Mono's Moonlight

I just wanted to take a second to congratulate the team of the Mono Project, the open-source counterpart to .NET on Linux for nothing short of an astounding feat - porting Microsoft's Silverlight to Linux in 21 days. Condiering that the team had no knowledge of Silverlight before the MIX conference earlier this year, it is quite impressive. YAY!! for open source.

Based on my previous posting on Silverlight, and what I've seen so far, things can only get better. Silverlight, while still in it's infancy is a project with tremendous potential (assuming Microsoft doesn't mess it up) and with maturity will undoubtedly become quite ubiquitous. The icing on the cake, the fact that it is essentially a part of the .NET framework only makes things better for integration into other aspects of development as the Mono team is already doing.

I can't help but say though that my disappointment continues with some members of the Adobe team who, at this point seem to just wait on the sidelines so they can stomp on any news of Silverlight coming their way, sometimes, legitimate, sometimes just plain petty. Everyone is of course entitled to his/her opinion. There wouldn't be debate without it.

Sometimes though, you should just say congratulations on what is nothing short of an incredible feat, and leave it at that.

In search of englightenment

In my continuous bid for self betterment alluded to in a previous post, I have been reading up on Grid Design in the context of the web as well as the use of Type.

Aside from keeping me occupied and distracted from the much over-hyped launch of the iPhone, it has added some well needed tools to my skill set and given me ideas to experiment with going forward.

I had briefly read up on grid design before thanks to the impressively good book - "Transcending CSS : The Fine Art of Web Design", written by Andy Clark, but as I didn't have much time to really look at it in great detail, finding other resources on the web that dealt with it such as designbygrid made me exceedingly happy.

In addition, I have spent some time reading up on hanging indents and punctuation, ligatures, leading, em spaces and kerning, thanks to Mark Boulton, who is thankfully trying to revive the lost art of Type design in this digital age. While his insights and articles were thoroughly enjoyable, he does seem to align himself to the classical way of thinking, which isn't all bad. And of course there's Richard Rutter who brought us the invaluable "Elements of Typographic Style - As Applied to the Web".

All in all, both good reads.

Steve's a Mac, and Bill's a P.C

In what was without doubt an historic event, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, the two icons of the computer industry, rumored rivals and friendly competitors met for a joint interview at the D5 Conference in California. 

The interview covered several topics from their historic beginnings working together in the late 70s to where they both see technology going in the next few years. 

As has been commented on by other bloggers who viewed the interview, there was an obvious sign of respect on both sides, and an acknowledgement of how much both companies complemented each other.

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