Monday, May 31, 2010

Latest Windows Phone 7 CTP Includes Office, Dialler
Windows Embedded OS: XP Embedded, Wince, Standard and Enterprise
Asus launches 2 Eee e-ink tablet based on android at price $199 to $299

asus_eee_tablet_launches
ASUS Eee Pad official: Intel CULV processors, Windows 7, and a 10-hour battery life -- Engadget
10", $399, Windows Embedded Compact 7 (?)
12", $499, Windows 7
camera, USB included...

from my experience, windows 7 on a asus netbook is SLOW.
touchscreen netbook (T91MT) with flash-drive and 2GB RAM

maybe the CPU in eeepad 12" will be faster,
or microsoft will "trim" windows 7 for tablet...,

windows embedded compact 7 is most likely OS of Windows Phone 7
so eeepad 10" may in fact be based on equivalent of apple ipad,

this means microsoft is in fact replacing windows ce
by trimmed version of full windows 7,
similar to what apple has done with iPhone

This evolution may bring mobile apps on desktops/laptops!

Since windows phone 7 will have silverlight based apps
managed in similar way iphone apps are managed
and it will run on same core os as any windows 7 computer
This will open doors (ok, windows) for apps on desktop/laptop.
In fact, Microsoft Office is one of first such "apps"...

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Raven DB

Raven is an Open Source (with a commercial option) document database for the .NET/Windows platform. Raven offers a flexible data model design to fit the needs of real world systems. Raven stores schema-less JSON documents, allow you to define indexes using Linq queries and focus on low latency and high performance.

  • Scalable infrastructure: Raven builds on top of existing, proven and scalable infrastructure
  • Simple Windows configuration: Raven is simple to setup and run on windows as either a service or IIS7 website
  • Transactional: Raven support System.Transaction with ACID transactions. If you put data in it, that data is going to stay there
  • Map/Reduce: Easily define map/reduce indexes with Linq queries
  • NET Client API: Raven comes with a fully functional .NET client API which implements Unit of Work and much more
  • RESTful: Raven is built around a RESTful API
  • Sunday, May 23, 2010

    Ford Turning Off PCs at Night to Save $1.2M

    Despite more efficient chips and monitor technologies, the electricity bills for large scale computer use are still considerable for corporations. While not much can be done to reduce power consumption while a computer is in use, Ford Motor Company is launching a new initiative that aims to save over $1 million a year through smarter power management.
    Why Mozilla Needs To Go Into Survival Mode

    a very detailed comparison and analysis of web browsers on the market...

    It is believed that Google’s royalties account for about 80-90% of Mozilla’s entire revenues. The royalty contract will end in 2011.

    At the very best, Mozilla has an ongoing financing problem by being too dependent on Google, which has now an interest in the very market that is Mozilla’s beating heart. I’ll leave it up to you to predict what will happen in this space, but it is clear that Chrome is gaining market share at a fast pace and Microsoft will do everything it can to stop the bleeding as it needs IE9 as a central part for its cloud computing strategy. At the current pace, Google may catch up with Firefox’ market share within two to three years – and that is if Microsoft simply stands still. Add Microsoft to the equation and it becomes clear that you end up with a battle of the giants that leaves Mozilla in the middle of the battlefield, with a share of the market both Google and Microsoft want.
    Richardson Maturity Model
    steps toward the glory of REST

    Saturday, May 22, 2010

    Slashdot Science Story | Quantum Teleportation Achieved Over 16 km In China

    "Scientists in China have succeeded in teleporting information between photons further than ever before. They transported quantum information over a free space distance of 16 km (10 miles), much further than the few hundred meters previously achieved, which brings us closer to transmitting information over long distances without the need for a traditional signal."
    Toyota, Tesla Burnish Their Images by Teaming Up | Autopia | Wired.com

    Toyota will buy $50 million worth of stock when Tesla Motors goes public, and it gets a closer look at proven EV tech. Tesla gets a shuttered Toyota factory in Northern California to build the Model S sedan and expert advice on how to engineer and build a mass-market car.

    Sunday, May 16, 2010

    Spill Fight Shows Progress - WSJ.com
    BP PLC had its first breakthrough in the effort to stem the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, using robots to insert one end of a mile-long tube into a shattered oil pipe on the ocean floor. The goal is to siphon up some, if not most, of the crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico
    explorercanvas - Project Hosting on Google Code
    HTML5 Canvas for Internet Explorer (javascript library, using VML feature of IE)

    Modern browsers like Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera support the HTML5 canvas tag to allow 2D command-based drawing. ExplorerCanvas brings the same functionality to Internet Explorer. To use, web developers only need to include a single script tag in their existing web pages.
    System.Data.SQLite
    System.Data.SQLite is the original SQLite database engine and a complete ADO.NET 2.0/3.5 provider all rolled into a single mixed mode assembly. It is a complete drop-in replacement for the original sqlite3.dll
    PhoneGap

    PhoneGap is an open source development framework for building cross-platform mobile apps. Build apps in HTML and JavaScript and still take advantage of core features in iPhone/iTouch, iPad, Google Android, Palm, Symbian and Blackberry SDKs

    Friday, May 14, 2010

    A Prism for Jolicloud: Web-Centric Desktop Apps - O'Reilly Radar

    The bold idea of Jolicloud is that the browser is the operating system. It's all you need and you don't need to even think about it. The browser is a core service that supports all applications but it can recede into the background and let applications take the foreground.
    Stephen Wolfram: Computing a theory of everything | Video on TED.com

    Start With Why, Simon Sinek

    All organizations and careers function on 3 levels. What you do, How you do it and Why you do it. The problem is, most don’t even know that Why exists.
    ...
    As it turns out -- there's a pattern -- as it turns out, all the great and inspiring leaders and organizations in the world, whether it's Apple, or Martin Luther King or the Wright brothers, they all think, act and communicate the exact same way. And it's the complete opposite to everyone else. All I did was codify it. And it's probably the world's simplest idea. I call it the golden circle.

    Why? How? What? This little idea explains why some organizations and some leaders are able to inspire where others aren't. Let me define the terms really quickly. Every single person, every single organization on the planet knows what they do, 100 percent. Some know how they do it, whether you call it your differentiated value proposition or your proprietary process or your USP. But very, very few people or organizations know why they do what they do. And by "why" I don't mean "to make a profit." That's a result. It's always a result. By "why" I mean: what's your purpose? What's your cause? What's your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care? Well, as a result, the way we think, the way we act, the way we communicate is from the outside in. It's obvious. We go from the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing. But the inspired leaders and the inspired organizations, regardless of their size, regardless of their industry, all think, act and communicate from the inside out

    ...
    Here's how Apple actually communicates. "Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?" 

    TED | About TED
    TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.

    Wednesday, May 12, 2010

    Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation | Video on TED.com

    social scientists know but most managers don't:
    Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think.


    The State of the Internet Operating System - O'Reilly Radar
    ...
    Where is the "operating system" in all this? Clearly, it is still evolving. Applications use a hodgepodge of services from multiple different providers to get the information they need.

    But how different is this from PC application development in the early 1980s, when every application provider wrote their own device drivers to support the hodgepodge of disks, ports, keyboards, and screens that comprised the still emerging personal computer ecosystem? Along came Microsoft with an offer that was difficult to refuse: We'll manage the drivers; all application developers have to do is write software that uses the Win32 APIs, and all of the complexity will be abstracted away.

    It was. Few developers write device drivers any more. That is left to device manufacturers, with all the messiness hidden by "operating system vendors" who manage the updates and often provide generic APIs for entire classes of device. Those vendors who took on the pain of managing complexity ended up with a powerful lock-in. They created the context in which applications have worked ever since.

    This is the crux of my argument about the internet operating system. We are once again approaching the point at which the Faustian bargain will be made: simply use our facilities, and the complexity will go away. And much as happened during the 1980s, there is more than one company making that promise. We're entering a modern version of "the Great Game", the rivalry to control the narrow passes to the promised future of computing...

    Tuesday, May 11, 2010

    InfoQ: Horizontal Scalability via Transient, Shardable, and Share-Nothing Resources

    beyond SQL databases and OO languages:
    key/value caching and data storage
    and functional languages...

    Adam Wiggins believes that now is the time of horizontal scalability achieved by using resources that are transient, shardable and share nothing with other resources. He gives as example several applications and a language: memcached, CouchDB, Hadoop, Redis, Varnish, RabbitMQ, Erlang, detailing how each one applies those principles.
     
    http://adam.blog.heroku.com/
     
    InfoQ: DoD Architecture Approach to Common Vocabulary Driven Service Implementation

    Semantic Web in practical usage for communication.
    As I was suggesting 5+ years ago on XML One conferences,
    ontology (shared vocabulary) is used to build messages,
    instead of hard-coded SOAP/WSDL...
    Parag Khanna maps the future of countries | Video on TED.com

    A very interesting view on meaning of formal and "real" maps. Instead of wars, modern economy is reshaping regions around the world...

    So lets get a sense of what is happening in this part of the world. We can start with Mongolia, or as some call it, Mine-golia. Why do they call it that? Because in Mine-golia, Chinese firms operate and own most of the mines -- copper, zinc, gold -- and they truck the resources south and east into mainland China. China isn't conquering Mongolia. It's buying it. Colonies were once conquered. Today countries are bought.  

    Saturday, May 08, 2010

    ZoomAtlas: Mapping Every Square Inch of America

    geo-social (mapping) site to watch
    has its own maps data from satellite images,
    to be able to modify
    wiki-creator on board
    interesting: it includes time dimension!
    Hands on with the Kobo eReader, setting the bar for low cost ebook readers | ZDNet

    Where did the name Kobo come from?

    When I hear new and unique names, I question where they originate so I asked my contact where the name Kobo came from. I was told it was simply an anagram for Book and that a four letter word was desired for the new name.
    Reports of netbook sales death greatly exaggerated, says analyst - Computerworld

    For a little more money, sometimes just $50 or so, consumers can buy a full notebook with a full-sized keyboard, a 15-in., sometimes a 17.-in. screen, with higher resolution [than a netbook].

    By the end of this month, Apple will likely have sold 1.5 million iPads, said Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe in a post to his company's blog Wednesday, putting the tablet in the record books for reaching $1 billion in sales faster than any other consumer product.
    Kobo International E-Book Store Launches: Why Amazon Should Be Afraid | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

    $150, USB and bluetooth only, no WiFi or 3G

    http://www.borders.com/online/store/MediaView_koboereaderspecs

    Tuesday, May 04, 2010

    Tools of the Mind | Extended Campus | Metro State

    Current research shows that self-regulation – often called executive function
    -- has a stronger association with academic achievement than IQ
    or entry-level reading or math skills.
    NurtureShock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
    The central premise of this book is that many of modern society’s strategies
    for nurturing children are in fact backfiring –
    because key twists in the science have been overlooked.

    Monday, May 03, 2010

    Graham Glass, etc.: Code stats update: EDU 2.0, Moodle, Sakai



  • Moodle: 1,500,000 lines of PHP, 300 man years


  • Sakai: 2,000,000 lines Java, 250 man years


  • EDU 2.0: 31,000 lines of Ruby, 4 man years



  • Sunday, May 02, 2010

    Time Zones

    HTML5 site, works nice from Safari and Chrome browsers
    (and iPhone, iPod touch, iPad)
    PhoneGap
    PhoneGap is an open source development framework for building cross-platform mobile apps. Build apps in HTML and JavaScript and still take advantage of core features in iPhone/iTouch, iPad, Google Android, Palm, Symbian and Blackberry SDKs.

    podcast iPads and Tablets @itconversations