I retired from personal blogging in July 2008 but you can find me over at blog.xero.com
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From David Gurle, ex MS Messaging guy, now head of collaboration services for Reuters. Extract from News.com
The biggest observation I’ve had in the last two or three months is that IM is the perfect disruptive technology to telecom providers. If you look at current telecom providers, none of them have the end users’ identity like MSN, AIM and Yahoo do. If you look at what’s going on in the addressing schema for the end user, it’s going to be their identity and not their phone number that matters because of the penetration of broadband and Internet into homes.
…
I’m saying that Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo will become the equivalent of phone companies of the future, and with a reach that will go beyond their reach today. That reach will be global and without boundaries. With phone carriers, they can only go where the wire goes.
Another good heads up from Richard Tallent. Kazaa founders extend P2P to VOIP with Skype.
On MSDN New Server Controls Provided by the ASP.NET Web Matrix, contains a number of new controls that seem Whidbey’esk.
The MxDataGrid server control is also a brand new server control that is included in the Web Matrix, but is not available in Visual Studio .NET. This control is quite similar to the DataGrid control, but makes turning on paging and sorting of a DataGrid far easier than using the traditional DataGrid Web control.
Not sure why it wouldn’t be available in Visual Studio, may be a Designer issue. Need to have a play. Later in the article it says …
You don’t have to use the ASP.NET Web Matrix in order to use these controls. You can import them into Visual Studio .NET.
Sam, the tech brains behind Wireless ISP AirNet, saw my Paradise Cable modem setup in the home office, (2 NIC server) and nearly passed out. He kindly sent me a LinkSys Router all programmed up. So now I’m Routed. Feels good to be protected by hardware and not reliant on just firewall software.
Super easy, should have done it long ago.
Oh no, My Mach 3 is out of date! Damn it, must get the new quattro!
So, how long until we see ‘The Pentium’!!
Won an Auction on Trade Me for an old 1970’s amplifier with lots of analog knobs. Just unpacked it and connected. Great sound. $80. It’s a Nivico MCA-104E.
There’s something that appeals about hooking up a shiny new iPod to a well worn classic amplifier.
Jonathan Goodyear hits the nail on the head in regarding XML features dropped to reduce the size of the compact framework.
I full realize that Microsoft had to make serious compromises in order to get the CF re-distributable down to a reasonable size. That said, it confuses me why they would choose to cut out essential XML manipulation features such as XPath and XSLT. Isn’t XML supposed to be the gateway technology for universal compatibility? XML features seem like odd candidates for exclusion.
Excellent!
http://web14.compaq.com/falco/detail.asp?FAQnum=FAQ2859
Richard Tallent suggests a cool idea for XHTML web editing …
<p>This is a paragraph. I can use <i>italics</i> and <b>bold</b>. HTML markup is editable, but directly inside each HTML element is an escaped, styled, but still editable copy of the HTML starting/ending tags. The displayed HTML is generated, on the fly, by constantly taking the plain text of the visible markup here, adding the styled, escaped markup back (via simple regex replacement), and rolling it back into the InnerHtml property. The text-only (visible) portion of the code is what is sent back in the form.</p>
Very clever.
I’m currently using HTMLArea from InteractiveTools.com. They are constrained by the HTML generated by I.E. Version 3.0 is in beta but no comments on XHTML support.
Hadn’t read a Wired magazine for a while. Thought I had subscribed, got a few. (Someone down the road is probably having getting a good monthly read.)
Anyway, what stuck out was eBay’s 4 page spread educating on ‘New In Box’ (NIB) purchasing.
- Add NIB to your search criteria
- Check out Feedback on Seller to assess risk
- Use Buy It Now, rather than waiting for an auction
So this is interesting. We’re seeing the start of new mode of purchase, complete with branding by acronym. “hey I NIB’ed my new laptop on eBay”.
And of course we’re seeing eBay explicitly develop consumers as the channel - further disintermediating traditional retail.
Beginning Dec. 3, MSN Mobile users in the United States and Canada will be required to pay $19.99 a year to access MSN services via cell phone, with a jump in fees to $24.99 a year after Nov. 25. Services that will be affected by the subscription plan include cell phone access to Hotmail, instant messenger, calendar, alerts and other Web content.
The changes will not affect cell phone carriers Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless in the United States, and Bell Mobility and Rogers AT&T in Canada.
Paul Vick from the VB.Net team writes
…we decided we wanted to retain the VB6 convention of specifying WithEvents so that it wasn’t something that was done lightly or accidentally. The problem now, though, is that designers such as the Winforms and Webforms designers just put “WithEvents” on things willy-nilly so that they can add handlers later, resulting in the opposite effect of what was intended. This unintended consequence is something we’re trying to work through in Whidbey.
I prefer the specific AddHandler syntax . Sometimes VB.Net’s desire of making it easy, conflicts doing it ‘right’. For example the project default namespace often fights with well named classes from code generation.
Also, Mathew Reynolds, who must be blogging from the PDC (Update - whoops PDC hasn’t started yet)
|
I’m not saying they’ve fixed a lot of stuff in ASP.NET Whidbey… but I’m sitting here watching Scott Guthrie demo the ASP.NET Whidbey alpha bits and the crowd keep erupting into applause every other sentence out of his mouth! |
I had a nice email from Todd Follansbee of Franklins.Net who do the .Net Rocks show. This week is the VB.Net team. Lots of gems.
When you are out of mainland USA you can often feel that your a long way from the industry. Carl and Mark’s show lets you get an insider perspective no matter where you are in the world.
The talk show format is great. Most technical information I read or watch is normally pretty dry, so .Net Rocks is a highlight.
I think I may also bond with them because I too belong to the bass play’n, VB.Net programm’n, vertical.
Thanks Carl and Mark. If I get a shout out, I’ve made it!
Another new Audi concept revealed at the Frankfurt show. Man their design team has been having fun this last year. Pikes Peak, Nuvolari and now the Le Mans quattro.
Mike Upshon has just released KickStarter 2.0. A pattern implementor for .Net that generates both C# and VB.Net code. I’ve been using it for ages and it reduces the development of rich CRUD, search, foreign key lookup, paging and builds for you the stored procs, data layer and ASP.net controls using a best practice event driven model, reducing days of drudgery to minutes.
I used it to build my Blog Manager!
Had a funny night in Auckland when we bumped into the head of the Lamborghini dealership, who was getting ready for the launch of the new Gallardo. With him were two Italians including one of the official Lamborghini test drivers.
Dream job! So what did I learn.
- No you don’t get given a Lamborghini on your 20th anniversary
- Now the Gallardo is close to release the test team works on the convertible model and a sports (what the!) model
- Yes they have an understanding with the local law, that the can test in a certain region as long as their discrete. “You try not to go over 280kph round there”
- They are concerned that next year cars could be 700hp but the speed limit is only 100 kph. Consumers are thinking hard about if they need a super powerful car.
Saw it in the flesh. Nice!
Apple(r) today announced new 20GB and 40GB models of its best-selling iPod digital music player. The new 40GB iPod holds up to 10,000 CD-quality songs (playing each song back-to-back takes a month) in a stunning enclosure that is lighter and thinner than two CDs. iPods are available in three models: a 10GB model for just $579 + GST, the new 20GB model for $759 + GST and the new 40GB model for $979 + GST; and offer the perfect combination of ease of use, storage capacity, audio performance and ultra-portable design.
Go and get one!
Amazon link from Mark Fowler on with lots of background on how the Segway works.
$US5,000 plus shipping.
The Segway HT i Series is Segway’s high-performance model. Its wide footprint provides superior stability and varied terrain capability, while its powerful motors and batteries offer extended range and enhanced speed.
Another album that’s been dominating my iPod.
Heres what Real Groovy says …
A profoundly pleasurable album to sink into, much like a nice warm bath. Dale Cotton, the producer/engineer behind HDU, Dimmer, The Subliminals, Cloudboy, Sola Rosa and others has offered up his own project, MEFASOLATE, in the form Conray. In his role of producer/engineer Dale has made something like 40 records, a healthy portion of which are critically acclaimed as some of the best to come out of New Zealand. As well as the ears, Dale is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and songwriter - his touches appear anonymously on most the records he works on - (you’d be surprised at some of the hooks he’s responsible for).
At the Wellington .Net User Group tonight Kirk Jackson (subscribed) presented the Web Services Enhancements 2.0 Messaging API.
“The Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 2.0 toolkit is the first of its kind for the .NET Framework that lets you start experimenting with other XML messaging possibilities beyond HTTP.”
It contains classes that lets your applications monitor a port directly and process XML envelopes received.
receiverUri = new Uri(String.Format(
“soap.tcp://{0}:123/receiver”,
System.Net.Dns.GetHostName()));
So it provides infrastructure and a protocol for building peer to peer applications (i.e. no web server). For example chat and file sharing. Great opportunity for building new connected applications.
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