Six fingered aliens, Microsoft’s Robot OS ambitions, micro bubbles and other trends

Good Trends:

1. As a high schooler when I was taking my first programming class – I wondered if it would be possible to have a microprocessor where more than one bit is the smallest unit of information. (I also wondered if there were aliens out there who had three fingers on their hands, wouldn’t they have a hepta-decimal numbering scheme). I guess the 3-bit revolution has begun in memory chips and we are moving closer to the day when we will be able to communicate with 3-fingered aliens.
2. What if there was a standard operating system for robots, why has it taken so long to develop, and if Microsoft were to develop it – what would be the robot equivelent of the blue screen of death
3. Can’t afford a robot well you people on the other side of the rail road tracks can just take a trip to the moon (almost)

Scary Trends:

1. Can the brilliant whiz bang financiers who caused the housing bubble police themselves or should they move to smaller firms to do what they do best: create more financial bubbles. This article also poses the novel question that everyone in this market must be asking: can I buy a $90 million home with “bubble money”? You may be wondering why ask this question at a tech web site – well just look at the state of the tech job market and how it was precipitated.
2. Not only does this telco’s customer service suck, but so does the experience for their shareholders. All hail another self centered CEO.

DOA Trends:

1. “We’re the record companies.  We’re big enough, we’re greedy enough, we’re loosing money and people don’t like us.  So let’s start a new audio file format“.

Enjoy

Here are some amazing web sites/tools:

1. Xmarks: Firefox, Safari & IE bookmark plugin which makes it easy to find similar sites and makes it easy to synch bookmarks across different browsers and computers
2. Cuil: A new search engine which apparently indexes 3x more web pages than Google and with orders of magnitude fewer computers.  Check out the interview of founder & CEO.  If nothing else it is amazing technology.

And some trends:

1. Pod-casting killed the Satellite Radio Star
2. OpenCL
   1. (AMD) Making the Universe Parallel
   2. OpenCL Changes the Game
   3. OpenCL in Max OS X Snow Leopard : Seems like Apple will get to kick Microsoft’s proverbial a** again in the OS wars

Here are some things I have read, heard or observed that indicate future trends:

1. Seeking Growth, Cisco Reroutes Decisions: Surprising place and scale to see “The Wisdom of Crowds” & “Agile Project Management” principles applied
2. Former employee hits Apple with unpaid overtime suit
3. Chip sales bounce but PC sales sink
4. Angel Funding Competitions:  Y Combinator ; TechStars ; LaunchBox Digital; Capital Factory – These angel funding competitions sound like a good idea but I became a little queasy after listening to this podcast at the Web 2.0 Show – Is this another bubble in the making?

Enjoy

In an environment where being an asshole or being perceived as an alpha male (when more likely the person is behaving like an alpha-moron) is de rigueur to get ahead you must think through whether this is the path you should take:

1. to follow in their footsteps
2. to cope
3. to leave

If you are a manager or a project manager then the type of environment you create can have a dramatic impact on the team’s productivity. “The No Asshole Rule” by Stanford professor Robert I. Sutton is a great resource to figuring out how to deal with-in your team and with-out your organization (double entendre intended).

Very often people forget that being overly aggressive and be hurtful.  Punishing people by demeaning does not necessarily result in better performance – but instead builds resentment and reduces the commitment people feel towards their job. When the hostile manager, VP or C-what-have-you thinks it is working, it is more likely because of the innate work ethic that people have and they are barely putting up with it for other reasons.

The book does a great job of covering all facets and consequences of assholes in the work place and don’t let the name fool you – this is a great well thought out book and can be a great asset to you.  It is a surprisingly easy read and very engaging – much better than some other books on the topic of hostility in the workplace.

So before you decide to become an asshole or choose to persist in working for/with an asshole for personal reasons then this book will be a valuable resource.

If you decide that coping is the option for the short or long run then you can also read Albert Ellis’s book: How To Keep People From Pushing Your Buttons

SO! Do you work for an asshole or an environment that promotes being an asshole? What is the experience like? Do you think it is a good idea? Are there better ways to motivate people? Or are you an asshole who thinks being angry, demeaning and threatening to fire people is the best strategy to motivate people and build a winning team

Here are some articles I read around the web today that indicate future trends:

1. Latest Google Chrome Beta Is “30 Percent Faster,” Supports HTML5, And Is Prettier Too
2. Google Acquires Video Compression Technology Company On2 For $106 Million
3. TMS wins flash bragging crown with 100TB monster
4. Planned 3D web graphics standard taps JavaScript
5. Goldman Pay, Trading Probed

Enjoy

If you went through the previous two reading lists as they related to building Java “Enterprise” applications and browser side Web 2.0 development, you will come to the realization that there is a lot to read. Looking for an agile platform that was “Enterprise Friendly” and did not have as steep a learning curve led me evaluate several different frameworks and tools including:

• CakePHP
• CodeIgniter
• Ruby-on-Rails
• WaveMaker
• JBoss Seam

The one that caught my eye was:

• Grails

It is a framework built on a dynamic language called Groovy, which runs on the JVM and also let’s you leverage jars that you may have already built or other third party java libraries. It has a great community following with a lot of plug-ins available and several good books.

1. The book I read to get started was: The Definitive Guide to Grails, Second Edition (The Definitive Guide) and I would recommend waiting till the second edition comes out (which is the edition I have linked to), since the first edition covers version 0.3.
2. If you are in a rush and don’t want to wait for the second edition you can read: Beginning Groovy and Grails: From Novice to Professional (Beginning from Novice to Professional).
3. Then to get a deeper appreciation of the Groovy language the book to read is: Groovy in Action which is written by one of the authors of the language.
4. Then optional reads would be: Programming Groovy: Dynamic Productivity for the Java Developer (Pragmatic Programmers) and Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java (Pragmatic Programmers).
5. Given that Grails comes with a great unit test framework which facilitates agile practices you should also read: Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change (2nd Edition) (XP Series)
6. I would recommend capping off your reading of with: Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional)

G2One, the company formed by the creators of the Groovy and Grails was just acquired by SpringSource, the company providing commercial support for the Spring Framework – incidentally the framework on top of which Grails is built. This now makes Grails a truly viable “Agile Enterprise Framework”.

The only limitation at this point is the lack of good support in Eclipse, though this should be forthcoming given that Grails is now in the SpringSource fold. Till then you can either live with the rather crude plug-ins that currently exist for Eclipse. If you are really hungry for an IDE with first class Groovy & Grails support you can use IntelliJ IDEA.

Hope this helps

Several people have asked me over the years how they can transition to the world of Web 2.0 Development, so I have summarized these recommendations in a reading list which I thought people might find helpful in these times of change and uncertainty:

1. Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML
2. ppk on JavaScript, 1/e (VOICES)
3. Head First JavaScript (Head First)
4. Head First Ajax (Head First)

Then you need to select one of the following books to go with one of the AJAX libraries:

• Prototype and script.aculo.us: You Never Knew JavaScript Could Do This! (Pragmatic Programmers)
• jQuery in Action
• Mastering Dojo: JavaScript and Ajax Tools for Great Web Experiences (Pragmatic Programmers)

Then wrap up with:

1. Pro JavaScript Techniques (Pro) or JavaScript: The Good Parts
2. Head First Software Development (Brain-Friendly Guides)
3. Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional)

Please feel free to ask me what other areas or types of resources you need help with regards to your career development or career change and I can address that in future posts.

If you are interested in the server side development of web applications you should check out these posts:

• PHP, Ruby, Python don’t work in the Enterprise and C++ applications takes too long to build – I want to learn Java Web Development
• Java in the Enterprise is Dead – Time to get ramped on Grails

Hope that helps

Well – the reason I put in the previous post was because as we have struggled to build our data warehouse, one of the things that we have continually struggled with is data that resides in spreadsheets, post-it-notes, emails. PDF files and other unstructured formats.

To solve for the problem of capturing unstructured data in a structured format I had to look at building simple yet robust applications for people to enter or upload their data. This prompted me to look around for different options for building applications quickly. I am not saying one way is better than an other (though I probably will) but I will present a couple of options and they will help not only data warehouse and BI teams, but application developers also.

More to come tomorrow.

Take care all

A little break from being focused on Data Warehousing & Business Intelligence. Here is recommended reading list in sequence for those wanting to become Agile Server Side Java Web Developers:

1. Head First Java, 2nd Edition
2. Head First Servlets and JSP: Passing the Sun Certified Web Component Developer Exam (Brain-Friendly Guides)
3. Head First SQL: Your Brain on SQL — A Learner’s Guide (Head First)
4. Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design (Head First)
5. Head First Software Development (Brain-Friendly Guides)
6. Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional)

Enjoy

Here are a couple of online resources that provide complimentry views on determining the ROI of your Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence efforts:

1. Data Warehouse Justification and ROI by William McKnight published in DMReview
2. Realizing Data Warehouse ROI by Lisa Slutter published in TDWI – What Works
3. Data Warehousing ROI: Justifying and Assessing a Data Warehouse published in BI Best Practices
4. Warehouse ROI by Rick Whiting published in Information Week
5. Data Warehouse Return on Investment – Myths and Mistakes by Benjamin Taub published in DMReview
6. Maximizing Data Warehouse ROI?- Keep Most Detailed Data by Rajan Gupta published in BeyeBlogs

I hope you find these links helpful.

If there are other links that you know of that might be helpful please post them below in the comments.