Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

I've read a few books since the last time I posted about them. I finished "The Next 100 Years" a month or so ago - it speculates about the next century of history, and posits a fairly bright future for the US in that time. I'm not entirely sure I agree with the various projections made by the author, but it's thought provoking.

After that, I read an interesting book about the first publication of Soviet archives after the fall of the USSR - "Inside the Stalin Archives". The book isn't really about the horrors of the Soviet system (although it's got plenty of that) - it's much more the story of how Jonathan Brent (the author) navigated the ins and outs of post-Soviet Russia in the scholarly pursuit of history. It's a fascinating read on those grounds alone, and I highly recommend it.

Finally, I just finished "The Paradox of Choice" - a great little book that explores why it is that we feel so much worse when we have so much more. Basically, in the developed world we've set our expectations so high that virtually nothing can satisfy many of us: we're simply convinced that in the sea of abundance we swim in, there must be a better (vacation/gadget/marriage/what have you) out there somewhere. I really enjoyed this book, and came to the realization that it's not really about me - I've always been upbeat and optimistic, and nothing really gets me down for long. If you are the sort of person who ends up regretting many everyday decisions though, you'll learn a lot by reading this book. Either way, I recommend it.

Technorati Tags: history, sociology

You have to love the level of tunnel vision on display here. Scoble berates Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg for describing something as "Web 3.0", partly over this:

Short aside: It's interesting that neither Kara nor Walt show up very often on friendfeed, which is the best example of the 2010 Web right now. Kara Swisher has made a total of five comments there. Walt is even worse, doesn't bring any items in there, and only has six comments. How can you know what the 2010 Web is, if you don't use it and don't participate in it?

Shorter Scoble: "You don't use my favorite, relatively unknown walled garden, so how dare you try to name something? Only us cool kids over in the walled garden can do that"

As to Google's Wave announcement, which features prominently in the rest of Scoble's post? It looks interesting, but it remains to be seen whether Google can still launch a new product that people will use. Since GMail, what have they pushed out that has caught on in any real way? While it looks cool, Friendfeed also has tons of cool features compared to Twitter, and it's completely failed to get beyond being niche sized. There are only so many social software tools that regular people will use, and getting them to switch over from Twitter and Facebook will be non-trivial.

Technorati Tags: social media

I'm exaggerating, of course - email isn't dead, and won't be going away any time soon. However, it is slipping down the rungs of relevance quickly, replaced by things like IM and SMS. That's even more true for younger people than for the working set; if you have kids, ask them how much they use email.

Accelerating this trend will be the movement of IM towards something like what Googe unveiled yesterday: Wave. While I'm not sure Wave itself will catch on, the kinds of things Google is talking about most certainly will.

Technorati Tags: social media, im, email

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at Cairo graphics in VW - to get the Cairo libraries installed, you'll want to go to the Cairo website. To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Cairo in VW from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: graphics, cairo

Looks like Google planned to be the biggest news of the day, and they won the news cycle - taking it from Microsoft, who expected to have buzz around Bing. Via TechCrunch:

So what happened? Well, the company that will do no evil will certainly engage in a little stealth black ops mission when its required. Google knew full well exactly when Bing was going to launch. And they carefully planned the Wave launch to occur just minutes afterwards. They knew the crowd was ready for something cool. Not only did they have that free phone, but the day before Google VP Engineering Vic Gundotra told the crowd that there would be a big announcement the next day. People were ready and willing to be wowed.

They timed that right as MS was finishing the announcement of their renamed search engine (Bing) - and before the website went live. Looks to me like MS should have made sure the site was live before they went public. It's too bad, too, because if this video shows the tool the way it works, it could be pretty cool.

Technorati Tags: bing, wave, google, microsoft

My daughter and my wife have joined Twitter now - it must be mainstream :)

Technorati Tags: social media, twitter

Ahh, the world is back to normal:

Technorati Tags: baseball, yankees

Travis explains some of his thinking vis-a-vis external interfaces - and it's making me think about some of my own interfaces to systems...

Travis demonstrates - in 4 lines - how to create anonymous objects - instances of a new anonymous class that is like an existing class, except that you can inject instance specific behavior into it. So say you wanted to have a custom XML parser that handled a specific kind of error, but you didn't want to create a whole subclass, and you didn't want to change the behavior of the stock parser....

And yes, as Randal mentions, this is one of the things that makes Smalltalk cool :)

Technorati Tags: reflection

Whatever travel-related problems Michael had seems to have come my way. I met Arden in Philadelphia yesterday, and we promptly waited through a 2 hour delay - and then they had to switch planes, sending us across the terminal to the new one. We then had another long delay before boarding the new plane (and another one after boarding) - there were problems with the cabin lights. Fortunately I was so exhausted that I slept anyway :)

So anyway, I'll be arriving in Cologne late, which means that the podcast won't be out until later today. Which won't actually be that late, given the timezone differences.

This week Michael and I discussed Bob Martin's RailsConf talk - which I commented on here. We ranged across that and a few related topics, largely dismissing Bob's talk. To listen now, click here.

If you have feedback, send it to smalltalkpodcasts@cincom.com - or visit us on Facebook or Ning - you can vote for the Podcast Alley, and subscribe on iTunes. If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!

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Technorati Tags: smalltalk, ruby, bob martin, railsconf

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at customizing an HTTP POST to use a server-side API. The example uses the Facebook Connect. To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Customizing an HTTP Post from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

I thought the stress fracture in my right foot was gone enough to go jog, and I really like jogging in cities I've never been to before. So yesterday I went out on the streets of Cologne, and it was beautiful - great weather, nice city, pleasant jog. However, I paid for that around 4 AM this morning when I woke up in pain, noticing that the right foot was right back where it started a few weeks ago. Sigh - and I have no Advil with me - something I should remember to pack next time.

So it's back to the bike, and back to a few days of hobbling. Also off on a mission to find Advil :)

Technorati Tags: injury

Last night on the way to dinner we took a short walk by the old cathedral here, and I got a few photos:

That last one has Suzanne, Jeremy, Arden, and I in front of the Cathedral.

London Geek Nights: Seaside: The Revenge of Smalltalk - That's the title of the talk on July 6th in London:

Our speakers will include: Lukas Renggli, who will be talking about Squeak and the world of Open Source Smalltalk; Michel Bany from Cincom who will be discussing how Seaside and Smalltalk has been used in companies like JP Morgan. Expect live demos as an introduction to the interactivity of Smalltalk.

Follow the link for the location in London.

Technorati Tags: seaside, london

I love the way some people act surprised by "leech" behavior in open source:

"Leeches" -- that's how Dave Rosenberg, co-founder and former CEO of MuleSource, and now part of the founding team of RiverMuse, refers to companies that use open source technology but don't give back to the open source community. Companies like Southwest Airlines, with a reservation system largely powered by MuleSource. Companies like Cisco's Linksys subsidiary, whose routers rely on Linux. Companies like Amazon.com, whose Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) service depends on Eclipse Foundation's open source offerings

I guess Rosenberg is new to this whole human condition thing. When you make something free, you're going to have to accept a lot of free riders - that's just the way things work out. What's even better is this, from a member of the Eclipse Foundation:

"The future of Eclipse is in danger," Michael Scharf, a member of the Eclipse Foundation's architecture council, said in an angry April blog post. "The problem is that there is no real pressure for companies to contribute back to the community and it is easy to use the Eclipse 'for free' for their own products. The Eclipse community should create peer pressure to prevent the freeloaders and parasites from getting away without punishment," he wrote.

Gee, let me shed a few tears for one of the people who have helped contribute to the idea that software development tools should be free, regardless of how much money it costs to develop them :)

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at character by character validation of an input field in VisualWorks. To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Validating Character Input in VisualWorks from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, validation, gui

If you're in or around Cologne Germany, there's still time to get to our Smalltalk event - head on over to the Marriott - we are getting started at 10 AM.

Marriott Cologne
Johannisstrasse 76-80
50668 Cologne
Germany
Phone: 49 221 942220

Technorati Tags: cologne

It's been a pretty good day so far - Georg reprised his "Yes We Can" talk:

Then I gave a talk showing off numerous interfaces to other systems, including Facebook, Twitter, and Adobe Air:

Suzanne introduced us all, and acted as the host:

Then Dirk gave a demonstration of the Modeling and Mapping tools for ObjectStudio 8:

With the last presentation before lunch, Arden gave his "Less is More" talk:,

Technorati Tags: cologne, visualworks, objectstudio

Here's Arden giving a Web Velocity Demo, here in Cologne:

Technorati Tags: cologne, web+velocity, seaside

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at what happens when a VW window is closed. To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Application Window Closing from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, gui, vw

It's been a long day of travel - I got out of bed in Cologne at 12:50 AM east coast time, so it's already been a full day. I'm not home yet, either - my flight to Baltimore leaves here (Philadelphia) at 6:50 PM. So I'll be pretty tired by the time I get back home.

A web designer at American Airlines explains why a "simple redesign" of the website ends up being anything but simple:

But --and I guess here's the thing I most wanted to get across -- simply doing a home page redesign is a piece of cake. You want a redesign? I've got six of them in my archives. It only takes a few hours to put together a really good-looking one, as you demonstrated in your post. But doing the design isn't the hard part, and I think that's what a lot of outsiders don't really get, probably because many of them actually do belong to small, just-get-it-done organizations. But those of us who work in enterprise-level situations realize the momentum even a simple redesign must overcome, and not many, I'll bet, are jumping on this same bandwagon. They know what it's like.

You don't even have to be at a huge enterprise to have some of these things rear their head :)

Spotted in A Suitably Innocuous Blog

When we were on our honeymood in NYC last November, I made the pilgrimage to the 5th Avenue store. I used to think the Cincinnati Apple Store was busy, it's certainly busy compared to other stores in the mall. Indeed, the Sony store looks like a ghost town in the same mall. But I was not ready for the throngs of people in this store.

What he says about the Cincinnati store rings true here in Columbia, Maryland as well - the rest of the mall might look empty, but the Apple store is always buzzing. A couple trips ago when I visited the Pentagon City store, I saw the same thing - the mall was busy, but the Apple store was hopping. A little over a year ago, I saw the same thing in the (very large) London (UK) store: absolutely packed. They may have been intended to be loss leaders at some point, but they sure don't look like that now...

Technorati Tags: apple, retail

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how to ceate instance specific behavior at the method (as opposed to block) level). To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Per Instance Behavior from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: instance specific behavior, smalltalk, metaprogramming

Here's Arden Thomas' Web Velocity demo from the one day Smalltalk event in Minneapolis last April. You can see all the video we've posted from the event here; - to watch this one, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

A Simple CRUD App in Web Velocity from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, web velocity, minneapolis, seaside

I'm not a big fan of complexity - not in tools, not in marketing, not in catch phrases, not in sales. So I had to chuckle at this from Microsoft:

Instead of the Intel-invented term netbook, Microsoft wants to introduce the term "low-cost small notebook PC," said Microsoft OEM division corporate vice president Steve Guggenheimer during a speech Tuesday at the Computex trade show in Taiwan.

Right.... hands up for everyone who thinks that the phrase "low cost small notebook PC" is going to catch on, and that the word "netbook" is going to fade :)

Hulu is leaving the door open to paid subscriptions:

News Corp is the parent company of Fox which owns a huge portion of Hulu. When Miller of Newscorp was asked if Hulu would begin charging for online content during an Interview with Daily Finance, he said that "the answer could be yes." He went on to say that he doesn't "see why over time that shouldn't happen."

I suspect that this means that ads aren't doing the job. That doesn't surprise me; most of the ads I've seen on the service have been PSAs, and I doubt they get much money for them. On the other hand, I'm not entirely certain why I'd bother paying for content on Hulu when I can get it from iTunes, NetFlix, or Amazon more coveniently - will the stuff from Hulu come down in a way that works with my iPod (or other devices)?

This may end up being more complex than they think...

Technorati Tags: iptv, tv

Anyone who thinks that the "rules of war" are different now than they ever have been should pick up a copy of Victor Davis Hanson's "A War Like No Other". It's a study of the 27 year long war between Athens and Sparta during the 4th century (BC). The progression of that war into methods and tactics that no one foresaw at the outset will sound familiar to anyone versed in modern history, and the litany of atrocities reminds us that human nature hasn't changed over the milleniums - and idealists should take note that it's unlikely to change now, either.

I highly recommend the book - I finished it during my flight back from Germany this last week. Hanson is an engaging author, and he's working with a great subject here.

Technorati Tags: history, classical greece, athens, sparta

Michael reports that he has Seaside 2.9 working in 7.7 - and it sounds like the read/write capabilities to Monticell he added are making collaboration with the core Seaside team a whole lot easier. Now we just need to keep up with the rolling changes, and hope that Seaside 2.9 synchs up with our release (August 2009) reasonably well. We'll see how that goes :)

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Google is getting closer to a Chrome build for OS X and Linux - they have developer access now, which is probably useful for browser compatibility testing - but not a lot else yet - Google is warning that the builds are incomplete:

How incomplete? So incomplete that, among other things , you won't yet be able to view YouTube videos, change your privacy settings, set your default search provider, or even print.

Chrome seemed fast on XP in my Parallels VM; we'll see how it looks native...

Technorati Tags: chrome

If this pans out, why would anyone want a Windows Mobile Phone?

A Chinese company showed what it calls the world's first mobile phone to run Windows XP at the Computex exhibition in Taipei on Friday. The xpPhone can wake Windows from standby mode to receive calls and text messages. It has a battery life of seven hours when not in standby mode, and with a larger battery it can run for 12 hours.

That's pretty decent battery life, and it's an OS that everyone is familiar with. Maybe MS should run with the idea of having mobile devices run a previous version of Windows instead of a more specialized OS.

Technorati Tags: windows, phones

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at database interfacing at the EXDI level, using inserts and updates (previous screencasts have covered queries). To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Using EXDI to Insert and Update from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, database, exdi

It's kind of hard to embrace new technology and accept the idea of new business models when you have a CEO with these kinds of ideas - here's Sony Entertainment's CEO:

"I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet...(The Internet) created this notion that anyone can have whatever they want at any given time. It's as if the stores on Madison Avenue were open 24 hours a day. They feel entitled. They say, 'Give it to me now,' and if you don't give it to them for free, they'll steal it."

With that kind of attitude, it's no wonder they spend all of their time fighting the future...

Technorati Tags: stupidity