ongoing � Mobility Blues

ongoing � Mobility Blues: "These days, I’m gloomier and gloomier about the prospects for the mobile Internet; you know, the one you access through the sexy gizmo in your pocket, not the klunky old general-purpose computer on your desk."

Protocol buffers: the early reviews are in [dive into mark]

Protocol buffers: the early reviews are in [dive into mark]

Google (my current employer) has finally open sourced protocol buffers, the data interchange format we use for internal server-to-server communication. The blogosphere’s response? “No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.”

Aaaaanyway…

Protocol buffers are “just” cross-platform data structures. All you have to write is the schema (a .proto file), then generate bindings in C++, Java, or Python. (Or Haskell. Or Perl.) The .proto file is just a schema; it doesn’t contain any data except default values. All getting and setting is done in code. The serialized over-the-wire format is designed to minimize network traffic, and deserialization (especially in C++) is designed to maximize performance. I can’t begin to describe how much effort Google spends maximizing performance at every level. We would tear down our data centers and rewire them with $500 ethernet cables if you could prove that it would reduce latency by 1%.

Besides being blindingly fast, protocol buffers have lots of neat features. A zero-size PB returns default values. You can nest PBs inside each other. And most importantly, PBs are both backward and forward compatible, which means you can upgrade servers gradually and they can still talk to each other in the interim. (When you have as many machines as Google has, it’s always the interim somewhere.)

Comparisons to other data formats was, I suppose, inevitable. Old-timers may remember ASN.1 or IIOP. Kids these days seem to compare everything to XML or JSON. They’re actually closer to Facebook’s Thrift (written by ex-Googlers) or SQL Server’s TDS. Protocol buffers won’t kill XML (no matter how much you wish they would), nor will they replace JSON, ASN.1, or carrier pigeon. But they’re simple and they’re fast and they scale like crazy, and that’s the way Google likes it.

BetaNews | Google releases its data encoding format to compete with XML

BetaNews | Google releases its data encoding format to compete with XML: "In an effort to solve the bulk and time-consumption problem when encoding large databases, Google developed its own alternative to XML. Yesterday, the company began evangelizing others to use it as an alternative to the industry standard.

There's an argument that open standards are only truly useful when one standard applies to any given category of service -- an argument that was raised in the matter of application formats. Now the broader category of data encoding -- handled nowadays by XML -- is about to receive a big challenge, ironically from the group perceived as the champion of open standards in Internet communication: Google.

Yesterday afternoon, Google publicly released documentation for a system it has been using internally, called Protocol Buffers, inviting others to use it as well. And in a surprising blog post, one of its own software engineers argued that its system was preferable to XML because it's less expensive to deploy, and can more easily scale up to very large databases."

Bit.ly: Please Use This TinyURL of the Future - ReadWriteWeb

Bit.ly: Please Use This TinyURL of the Future - ReadWriteWeb: "URL shorteners like TinyURL are a wildly popular way to share long links over email, IM, microblogging and other contexts. The millions of shortcuts that have been created through such services represent a huge opportunity to capture interesting data - but to date those opportunities have all just gone down the drain.

Bit.ly, a new URL shortening service from the innovation network Betaworks, is launching today with a staggering feature set for both end users and forward-looking developers."

APOD: 2008 July 5 - Comet Between Fireworks and Lightning

APOD: 2008 July 5 - Comet Between Fireworks and Lightning

Click image for the high resolution version

Explanation: Sometimes the sky itself is the best show in town. In January 2007, people from Perth, Australia gathered on a local beach to watch a sky light up with delights near and far. Nearby, fireworks exploded as part of Australia Day celebrations. On the far right, lightning from a thunderstorm flashed in the distance. Near the image center, though, seen through clouds, was the most unusual sight of all: Comet McNaught. The photogenic comet was so bright that it even remained visible though the din of Earthly flashes. Comet McNaught has now returned to the outer Solar System and is now only visible with a large telescope. The above image is actually a three photograph panorama digitally processed to reduce red reflections from the exploding firework.

Case-Hardened Web Badges: the Live Version - kentbrewster.com

Case-Hardened Web Badges: the Live Version - kentbrewster.com

Here's my presentation from the 2008 edition of Web 2.0, originally given at the crack of dawn, 8:30am, Wednesday, 23 April 2008.

Quite a bit more on the subject is available here:

TechCrunchIT � Blog Archive � A Million Businesses on Office Live While Generic Hosting Slides

A Million Businesses on Office Live While Generic Hosting Slides

At the same time today over at Pingdom they noticed that the search mind-share for ‘web hosting’ is continuing its downward trend. Generic hosting seems to be on it’s way out - the type of hosting that can be purchased from GoDaddy, 1&1 and many others where the basic plan offers a control panel, a shared host and some bandwidth.

Generic hosting is not only being replaced by services such as Office Live and Google Apps, but for personal user networks such as Wordpress.com and Blogger. For an SMB, there are a number of easy options available that require little development work and setup time with integration into other applications such as document management. The downward trend in generic hosting in favor of more specialized and integrated platforms will also definitely cut into the SMB web development market, as each of these solutions provide default templates that are easily branded and customized with a corporate identity.

Identi.ca: May A Million Twitters Bloom - ReadWriteWeb

Identi.ca: May A Million Twitters Bloom - ReadWriteWeb: "Identi.ca is a new microblogging service that launched today - but it's not just another also-ran. The service is an Open Source, CreativeCommons framework for a distributed network of federated microblogging services.

If you've become interested in the paradigm changing model of communication popularized by Twitter but have been frustrated by Twitter's frequent down time or other shortcomings - then Identi.ca could be for you."

YouTube - Miss Teen USA 2007 - South Carolina answers a question

YouTube - Miss Teen USA 2007 - South Carolina answers a question

Downgraded to Firefox 2.0

Well I gave Firefox 3.0 a good run but decided to stay with Firefox 2.o for now. Some of the reasons for this include:

1. Stability FF3.0 is the first browser since Netscape Communicator to crash on my machine daily.
2. Compatibility FF3.0 just doesn't log into GMail as easily or remember my password for as long. Inevitable a god number of add-in broke. GMail kept having AJAX issues which went away when I downgraded.

I still prefer FF over other browsers and will check on 3.0 from time to time but basically for my purposes I think 3.0 aint quite done yet.

Tagneto: Mobile Development

Tagneto: Mobile Development

I was recently asked about my experiences making TinyBuddy IM. Here are my very biased thoughts about it and mobile development in general.

Server-side JavaScript on the Java Virtual Machine (Google I/O Session Videos and Slides)

Server-side JavaScript on the Java Virtual Machine (Google I/O Session Videos and Slides): "Server-side JavaScript on the Java Virtual Machine
Steve Yegge (Google)

After over a decade in the browser space, JavaScript is making a surprise move into the server programming space. Mozilla Rhino is turning JavaScript into a compelling option for Java programmers. Will JavaScript be the next server-side programming language? In this talk I will do a deep dive into Rhino's technology, and I'll demonstrate some of its many uses in server-side computing."

YouTube - Google I/O 2008 - Underneath the Covers at Google

YouTube - Google I/O 2008 - Underneath the Covers at Google: "Underneath the Cov I/ers at Google: Current Systems and Future Directions
Jeff Dean (Google)"

Powering a clean energy revolution

Powering a clean energy revolution: "RE<C (Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal)

Clean and affordable energy is a growing need for our company, so we’re excited about launching RE<C, a strategic initiative whose mission is to develop electricity from renewable sources cheaper than electricity produced from coal. Initially, this project to create renewable energy cheaper than coal will focus on advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, and enhanced geothermal systems – but we’ll explore other potential breakthrough technologies too.

We’re busy assembling our own internal research and development group and hiring a team of engineers and energy experts tasked with building 1 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. (That’s enough electricity to power a city the size of San Francisco.) Google’s R&D effort will begin with a significant effort on solar thermal technology, and will also investigate enhanced geothermal systems and other areas."

Google IO 2008 Conference Videos

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.: "Playlist: Google I/O 2008
Description: Videos of sessions from Google I/O 2008."

Gears API Blog: Appcelerator gives you Gears functionality out of the box

Gears API Blog: Appcelerator gives you Gears functionality out of the box: "First, for those that haven't heard of Appcelerator, it is an open source 'RIA' development toolkit that focuses on rich clients talking to services on the backend. You can think of it somewhat as a Flex-like framework built with Open Web technology.

We are seeing an interesting trend. At first, frameworks would wrap Gears semantics in something that makes sense for their audience of developers, which is great.

Appcelerator though does something a little different. It uses Gears under the hood to make your existing Appcelerator based application a better user experience."

New World Notes: Metaverse Milestone: Interoperability Between Second Life And Open Sim Virtual Worlds

Today at around 11:00am, according to Zha Ewry, a long hoped for landmark was reached: a couple Linden Lab staffers teleported with Zha from the Second Life grid... into Open Sim, the open source spinoff of SL. They came only as avatars, without inventory or attributes, and therefore, appeared as "Ruth", SL's default bug avatar. Even so, it was still the first instance of interoperability between one virtual world and another. "Next steps," writes Zha, who runs the Architecture Working Group, "will include better syncing with the OpenSim environment, handling teleport in and our requests, and then starting in on how to fetch assets from the test grid." It's a small step, but it opens up worlds of possibility.New World Notes: Metaverse Milestone: Interoperability Between Second Life And Open Sim Virtual Worlds

Webtop Watch: Adobe Launches Acrobat.com and Releases Acrobat 9 (With Flash).

Webtop Watch: Adobe Launches Acrobat.com and Releases Acrobat 9 (With Flash).

Continuing its push to become a major provider of Webtop software, Adobe is releasing two new products on Monday: Acrobat.com and Acrobat 9. Adobe’s Webtop arsenal already includes the recently launched online version of PhotoShop and its online media player, Adobe TV. Acrobat.com is another big step towards bringing more desktop-like experiences to the Web. “It is our intent to blur a lot of the lines of the past,” says product manager Erik Larson.

Acrobat.com—Online Word Processing, Meetings, and File Sharing

Acrobat.com is a combination of three recently launched online services: Adobe Brio (online meetings), Adobe Buzzword (online word processor), and Adobe Share (online file sharing). Thus with the public beta launch of Acrobat.com, Adobe is taking on Google Docs, Microsoft Office Live Workspace, WebEx, and GoTo Meeting—all at the same time.

Buzzword is now integrated into Acrobat.com as the default word processor. (I reviewed Buzzword and Share when they first launched last March). Multiple people can edit a document and leave comments. Tabs along the bottom representing different people show you who has accessed the document most recently and their status (author, reviewer, etc.). It paginates documents, supports all kinds of fonts, and lets you create the closest equivalent to a PDF that is possible online.

All the documents on Acrobat.com are organized in what up until now has been Adobe Share. The document and file-sharing service now offers five gigabytes of free storage, and lets you embed documents in a widget on other sites across the Web. (I’ve put an Adobe PDF widget at the bottom of this post). This last feature should worry startups like Scribd and DocStoc, which are based entirely on the ability to upload and share documents in a similar fashion.

Finally, my favorite part, Acrobat.com includes Brio, which is a light version of Adobe Acrobat Connect. It lets up to three people have online meetings for free, with screen sharing, desktop video, voice conferencing, chat, white-boarding. You can add in a regular toll line for a fee. Anyone with a Mac is going to love this. Whenever I get a virtual demo, I prefer to do it through Adobe Connect because WebEx and GoTo Meeting sometimes don’t work with my Mac. And Adobe’s Flash viewer simply looks better.

Adobe Launches Online Office Suite and New Flash-Enabled Acrobat 9 - ReadWriteWeb

Adobe Launches Online Office Suite and New Flash-Enabled Acrobat 9 - ReadWriteWeb: "Back in March, we said Adobe was slowly building an online empire. Today, that news turns out to be true. Adobe is has just launched their version of an online office suite available at Acrobat.com, complete with word processor (Buzzword), web conferencing/whiteboard app (ConnectNow), online file sharing (Share), file storage, (My Files), and PDF converter. To complement this launch, Adobe has also announced a brand-new version of Adobe Acrobat, Acrobat 9, the biggest release since the initial one that introduced Acrobat to the world. The remarkable change in this new version is that Adobe is now incorporating Flash into the PDF experience."

Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Note to Web 2.0 Companies: Early Adopters are not the Mass Market

Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Note to Web 2.0 Companies: Early Adopters are not the Mass Market:

If you work in the technology industry it pays to be familiar with the ideas from Geoffrey Moore's insightful book Crossing the Chasm. In the book he takes a look at the classic marketing bell curve that segments customers into Early Adopters, Pragmatists, Conservatives and Laggards then points out that there is a large chasm to cross when it comes to becoming popular beyond an initial set of early adopters. There is a good review of his ideas in Eric Sink's blog post entitled Act Your Age which is excerpted below

The people in your market segment are divided into four groups:

Early Adopters are risk takers who actually like to try new things.

Pragmatists might be willing to use new technology, if it's the only way to get their problem solved.

Conservatives dislike new technology and try to avoid it.

Laggards pride themselves on the fact that they are the last to try anything new.