Some thing i felt.......

Architect != Technical writer

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 12:35:00 +0000

"Architects must rely on personal interaction with developers not documentation to understand the requirements"

Cool stuff unveiled at opening of Consumer Electronics Show (photos)

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 08:22:00 +0000

Cool stuff unveiled at opening of Consumer Electronics Show (photos): "

I went through the annual ritual of CES Unveiled tonight, the opening reception at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where 100 or so companies show off their award-winning gadgets to the press. It was a big crowd, inflated perhaps by the blogosphere that has more than made up for the dwindling numbers of traditional press. Here are my impressions of some of the good gadgets. I snapped pictures with my new Canon Rebel XSi SLR camera.

The Pocket Radar, available in March for $249. This radar can measure the speed of just about any moving object. It can measure the speed of a baseball from 120 feet, and the speed of a car from a half mile away. It can measure anything moving from 7 miles per hour to 375 miles per hour, with an accuracy of plus or minus 1 mile per hour. It weighs just 4.5 ounces and measures 4.7 inches by 2.3 inches by 0.8 inches. Inside, it has a couple of microprocessors, high-speed digital signal processor technology, and other sophisticated radar gear. You just point and press the red button.

The Klipsch LightSpeaker is an audio speaker that you can hide on top of a ceiling light. So now you’ll never know where the music in your home is playing from. There are all sorts of invisible speakers, some hidden in walls. But this is a weird novelty, and some people might actually pay for it. It costs $599 for a set of two speakers with remote and other stuff. Additional speakers are $249. It will be available in March. It was developed by Kadence.

I happened to run into Charles Bellfield, the old huckster who was a spokesman for Sega in the Dreamcast days, God rest its soul. He is general manager for North America at Pure, a division of Imagination Technologies. The company was announcing the line of its Pure digital radio products for North America. It included this Pure Sensia, a round digital radio with Wi-Fi and a color touchscreen. It is available for $349 later this spring or early summer.

Zomm unveiled a Bluetooth wireless leash. It will sound an alarm if you walk away from your mobile phone, making it easier not to forget it somewhere. The Zomm device goes on your key ring and is wirelessly paired with your mobile phone via Bluetooth wireless. If you walk out of range, Zomm will vibrate and flash lights. It will also provide you with a sound alert for incoming calls when your phone is out of sight. You can answer a call by pressing a button. Then you can use Zomm as a speaker phone. It will be available in the second quarter. It also has a security panic alarm that makes noise when you press it. It lasts three days on a battery charge. Price is to be determined.

Gigle Networks was showing off what its customer, Belkin, can do with a powerline. You plug your Ethernet wire for a computer into the device, which plugs into a wall. It then sends the Internet data through the electrical wires of your home to another plug, which converts the data back into the form that can travel over an Ethernet wire. You can thus use it to extend a fast Internet connection– 200 megabits a second — into another room. That’s fine and dandy, and rivals such as DS2 and Intellon (now owned by Atheros) can do it too. But Gigle’s chips will be built into new unannounced devices coming in the first quarter that can become universal Internet adapters. That is, one device can be used to extend your Internet connection over the phone lines, coaxial cable (cable TV line), or power lines. This universal adapter is going to solve a lot of problems for people who can’t handle home Wi-Fi or want faster traffic lanes within their homes.

The AR.drone is a radio-controlled quadricopter. It’s a toy helicopter with four spinning rotors that can hover vertically and move around. You can remotely pilot the drone by holding a remote control (which could be your iPhone or iPod Touch). Just about anyone can control it. You can play games with it and fight duels with others on a Wi-Fi network. The drone is made by Parrot. There is no pricing or availability info yet.

Saygus was showing off the Vphone, a device that has been 12 years in the making. It’s designed to be able to do two-way video conferencing even when there is a low-bandwidth cellular connection. The video calls will run at 24 frames per second, all the way up to 30 frames per second. That’s as fast as television. It sounds impossible, but Sayers said the company worked on the proprietary compression technology to make it happen. Chad Sayers, founder of the company, said the company will launch it in the second quarter on a GSM cell phone network. The Android-based phone has no carrier and will be unlocked. It has a 3.5-inch screen and a Marvell PXA 310 624-megahertz processor. It can play standard video types such as MPEG-2 or H.264. Sayers said Fox News will show off the phone live on a video call on Friday. We’ll all believe it when we see it.

Liquid Image showed off its Wide Angle Video Mask for scuba divers. It has a video camera built into the face plate of a diving mask. It has an internal 16-gigabyte memory, or you can put in a micro-SD memory card into a waterproof compartment of the mask. Then you can snap pictures or shoot video by pressing a lever on a side of the mask. It sells for $200 and will be available in June. It has a five-megapixel camera with a 135 degree wide angle lens and can record video with a resolution of 720p at up to 30 frames per second with audio. There are versions for skiers, climbers, and others. A 16GB card can record up to 5.33 hours of video or thousands of still images. It operates on two AAA batteries.

Kempler & Strauss and the VNA Group showed off the W Watch Phone. You can use it as an unlocked speaker phone on a quad-band GSM cell phone network. You can also pair it with the company’s own Bluetooth headset. It has a touchscreen and can be as a camera, camcorder, music player, and for sending text messages via a virtual keyboard. It costs $199 and will be available at the end of the first quarter. Compare that to LG’s watch phone which is big and costs $1,200.

Entourage Systems showed off an Edge eBook reader with two screens. It looked pretty cool. You could read a page in Digital Ink on the right screen and then make notes on the left screen. The right screen is a 9.7 inch black and white E-ink screen that you can use to read eBooks. The left screen is a 10.1-inch color LCD screen that can be used to write notes, surf the web, watch videos, draw on or send messages with a virtual keyboard. The screens can be folded clamshell style when you aren’t using it. It will be available in February for $490.

The Tivit from Valups is a wireless mobile digital TV receiver that lets your smartphone or laptop get a local digital TV signal. It can receive Mobile Digital Television signals sent by local broadcasters. About 30 of them are using it now. It is based on a similar product sold in Japan that lets Wi-Fi phone users watch TV signals. The transmission standard for Mobile DTV was adopted in October, and it competes with a proprietary standard created by Qualcomm for FloTV. Tivit works with a Wi-Fi mobile device, paired together, to let you watch shows with the local digital TV programs. Tivit is two inches by 3.5 inches in size and it weighs 2.8 inches. It will debut in the spring for $120.

10 Technologies That Will Rock 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 03:40:00 +0000

10 Technologies That Will Rock 2010: "

Looking back at 2009, we can say that it was the most interesting times for the web technology despite the harsh economy. The year 2009 boosted the potential of mobile gadgets and exhibited the value of mobile devices in today's networked society. We can call it the rise of social awareness towards the value of connecting and communicating. So when we look ahead in 2010, we can see that the innovation have just begun. ...

15 Google Chrome Extensions You Might Enjoy - Search Engines from eWeek

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:25:00 +0000

15 Google Chrome Extensions You Might Enjoy - Search Engines from eWeek

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10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World. – Neatorama

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:53:00 +0000

10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World. – Neatorama: "

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on March 21, 2007 at 1:20 am. "A tree is a wonderful living organism which gives shelter, food, warmth and protection to all living things. It even gives shade to those who wield an axe to cut it down" – Buddha. There are probably hundreds of majestic and magnificent trees in the world – of these, some are particularly special: ...

Google Goggles Breathes New Life into Android Phone Pics - Mobile and Wireless

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:44:00 +0000

Google Goggles Breathes New Life into Android Phone Pics - Mobile and Wireless

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Watch the PDC 2009 Keynotes

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:59:00 +0000

Watch the PDC 2009 Keynotes: "

The keynote videos from day 1 and day 2 of PDC 2009 are now available.

The day 1 keynote features Ray Ozzie, Bob Muglia, and many other people coming on to present. This is the keynote talk where AppFabric was first announced.

The day 2 keynote features Steven Sinofsky and Scott Guthrie. If you're interested in Silverlight you'll particular want to watch this session.

More.

http://microsoftpdc.com/Videos

I highly recommend watching both. The amount of planning and preparation that goes into producing these keynote talks is immense. There's a lot of material packed in on a very tight script and schedule.

Bob Muglia on Azure, Silverlight, and Realtime

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:23:00 +0000

Bob Muglia on Azure, Silverlight, and Realtime

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What Was Popular Mechanics Thinking?

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:49:00 +0000

What Was Popular Mechanics Thinking?: "

It's fun to peruse old copies of Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Modern Mechanix, and similar magazines and laugh at the naivety of 1950s science. Everything was all, 'Rockets! Space! Lasers! Together at last, on your toaster!' Really, it was a recipe for an inevitable letdown when jet-packs failed to show up by 1970. But sometimes Popular Mechanics just had bad ideas. Like, crazy, poorly-thought-out contraptions and scenarios that, even in the '50s, made no damn sense whatsoever...

Helicopter Skiing? Have you ever seen a helicopter, guys? Unless this is some kind of magical 'no prop wash' chopper, those kids are going to be whipped around by a constant blizzard until the spiraling winds whip their tethers around their frozen, lifeless bodies and they're dragged through the Rockies. How would you even communicate to the pilot that you're ready to stop? He'd just go on sipping his coffee and plowing the mountainside with your icy corpse. No doubt the alarmed people emerging from the trees are trying to warn the boys of just this danger.

Why does this thing have wheels on the bottom, exactly? Is someone seriously taking the time to unhook the cables above, drive this to the airport, pick up vacationing tourists, drive back, reattach the gondola cabling, then use it to rappel over land flat enough that they could've just driven anyway? It says 'Skiway' on the side, but they're traveling above grass. The people on the ground aren't even wearing coats for cryin' out loud!

'Ideas for Making Money?' This is an idea for ruining your shoes, pal. Come on, this isn't even trying! The guy's already got his feet in the ocean and he's dressed like he's on his way to the Sears Portrait Studio. No way Aunt Edna is going to appreciate him showing up smelling like low tide and squishing sea water all over her carpet. And I'll admit I'm not up to date on a lot of hydrodynamics, but I'd be willing to be that front wheel/bubble turns into a face soaker in about two and a half seconds after launch.

Finally, a sport even more pompous than polo! Why, at this point, are we hanging on to the horse part of this equation? I mean really, I can understand some traditions and all, but there's nothing equestrian about riding carousel spare parts around a lake thwacking a beach ball with an extra long window squeegee. At least our boy in the foreground seems to have mastered how to ride. I can't say the same for the gentleman in the back.

Okay, this is tough to judge in terms of scale, but if that little airplane looking thing is supposed to be carrying people, I have to assume it sits atop a 150 feet tall hollow plastic ball with propeller engines on the sides. How is this practical on any level? How do people even get in that thing? When they reach their destination do they have a waiting platform or do they just leap out, lemming style, falling either into the surf or down to break their legs on a pier below?

Finally, jet packs! I can zoom around above the snarled traffic on my way to work and never get stuck on the offramp again! Except that the first time you turned this thing on your legs would instantly look like two little fish sticks that fell to the bottom of the oven and burned to a horrible black crisp. There's a reason you don't can't stand under the space shuttle to get a good view of the launch.

Apparently in the future we're ruled by a race of giant four-year-olds. If not, I have no idea how you're going to swipe this thing across the ground enough times to make it take off across the kitchen linoleum and into the floorboards. And let's say the 'Dyno-Wheel' is a perfectly legitimate mode of transportation (it's not): why do you have the other wheels, then? It sure seems like they're never going to touch the ground. Maybe this was just so enough people would associate 'car' with this thing and realize what they were looking at.

Holy crap. How did this get past Quality Control? First off, is this actually supposed to have military applications? I know this was back when Russia was pretty scary to everyone Stateside, but a fire engine red propeller on skis with an infantryman strapped to the front isn't very stealthy. Imagine a squad of 10 or 20 guys motor-skiing around the Siberian plains wondering why the enemy is always gone at least a half hour before they show up. Suppose they find some bad guys. Do they just park that thing and hop off? It's a pretty easy marker for a sniper down range. And what the hell happens if a guy lets go of the handles accidentally while he's moving? I have to assume he turns into an Army guy smoothie.

Why not just have a giant knife sticking off the front of this thing? Was that too subtle? These guys are already making it look dangerous; they're obviously moving at very high speed (see those streaks?) approximately a foot and a half away from a group of terrified skaters. You know, because if there's any surface that begs for an exposed propeller moving at extremely high speed near large groups of people, it's ice.

What is it with these guys and giant, exposed props? Jeez. You know what happens every time a plane sucks in a wayward bird? If everyone's lucky, it has an emergency landing and everyone has to get off because the exploding bird really does a number on the engines and they need to be either repaired or replaced. If everyone's not so lucky, the engine explodes and the plane crashes. You know why it doesn't happen as often as you might expect? There aren't a lot of birds at 30,000 feet. You have to go a lot lower, you know, like zipping across the road. Actually, forget birds, what happens the first time you rear end somebody and your propeller chews up the back end of the next guy's car and it looks just like that time my Great-Grandma ran over the rabbit den with the lawnmower?

In the future, planes will have genitals! I guess this ended up turning into the common airport shuttle, but I don't really get this scenario. Why do some of the people have to be secluded in what looks to be a windowless Twinkiemobile that docks with the plane like some sort of lunar lander? Is the atmosphere toxic? There are people outside the thing milling around trying to get in!

No sir, that's not a silent engine. That's a bong. We had combustion engines in the 1950s, right? How would having to light some sort of explosive fuel with an open flame just to cut your grass be seen as technological progress?

Finally, I can travel around town with all the convenience of rowing, one of the most physically demanding and exhausting activities known to man. Do these go backwards like traditional rowing would seem to indicate? Because we just went from 'useless exercise equipment' to 'high speed deathtrap' if that's the case. I don't even see a seatbelt over that guy's purple pants.

No, Popular Mechanics, that cannot happen to me. You know why? Because I don't go speeding around rooftops in my car. I'm not even sure how they got that thing on top of an office building. Even the poor dog is going to take a pretty nasty spill from this. And what future is this predicting, exactly? One in which this particular guy's bouts with alcoholism finally catch up to him? The future's a bummer.

Microsoft SDK for Facebook Released

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:57:00 +0000

Microsoft SDK for Facebook Released: "

Microsoft has created an SDK to make it easier for you to write Facebook applications.

Resources

Read the announcement.
Find out more about the .NET Facebook SDK

Microsoft Reminds Users About End of Windows 2000 and XP Support - Windows from eWeek

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:36:00 +0000

Microsoft Reminds Users About End of Windows 2000 and XP Support - Windows from eWeek

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VP of Operations

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:00:00 +0000

VP of Operations:

One of the most common questions we get from individuals is “what is the path to becoming a CTO?” We posted about this before and focused on the skill sets required as opposed to the path to get there. We highlighted

1) good knowledge of business in general

2) great technical experience

3) great leadership

4) great manager

5) great communicator and willing to let go.

This time we’re going to one of the jobs that is often a stepping stone to the CTO job.

Hey Look, We Know Nothing About The Apple Tablet!

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:16:00 +0000

Hey Look, We Know Nothing About The Apple Tablet!: "

What is the Apple Tablet? It is beginning to take on the image of an anticipated Christmas present, only everyone has the same gift, and is at the same time wildly guessing what it might be. We have no idea, but we keep on talking about it.

It seems that everyone so wants Apple to build a tablet, (why I have no idea, we have all always hated tablet computing, and refuse to buy any other tablet by any other company), that we are willing to invent endless tales about just what they might launch. It is the proverbial group whiteboard, everyone just draws their own images and writes about it.

You know what, I would find it very comical if Apple had no intention of ever building a tablet. But, to their credit, we have been talking about it for so long now, they could have conceivably began the project after the babble, and completed it in its current hype cycle, releasing it just at the tail end of the buzz to massive clamor. Apple, I never said that you were not brilliant.

But until we have at least some new credible rumor, can we all be quiet? Sure, it’s fun that CNN Money did a piece on the tablet, right? Not really, it was hundreds of words of endless fluff that was a mere rehash of what we already knew that we didn’t know. Its two scenarios: “Coolest Device.. Ever?” and “Or the Fizzle May Fail?” were both so oversimplified as to say nothing.

The most telling point in the article came with this: “It’s supposedly going to make its début in the next few months, and you can have it for the low, low price of $600. Or $800. Maybe $1,000. No one’s really sure.” Uh huh. So, you have no idea if and when it is going to be launched, and you have no idea what it will cost. Well, given that you have no idea what it will do, or if it exists, having no idea what it will (maybe) cost, makes sense.

If we did have a price, that would be interesting; we would at least have something to guess from. Until Apple tosses a bone, if they ever do make a Tablet, then we can talk. Until then, can we all put our pants back on and sit down? There is enough going on the tech that actually exists.

Rumors and speculation are important, and fun, parts of technology. Especially in technology reporting and blogging. What is not fun is rehashing the same set of non-facts for the tenth time. Stop kicking the horse, it has expired.

The History of the Internet in a Nutshell

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:16:00 +0000

The History of the Internet in a Nutshell: "

If you’re reading this article, it’s likely that you spend a fair amount of time online. However, considering how much of an influence the Internet has in our daily lives, how many of us actually know the story of how it got its start?

Here’s a brief history of the Internet, including important dates, people, projects, sites, and other information that should give you at least a partial picture of what this thing we call the Internet really is, and where it came from.

While the complete history of the Internet could easily fill a few books, this article should familiarize you with key milestones and events related to the growth and evolution of the Internet between 1969 to 2009.

1969: Arpanet

Arpanet was the first real network to run on packet switching technology (new at the time). On the October 29, 1969, computers at Stanford and UCLA connected for the first time. In effect, they were the first hosts on what would one day become the Internet.

The first message sent across the network was supposed to be "Login", but reportedly, the link between the two colleges crashed on the letter "g".

1969: Unix

Another major milestone during the 60’s was the inception of Unix: the operating system whose design heavily influenced that of Linux and FreeBSD (the operating systems most popular in today’s web servers/web hosting services).

1970: Arpanet network

An Arpanet network was established between Harvard, MIT, and BBN (the company that created the "interface message processor" computers used to connect to the network) in 1970.

1971: Email

Email was first developed in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, who also made the decision to use the "@" symbol to separate the user name from the computer name (which later on became the domain name).

1971: Project Gutenberg and eBooks

One of the most impressive developments of 1971 was the start of Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg, for those unfamiliar with the site, is a global effort to make books and documents in the public domain available electronically–for free–in a variety of eBook and electronic formats.

It began when Michael Hart gained access to a large block of computing time and came to the realization that the future of computers wasn’t in computing itself, but in the storage, retrieval and searching of information that, at the time, was only contained in libraries. He manually typed (no OCR at the time) the "Declaration of Independence" and launched Project Gutenberg to make information contained in books widely available in electronic form. In effect, this was the birth of the eBook.

1972: CYCLADES

France began its own Arpanet-like project in 1972, called CYCLADES. While Cyclades was eventually shut down, it did pioneer a key idea: the host computer should be responsible for data transmission rather than the network itself.

1973: The first trans-Atlantic connection and the popularity of emailing

Arpanet made its first trans-Atlantic connection in 1973, with the University College of London. During the same year, email accounted for 75% of all Arpanet network activity.

1974: The beginning of TCP/IP

1974 was a breakthrough year. A proposal was published to link Arpa-like networks together into a so-called "inter-network", which would have no central control and would work around a transmission control protocol (which eventually became TCP/IP).

1975: The email client

With the popularity of emailing, the first modern email program was developed by John Vittal, a programmer at the University of Southern California in 1975. The biggest technological advance this program (called MSG) made was the addition of "Reply" and "Forward" functionality.

1977: The PC modem

1977 was a big year for the development of the Internet as we know it today. It’s the year the first PC modem, developed by Dennis Hayes and Dale Heatherington, was introduced and initially sold to computer hobbyists.

1978: The Bulletin Board System (BBS)

The first bulletin board system (BBS) was developed during a blizzard in Chicago in 1978.

1978: Spam is born

1978 is also the year that brought the first unsolicited commercial email message (later known as spam), sent out to 600 California Arpanet users by Gary Thuerk.

1979: MUD – The earliest form of multiplayer games

The precursor to World of Warcraft and Second Life was developed in 1979, and was called MUD (short for MultiUser Dungeon). MUDs were entirely text-based virtual worlds, combining elements of role-playing games, interactive, fiction, and online chat.

1979: Usenet

1979 also ushered into the scene: Usenet, created by two graduate students. Usenet was an internet-based discussion system, allowing people from around the globe to converse about the same topics by posting public messages categorized by newsgroups.

1980: ENQUIRE software

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (better known as CERN) launched ENQUIRE (written by Tim Berners-Lee), a hypertext program that allowed scientists at the particle physics lab to keep track of people, software, and projects using hypertext (hyperlinks).

1982: The first emoticon

While many people credit Kevin MacKenzie with the invention of the emoticon in 1979, it was Scott Fahlman in 1982 who proposed using :-) after a joke, rather than the original -) proposed by MacKenzie. The modern emoticon was born.

1983: Arpanet computers switch over to TCP/IP

January 1, 1983 was the deadline for Arpanet computers to switch over to the TCP/IP protocols developed by Vinton Cerf. A few hundred computers were affected by the switch. The name server was also developed in ‘83.

1984: Domain Name System (DNS)

The domain name system was created in 1984 along with the first Domain Name Servers (DNS). The domain name system was important in that it made addresses on the Internet more human-friendly compared to its numerical IP address counterparts. DNS servers allowed Internet users to type in an easy-to-remember domain name and then converted it to the IP address automatically.

1985: Virtual communities

1985 brought the development of The WELL (short for Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), one of the oldest virtual communities still in operation. It was developed by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant in February of ‘85. It started out as a community of the readers and writers of the Whole Earth Review and was an open but "remarkably literate and uninhibited intellectual gathering". Wired Magazine once called The Well "The most influential online community in the world."

1986: Protocol wars

The so-called Protocol wars began in 1986. European countries at that time were pursuing the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI), while the United States was using the Internet/Arpanet protocol, which eventually won out.

1987: The Internet grows

By 1987, there were nearly 30,000 hosts on the Internet. The original Arpanet protocol had been limited to 1,000 hosts, but the adoption of the TCP/IP standard made larger numbers of hosts possible.

1988: IRC – Internet Relay Chat

Also in 1988, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was first deployed, paving the way for real-time chat and the instant messaging programs we use today.

1988: First major malicious internet-based attack

One of the first major Internet worms was released in 1988. Referred to as "The Morris Worm", it was written by Robert Tappan Morris and caused major interruptions across large parts of the Internet.

1989: AOL is launched

When Apple pulled out of the AppleLink program in 1989, the project was renamed and America Online was born. AOL, still in existence today, later on made the Internet popular amongst the average internet users.

1989: The proposal for the World Wide Web

1989 also brought about the proposal for the World Wide Web, written by Tim Berners-Lee. It was originally published in the March issue of MacWorld, and then redistributed in May 1990. It was written to persuade CERN that a global hypertext system was in CERN’s best interest. It was originally called "Mesh"; the term "World Wide Web" was coined while Berners-Lee was writing the code in 1990.

1990: First commercial dial-up ISP

1990 also brought about the first commercial dial-up Internet provider, The World. The same year, Arpanet ceased to exist.

1990: World Wide Web protocols finished

The code for the World Wide Web was written by Tim Berners-Lee, based on his proposal from the year before, along with the standards for HTML, HTTP, and URLs.

1991: First web page created

1991 brought some major innovations to the world of the Internet. The first web page was created and, much like the first email explained what email was, its purpose was to explain what the World Wide Web was.

1991: First content-based search protocol

Also in the same year, the first search protocol that examined file contents instead of just file names was launched, called Gopher.

1991: MP3 becomes a standard

Also, the MP3 file format was accepted as a standard in 1991. MP3 files, being highly compressed, later become a popular file format to share songs and entire albums via the internet.

1991: The first webcam

One of the more interesting developments of this era, though, was the first webcam. It was deployed at a Cambridge University computer lab, and its sole purpose was to monitor a particular coffee maker so that lab users could avoid wasted trips to an empty coffee pot.

1993: Mosaic – first graphical web browser for the general public

The first widely downloaded Internet browser, Mosaic, was released in 1993. While Mosaic wasn’t the first web browser, it is considered the first browser to make the Internet easily accessible to non-techies.

1993: Governments join in on the fun

In 1993, both the White House and the United Nations came online, marking the beginning of the .gov and .org domain names.

1994: Netscape Navigator

Mosaic’s first big competitor, Netscape Navigator, was released the year following (1994).

1995: Commercialization of the internet

1995 is often considered the first year the web became commercialized. While there were commercial enterprises online prior to ‘95, there were a few key developments that happened that year. First, SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption was developed by Netscape, making it safer to conduct financial transactions (like credit card payments) online.

In addition, two major online businesses got their start the same year. The first sale on "Echo Bay" was made that year. Echo Bay later became eBay. Amazon.com also started in 1995, though it didn’t turn a profit for six years, until 2001.

1995: Geocities, the Vatican goes online, and JavaScript

Other major developments that year included the launch of Geocities (which officially closed down on October 26, 2009).

The Vatican also went online for the first time.

Java and JavaScript (originally called LiveScript by its creator, Brendan Eich, and deployed as part of the Netscape Navigator browser – see comments for explanation) was first introduced to the public in 1995. ActiveX was launched by Microsoft the following year.

1996: First web-based (webmail) service

In 1996, HoTMaiL (the capitalized letters are an homage to HTML), the first webmail service, was launched.

1997: The term "weblog" is coined

While the first blogs had been around for a few years in one form or another, 1997 was the first year the term "weblog" was used.

1998: First new story to be broken online instead of traditional media

In 1998, the first major news story to be broken online was the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal (also referred to as "Monicagate" among other nicknames), which was posted on The Drudge Report after Newsweek killed the story.

1998: Google!

Google went live in 1998, revolutionizing the way in which people find information online.

1998: Internet-based file-sharing gets its roots

In 1998 as well, Napster launched, opening up the gates to mainstream file-sharing of audio files over the internet.

1999: SETI@home project

1999 is the year when one of the more interesting projects ever brought online: the SETI@home project, launched. The project has created the equivalent of a giant supercomputer by harnessing the computing power of more than 3 million computers worldwide, using their processors whenever the screensaver comes on, indicating that the computer is idle. The program analyzes radio telescope data to look for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.

2000: The bubble bursts

2000 was the year of the dotcom collapse, resulting in huge losses for legions of investors. Hundreds of companies closed, some of which had never turned a profit for their investors. The NASDAQ, which listed a large number of tech companies affected by the bubble, peaked at over 5,000, then lost 10% of its value in a single day, and finally hit bottom in October of 2002.

2001: Wikipedia is launched

With the dotcom collapse still going strong, Wikipedia launched in 2001, one of the websites that paved the way for collective web content generation/social media.

2003: VoIP goes mainstream

In 2003: Skype is released to the public, giving a user-friendly interface to Voice over IP calling.

2003: MySpace becomes the most popular social network

Also in 2003, MySpace opens up its doors. It later grew to be the most popular social network at one time (thought it has since been overtaken by Facebook).

2003: CAN-SPAM Act puts a lid on unsolicited emails

Another major advance in 2003 was the signing of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, better known as the CAN-SPAM Act.

2004: Web 2.0

Though coined in 1999 by Darcy DiNucci, the term "Web 2.0", referring to websites and Rich Internet Applications (RIA) that are highly interactive and user-driven became popular around 2004. During the first Web 2.0 conference, John Batelle and Tim O’Reilly described the concept of "the Web as a Platform": software applications built to take advantage of internet connectivity, moving away from the desktop (which has downsides such as operating system dependency and lack of interoperability).

2004: Social Media and Digg

The term "social media", believed to be first used by Chris Sharpley, was coined in the same year that "Web 2.0" became a mainstream concept. Social media–sites and web applications that allow its users to create and share content and to connect with one another–started around this period.

Digg, a social news site, launched on November of 2004, paving the way for sites such as Reddit, Mixx, and Yahoo! Buzz. Digg revolutionized traditional means of generating and finding web content, democratically promoting news and web links that are reviewed and voted on by a community.

2004: "The" Facebook open to college students

Facebook launched in 2004, though at the time it was only open to college students and was called "The Facebook"; later on, "The" was dropped from the name, though the URL http://www.thefacebook.com still works.

2005: YouTube – streaming video for the masses

YouTube launched in 2005, bringing free online video hosting and sharing to the masses.

2006: Twitter gets twittering

Twitter launched in 2006. It was originally going to be called twittr (inspired by Flickr); the first Twitter message was "just setting up my twttr".

2007: Major move to place TV shows online

Hulu was first launched in 2007, a joint venture between ABC, NBC, and Fox to make popular TV shows available to watch online.

2007: The iPhone and the Mobile Web

The biggest innovation of 2007 was almost certainly the iPhone, which was almost wholly responsible for renewed interest in mobile web applications and design.

2008: "Internet Election"

The first "Internet election" took place in 2008 with the U.S. Presidential election. It was the first year that national candidates took full advantage of all the Internet had to offer. Hillary Clinton jumped on board early with YouTube campaign videos. Virtually every candidate had a Facebook page or a Twitter feed, or both.

Ron Paul set a new fundraising record by raising $4.3 million in a single day through online donations, and then beat his own record only weeks later by raising $4.4 million in a single day.

The 2008 elections placed the Internet squarely at the forefront of politics and campaigning, a trend that is unlikely to change any time in the near future.

2009: ICANN policy changes

2009 brought about one of the biggest changes to come to the Internet in a long time when the U.S. relaxed its control over ICANN, the official naming body of the Internet (they’re the organization in charge of registering domain names).

The Future?

Where is the future of the Internet headed? Share your opinions in the comments section.

Sources and Further Reading

A People’s History of the Internet: from Arpanet in 1969 to Today: A timeline of the Internet from guardian.co.uk.

History of the Internet: An early timeline of the Internet, from precursors in the 1800s up through 1997.

A Brief History of the Web: A series of videos from Microsoft to celebrate the launch of Internet Explorer 8.

The History of the Internet – Tim Berners-Lee: A brief history of major developments associated with the Internet from About.com.

Hobbes’ Internet Timeline – the definitive ARPAnet & Internet History: A very thorough timeline of the Internet, starting in 1957 and going up through 2004, with tons of statistics and source material included.

Internet Timeline: A basic timeline of Internet history from FactMonster.com.

About the Author

Cameron Chapman is a professional web and graphic designer with over 6 years of experience in the industry. She’s also written for numerous blogs such as Smashing Magazine and Mashable. You can find her personal web presence at Cameron Chapman On Writing. If you’d like to connect with her, check her out on Twitter.

Show Week Numbers in Google Calendar

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:49:00 +0000

Show Week Numbers in Google Calendar: "Google Calendar's gallery of interesting calendars lets you add some useful features: show week numbers, the day of the week, sunrise and sunset time for your location.

Some of these features should be available as options because they're difficult to find in the list of calendars and they clutter the interface.

Google's decision to remove public calendar search had a strange side effect: users can no longer find public calendars with features that are missing in Google Calendar. A post from 2007 explained how to show week numbers in Google Calendar by searching public calendars.

{ Thanks, Sean. }

10 Things Apple, Google and RIM Won't Tell You About Mobile Phones

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:16:00 +0000

10 Things Apple, Google and RIM Won't Tell You About Mobile Phones

Posted using ShareThis

Now Available: patterns & practices Application Architecture Book

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:28:00 +0000

Now Available: patterns & practices Application Architecture Book: "

The Microsoft Application Architecture Guide, 2nd edition, is now available on Amazon and should be available on the shelf at your local bookstores soon. The PDF was downloaded ~180,000 times. This is the Microsoft platform playbook for application architecture. You can think of it as a set of blueprints, and as your personal mentor for building common types of applications on the Microsoft platform: mobile, RIA, services, and Web applications.

The backbone of the guide is an information model for the application architecture space. It’s a durable and evolvable map to give you a firm foundation of principles, patterns, and practices that you can overlay the latest technologies. It’s your “tome of know-how.” While it’s not a step-by-step for building specific applications, it is a pragmatic guide for designing your architecture, with quality attributes, key software principles, common patterns, and architectural styles in mind. It’s holistic and focused on the key engineering decisions where you face your highest risks and most important choices.

Key Features of the Book
The book has several compelling features for slicing and dicing the application architecture body of knowledge:

Canonical Frame. This describes at a meta-level, the tiers and layers that an architect should consider. Each tier/layer will be described in terms of its focus, function, capabilities, common design patterns and technologies.

Application Types. These are canonical application archetypes to illustrate common application types: Mobile, Rich Client, RIA, Services, and Web applications. Each archetype is described in terms of the target scenarios, technologies, patterns and infrastructure it contains. Each archetype is mapped to the canonical app frame. They are illustrative of common application types and not comprehensive or definitive.

Quality attributes. This is a set of qualities and capabilities that shape your application architecture: performance, security, scalability, manageability, deployment, communication, etc.

Cross-cutting concerns. This is a common set of categories for hot spots for key engineering decisions: Authentication, Authorization, Caching, Communication, Configuration Management, Exception Management, Logging and Instrumentation, State Management, and Validation.

Step-by-Step Design Approach.

Principles, patterns, and practices. Using the application types, canonical frame, and cross-cutting concerns as backdrops, the guide provides an overlay of relevant principles, patterns, and practices.

Technologies and capabilities. The guide provides an overview and description of the Microsoft custom application development platform and the main technologies and capabilities within it.

Contents at a Glance
The full Microsoft Application Architecture Guide is available for free on MSDN in HTML. This is the contents of the guide at a glance:

Foreword by S. Somasegar

Foreword by Scott Guthrie

Preface by David Hill

Chapters

Chapter 1: What is Software Architecture?

Chapter 2: Key Principles of Software Architecture

Chapter 3: Architectural Patterns and Styles

Chapter 4: A Technique for Architecture and Design

Chapter 5: Layered Application Guidelines

Chapter 6: Presentation Layer Guidelines

Chapter 7: Business Layer Guidelines

Chapter 8: Data Layer Guidelines

Chapter 9: Service Layer Guidelines

Chapter 10: Component Guidelines

Chapter 11: Designing Presentation Components

Chapter 12: Designing Business Components

Chapter 13: Designing Business Entities

Chapter 14: Designing Workflow Components

Chapter 15: Designing Data Components

Chapter 16: Quality Attributes

Chapter 17: Crosscutting Concerns

Chapter 18: Communication and Messaging

Chapter 19: Physical Tiers and Deployment

Chapter 20: Choosing an Application Type

Chapter 21: Designing Web Applications

Chapter 22: Designing Rich Client Applications

Chapter 23: Designing Rich Internet Applications

Chapter 24: Designing Mobile Applications

Chapter 25: Designing Service Applications

Chapter 26: Designing Hosted and Cloud Services

Chapter 27: Designing Office Business Applications

Chapter 28: Designing SharePoint LOB Applications

Appendices

Appendix A: The Microsoft Application Platform

Appendix B: Presentation Technology Matrix

Appendix C: Data Access Technology Matrix

Appendix D: Integration Technology Matrix

Appendix E: Workflow Technology Matrix

Appendix F: patterns & practices Enterprise Library

Appendix G: patterns & practices Pattern Catalog

The Team
Here is the team that brought you the guide:

Core Dev Team: J.D. Meier, Alex Homer, David Hill, Jason Taylor, Prashant Bansode, Lonnie Wall, Rob Boucher Jr, Akshay Bogawat

Test Team - Rohit Sharma, Praveen Rangarajan, Kashinath TR, Vijaya Jankiraman

Edit Team - Dennis Rea

External Contributors/Reviewers - Adwait Ullal; Andy Eunson; Brian Sletten; Christian Weyer; David Guimbellot; David Ing; David Weller; Derek Greer; Eduardo Jezierski; Evan Hoff; Gajapathi Kannan; Jeremy D. Miller; John Kordyback; Keith Pleas; Kent Corley; Mark Baker; Paul Ballard; Peter Oehlert; Norman Headlam; Ryan Plant; Sam Gentile; Sidney G Pinney; Ted Neward; Udi Dahan

Microsoft Contributors / Reviewers - Ade Miller; Amit Chopra; Anna Liu; Anoop Gupta; Bob Brumfield; Brad Abrams; Brian Cawelti; Bhushan Nene; Burley Kawasaki; Carl Perry; Chris Keyser; Chris Tavares; Clint Edmonson; Dan Reagan; David Hill; Denny Dayton; Diego Dagum; Dmitri Martynov; Dmitri Ossipov; Don Smith; Dragos Manolescu; Elisa Flasko; Eric Fleck; Erwin van der Valk; Faisal Mohamood; Francis Cheung; Gary Lewis; Glenn Block; Gregory Leake; Ian Ellison-Taylor; Ilia Fortunov; J.R. Arredondo; John deVadoss; Joseph Hofstader; Koby Avital; Loke Uei Tan; Luke Nyswonger; Manish Prabhu; Meghan Perez; Mehran Nikoo; Michael Puleio; Mike Francis; Mike Walker; Mubarak Elamin; Nick Malik; Nobuyuki Akama; Ofer Ashkenazi; Pablo Castro; Pat Helland; Phil Haack; Rabi Satter; Reed Robison; Rob Tiffany; Ryno Rijnsburger; Scott Hanselman; Seema Ramchandani; Serena Yeoh; Simon Calvert; Srinath Vasireddy; Tom Hollander; Wojtek Kozaczynski

Application Architecture Knowledge Base
The guide was developed in conjunction with our Application Architecture Guide v2.0 Knowledge Base Project. The knowledge base project was used to inform and steer the guide during its development. The Application Architecture Knowledge Base includes a large amount of material that expands on specific topics in the main guide. It also includes draft material from the main guide that is targeted and packaged for more specific audiences, such as the Pocket Guide series.

Overview Slides

Train the Trainer (Video)

Pocket Guides

Videos

Slides

Figures (Visios)

Key Links at a Glance
Here are the key links at a glance:

Microsoft Application Architecture Guide (MSDN)

Microsoft Application Architecture Guide (Amazon)

Application Architecture Knowledge Base

Cutting back on your long list of passwords

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:10:00 +0000

Cutting back on your long list of passwords: "Does anyone actually like passwords? Most people can't stand them because they end up having to keep track of a long (and often memorized) list of usernames and passwords to sign into the websites they visit. Website owners hate them because it's hard to get people to create a new account on their website, and almost half of those account registrations are never completed. Thanks to the utilization of new technology, we're now seeing large-scale success in eliminating the need for passwords while increasing the successful registration rate at websites to over 90%. The most visible examples come from Plaxo, Facebook, Yahoo! and Google using a technique the industry calls hybrid onboarding. In the past, if you're a Gmail user who got an invitation to use Plaxo or Facebook, you were asked to perform the traditional process of creating a new account with yet another password, and then you might also have been asked to provide the password of your email account so Plaxo or Facebook could look up the list of your friends. With hybrid onboarding, if you click on such an invitation in your Gmail, you'll see a page like one of these:

Clicking the large button on the Plaxo page takes you to a page at Google like this:

If you give consent to share a few pieces of information, you are sent back to Plaxo with all key registration steps finished.

The registration process used to involve more than 10 steps, including requiring you to find one of those 'email validation' messages in your inbox. If you've followed the steps above, you can now sign into Plaxo more easily — by simply clicking a button.

While Plaxo showed the first successful results of this technique in early 2009, other companies like Facebook are starting to use the same model and to recognize its business value potential. At the same time, the hybrid onboarding model improves authentication security because websites like Plaxo that use this technique never see a password from you at all. Since you don't have to enter your password on additional sites, your password remains closer to you and is less likely to be misused. We'd like to applaud Plaxo and Facebook's work in designing the user experience needed for this technique as well as pushing us to create the optimizations needed to carry out their design. Today we're happy to announce that all of these login flow designs are now available to any website operator. All of these hybrid onboarding techniques are based on industry standards that both Google and Yahoo! support, and that other email providers are beginning to support as well. For more technical details, check out our Google Code Blog post.

Hybrid onboarding is also being used by Enterprise Software-as-a-Service vendors — such as ZoHo — that want to eliminate the need for employees at their customers' businesses to create another password. More details are available on our Enterprise Blog. In addition, after a thorough evaluation of the security and privacy of these technologies, the same techniques are being piloted by President Obama's open identity initiative to enable citizens to sign in more easily to government-operated websites.

There is still a long way to go before you'll be able to trim down your long list of website passwords, but this progress demonstrates the potential for even the largest websites to adopt to adopt the hybrid onboarding model. We hope many other websites will follow.

Posted by Eric Sachs, Product Manager, Google Security

Barnes & Noble Sued Over Nook Design

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:53:00 +0000

Barnes & Noble Sued Over Nook Design: "

As the electronic book reader market heats up with a number of new offerings coming up, this was an unexpected flare up: Spring Design, makers of the Alex dual-screen eReader, are suing Barnes & Noble over their Nook eBook reader, another dual-screen device announced the day after the Alex.

The lawsuit claims that Barnes & Noble violated an NDA with Spring Design and misappropriated trade secrets by copying features from the Alex into their own Nook eReader.

Spring Design’s VP of Sales and Marketing was quoted as saying “We showed the Alex e-book design to Barnes & Noble in good faith with the intention of working together to provide a superior dual screen e-book to the market.” In development since 2006, the Alex runs the Android operating system and utilizes two screens to provide an innovative level of interactivity as compared to current market leader, the Amazon Kindle.

Spring Design had apparently been working with Barnes & Noble since the beginning of this year under a non-disclosure agreement, with the original intent of collaborating on the device. Barnes & Noble executives reportedly praised the innovative features of the device without mentioning their plans to incorporate similar functionality into the Nook device they publicly disclosed last month.

It’s unclear at this point what consequences the lawsuit might have on the launch and sale of either device. We’ll keep an eye on the situation and post updates as they become available.

Were you planning on picking up either of these devices? What’s your take on the allegations, and what impact do you think it will have on the burgeoning eReader market? Check out the comparison photos below and let us know what you think.

Barnes & Noble Nook

Spring Design Alex

[via Peter Rojas]

Reviews: Android

Tags: alex, android, barnes & noble, e-ink, ebooks, ereader, nook, spring design

7 Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:46:00 +0000

7 Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School: "

What is good writing?

Ask an English teacher, and they’ll tell you good writing is grammatically correct. They’ll tell you it makes a point and supports it with evidence. Maybe, if they’re really honest, they’ll admit it has a scholarly tone — prose that sounds like Jane Austen earns an A, while a paper that could’ve been written by Willie Nelson scores a B (or worse).

Not all English teachers abide by this system, but the vast majority do. Just look at the writing of most graduates, and you’ll see what I mean. It’s proper, polite, and just polished enough not to embarrass anyone. Mission accomplished, as far as our schools are concerned.

But let me ask you something:

Is that really good writing?

I think most good writers listen to the way English teachers want them to write and think, “This isn’t real. It has no feeling, no distinctiveness, no oomph. You’re the only person in the world who would willingly read it. Everyone else would rather chew off their own eyelids than read more than three pages of this boring crap.” And they’re right.

Compare an award-winning essay to a best-selling novel, and you’ll notice that they are written in almost completely different languages. Some of it has to do with the audience, sure. It’s natural to write differently for academics than you would for everyday people. But my question is: who are you going to spend more time writing for?

My guess: everyday people — your family and friends, your blog audience, your boss at work, maybe even a Letter to the Editor every now and again. None of them are academics. None of them want to read an essay.

Personally, I think good writing doesn’t have to be educated or well supported or even grammatically correct. It does have to be interesting enough that other people want to read it. Much of what comes out of high schools and universities fails this test, not because our students are incapable of saying anything interesting, but because a well-meaning but flawed academic system has taught them a lot of bad habits.

Let’s go through some of them.

1. Trying to sound like dead people

It’s a sad state of affairs when the youngest writer on your reading list has been dead 100 years, but that’s the way it is in school.

I don’t know who exactly decides what’s worth reading and what’s not, but they (whoever “they” are) believe in reading the “classics,” and most of those classics are centuries old. What’s worse is that many teachers hold up the classics as examples of what good writing is, and they expect you to mimic those writers with your essays.

Sure, Chaucer and Thomas More and Shakespeare were the stud muffins of their day, but you don’t see them on the New York Times Bestseller List now.

Not because they aren’t good (they were freaking great), but because people can’t connect with them. By mimicking their style, you might make a few teachers happy, but you’re essentially handicapping your writing in the eyes of the public.

If you want to make a connection, you’re much better off studying the hot writers of today — like Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, and Seth Godin. Watch what they do, and play with using some of their techniques in your own writing.

Yes, you’ll still be mimicking the work of another writer, but at least you’ll be mimicking something people want to read.

2. Expecting someone to hand you a writing prompt

Looking through the eyes of an educator, I can see why telling students what to write about would be useful. You have a bunch of students who couldn’t care less about your curriculum, and making them write a paper about the assigned readings is a great way to force them to read the material.

Makes sense . . . but it doesn’t make it any less damaging.

One of the biggest challenges of writing is figuring out what to write. Whether you’re writing a memo, an article, or a letter to your mother, the process is always the same: you start out with a blank page, and you decide what to put on it.

Sure, that involves considering what your audience will want to read, but no one but you makes the final decision of what to put on the page. That act of deciding is what writing is all about.

3. Writing long paragraphs

Once upon a time, it was acceptable to write paragraphs long enough to fill multiple pages with big blocks of text.

Not surprisingly, that’s the way most of us were taught to write: long paragraphs, topic sentences neatly organized, lots of supporting evidence in between assertions. It was the “correct” way to write.

Not.

Any.

More.

Nowadays, most paragraphs should be a maximum of three sentences. It’s also a good idea to include some shorter paragraphs with only one or two sentences, using them to punctuate powerful ideas.

It’s not so much about having a “correct” length as using paragraphs to give your writing rhythm.

4. Avoiding profanity at all costs

I admit it; this is a controversial one. Many excellent writers still hold that profanity has no place in a professional publication, while others curse like a lovable two-dollar, er, paid companion.

The rest of us sit around feeling uncomfortable and wondering whether it’s okay to express ourselves “that way” or not.

So who’s right? Well, I think Stephen King says it best:

Make yourself a promise right now that you’ll never use “emolument” when you mean “tip” and you’ll never say John stopped long enough to perform an act of excretion when you mean John stopped long enough to take a shit. If you believe “take a shit” would be considered offensive or inappropriate by your audience, feel free to say John stopped long enough to move his bowels (or perhaps John stopped long enough to “push”). I’m not trying to get you to talk dirty, only plain and direct.

‘Nough said.

5. Leaning on sources

Most kids I knew hated digging up sources and quoting them in their papers, but not me. No, the sneaky little bugger that I was (and still am), I realized that sources were an escape route from creativity. With enough quotations from other writers, I could fill up an entire paper without coming up with a single original thought of my own.

And I was rewarded for it. From kindergarten to getting my degree in English Literature, I got an A on all but like five papers.

Here’s why: a lot of teachers care more about solid research than original ideas. They don’t want to see daring and inventive arguments, challenging the foundation of everything we hold to be true and arguing boldly for a new worldview. To them, it’s much more important that you understand the ideas of others and be able to cite them in MLA format.

But real life is the opposite.

Go around citing the sources of all of your ideas and people will start avoiding you, because it’s boring as hell.

They don’t care who said what, and they aren’t interested in hearing the chronology of an idea. What they want to hear is a new perspective on a favorite topic.

If it comes from you, that’s fine. If it doesn’t, that’s fine too.

6. Staying detached

We are taught that good writing puts the focus on the subject, not the writer. It’s unemotional. It gives equal attention to opposing points of view, presenting them all without singling out one as best.

And sometimes, it’s true. If you’re a scientist, engineer, or a doctor, then maintaining your role as a detached observer is a great idea.

For everyone else though, it’s a disaster.

Have you ever read the stuff scientists, engineers, and other so-called “detached observers” write? It’s boring! Outside of their exclusive circles, you couldn’t pay people to read it.

If you want people to want to read what you write, then you should do the opposite. Be more like Oprah Winfrey, Howard Stern, Gary Vaynerchuk. They are opinionated, have a unique style, and are prone to emotional outbursts.

It’s no coincidence. That’s what makes them interesting.

7. Listening to “authorities” more than yourself

Who am I to criticize the writing habits you learned in school?

Well . . . nobody.

Yes, I’m a professional writer. Yes, I have a literature degree. Yes, other writers have paid me up to $200 an hour to edit their work, and they’ve been amazed when all I did was correct the above mistakes.

But that doesn’t mean I’m right. In fact, that’s probably the most important lesson you can learn about writing:

No one but you is an authority on your writing.

Not me. Not your English teachers. Not Strunk and White and their highfalutin Elements of Style.

The longer you write, the more you’ll realize that other writers can’t tell you what to do. You should listen to more experienced writers, sure, but never more than you listen to yourself.

Great writers don’t learn how to write by sitting in writing courses, reading writing blogs, or browsing Barnes & Noble for yet more books on writing.

They learn how to write by coming to a blank page, writing something down, and then asking themselves if it works.

If it does, they keep it. If it doesn’t, they don’t. Then they repeat the process until they finish something they feel is worth publishing.

Sadly, most writers don’t know this

They labor under the mistaken assumption that there is an invisible standard of good and bad. And they worry that the Writing Police are going to show up at their door any minute, handcuff them, and haul them off to jail for failing to measure up.

If that was true, you wouldn’t see a single writer walking the street without one of those blinking bracelets around their ankle.

The truth is that you’re in charge. You. The blank page is sitting there, and you can fill it up with whatever the hell you want.

So stop sitting there, silly.

Go for it.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is Associate Editor of Copyblogger and Cofounder of Partnering Profits. Get more from Jon on twitter.

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:58:00 +0000

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2: "

Lots of big stuff happening this week. Today Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 is available to MSDN Subscribers and it'll be available for everyone on Wednesday.

I'm running Beta 2 on all my machines now and really digging it. It's much faster than Beta 1 and I'm doing all my work in it now. It's come a long way and I'm really impressed at the polish.

.NET 4

This is a big deal. This isn't '.NET 3.6' - there are a lot of improvements of .NET 4, and it's not just 'pile on a bunch of features so you get overwhelmed.' I've been working with and talking to many of the teams involved and even though it's a cheesy thing to say, this is a really customer-focused release.

Shouldn't every release be that way? Sure, and in this case there's a really clear focus on, as I like to say, 'making the Legos the right size.' This is as much about tightening screws as it is about adding new features.

There's more goodness that I can put in one post, but some personal favorite highlights are:

Quicker to Install - A smaller Client Profile with a much smaller initial download (down to 0.8 megs from 2.8) for bootstrapping .NET client apps faster than ever)
Side by Side - .NET 4 is a side-by-side release that doesn't auto-promote, meaning you won't break existing apps and you can have .NET 2.0, 3.5 and 4 apps on the same machine, happily.
- Side-by-side CLR support for managed add-ins inside of apps like Explorer or Outlook. Again, new and existing apps in the same process, chillin'.
- For more details on Application Compatibilty, check out the AppCompat Walkthrough for .NET 4 on MSDN.
Dynamic Language Support - The DLR (Dynamic language runtime) ships built-in with .NET 4 so you can mix-and-match your solutions and pick the best language (or languages) amongst C# and VB.NET as well as F#, IronPython and IronRuby. This includes better support for COM (yes, COM! People do use COM and it's even easier with the new dynamic keyword in C# these days.)
More Web Standards Support - Better support for WS-* and REST making interop easier. (I love ADO.NET Data Services, but you know that already, Dear Reader. I'm a bit of a RESTafarian, these days.)
Plugins Galore - Visual Studio 2010 uses MEF and WPF to enable a whole new world of clean managed extensions as well as an Online Gallery (there's an extension for that!)
Multi-Framework Multi-targeting - You can't really overestimate how useful this is, but a picture is worth a thousand words. You can code all your apps in all your organization's frameworks with the same IDE:

Keep an eye on the blogs this week as the various teams talk about their favorite features.

On the ASP.NET 4 side:

I'll be posting video interviews with the actual ASP.NET 4 developers all week on Hanselminutes on 9 up on MSDN's Channel9 so watch for those.
Joe and I will also start populating the Learn section of ASP.NET with new ASP.NET 4 videos between now and Christmas as well.
And of course, @ScottGu is continuing his series of ASP.NET 4 Tutorials, so watch his constantly updated rollup post. He's currently on #8!

Oh, yes, one other thing…

Fresh Look

You may notice a few things in the new Splash Screen above. There's a new Visual Studio logo that goes nicely as well as a new logo for MSDN. You probably heard that we launched a new MSDN this weekend and today we add the new logo and background. This new MSDN is the beginning of a more agile, community focused MSDN and you should expect to see and hear of cool stuff coming from the team, often, in the months to come. Of note will be the new MSDN Lightweight view, soon to be the default view for the library.

In the coming weeks I'll dig into more details on the these new things and how they work together:

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4
Windows 7
Microsoft Developer Network

Enjoy! Also, be sure to check out Soma's blog post and go get Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 as soon as you can!

Chrome OS Now Available, Go Get It [Chrome]

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:41:00 +0000

Chrome OS Now Available, Go Get It [Chrome]: "

This one came out of nowhere. Chrome OS is now available for download. It's not the final version, but a beta.

2009-10-21: New Chrome OS 0.4.223 beta is available now!

Chrome OS is a brand new free operating system built around the revolutionary Google Chrome browser.

The project aim is to provide a lightweight Linux distribution for the best web browsing experience.

Featured software in Chrome OS:
GNOME 2.24 desktop environment
Google Chrome 4.0.223 web browser
Google Picasa 2.7 photo manager New!
OpenOffice.org 3.0 office suite
GIMP 2.6 image editor
Flash Player 10.0 plugin
and much more!

System requirements of Chrome OS:
Processor: Intel Pentium, Xeon or newer; AMD Duron, Athlon, Sempron, Opteron or newer
RAM: min. 256 MB
Hard disk: min. 1 GB
Graphics card: supports most modern graphics cards

[Google]

Top Sites for Free eBooks

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:29:00 +0000

Top Sites for Free eBooks: "

eBooks are becoming more and more popular these days and Crenk just wanted to let you know the best places on the web to find eBooks.

eBook Search Engines

www.pdfgeni.com

www.pdf-search-engine.com

www.data-sheet.net

Scribd.com

Scribd is basically the YouTube of documents. They have a great library of free ebooks to choose from.

Free Ebooks For Your iPod, PDA, Smartphone, Blackberry etc.

www.gutenberg.org

www.manybooks.net

www.feedbooks.com

www.booksinmyphone.com

Free Tech eBooks

www.freecomputerbooks.com

www.freetechbooks.com

26 New And Awesome Web Apps You Probably Don’t Know About

The World’s Top 10 Free Music Streaming Services

Microsoft Has Launched Bing

Website Grader: Free SEO Tips

Top 5 Freeware Video Converters

Verizon

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:14:00 +0000

Verizon’s Motorola Droid Demo [VIDEO]

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Your Opinion Counts: Help Google Build Better Maps

noreply@blogger.com (Insider) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:26:00 +0000

Your Opinion Counts: Help Google Build Better Maps

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