Monday, December 31, 2007

A Year From Now

A Year From Now

A Year From Now
I will be better
A Year From Now
I will be fine
A Year From Now
I will write
In somewhat poetic lines

A Year From Now
I will know more
A Year From Now
I will know less
About the world
About myself
About the unequivocal guess

Oh yeah, and a year from now, I'll have better hair.

I am thankful for this year, for kind people, for learning, for health, for so much.

May this be a great year for all.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

The Continuing Adventures of a Leopard Convert

Gosh, a late night last night, watching the Leopard install. Leopard started to look like Leopold, Mozart's father. My wife said this was a spotty installation. My eyes. Do I have eyes? My friend Thom Bresh was raving about this latest version of OS X, so I had to give it a whirl I'm going to iChat it up with the man.

What a phenomenal interface--but it's slower. Investigate. The plans here are to go with virtualization, bootcamp, maybe vmware. Shucks, I'm going Mac and not going back. But I have a rear-view mirror with thousands of $ in PC software. Before I fork over another 4 figures for it on the new platform, why not use it in BootCamp if possible?

Another great component here is access to Darwin, the guts of OS X. A BSD implementation/variant that shreds. Unix/Linux will be in this virtualization scheme. So I'll be in hiding with thousands of physical and virtual manual pages, sifting through for answers. Will I have enough hard drive space?

There will be answers. I will settle for nothing less.

David Meerman Scott and The New Rules

A friend recently recommended a book to me: The New Rules of Marketing & PR, by David Meerman Scott. It's one heck of a readable read. There's an enthusiastic style here, with straightforward comments and insights on how the web has altered how businesses reach customers.

There's the old way and there's right now. Get on board with your blogs, podcasts, and other means of communicating. The book is rich with case studies and pointers on strategy for the new paradigm. Good stuff. In print. What a concept.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

The Things You Learn

One of the things you learn is that there's always more to learn!

Can you do it all? Can someone do it for you at a reasonable price? What's applicable--or not? Is there a formula for this? Is there a page on youtube? What does a google search yield?

Can you memorize php.net? Are control structures ringing in your head?

Ahhh, some things to do and/or ponder for 2008....

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Let The Good Times Knol Over Wikipedia?

What will become of Knol? Hearing about it certainly sparked curiosity and speculation. Google does no wrong, right? I recall just a bit ago seeing a story concerning Knol, along with an assertion or two that it will overtake wikipedia, seemingly overnight.

At the source, it seems that there may be a little bit more control built into the content, with credit being given to authors. The official Google blog intro seems to be where this all started, and the wikipedia page sheds a good deal of light on this. Interesting descriptions of the project include "private beta", i.e. invitation only, and there is the idea that it actually may not ever be released.

Then there's the idea of the conflict, concept of organizer of info vs. provider. Hey, you can be all things for all people, all of the time, especially when you're Google. More to come I am sure.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Web 3.0, Widgets, API's

Is what you're looking at on your computer local, or is it the web, or is it both? You may not know unless you look under the hood (oh yeah, and make sure you're connected--unless you've already done some work on REMEMBERTHEMILK.COM, as it, should you give it permission to do so, will keep your tasks offline, let you work on them, and then sync them up on the web once you log back in and decide to go ahead with sync).

On initial look at what Web 3.0 is referring to, the hallmark of the next gen is the blurring of these offline/online distinctions. It seems to me to be old news--but perhaps the fact that it may become the norm vs. the exception is what may make this a key characteristic.

In working as a developer a few years ago, discussing MS Interdev, the object explorer revealed browser embeds within a standard client server GUI. I don't remember what the class name was, or Method/Property combinations, but I did enough to realize that it could happen relatively quickly, via controls or quick instantiations.

It's become much more slick, however. The integration will be getting tighter, more sophisticated. Active content, Flash, widget embeds for great presentation. Real thorough incorporation of RSS feeds, mashups, conglomerated from who knows where. I'm looking at SpringWidgets, there appears to be a claim of desktop/site embeddibility. Google Gears, same thing. Springing up, like virtual flowers.

We'll see how it shakes out....