Digital Conundrum

As if Google weren’t involved in enough of the new technology landscape, they burst forth with their own entry into the cloud with App Engine. As their logo intimates, this is a direct way to go soaring into the clouds.

Although their entry is functionally equivalent to AWS in terms of providing a cost-effective way to bring massively scalable web applications to market for anyone, their approach is radically different.

Amazon takes a loosely coupled approach with the Elastic Compute Cloud, Simple Storage Solution, Simple DB, Mechanical Turk and Simple Queue Service by allowing users to pick and choose which service and in which amount they need. But this comes with a cost - and that is that it is the responsibility of the user to tie the pieces together and build the scalability pieces themselves.

Google on the other hand takes a tightly coupled approach by making their service essentially a black box. The downside, if there is one, is that they only support one language , Python, and there is no direct access to the data of the application. Some have talked about a “lock-in” factor in going the Google route, but that concern was short lived, as the environment has already been ported to Amazon, allowing an application written for Google to directly run on Amazon with only minor tweaking.

So the race is on. Up, up and away into the cloud! The only question, to borrow directly from Nicholas Carr is -

Where’s Microsoft?

Now, obviously Microsoft is involved in creating their own cloud-like products, but the concern has to be can they catch up, in a world where things change so quickly and so dramatically, and most importantly within a completely new paradigm. Red Dog has been discussed and speculated on (here for example). One has to wonder in a world of cloud computing, why would you choose “dog” as a code name and perhaps metaphor for your new product.

They already have one “dog” with Vista, do they need another.

As always, this will be interesting to watch and wonder.

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Much has been written about the trend toward internet-centric applications and how cloud computing is changing the fundamental metaphor of how people use computers. The popularity of these applications are creating a need to pull the applications into the local machine for use during periods of unconnected operation. Google Gears is an example of early efforts to provide this functionality.

But there is another driving force that I hadn’t quite realized was happening and that has to do with the entire model of application development. In the onAIR Weblog the author talks about how “easy” web development is compared to development for the traditional desktop. One might think that the driving force is cross-platform operation, and that is certainly one major force. Obviously, the ability to write for a standards-based browser automatically provides capabilities for Mac, Win and Linux users to all access the same apps from the browser of their choice. But there is another driving force, and that is the ease of development.

So was the desktop medium the problem? Nope, it was just the development model. What if we could take the ease/cross-platform/fun development model of the web and provide desktop functionality? That’s exactly what rich Internet applications on the desktop are trying to do and that’s Adobe AIR’s goal. There are a lot of different approaches to the “new desktop” development model and they’re all good. But desktop development isn’t just about offline access or having a desktop shortcut. It’s about capturing the full experience of web development and providing the ability to create powerful, persistent, usable desktop applications.

Great point.

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The Mix conference was, again this year, a fascinating inside look into Microsoft’s vision for the future in technology terms, and an experience of what many call “the new Microsoft”. If you’ve read any of my posts on the Mix-centric blog (Mix Blog) you can get a sense of what happened.

I believe that Microsoft has truly decided to “play nice”. I think they realize that the old desk-top model is quickly on the way out (perhaps hastened by the myriad problems with Vista) and the new model is already here - take your pick of the name for this: cloud computing, utility computing, browser-centric computing, internet computing, or whatever.

A couple of major indicators of this trend will be illustrative.

First from the technology perspective. The decision was made specifically to support the new Silverlight technology on a cross-platform. Silverlight is available on Mac, Linux and most Windows platforms (Win2K notably absent from the supported list. In this same vein, Mono (.Net on Linux) is now not only tolerated but supported. And finally, in the new Internet Explorer, the standards model will be the default representational profile. No more IE-specific hacks to make web-sites render properly.

Second, from the strategic perspective, Microsoft invited Guy Kawasaki to do a sit down, no-holds-barred interview with Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer. This was remarkable - in the past, Ballmer would have gotten up in front of the group and “told them what they needed to know”. But this time, Kawasaki asked Ballmer about all the things that customers are concerned about - Apple, Yahoo, Vista, Google, Facebook, you name it. Ballmer was remarkably open, only really dodging where appropriate, on issues related to merger talks and legal issues, for which comment would have been truly problematic and inappropriate. He even provided his email address, steveb@microsoft.com.

So the event was fun, informative and a chance to experience first hand and in real time, the new Microsoft.

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For the next few days I will be attending the Mix08 event in Las Vegas. All my blogging will be on the MixBlog site during this time.

I’m looking forward to a great event and if any of the rumors are true, there should be some interesting announcements.

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Microsoft has gone on record in an MSDN Blog post, with the commitment to “interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can”. If true, and unfortunately with Microsoft you have to wait and see if there is actual follow through, this is great news for web developers. Just imagine no more IE work arounds in web pages just to have content render properly on standards-based browsers and IE. This has been a huge problem because IE just works differently.

There is another more important message in this, and that is that Microsoft appears to be acknowledging publicly that they have lost enough market share and mindshare that they now have to play nice. They can no longer just ride roughshod over users and do whatever they damn please. First, they decided to begin to play nice with Linux and now they are deciding to play nice with browsers, maybe soon they will decide to play nice with customers who might want to run XP instead of Vista on their nice new laptop… naaaaa, that would never happen.

It is interesting, I have slowly moved away from IE to Firefox, in fact there are only two primary places I use IE - to access Exchange through the web and to download Firefox on a new machine!

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I originally got interested in Facebook around the time that Microsoft made their investment in the firm creating the now infamous $15billion valuation. It seemed a little over the top at the time and perhaps even more so even now. Facebook’s meteoric rise has been accompanied by some interesting side stories. Their misstep with the advertising program and problems with the applications engine are but two of the issues that have beset the young company. I had been thinking that and observing that my interest had been waning… quite substantially. I don’t get a lot of value out the the service, and kind of wonder what all the fuss is about.

The dot.life blog made this observation, which I well agree with

The general feeling is that the kids, with their minute attention spans, have already tired of the social networking site and moved on to something more hip and happening. I think the opposite is true - that Facebook’s new wave of older users have decided it is just not worth the bother and are now leaving it to the kids.

I think it’s kind of the same thing as I experienced with MySpace - although I never even bothered to sign up for that. One look around convinced me that this was definitely for the teeny-bopper set and not for adults. Facebook I thought I might be able to assimilate to, but so far nothing of real substance.

I’m not giving up, just acknowledging that it’s probably not going to be something I can get into -

Bill, commenting on Scobleizer’s post on the subject, pretty much sums it up

Facebook never had much “shine” for me. I joined, added a few friends, joined a handful of groups. Noticed that there wasn’t much going on in the groups. Started getting regular “Facebook apps spam”. Noticed that the friends in my book and I were already doing plenty of communicating via Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social networks. Ergo, I haven’t been into Facebook in about six weeks, haven’t posted there in even longer. Ho hum. Life goes on.

Yup, ho hum, life goes on.

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The following YouTube video is making the rounds. In fact it recently popped up on one of Elliot Masie’s entries. The video is interesting from two major perspectives. First, it makes a great point about how monolithic, archaic and dull most of state-sponsored academia is. (We could easily get out into the weeds on discussions of tenure, structure, inertia and a bunch of other stuff, but that can wait for another day). The fact is, that new methods, technology and innovation just take forever to make their presence felt within these closed systems. Certainly the comments about the educational process and the overall experience are well taken. And the ways that students are finding to use technology on their own to learn is interesting and compelling. But there is another thing that is quite concerning, and that is the shallowness of some of the comments. But I guess, if, as many believe, education is more about indoctrination than learning… or more importantly, learning how to learn…and how to think - it is not surprising. It’s an interesting video and one worth watching.

The other questions that this video prompts us to ask are - Who will be the innovator in learning moving forward? What kinds of innovation is effective? How can technology be used to address some of the major limitations of traditional educational process? What is the proper balance of technique, strategy and method?

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For once we’re not talking about Linux, Apache, MySQL and PhP - no this time the free software is from Microsoft. Dubbed DreamSpark, the program promises qualifying students the opportunity to download an entire suite of development tools and products. And an impressive list it is

• Visual Studio Professional Edition
• Expression Studio
• XNA Game Studio 2.0
• SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
• Windows Server Standard Edition

It is a very interesting and unique program coming from Microsoft.

So why is Microsoft doing this now? Probably for the same reason they bought a stake in Facebook… and made a hostile offer for Yahoo! … and bought aQuantive… and launched Live … and are doing a log of the other things that they are now doing.

I fear it is too little too late. This would have been an extremely smart, preemptive move several years ago, but today it smacks as desperation. Apple was brilliant in their early moves to put cheap Apples in the schools. It bought them significant market share and mindshare for a number of years, before their proprietary model ran its course and was overrun by the WinTel platform which offered dramatically better pricing, more functionality and a de facto standard. Nevertheless, the seeds that Apple planted produced massive amounts of revenues as schools were locked in to the platforms their initial “budget-based” decisions dictated.

It will remain to be seen whether the initiatives being undertaken will have the desired effect of seeding the developer community with tools that become the comfort level default choice of those learning them, or whether students will see through the charade and continue to build world-class applications on internet-standard platforms.

I  suspect that much of the outcome will depend on what happens with cloud computing. Will Microsoft have a role to play, or has the standard for utility computing already been set with the Amzon’s, Sun’s, EMC’s and Google’s of the world. First mover status is a very, very difficult thing to overcome. Especially when things turn at internet speed.

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I just signed the petition to save Windows XP. As I have learned through casual reading on the subject, there are almost countless reasons to do so. But, the reason I signed was my experience with Vista. Several months ago I needed a desktop PC with a little more horsepower and figured that this would be a good opportunity to give Vista a chance. What a disaster! I could spend pages and pages detailing the sorry state of this product, but why be redundant?

Then yesterday, I decided to upgrade my years old Toshiba laptop with a machine with some better performance and more capacity. Finding a decent machine with XP is almost impossible.  So I held my nose and got a Vista machine. Again, a major disaster.  Fortunately neither of these Vista machines are my “daily drivers”  but more specialty use machines. Hopefully I can survive until SP1 (or 2 or 3 or 4) come out and rectify the myriad issues.

So I signed the Petition to Save XP. As is probably universally known by now, Microsoft is planning on terminating the availability of XP in June. InfoWorld is spearheading the effort to save XP and have created an on-line petition site.  To date almost 100,000 have signed their petition. If you are inclined to do the same, here is a link

And on background, here are some links that make interesting reading

Save-XP web site

On Microsoft’s Response

Tech Observer  - on saving XP

Almost reminds me of the classic Old Coke - New Coke debacle of years past.

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Paul Graham, the founder of ViaWeb (the first ASP) has a fascinating essay titled 6 Principles for Making New Things. Cutting right to the chase, these principles are

• Find a simple solution
• To overlooked problems
• That actually need to be solved
• Deliver them as informally as possible
• Starting with a very crude version 1
• Then iterate rapidly

It is pretty obvious in retrospect to see how companies like Google, Amazon, eBay, CraigsList, Wikipedia, YouTube and Flickr, and technologies like Linux have used this formula to great success.

Turning the principles on their head, it makes one wonder how companies that exist to create incredibly complex “solutions”, to problems that don’t really exist, and don’t really need to be solved and deliver them extremely formally and iterate slowly, if at all, survive.

And I further wonder how these principles might be applied to the whole world of education. The guiding questions might be phrased as:

• What are the overlooked problems that need to be solved?
• What might an informal solution look like?
• How can a crude version 1 be iterated rapidly?

As I see it, the problems with education seem to be very expensive, inconvenient, one-size-fits-all, not timely, labor-intensive and archaic (think Socrates)

If those are indeed a valid set of problems, what solutions might be able to address them?

I’ve got some ideas… but there must be more.

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