Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

I did a screencast this morning on Smalltalk processes, and it generated a few comments. Given that, I figured it was worth following up. The basics:

• Smalltalk Processes are lightweight - i.e., they are managed within the single OS process running the Smalltalk image
• You can create OS level threads by making external API calls - assuming that it's safe to call those APIs in a threaded fashion

I've gone into a lot more detail on this stuff - head on over to Smalltalk Daily, and start with this page of screencasts on the processes model. If you have questions on any of that, shoot them my way.

Technorati Tags: process model, threads

Arden did some coding in the product today, and has some observations about the experience.

Technorati Tags: tetris

When optimists like Scoble start asking about the future of California (relative to other states), then you know there's a problem. I have a sister in Texas, and she's been pretty happy there since the late 80's....

Technorati Tags: brain drain, business

PC World reports that the recent surge in Twitter usage has brought back the Fail Whale:

Twitter appears to be experiencing more growing pains. Users and the service itself recently have reported a spate of problems

I find it fascinating that so many people use, enjoy, and even rely on Twitter - while at the same time, there's nothing that even vaguely resembles a revenue plan for the company. Eyeballs aren't enough, especially if - like me - you think that advertising is mostly a dead end...

Technorati Tags: twitter, social media

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how Smalltalk processes run - i.e., in what order two processes will run based on their runnable state and their priority. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, processor scheduler

PC World is reporting that Dell is looking to get into the smart phone space. That makes sense - they have to move into the growing end of the business if they want to stay relevant. They mention that Dell might buy Palm - that would certainly breath new life into that entity...

Technorati Tags: smart phone, netbook

While I'm skeptical about Twitter's ability to make money, I'm not skeptical about the corporate adoption; as Wired points out, that's happening at an expanded pace. Cincom has a Twitter presence, as does our Smalltalk suite. It makes a lot of sense for companies to track Twitter mentions of their products and services, and to offer a feed with important announcements.

Technorati Tags: social media, marketing, twitter

Advertising around "important" Twitter users? Quick, show of hands - how many Twitter users visit the website versus use a tool such a Twitterific? Follow up - why do you even care what the "executive" tweets are?

This isn't just laughable; I'd say it borders on desperation.

Aparrently, the Economist agrees with me:

Ultimately, though, every business needs revenues -- and advertising, it transpires, is not going to provide enough. Free content and services were a beguiling idea. But the lesson of two internet bubbles is that somebody somewhere is going to have to pick up the tab for lunch.

Two weeks ago, they were talking about this on "This Week in Tech", and one of the panelists (I forget who now) said that sooner or later, Twitter and Facebook were doomed without a real revenue model. Lots of eyeballs are one thing; actual dollars coming in to pay the bills is something else again.

Consider how I'm using Facebook - I throw the "Smalltalk Daily" videos up there every day. Now, they aren't huge, but they take up some amount of storage, and anyone who watches them (I'll be darned if I can find metrics from Facebook for that) consumes bandwidth. Who's paying for that? Right now, no one. You think the audience for the Smalltalk videos is interested in the ads that pop up on the page? Right now, I see an "Easter in Howard County" ad, and another one for Lasik. That kind of non-targeted ad simply doesn't work well, and - once the pleasant delusion on advertising passes, will simply disappear.

I really have no idea how either Facebook or Twitter are going to survive. They've gotten us used to the idea of free, and told us that we can upload virtually infinite amounts of content to them for nothing. Where's the revenue for that?

Update: Doc Searls ads some relevant points, and a few suggestions as to what the future might look like.

Technorati Tags: revenue

Spotted in SCI FI Wire

"They filmed my favorite scene in the whole script," Sawyer said in an exclusive telephone interview. "And I actually got misty-eyed when they were filming it, because it didn't matter if the character names were the same as the character names in my novel. They were saying things that were the heart and soul of the novel that I had written a decade ago. What they're doing is Flash Forward, and I to the core of my being feel that they are doing my book."

I'm glad Sawyer is happy with the filming - I really liked the book "Flash Forward" (as well as a lot of his other work). What I'm less sure of is whether the book works as a series. I can definitely see it as a movie, or a mini-series, but an ongoing set of shows?

Technorati Tags: tv, books

Today's Smalltalk Daily takes a look at the API for the XML Parser in Cincom Smalltalk - how to use it for basic document creation. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch on Vimeo:

Using the XML Parser from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Interesting reporting from ComputerWorld:

A new survey says that a majority of respondents would avoid a hotel in the future if they had bad cell phone reception. And nearly half would make the same decision for office space, meeting facilities and even hospitals. Is bad cell phone reception driving away customers?

I haven't paid much attention to cell coverage, but I have paid attention to wired/wireless net access - and whether it's free or charged. When we last scouted for a "default" hotel near corporate HQ in Cincinnati, network access definitely came up, both in terms of quality and expense. Saving $10/night on the room is meaningless if you have to pay it back with a daily net access charge, for instance.

I pay attention when I travel for personal reasons as well - I'm far more likely to stay somewhere with reasonable internet access.

That's the premise of this post from Eric Clemens - consider this:

The internet is the most liberating of all mass media developed to date. It is participatory, like swapping stories around a campfire or attending a renaissance fair. It is not meant solely to push content, in one direction, to a captive audience, the way movies or traditional network television did. It provides the greatest array of entertainment and information, on any subject, with any degree of formality, on demand. And it is the best and the most trusted source of commercial product information on cost, selection, availability, and suitability, using community content, professional reviews and peer reviews.

I thought about that in the context of what I do every day. I post screencasts on how to work with our products, I post podcasts with long form conversations about Smalltalk, I post videos from events, and I post a lot of other content about the products. We use AdWords, but that's not traditional advertising - it will present information about our site to people searching for related information. That's very different from the broadcast model used by TV, radio, and lots of websites.

Put another way - how often do you click on ads you see on websites? When a search using your favorite search engine can find specific information for you from sources you trust, why do ever need an ad to get your attention? This is the huge shift that's coming at the entire market: TV, radio, and net. I've said before that advertising has been a pleasant fiction that we've all chosen to believe in; what Clemens is saying is that more and more people are noticing how few clothes the emperor is wearing...

Technorati Tags: marketing

Head on over and add your own answer, or vote mine up :)

On March 9th, Alan Knight, our engineering manager for Smalltalk, gave a talk at the Ottawa (Canada) Smalltalk User's Group. He presented the roadmap for the product suite from the engineering side of things. I released the video for the talk earlier; this is the audio-only version. I've cleaned up the audio quite a bit - it came out pretty well. You can listen to it 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!

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, roadmap

Dan Ingalls on web development:

"Lord knows you can get the Google Web Toolkit and start cranking out Java code for doing these things [browser-based applications], then translate it to JavaScript and make a Web page, but typically those Web pages are not then alive. You can't go in a grab hold of part of it and pull it out or change it the way you can in our system," Ingalls says.

"Now at times you don't want that. You don't want people accidentally pulling the scroll bar off their mail system. But my philosophy has always been: Make it first dynamic and malleable and then you can always turn off those capabilities. But you're in much less of a position to go forward in the world if you start out with stuff that can't be changed."

If you start off with handcuffs, it's hard to get much flexibility, ever. If you start off with flexibility though, you can always add in hard edges later.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

I just finished reading "Spring Forward", a history of Daylight Saving time written by Michael Downing. It's a short, funny book - I never realized how much confusion surrounded this whole topic. Never mind the recent change here in the US and Canada - this book traces the long century of confusion surrounding the idea, and how - before the 1970s - the adoption of daylight saving time varied all across the country. Worse, before the 1880s and railroad time, time keeping varied across the country, period. It's a fascinating little book, and a very entertaining read.

Microsoft has figured out how to advertise - they show real people doing cool things with Windows, and how easy it is. Apple has been pushing that line for years - and while Microsoft has caught up in a lot of ways, they've let the "Mac is easier" tag stick for way too long. The latest set of ads, where they have kids (the one I just saw had an 8 year old) doing things like photos and movies are great stuff. Way, way better than the Seinfeld/Gates silliness they tried last year.

This all gets back to something I dislike in current marketing fads: story telling. The first set of Gates/Seinfeld ads were all about telling a story, but they were utterly disconnected from the product being promoted. The new ads also tell a story, but they tell one that promotes the product in question. As I've said before, connected stories work. Disconnected ones don't. Unless you tell people what kinds of problems your product/service can solve, you're not telling a useful story - no matter how many people hear it.

I'm interested in finding people who have:

• Recently downloaded Cincom's non-commercial Smalltalk
• Just learned Smalltalk
• Would be interested in talking about the experience on our Podcast, "Industry Misinterpretations"

If that sounds interesting to you, please drop me a line. I'm not looking for experienced Smalltalkers with ideas about the products; it's not that such feedback has no merit, it's that I've heard that kind of feedback already :)

Technorati Tags: podcast

A few posts ago, I said that the one thing MS should do with Windows 7 is this: get rid of the pre-load "feature" that allows applications to load all (or part) of themselves at boot time. I had one commenter express amazement that I'd call the "Apple Tax" (the premium you pay for getting a Mac) worth it on those grounds alone, and sure - that's hardly my only beef with the revs of Windows I've used. However, in XP (the one I've run the longest), it's a huge problem.

Why? Well, you end up rebooting any system - Windows or Mac - more often than you would like. There are lockups - fairly rare on XP, from what I hear very rare in Vista, and very rare in OSX - but that's not really the source of boot time frustration. The source is the frequent reboots required by vendor provided updates. Most of the recent OS X updates have required reboots, and the vast majority of Windows updates also require a reboot. Here's where the frustration enters:

• I see an update notification. All the tenets of safe computing tell me I should apply it
• I have a bunch of applications open, and I'll have to get out of all of them, then allow the system to reboot
• On the Mac, outside of patch application time, the reboot is fast - when I login, I can start working immediately
• On Windows, I'm forced to wait for all the apps that have registered for pre-load to get done before I can do anything

Once that happens, Windows is stable, and based on the feedback I hear from Vista (SP1) users, pleasant. The entire problem is this antiquated "time saving" system that now wastes time. Get rid of that, and the ground between Windows and OS X will be a lot more level.

Technorati Tags: Mac, boot time

I just finished watching the series finale, and I liked it. The "God's plan" idea that has threaded in and out of the series was made clear, and all of the story threads were wrapped up within that context. I don't want to drop any spoilers yet (what with the various air times for the show, and DVR usage, etc) - but everything did get answered in a consistent way at the end.

Technorati Tags: bsg, galactica

Wow, the best seats at the new Yankee Stadium aren't cheap:

If you want to buy a front-row seat at the new Yankee Stadium for an individual game, the list price of a ticket is $2,625. Individual game sales for the first season of the $1.5 billion ballpark start Tuesday, and the Legends Seats that ring the infield start at $525 a game, according to the team's Web site. Those seats cost $500-$2,500 as part of full season tickets, and they include food and soft drinks.

Grandstand seats start at $23, and the bleachers are $14. Better get that third mortgage before you head out :)

Technorati Tags: baseball, yankees

Spotted in Engadget

Hot off word that Apple's Mac and iPod sales for February took a 16 percent hit compared to last year, Steve Ballmer says the "tide has really turned" after recent Apple market share gains: "Apple gained about one point, but now I think the tide has really turned back the other direction. The economy is helpful. Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment -- same piece of hardware -- paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be

Hmm - I'll buy the idea of expense keeping people back, but those of us who've made the switch to Mac have done so for more than "just a logo". My MBP still boots as fast as it did when I got it, during the summer of 2007. My old G4 based Mini still boots as fast, and it goes back a lot longer. The iMac that I bought last summer - same story.

The old Windows notebook next to me? I can get in a decent workout while I wait for it to boot and log me in. My wife's media center PC? Same story. There's one major thing MS could do that would help a lot: eliminate the "pre load" capability that so many apps (Microsft's and others) use at boot time. It used to serve a purpose back when machines were slower, but all it does now is make Windows look a lot slower than it really is.

Sounds like Microsoft has achieved one big goal: they are becoming the lead "hard core" game vendor, taking that slot from Sony. The Greenberg interview over on Gamasutra is somewhat self serving, but heck - MS has the console and game title numbers to back it up.

Technorati Tags: ps3, xbox360

Just as CD's replaced LPs, digital (both mp3s and streaming services) are replacing CDs:

While overall music sales were up 10 percent in 2008, the year saw a drop not only in CD sales, but in the number of customers actually purchasing music. But according to a new report, the act of music listening is actually on the rise. While digital music purchases remain strong, the numbers show that there is still much more work to be done in the industry's transition to a new, more diverse set of business models.

Services like Pandora are the new radio. I have Pandora on about 50% of the time now, and my iTunes collection on the rest of it. I listen to things like podcasts when I'm exercising. The good news is, we seem to have passed through the denial stage of this transition (where DRM was seen as the way to go), and onto something like acceptance.

Over in video land, denial is still king - but as consumer level bandwidth improves, I think we'll get to see the same kind of dynamic play out there.

Technorati Tags: drm, business models

Earlier this year I mentioned that Cincom would be coming to you with Smalltalk information - we've got our first seminar date and location planned: April 29, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It should be a great day, with lots of information from the experts here at Cincom. There are some general details on the seminar series here; if you would like to request one in your area, send an email to the Smalltalk Star Team.

Stay tuned - I'll push out more information as I get it.

Technorati Tags: cincom smalltalk, objectstudio, visualworks, web velocity

On today's Smalltalk Daily we take a look at customizing the display of list elements in VW with VisualBlock objects. The specific example changes the alignment of the text in the list, either left, right, or center - but the main point is how to use VisualBlocks. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Using VisualBlocks from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Spotted in Engadget:

"Oh, bollocks." No, we can't definitively prove that Gordon Brown said that after witnessing a "Wrong Region" code when inserting a DVD given to him by Barack Obama, but we're sure something of the sort was uttered. You see, the ridiculous DVD region coding system recently prevented the British Prime Minister from viewing a set of 25 "American classics" on DVD, all of which were bestowed upon him by President Obama during a recent visit to Washington, D.C. We hate to bludgeon a dead mule, but seriously, when will the DRM madness end?

Leaving aside any politics, this whole thing illustrate the silliness of region codes. In a world where anyone can download just about anything they want via BitTorrent, why do we have region codes? What exactly is being protected here? Even before the net came on big, was there any real risk of piracy stopped by this? Region free players do exist....

I think Dvorak has this right:

These phones are still a little weak for word processing and full docking capability. By that I mean the phone should be dockable, but not into another computer -- into a simple dock that attaches a keyboard and screen. The smartphone should have enough power to run the software it has as full-blown application software. Combined with some nifty cloud applications and remote storage, these phones should give people enough to get by. In fact, the newer processor chips coming out for the smartphone will deliver a lot of computing power.

It would be nice to be able to hook an iPhone up to an LCD screen and keyboard, and have it function as a fullblown system. I suspect that kind of capability will arrive soon - certainly Google would be happy to see the g-phone used that way along with a suite of Google cloud apps :)

We've had some great interviews and shows lately, and we have some more coming up. This weekend, I'll be releasing Alan Knight's talk to the Ottawa Smalltalk User Group (which he gave on March 9th). We also spoke to John McIntosh recently, about some of the work he's been doing of late - specifically, his work in getting Squeak running on the iPhone. We'll also have Alan on the podcast directly soon, to talk more in depth about managing the Smalltalk team here at Cincom. We also have some other interviews lined up that aren't finalized yet, but we have high hopes for.

Subscribe in iTunes now, or just drop this url into your favorite podcatching software.

Technorati Tags: podcast, industry misinterpretations

Spotted in SCI FI Wire

Producer Donald De Line told Dark Horizons that a live-action movie based on the 1960s animated TV series The Jetsons is still a go. The movie was first announced in May of 2007.

I'd love to know who thought this would be a good idea. How hard would it be for the bright guys in Hollywood to try perusing the SciFi section at Borders (or B&N, you get the idea) and find something new to film?

Today's Smalltalk Daily demonstrates a simple HTTP based interface to Twitter. The code works in either VW or ObjectStudio - it's domain level only, with no associated API. To try it out, load TwitterInterface (bundle) from the public reposittory in either toolset. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

A Simple Twitter Client from James Robertson on Vimeo.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

A long while back, Michael and I wote a simple Twitter Client. That client is obsolete now, but there's some useful code in it that I'm in the process of harvesting. When I publish this morning, I should have a small bundle that contains:

• A simple client for posting to Twitter
• A simple client for fetching updates from Twitter

What it won't have is any kind of UI. The idea here is to provide a small interface that could be used by anyone interested in Twitter for their own projects.

Technorati Tags: twitter, social media

Here's something you don't want to say in a public Twitter channel, after a job interview:

Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

Heck, I have searches set up for finding Twitter (and wider) references to Smalltalk, VisualWorks, ObjectStudio, Cincom (and a number of other terms as well). I think anyone applying for a job should assume that the company you are applying to will be doing the same...

Technorati Tags: social media, web, twitter

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we look at how to load a specific version of a package/bundle from Store within a script. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Scripting a specific version load from Store from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

So now I see that IBM is talking about buying Sun:

International Business Machines Corp. is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems Inc. in a combination that would bolster IBM's heft on the Internet, in data storage and in government and telecommunications areas, according to people familiar with the matter.

The good news for people interested in Sun is that IBM would jettison all of the "we'll make it up in volume" bozos at Sun (like their CEO), and actually use their services business to start bringing in revenue from Sun's various open source properties.

I have to say, it's amusing that the purchase price would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $6.5B (hat tip Troy - he has a subscription the WSJ, so he has access to that little tidbit). Recall that Sun blew $1B on MySQL not so long ago; I wonder how much more the company would have been worth had they not done that, and instead just made outrageous salary offers to the lead MySQL developers?

Technorati Tags: sun, ibm

Update: See, this is why I have comments - so I can find out what I don't know. It turns out that there's almost the API I want implemented. So:

     versions := (Store.Package withName: 'TimeSoZone' version: '8').
     versions notEmpty
	     ifFalse: [versions first loadSrc]

I ran into some interesting problems with my BottomFeeder build script and the latest VW build today - as it happens, I had an interaction problem between the new build and the latest version of a package in the public repository. Why did I run into that? Well, here's the line of the script that I ran into trouble with:

(Store.Package newestVersionWithName: 'TimeSoZone') loadSrc.

What that does is find the named package and load the latest version. The problem is, the latest version happens to be a branch I don't want - what I really want is the last "stable" version. Perusing class Store.DBRecord, it doesn't look like there's an API to load a specific version. However, that's not really much of a problem, because we can craft a line of code that suits our needs:

((Store.Package allVersionsWithName: 'TimeSoZone') detect: [:each | each version = '8'])

That almost solved my problem. It turns out that the script wasn't loading the latest version of a package I wanted - ImageConfig. Why? Well, there's an old (2003) version that was published with a previous rev of Store, and it has a primary key that makes it look newer than the actual latest version. Yes, I'd call that a bug :) Still, I needed to deal with it, and I just used the same line of code again:

((Store.Package allVersionsWithName: 'ImageConfig') detect: [:each | each version = '7.10'])

And that solved my problem. I'll do a screencast on this in the morning :)

Technorati Tags: BottomFeeder, build script

Simberon is offering OO training in Ottawa this May - follow the link for details and registration information.

I love my iPhone, but really - Joy of Tech has this one nailed :)

And there was much rejoicing. Just head on over to Engadget, and keep scrolling

Technorati Tags: iPhone, apple

Looks like there's something of a "Is Fit Dead" conversation going on. I've always had my doubts about expecting end users to work with HTML/Wikis, and that seems to be one of the sticking points...

Update: In case you aren't sure what FIT is, go here.

Spotted in Micro Persuasion

As long as Twitter maintains a following I feel every business should join it and converse with their customers - just as I said a year ago. Still, it's always important for everyone to see the big picture. That's why predicting a market top is something I thoroughly enjoy doing. In part, it's what I am paid to do - think about what's next. This disicipline keeps me and others like Robert Scoble like from getting stale.

Perhaps. It's also what makes the two of you look like hummingbirds...

Technorati Tags: twitter

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how to integrate an HTTP API into an existing application. The example uses the blog posting tool I use and Twitter. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch on Vimeo:

Integrating HTTP Based Services from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

While I think Shirky and Johnson are right, there's still a lot of wrong out there. Witness David Carr of the NY Times, fantasizing about some way to force people to pay for newsgathering:

No more free content. The Web has become the primary delivery mechanism for quality newsrooms across the country, and consumers will have to participate in financing the newsgathering process if it is to continue. Setting the price point at free --the newspaper analyst Alan D. Mutter called it the "original sin" -- has brought the industry millions of eyeballs and a return that doesn't cover the coffee budget of some newsrooms.

So what does he propose to do about a local blogger who shows up to cover a city hall meeting? Take him out behind the building and work him over? Force a paywall in front of all of his "news" posts?

The world of news gathering and reporting is shifting, and there's no way to hold back the tide. The old business models simply don't work. Pretending otherwise isn't a solution.