I retired from personal blogging in July 2008 but you can find me over at blog.xero.com
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From the Scobleizer some
analysis that gives a bit more colour to the impact of the Longhorn carve
up.
I had an overnight in Auckland so went along to the Auckland .Net User Group session on DotNetNuke.
DNN is an open source portal built on ASP.Net (VB). It has 40 core team members, and 85,000 site members.
What was impressive was how they had architected the framework to allow components to plug in. The skinning or UI separation was really clever.
I now get how the open source model changes the rules. As a developer you can tap into a wide body of work to extend yourself virtually. It gives the smart developer scale and opportunity.
I think we are only now seeing the start of the model and I’m going to spend a bit of time thinking about where it could go.
Philip from www.segway.co.nz stopped
by the office today to say hi after we brought a i series model a few
months ago. Philip had with him the new p series (small
Segway) and the ‘not for consumer’ e series.
The p was quite a bit smaller and definately better for a Lambton Quay run.
The e series has what’s called an e stand. That is it stands up by
itself - with a disconcerting swaying motion. Magic. It will stand
for 2 days apparently.
So obviously the search is on to find out how we get e series software into
our i series. Must have e stand!
Update: Discussed here:
Segway Chat.
So pulling WinFS suddenly makes the Lookout purchase make a lot more sense huh?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of MS as they’ve been great to me for years, and I love .Net and SQL and Avalon looks awesome. What fascinates me is MS’s strategy moving forward.
Due very soon is the XDA III
Key features
- Wifi
- Better Bluetooth - i.e. supports standards
- Landscape mode
- Keyboard
So how will it rate against the new Motorola?
Microsoft Watch has more analysis including this tasty tidbit.
Microsoft’s decision to make its Longhorn technologies available to users of older versions of its software is not unprecedented. Microsoft’s Office team opted for a similar strategy, by designing the next major release of Office (Office 12, due out as part of the “Longhorn Wave” of technologies) able to run on older versions of Windows, in addition to Longhorn. Originally, Office 12 was set to be a Longhorn-specific release.
And that summarizes MS’s dilemma.
On different P&L’s the Longhorn team will want Office on Avalon to pull through Longhorn sales. Office will want to support NT4.0 to have the widest possible coverage.
So the new wrinkle is that Avalon will be decoupled from Longhorn.
And Office will support both ?!?! Aw crap. No Office rewrite, more fudge.
Any suggestions on who does the best online banking experience in NZ?
My sole criteria for choosing a bank now would be the online experience. I went on ASB FastNet because they were the first. Over the last 4 years they’ve probably updated it twice and its starting to be feel very ordinary. It maybe time to move.
Peeves:
- Standard Bill Payments don’t allow you to change the reference fields each month. I have 10+ people I pay regularly. It would be nice to put in an invoice number so it’s easy to track the payment later. The standard references should be overridable defaults.
- The export format is not even well formed XML
- The browser experience doesn’t work on Pocket PC. Just some basic stuff on PPC would be useful.
- It’s difficult to tell what account your working on when creating payments or doing transfers.
What would my dream features include?
- A suite of web services
- RSS alerts for transactions
- Ability to add meta data to payee’s that came across in the XML web services
- A suite of dashboard components (say daily balances graph balances) that I could drop into another web application. Just a url to a daily balances gif would do it.
- Ability to assign read only rights so other staff could easily view balances
- Sorting of statements
- Analysis tools
The frustrating thing is that adding these features is days to weeks of work, not months.
Who will be the first bank to get it?
Some response to the “you want me to wait how long?” question.
Microsoft will deliver a Windows storage subsystem, code-named “WinFS,” after the “Longhorn” release. The new storage system provides advanced data organization and management capabilities and will be in beta testing when the “Longhorn” client becomes available.
Today’s announcements relate only to the “Longhorn” client operating system. Anticipated availability for the Windows “Longhorn” Server operating system continues to be 2007.
When in a hotel (Sydney) and flicking on your wifi and finding an unsecured
wireless network.
Finally I have Exchange syncing over GPRS to my iMate.
This is really cool because …
- I can create emails on my iMate or in Outlook on my PC, or OWA and all emails received and sent are kept in sync. I.e. it doesn’t matter what device I’m on.
- I can easily see what’s going on when travelling by just having roaming data working on my phone.
- If I create an appointment while on the road or someone loads an appointment in Exchange it just appears.
- My phone automatically checks if there are any updates so I can just forget about it.
This really makes a difference to being organized.
How Exchange ActiveSync works.
Anybody want to do a small MS Access project? In Wellington for a rapidly groing small business. Flick me an email if have some capacity.
Interesting article on why the process was less than optimal.
http://news.com.com/Google+this%3A+disaster/2010-1030_3-5309149.html
While in the UK last month I asked around to find out if there were any British Comedies we might have missed out on in New Zealand like Spaced.
We had. League of Gentlemen. The first series viewed in ‘99.
I ordered the 5 DVD’s from Amazon.co.uk which meant that I had something to do this weekend while getting over the flu.
Series 1 & 2 were unlike anything I’d seen before. Horror, Comedy. The characters are so good. Series 3 took a different tack and was even funnier.
You have to see this if you’re a fan of offbeat (off colour) humour.
Here is the link to run Web Messenger.
I love this …
Greed of some parties is slowing us down
That Steve Simms owes me a beer but mission accomplished. Business Herald 10 August 2004.
Just noticed Peter Griffin’s summary of the Morgo Conference.
Kerry is taking the AfterMail Segway to the Nelson Ecofest this weekend.
Rides for all.
Just did a radio interview for the local Nelson radio station. The Segway also made page four of the Business Herald yesterday. Best marketing money I’ve ever spent.
And the Sebel now charges 68 cents per minute for broadband, capped at $29 for a day.
What are they thinking. Broadband on a per minute charge, can you think of anything more stressfull?
My sole criteria for choosing accomodation is broadband access. I don’t know why its not done for free - even if its a couple of bucks hidden in the room charge - I’d stay there everytime.
I hadn’t staying in Auckland overnight for a few months and checked into the Sebel because it has good broadband and is above Mecca which also has good broadband so forms a good base.
Telecom has installed hotspots that require a Telecom Account to use. They signed up starbucks so now the ‘open that everyone can use Reach’ is no longer available, even though the ‘have to be a Telecom customer’ service hasn’t been installed yet.
So we have gone backwards two years. This really ^#%#%’s me off.
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