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.

View Highlights

User Experience - Why Customers come back

The mark of a professional, I believe, in any field of expertise is the drive to improve their value, their worth as a whole to that field; The desire for self improvement. In some ways, it is what sets us as humans apart from the lower species. Over the course of the last few years, what has inevitably come to the fore for most designers and developers alike is the importance of customer experience, and in many cases, the emotional connection the customer forms with your product and or brand.

This connection is what fuels popular brands like Starbucks, Apple, JetBlue and others. They seem to have discovered this much earlier on than most companies and the benefits are tremendous.

As a designer and a developer, it is very easy in this field to lose sight of the most important part of the entire process. The Customer. Not the product, not the tools, but the customer. The customer's need, his connection with you and how much he feels you understand that are key in creating brand loyalty. Reviewing the recorded sessions from MIX07 that are on the web reveal a few sessions dedicated to rethinking the entire design experience, changing how we the producers of what customers use approach the process. My favorite of all those by far, and quite frankly, the best presentation I've seen in a while was the one given by Lewis Carbonne on "The Emotion of Customer Experience" available recorded. One of my favorite quotes from his presentation is this

Good, bad, or indifferent, every customer has an experience with your company and the products or services you provide. But few businesses really manage that customer experience... so they lose the chance to transform customers into lifetime customers.

I would classify that as well as several others as a must see for any designer, developer or producer as a way to provide context and direction for where and how they need to evolve in the current competitive market.

My Flash is bigger than your Silverlight

In what can only be referred to as a playground pissing contest, I've been coming across quite a few posts by Adobe developers reacting to the news of Microsoft's release of Silverlight (formerly WPF/e) and the inevitable conclusion by this observer is that Adobe and it's developers are worried and are acting out, like children in a playground who just noticed a new kid with a better ball than them. With good reason I might add.

To start with, in my brief testing and review of Silverlight and it's capabilities, it is nothing short of stunning. And the potential for this technology is tremendous, and cross browser to boot (except for linux that is). Silverlight is without question a competitor to Adobe's Flash offering, which has more or less owned the market for vector animations and rich dynamic applications for quite a while. It's features are quite similar, both have a light install footprint, but more than that, even in it's beta release form, the video performance of Silverlight exceeds that of Flash. And to sweeten the pot, the upcoming version 1.1 opens up development to all .NET developers as it includes a reasonably full subset of the framework.

With all this going on, it is understandable that adobe and it's developers would be a mite perturbed. But instead of taking a step back and examining where they need to innovate and go from here to bolster competition, many of them are taking the juvenile step of attacking the technology and Microsoft, seemingly on every little weakness or deficiency of the technology. Nitpicking at this and that like kids at a playground. And interestingly, so far, this has been mostly one sided. Alessandro Crugnola, a well known flash developer referred to it as "Fear of Silverlight".

I am a big admirer of Adobe, quite frankly, as far as software goes, if there were software groupies, I'd be one. But I have to say, in this most recent outburst of emotion towards Silverlight, they leave a lot to be desired.

Design Treasure 35/5

The good people at Smashing Magazine have released a survey of 35 designers, each answering 5 questions about their design process, workflow and approach and other tips. What it amounts to is a vital resource of ideas and suggestions and consequently a link dump of portfolios from other designers.

For anyone who is even remotely interested in design all the way to established designers, this is an excellent place to gain some perspective on what drives others in the field and maybe pick up a few nuggets of information to add to your design toolbag.

Highlights included

1. Communication, Usability, Typography, Navigation and Details being the top 5 things designers focused on when designing. Others were listed.
2. Normalizing the browser (reseting margins and paddings to 0px or 1px) before applying new styles as one of the top CSS techniques used by designers.
3. Helvetica, Lucida Grande, Arial, Garamond - classic fonts still widely loved.
4. Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" came out on top by far as the book most designers referenced. (Just added to my Amazon wishlist)
Robert Bringhurst's "Elements of Typographic Style" also caught my eye in the list of books mentioned.
5. DigitalWeb Magazine as well as A list Apart came out as designer favorites in the online magazine category for the surveyed group. A good number have also opted out of reading online magazines and focusing on relevant articles as they come out.

View the full survey here..

Humorously Yours

Inevitably in my travels around the interweb, I find new things that tickle me. Based on a link from a podcast I follow quite faithfully, I discovered this online column/video podcast on technology from David Pogue at the New York Times.

I particularly like the perspective he brings with his column, obviously tailoring it for the everyday user, who frankly is the average N.Y. Times reader. It's full of good insights and fun to watch. As a techie, it's sometimes hard to remember that not everyone understands why having an 802.11n router is cool or VOIP for that matter.

Can Wii have this dance?

In the trend of continued popularity and adaptability of the Nintendo Wii, I happened upon the DJWiiJ. The concept on the site shows how Wii fans and users have modified the Wiimote to be used as a control device for D.Js. Pretty nifty stuff. Like I've always said, it's never really about the glitz and glamour. If you make a good lovable product, the fans will do the rest.

It is wiithout doubt, time I got me a wii.

via Jetset

Vista, Can you hear me now? What about now?

I just ran into this hilarious video on YouTube of a guy using the speech recognition software on Vista to write a simple perl script . Thought I'd blog it for posterity, and for laughs.



warning: hilarious out loud laughter is sure to ensue.


via stacyyoung.org

Steve Jobs casts his vote in the DRM debate

In what's bound to be without a doubt, the opinion that's heard around the blogoshpere and the technosphere, Apple's website today posted what appears to be an OpEd piece from Steve Jobs on the ever present debate over DRM (Digital Rights Management).

In said posting, Steve Jobs, who's company, like it or not controls the bulk of online music downloads via the iTunes music store stated that from his point of view, there are only three ways to currently solve the DRM issue. One, is to leave things as is, which quite frankly does nothing to resolve the issue, two - open up the DRM software that Apple uses, (thereby possibly encouraging other companies to do the same ) to promote interoperability or - and here comes the best part - sell their music DRM free. This is something everybody and their mama has been lobbying for, for the past couple of years. Why? In his words, which by the way, echo what everyone else has been saying..

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy.

As he said, over 90% of the world's music is at the moment sold DRM free. Also evidence has shown that so far, DRM has likely hurt digital music sales much more than it's helped.

All of this comes on the heels of the trouble Apple is dealing with in Europe regarding opening up it's FairPlay DRM system to other companies (gotta love those pesky Europeans) . It's only likely to get worse as more and more countries join the band wagon. Apple is essentially now throwing the ball in the court of the big music companies, saying in part..

Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.

Hopefully this is a beginning of a turn in the right direction.

Design confessional

I got an e-mail update this morning that reminds me of how much cooler a design shop can be if they don't take themselves too seriously. It adds a lot to the work environment. One of my very favorite design firms - group94 updated their site, - sort of. I'll let their project manager explain here

They did what inevitably happens to a lot of design shops. If you do manage to stay afloat and build a client base, you tend to spend most of your time working on client projects than doing your own website which inevitably may leave your website without an update for years. I for one am a poster child for this.

And considering that when I built my website,I was quite new at this whole web design thing and didn't put a content management system in, the idea of having to manually update the website didn't help. An updated version is coming. Soon.

iPhone, USue

It's a beautiful new year, and as is prone to happen, what's old is new again. Technology as usual keeps moving at a dizzying speed and the law firms of Cease, Desist and Howe are rubbing their palms together waiting for who it is they can dig their claws into once again. Gotta love technology. I can only imagine how many General Counsels are thanking their gods for copyright infringement lawsuits. If nothing else, it's keeping them busy, without doubt funding house expansions and jacuzzi bathrooms and for us the observers, it makes for fun reading.


In a "I so didn't see that coming, wink wink" move, Cisco Systems today is suing Apple Computer Inc. over the use of the name iPhone. Yesterday, at MacWorld, the quintessential face and CEO of Apple launched the iPhone, the company's new entry into the phone/handheld/mp3 player space. What makes this interesting is that Linksys, a division of Cisco Systems, the copyright holder to the name "iPhone" a few weeks ago released their own product of the same name. While both products are reasonably different, there is obviously a conflict here. Considering that Apple knew about it and are actually in negotiations (albeit stalled it appears) to use the name, going ahead to use the name anyway is a bold move if I ever saw one. Cisco it appears is not amused.

Me thinks this is going to be a fun year.

Zune come, Zune to go

So, in all the hullabaloo surrounding the premiere of the Microsoft Zune media player, just in case there haven't been enough comments about it already, I figured I'd throw in my two cents.
I got a chance to play with the good 'ol Zune last week when I went into J&R in downtown Manhattan. Like most people, I was impressed with the picture quality and ease of use of the player. So far, it has the largest screen and best resolution of all the players I've seen and physically handled, which to be quite truthful hasn't been that many.

That being said, the release of the Zune is classic Microsoft at its usual game of - It ain't ready yet, but lets get it out the door.

Potentially the one player that could have shaken the quintessential iPod from it's perch as top dog, Microsoft took a good thing and shot themselves in the foot. The player is quite clunky in size, I'm talking first generation iPod size here, maybe a lil bigger.

All that probably wouldn't be a problem if they did everything else right. The iPod is continuously successful largely in part to the ecosystem of iPod - > itunes music store and the classic plug it in and it just works philosophy. There have been numerous reports of how bad the zune software is, many from people who couldn't even get the software installed at all. Then of course the side effects of removing the software from your p.c and getting unexpected results.

What's even more terrible about this is that they've probably turned so many people gun-shy with this debacle that even if Microsoft learns from their mistake and releases a revision to the Zune next year with everything working, it wouldn't make a difference to those people.

Let's not even start on the branding, cheerfully shown on Zune.net - "Welcome to the Social". Really? that's the best they could come up with? Apple has nothing to worry about, at least not from the Zune.

There's nothing as sad as excellent potential in the wrong hands.

Behold the Vista

That's right folks, Windows Vista has gone Gold, RTM. In normal people speak, that means the code has been mixed, baked, basted, poked, prodded, iced and yes, ladies and gentlemen after all that is ready to serve - in seven flavors no less.

Look for it on your shelves on January 30, 2007

technorati tags:microsoft, windows, vista, gold, release

Blogged with Flock

Curses and Blessings

So, I've been quite busy over the past few months working on an in-house project which I will talk about soon. But part of the quagmire of nuttiness that I've been buried in has involved frameworks and wirings and structures and architechture and code and all sorts of things that are the stuff of nightmares. More to come on that btw.

As if that is not enough, it appears good 'ol Uncle Bill and his cronies are finally pushing out ie7 through microsoft update, consequently breaking sites that were otherwise carefully and thoroughly hacked to work in ie6 anyway. Thanks to their new semi-dedication to standards compliance improvement on the platform, one of the website I developed just got broken and here I am saddled with the unpleasant task to having to rewrite the layout for the site to work in ie7.

On the one hand, I'm brimming with curses. On the other hand I'm getting paid to per hour of cursing so what's the downside?

Thanks Uncle Bill. Time to get started on that list for Santa. I wonder if he knows anything about DOM, html and standards compliance.....

The Drive-in Web

With YouTube, Yahoo video and Podcasting gaining in popularity on a daily basis, video on the web is certainly nothing new.  Over the last year though, video seems to have moved up in the world with television networks.  This week, as most major networks ( cbs, nbc, abc , fox) are premiering their new season of shows, it's really encouraging to see the networks picking up from where abc left off last spring, bringing a lot of their programming to a growing web audience giving us the opportunity to catch up on previous episodes and previewing what's coming up next.  As the networks also seem to be realizing, it helps a great deal in promoting new shows that don't have an established audience.

For a long time, the issue has been which plugin/platform would be the best medium to deliver this content over the web along with the available bandwidth and names like Real Video and QuickTime come into play.  While pretty good platforms on their own, without a doubt, those mediums have always been plagued with the issues of installation and updates across different platforms, but lately, that seems to be less of an issue to many of them who opt for using flash video, a platform for which the word ubiquitous was coined.  The evolution of the new web continues.

Technorati, Aye!

So it occurred to me that it might be fun to try this technorati thing out, so I hunkered down and signed me up for an account.

I have to add this lil 'ol widget

Technorati Profile

and presto!, I can hang with the big boys now.

Too much fun

This here is just too much fun. Google maps flight sim

Oh, and quite a good read this here article from Paul Thurrott on Steve Jobs letting his mouth run away with him in the Apple WWDC which normally heralds good things from Apple, but turned out to be dramatically disappointing this year.

The future is now

I just saw this technology that was demonstrated at the ultra-cool TED conference in california - the intuitive pressure/touch sensitive interface for computing introduced by Jeff Han, a research scientist at NYU. The potential applications of this are mind-boggling.


Via Geekbrief.tv

Catching Up

The realities of developing a reasonably large project solo are anything but trivial. Hence, my lack of posts in the last month or so. Not that I was that regular at it anyways.

Here's what's been happening.

In case you've been under a virtual rock or better yet, are a video blog virgin, Amanda Congdon and Rocketboom have parted ways. Incredibly, I never really got into the video podcasting craze until this thing exploded. Rocketboom is currently back with interim host Joanne Colan, former MTV Europe VJ. Along the way, I discovered Geekbrief, hosted by Cali Lewis, totally adorable.

In Adobe news, Flex 2 got released. All details are here..

In Microsoft news, Vista will be delayed yet again, or wait, that's old news. Ah yes, Office 2007 will be delayed yet again. That's the most recent one.