I guess a downturn has a way of concentrating a VC dependent company's mind:
Twitter receives a crushing amount of partnership opportunities on a regular basis—it's a good problem to have yet until now there has been nobody on staff dedicated solely to business development. Things are changing. We hired Kevin Thau as our Director of Mobile Business Development late last month. Although his title includes the word "mobile" Kevin is digging in on several fronts since he's our first official business development guru.
With the end of the various investment bubbles, the "support it all with ads" model isn't looking so hot. I'm not sure what they'll come up with, but I don't think any ad based model is going to cut it. I just don't see Twitter being able to define targetable niches very easily...
The new Netgear router is in place, and it works - The N support is fast, and reliable. However, I can't get AIM to work at all - it connects and disconnects constantly, and never shows anyone as being online. I could do port forwarding of the relevant ports, but there are two problems with that:
My IP changes whenever I switch from my office (wire) to the living room (wifi)
What if someone else in the house (wife, daughter) wanted to use AIM?
So - anyone have any suggestions? I've got the WNR3500.
Now, the MacBook Pro complaint? It seems that it loses track of SMB network shares if the network changes (even after it gets back online). The iMac doesn't have this problem, my Windows boxes don't seem to, and even the lowly G4 based mini and my wife's white plastic MacBook deal with this issue just fine. My MBP? It seems to periodically lose its mind and require a reboot. If it were Linux, I'd just kill Samba and restart it. Is there a simple way to do the equivalent thing in OS X that I just don't know about?
The TiVo senior programmer from San Jose spent a week modifying his 25-year-old washing machine to send a message to Twitter when his laundry is ready. Rose, 35, admits his less-than-reliable memory has been to blame for the mildewed clothes that have piled up after he's left a load sitting in his machine too long.
There are full details if you follow the link; to quote Mathew Ingram: "finally, someone has come up with an actual use for Twitter"
I've been doing Smalltalk Daily since September 2006, and there's a lot of content available there now. As we produce new versions of the products, there's going to be normal turnover of the introductory/tools screencasts; those need to be up to date in order to be useful. Beyond that, I could use some suggestions:
What would you like to see? What have I not covered, or not covered well enough? Send me feedback, or just add a comment to this post. Thanks!
Steve Rubel brings up a well known and popular example to demonstrate the limitations of video plays:
So what's Scoble's problem? Well a lot. The videos don't generate a lot of in-bound links from bloggers, conversations on Twitter or mentions on aggregators like Techmeme. "None of my 1,000+ videos has ever made it to Techmeme," Scoble said. He's right. A quick analysis reveals some get no links, others get a couple. However, when he surrounds them with text, it's a different story. Why? Text! It provides context and I suspect for many it's a proxy for the video.
You still need the meta-information in text to make this stuff findable. I should really go through the podcasts and videos I've posted and see if there's a correlation between the textual descriptions (quality, size) and the download rates...
Today's Smalltalk Daily wraps up our look at the JPEG Bundle (warning: it's GPL, which may prevent some of you from using it). To watch, click on the image below:
Mathew Ingram explains why there won't be an iTunes like model for news. The summary: you'll listen to the same song over and over (and pay for the ability to do so) - but you simply won't do that for an ephemeral thing like news or opinion. The iTunes model isn't going to work.
Now Listening to: Sleeping And Waking by 'Til Tuesday from: Welcome Home
Sling Media announced today that they've lost their top executives, including co-founders (and brothers) Blake and Jason Krikorian, CEO and SVP of business development respectively. Also on the way out is Jason Hirschhorn and Ben White, President and Cheif Creative Officer of Sling Media Entertainment Group, and Greg Wilkes the VP of sales
THere's no way that can be a good sign. And I was starting to get interested in their products...
Now Listening to: Flying Sorcery by Al Stewart from: Year Of The Cat
If you watch "24", you'll know what I mean while you watch tonight's episode. I won't give away any more spoilers - and what the title means will only be clear partway into tonight's show anyway :)
Scoble got some interesting video of the rendering of virtual people. Right now, it's being used for things like games and special effects, but I'm thinking that this is going to move into things like "resurrected" actors: I wonder if anyone is looking to buy the rights to use the likeness of people like Gable, Cagney (etc, etc). Things are going to get interesting in this area...
Last week I took a trip to Dallas, and I spoke to the Ruby User Group while I was there. It was a good session - I covered Seaside and Web Velocity, and the crowd seemed impressed. I have the video up now - click on the image below to watch:
Today's been one of those days where I end up on the phone all day :) During the rare intervals when I haven't been on the phone, I've been working on a website refresh. We are planning to launch a new look and feel for the site within a few days; all I really need at this point is a bit of content that needs to be added in. I think you'll like what we've been up to.
Now Listening to: The River Sings by Enya from: Amarantine
On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at a package in the public repository that adds JPG writing capability to the library. To watch, click the image below:
This week, Michael and I discussed how we build the products at Cincom: ObjectStudio, VisualWorks, and Web Velocity. In the process of doing that, we talked about how that process has changed over the course of the last few years, and where we need to take it. Download the podcast 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!
Eli looked like a great QB last season, and again up until Burress took himself out this season. Today? He took a quick trip back to 2006, and helped throw the game away (literally) with interceptions. What a disappointing end to a 12-4 season.
The embattled SCO Group Inc. is proposing to auction off its core products and use proceeds to continue its controversial lawsuits over the alleged violations of its copyrights in Linux open-source software. The Lindon company has filed a new reorganization plan with the federal court in Delaware where it sought bankruptcy protection from creditors after an adverse ruling in the Linux litigation. If approved by a bankruptcy judge, the plan could mean SCO's server software and mobile products lines are owned by other parties while SCO itself remained largely to pursue the lawsuits under the leadership of CEO Darl McBride.
I don't think "leadership" is the word they're looking for...
With scifi shows and Fox, this is always a safe bet, from an interview with Dekker (who plays the young John Connor on "Sarah Connor Chronicles":
He also said the show will become more serialized and more "science fiction" for the rest of the season (Woo Hoo!). Surely that means we'll get nine awesome new episodes then Fox will immediately cancel it and replace it with something that has the word "Dancing" in the title.
Over the years, it's been a pretty safe bet - bet against any scifi show Fox puts on. They must have some staff that likes scifi, and ad sellers who dislike the demographic...
People are going to look back at the last couple of years as a prime example of how not to roll out and promote a major product - Vista. Microsoft seems to have addressed all (or at least most) of the technical problems with Vista - I know people running it who don't have complaints.
However, the perception that "Vista Sucks" has been successfully transmitted, both by the initial failures from MS (and their lackluster response), and the highly successful Mac/PC ads put out by Apple. Apple rode the "Vista Sucks" wave to better Mac sales, and to a successful product definition. Now it looks like Microsoft has realized they have lost this particular battle:
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer kicked off the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show on Wednesday with an impassioned endorsement of PCs and a sneak peek at the company's future Windows 7 operating system.
Without mentioning the security and compatibility issues that have dogged Vista, Ballmer promised that Windows 7 will make PCs faster and easier to use. He didn't offer a timetable for its official release, although Windows Vista went on sale more than two years after it was issued in beta form.
It looks like they've given up on the "Mojave" idea, and gone straight to Windows 7. Now they need to get it from beta to product faster than the two year timespan Vista took to make that run. It will probably happen; by all accounts, Windows 7 is more or less Vista SP2 - making this largely a re-branding effort.
I bought a new router yesterday, after the old one started getting flaky. I got a Netgear WNR3500 - it's a gigabit (wired) N (wireless) model. I ran into configuration issues immediately :) I wanted to set it up with the same configuration (SSID and security) as the old G router, but I couldn't get it to use the same WEP key (my daughter's DS can't talk anything past 11b). I fought with that for awhile, but it just didn't seem to want to go. So, I finally just set it up for WPA.
We also have a wireless printer that it would be a bit of a pain to reconfigure, so I took the old router - since it still works for wireless - and reconfigured it as an access point. With that, things are mostly back to normal around here.
The army recently held a "Mad Scientist" conference (no, really) - they are looking at all of the possible things that individuals or small groups might be able to do in the next few decades:
"The U.S. must accept the reality that it can no longer assume technological superiority over the rest of the world. Ready access to scientific information and technological know-how has and will continue to level the playing field," the Mad Scientist summary notes. "In the operational environment of 2030 and beyond, the destructive/disruptive capability of the individual and small group will be more effective, more lethal, more easily developed/acquired, more efficiently delivered, and more easily concealed and transported... Individuals with access to the global information grid can easily acquire the knowledge needed to develop lethal bio agents, literally in their kitchen sink. Nanotechnology and robotics will offer opportunities to introduce and spread bio and chemical agents into targeted populations."
The transition here reminds me somewhat of the French Revolutionary era. Before then, armed forces were seen (at least in the West) as largely composed of professionals, and war was something professionals did. The common man often suffered, but was rarely a direct participant - the elites saw war as "too important" for the peasants. Then the "Levee en Masse" came into the picture, and war was a mass social movement right through the end of WWII.
The changes being looked at aren't similar, other than in their scope for disruption. The change from small elite armies to mass conscription was a big social change; this one looks like a huge disruption as well.
News is still a big business; it's just the printing of it on papare that's dying. Here's another example: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is about to go internet only (I seriously doubt they'll find a buyer willing to keep printing it):
Hearst Corp. put Seattle's oldest newspaper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, up for sale Friday, saying that if it can't find a buyer in the next 60 days, the paper will close or continue to exist only on the Internet.
Had local papers taken Craigslist seriously, and built up their own online classifieds, this transition might have gone more smoothly.
But the worst effect of the DRM fraud is that it generates pressure to cripple general-purpose computers in an attempt to foil emulation attacks. As a society, we can live with silly restrictions on device-shifting the latest blockbuster movie, but we cannot tolerate (for example) attempts to prevent PCs from running software not certified in advance by a consortium of Big Media companies. Yet that - and even more draconian restrictions - is where the logic of the DRM fraud inexorably leads. Such measures have already been advocated under the misleading banner "trusted computing", and half-attempts at them routinely injure today's computer users.
It's a fine system that prevents me from watching content I purchased, while allowing actual pirates to make copies easily.
I guess it's time for me to go to Wireless N - my router just stopped working for wired connections. In the past when I've had routers go, it's been the wifi that's died. Not today though - the wifi still works, but the wired connections have dropped dead. Joy.
It looks like I have to consider another phone come February: the Palm Pre (which will be on the Sprint network). Engadget seems to like it:
The UI is incredibly well thought out and smooth. Animations going in and out of apps, and all of the menus and switching are done with a grace and simplicity that we rarely see on any device. The UI outclasses most of its competition on a number of levels, and actually may be quite a bit more revolutionary than the iPhone. Multitasking works like a charm, and reps say you can push it quite hard before you'll need to close applications. One of the most fascinating components of the UI is that when you're zoomed out to cards, the data is still active in the previews.
They only got to see near final prototypes at CES though, so there's no word yet on what battery life will be like. Being able to change batteries isn't nearly as good as decent life, so I'll have to wait and see on that. Also, it's not a world phone (which is a downside for me). Still - looks interesting.
We are looking for another support engineer to work with the Smalltalk team here at Cincom:
You will provide technical support services to Cincom Smalltalk customers, channels partners, and to other internal and external stake-holders. You will have extensive technical knowledge of the Smalltalk programming environment. You must truly enjoy working with customers and end-users as well as with globally-distributed engineers and software development teams to resolve complex technical issues.
So it sounds like the old analog TV transmissions are going to get extended past February 17:
Echoing concerns from consumer groups, Mr. Podesta said that the Obama transition staff has found major difficulties in the transition, which was authorized by Congress in 2005. On Feb. 17, stations are scheduled to cease their analog transmissions and broadcast only in digital form, requiring consumers without a digital-ready TV who rely on over-the-air signals to install converter boxes.
How many people actually rely on over the air analog transmissions these days? The high end estimate puts it at 6-7 million households. That's about as close to universal penetration as you're going to see short of some kind of coercion. The old analog cell system was turned off with minimal problems recently; they should just let this go.
At ESUG 2008, Georg Heeg gave a fascinating presentation on the Smalltalk and Seaside work they did in pursuit of the location of the Bach House in Koethen - a task that historians had been quibbling over for centuries. Download the slides here - Watch the presentation to see how they solved the problem:
I took a little break from posting ESUG audio and video over the holiday break, but I'm getting back to it today - I'll have another one of the talks online within an hour or so. I'll be returning to a 1-2 talks per week posting schedule as well, so expect to see them start showing up in iTunes again.
On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at using Xml-Rpc services from Cincom Smalltalk (i.e., using Smalltalk as the client to the service). To watch, click on the image below:
Microsoft announced Wednesday that a beta version of Windows 7 will be available for the general public to download and try out on Friday. At the same time, it provided a list of the minimum system requirements it recommends for people who run the beta.
They call for a 1GHz processor (32- or 64-bit), 1GB of main memory, 16GB of available disk space, support for DX9 graphics with 128MB of memory (for the Aero interface), and a DVD-R/W drive.
Those system requirements are similiar to the Vista ones - but seeing as how Windows 7 will be out three years or so after Vista, it means that they are effectively lower. Early reports are that Vista runs pretty well, and that the driver issues that Vista suffered from are gone (since Windows 7 can use Vista device drivers).
The big question for me is this: Will MS continue to cede the PR space to Apple? A lot of Vista's reputation issues linger due to MS allowing Apple to define the OS, well after the early problems had been solved. The Windows 7 launch won't work for them if they let the same thing happen.
Sitting on my flight back home, I'm pondering how the presentation to the Dallas Ruby group was received. The first thing to come to mind is this: as I've visited various Ruby groups, it's clear that Smalltalk has some nascent mindshare. Everyone tells me that Smalltalk comes up in conversation a lot, but they just don't hear much about it (leading them to believe that there's not much going on with it). Clearly, this means that we (Cincom) need to do a better job of promoting what we do. Here are a few things that anyone interested in Smalltalk should know about:
Industry Misinterpretations - our weekly podcast. You can subscribe with iTunes. We have fresh ideas about Smalltalk and interviews with notable people in the Smalltalk (and dynamic language) community regularly
Smalltalk Daily - our daily screencast demonstrating "how to" do various things with ObjectStudio and VisualWorks. There are over 500 of these now, and a new one appears every weekday. You can subscribe in iTunes
Smalltalk Videos - we post videos from trade shows, various presentations, and longer form screencasts. As with evreything else, you can subscribe in iTunes
With that out of the way, some more observations - the ability to debug web applications (especially in the browser with Web Velocity) really impresses people - jaws regularly drop when I demonstrate that. The entire environment impresses people, but the debugger (and even the workspace) especially. Want to impress a non-Smalltalker? Just do a demo that shows coding in the debugger!
The reality is that while DRM may be a big hobbyhorse for geeks, it isn’t really a big concern for most iTunes shoppers. The vast majority of buyers are happy to buy songs from Apple regardless of what format they come in - provided they can play them on an iPod. Anyone looking for DRM-free music can already find it pretty easily.
Yes and no. On the one hand, Apple's sales make it clear that there's some truth to this assertion. However, I need to go back to a conversation I overheard at the gym a couple of weeks back: two older gentlemen were discussing music, and they mentioned (before I got involved) how irritating the 5 computer limit was. That limit is part of Apple's DRM scheme. Thus far, people have put up with Apple's DRM because the ease of use of the iPod and iTunes has trumped the irritation. Had MS partnered with Amazon and come up with an equally easy to use DRM-free store, I think the Zune might welll be powering ahead of the iPod right now.
Fortunately for Apple, Microsoft is no longer an innovative enough company to try something like that.
I just got back from the Dallas Ruby group, where the Seaside/Web Velocity presentation went pretty well - I'd like to thank Adam Keys, who was kind enough to let me present to the group. Here I am presenting:
James Savidge, who's a local here, came out and helped me record the event (and he helped answer questions as well):
As you've you probably noticed in the liveblog, Apple just made this very much official, and announced that some 8 million songs from all the major labels will indeed be DRM free, with a full ten million planned by the end of the quarter. As if that wasn't enough, it's also announced a new pricing structure for tracks, including a new $0.69 tier and a $1.29 one, which music companies will apparently be able to use at their own discretion.
Looks like the magic combo was that Jobs had to give on flat pricing, and the labels gave on DRM. I'd call that a win for the rest of us - time to upgrade the tracks I have with DRM...
On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at the recent changes to the Web Velocity beta candidate. If you're interested in getting involved in the beta, send me an email. In the meantime, click on the image below:
I'm in the air as I write this, and it's not one of the flights with WiFi on board. No travel hitches; I'll be at the Dallas Ruby meeting this evening. I'll have Cincom Smalltalk non-commercial CD's with me as well - hope to see a good crowd!
