. This is as much about designer and developer communities as it is about technology. The same applies to Microsoft’s Silverlight, which is ideal for Visual Studio developers to whom Flash is foreign.

I still have reservations about AIR, though there is also much to like. It’s early days of course; I’m looking forward to trying it for real. I also love the way these new initiatives are making us rethink the design of essential applications that have remained essentially unchanged for years.

internet, microsoft, mono, open source, web authoring

Mono at Mix08

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Back in 2003, I blogged about how Miguel de Icaza could not get his proposed Birds of a Feather session approved at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference.

There’s always been ambivalence at Microsoft about Mono. Extending the value of .NET – good. Making it possible to ditch Windows – bad. Mono events at Microsoft conferences have tended to be off-site affairs in nearby hotels.

Viewing the sessions for Mix08, it’s clear that Mono has been pretty much welcomed into the fold. The catalyst for change was Moonlight, which solves a problem for Microsoft by enabling Silverlight to run on Linux. Miguel de Icaza is participating in a panel discussion on open technologies (with Andi Gutmans at Zend and Mike Schroepfer from Mozilla), and has his own session on Moonlight, subtitled “Come experience .NET on Linux”.

Don’t expect Microsoft to open source Office any time soon. That said, the company has changed significantly since 2003. Yes, it’s been forced by the market; but it’s a welcome development nonetheless.

If the Yahoo deal goes ahead, open source at Microsoft will get even more interesting.

internet, search

Google the “official innovation provider” for Republican convention

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Google is to be the “official innovation provider” for the Republican Convention, according to the convention’s official web site. Thanks to Valleywag for the link. “It’s another huge step in making our convention the most high-tech savvy in history”, enthuses the Convention President Maria Cino.

The convention’s official website, www.GOPConvention2008.com, will eventually feature a full-range of GoogleTM products, including Google Apps, Google MapsTM, SketchUpTM, and customized search tools, which will make navigating the site easier. The convention’s YouTube channel will enable visitors to upload, view, and share online videos. These innovative technologies will also help the GOP streamline convention organization and expand its online reach across websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email.

Looks like a Google blunder to me. The problem is not that the political convention is using Google technology; the problem is the way it is being presented, as a proud partnership. It is particularly unpleasant for a company which is supposed to offer a ruthlessly neutral search engine. Was Google expecting this, I wonder? Is it, as Valleywag suggests, “trying to beef up its GOP lobbying”?

As an aside, plastering the Google brand all over its convention web site does nothing to persuade me that the Republican party is “high-tech savvy.”

Politicising your brand is stupid. Further, Google’s California base was not a hot-bed of Republicanism last time I looked; though frankly a similar deal with the Democrats would be equally daft.

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internet, java, software development

Sun reflections: open source but not open development?

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I’m at the airport following two days of Sun’s Global Media Summit. I’ll be writing up various pieces on this, but in the meantime here are some quick reflections.

In the first dot com boom Sun could do no wrong; its servers were lapped up by every company with an internet presence. In the ensuing years it failed to sustain its momentum and began posting losses. It created Java, which transformed enterprise computing, but somehow others (IBM,Oracle,BEA) seemed to profit from Java more than Sun itself.

Sun has recovered. We were told repeatedly that it has posted profits for several consecutive quarters; its margins are good and its focus is now on growth. It has bold plans for its Solaris operating system. It wants to transform Java into something that will rival Flash and Silverlight as well as doing valuable but dull work on application servers. It still believes in thin clients. It can supply eco-friendly datacenters that offer money savings as well as a reduced carbon footprint.

Above all, Sun is engaged in a fascinating experiment around open source. Most of its software is both free and open source, including of course its big recent acquisition, MySQL. Sun is a company with 4,000 more-or-less unfettered bloggers, talks a lot about community, and wants to be considered just as much an open source company as, say, Red Hat or indeed MySQL.

Has Sun figured out how to do open source and remain profitable? It says it has; though part of its argument is that even free software users need hardware. And if there was one thing I learned this week it is the extent to which Sun is a hardware company. Another journalist said that the one word which sums up Sun is “Datacenter.” We heard a lot about the “Niagara” 64-thread processor; the “Thumper” storage server; and the “Blackbox” datacenter-in-a-container; and we were given a tour of one of Sun’s own datacenters in Santa Clara.

Nevertheless, Sun is serious about open source, though it is early days and the company has not worked out all the implications. Some feel that Sun wants to retain a degree of control that makes Linux-like freedom and diversity impossible. Here’s Ben Rockwood, an external member of the governing board of Open Solaris:

…we have open source but we don’t have open development. Sun has done an admirable job with releasing code, but Sun’s track history in the arena of open development efforts with the free software community has been abysmal. Many engineers inside of Sun “get it” (look at IPS, or almost anything Dr. Stephen Hahn is involved in, just beautiful) but somewhere in that middle-management there is a disconnect.

If Simon Phipps and others like him have their way the community will be “rebooted” from what most of us envisioned, an open development effort in which Nevada [Solaris 11] is developed as a community effort, to a glorified support infrastructure in which the “community” is really just a bunch of bi-standers with no real involvement. The later case is apparently closer to the MySQL model, which I refer to as “glass house development”, that is, you can look in at whats going on but you’re not part of the action.

These tensions and its whole open source experiment will make Sun a fascinating company to watch.

Sun is also serious about eco-friendly computing. In the context of global warming, this is smart business as well as a compelling argument for concepts like thin clients (Sun Ray) and more efficient datacenters.

Conclusions? None yet. This is a company in transition. That said, I’ve come away thinking that its lean years have left it as well prepared as anyone for the coming economic uncertainty.