Michael Kariv's Personal Blog

Moving Web Applicaitons Blog to Wordpress

2009-05-25T16:14:00.002+03:00

Many of my recent posts were about webware - web applciations competing and replacing the desktop software we all are accustomed to.

I decided that I need a separate blog for it. And I decided its time to revive my old blog hosted on wordpress.

This blog here, on blogger/blogspot will remain my personal blog for matters outside of web applications.

Big push for Web Apps in 2010

2009-05-24T08:06:00.005+03:00

Here is my prediction - Web Apps usage will get a big boost in early 2010. The reason is Windows 7. Let me explain.

With all the nice Web Apps out there, they require a modern browser to shine. They need Ajax capability, good DOM manipulation, fast Javascript engine, good CSS support. Those are available in the best and newest browsers, especially Google Chrome 2 and Firefox 3.5. They are available in IE7 and IE8.

These crucial features are missing in IE6. Why is that important?

Because coprorate use is critical to the success of the productivity Web Applications, to Office 2.0. And IE6 is strong there. Today I was listening to Buzz Out Loud podcast (http://bol.cnet.com/) eposode 965, and they discussed how disproportionally high the IE6 usage numbers are in the corporate world. The number is 60%.

It contrasts with general browsers market share. According to the current state of Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Web_browser_usage_share.svg), IE is 66%, and of those only 17% is IE6. So IE6 is about 11% in general not 60%. No, wait, 11% is the aggregate result, so in non-corporate IE6 is even lower.

IE6 was released just before Windows XP. It is the default on Windows XP. That explains to me the phenomena. Corporate users don't upgrade. Corporate IT departements don't upgrade until they must.

Windows 7 will be released in October 2009. Microsoft claimed it is early 2010, util somebody leaked Windows preinstalled on a new laptop available for orders in October 2010. So now we know. IE8 will be (already is on my Windows 7 RC1 machine) the default browser.

Those in the corporate world who skipped Vista and stuck to Windows XP wait for Windows 7. (see for example http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24596745/).
Windows shipping in late 2009 means rollout will begin in earnest in early 2010.
And IE6 market share will nosedive. And the era of Office 2.0 will finaly dawn.

Google Docs will be used by 30% (or 6%) a year from now

2009-05-24T07:50:00.004+03:00

Google does not publish usage statistics of its Docs suite of applications. So it became a guessing game. The best summary I was able to find is
http://www.dullest.com/blog/google-docs-marketshare/
Matt Cutts compares data from 3 sources: compete.com, ClickStream, and Wakoopa .
Wakoopa cought my eye because the way Matt used it allows periodical re-gathering of numbers. One could plot a trend line here.

So I did. I have quickly written such calculator and followed numbers for about a week. In november 2008, as Matt reported, it was 5%. In May, I calculated it was 15%.
From one week of observations of how the numbers change, the numbers suggest it will be 30% a year from now, following the same measuring technique.
The results are published by me using, obviously, Google Spreadsheet:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rvaDvIdh6E8qqluzLDpo5yw&gid=0

Matt compared the numbers from 3 sources and they differ. The reasons are in measurement methodology and audience of choice. ClickStream numbers were fifth of Wakoopa's. Preserving this ratio will mean that in a year from now ClickStream would report 6% market share for Google Docs.

My take: 6% or 30%, it is a lot. Watching Wakoopa numbers convinced me that online office is arriving fast.

How to write good technical documentation

2009-04-20T09:42:00.002+03:00

Yesterday I was writing a relatively complex and lengthy technical document for a client. I was struggling. It was a kind of document that will be published and read by many people of various backgrounds. Not being able to make assumptions, I had to really watch my use of terms, logic of presentation etc. It is not easy, at least it is not easy for me. I do not have formal training in technical writing. My experience is vast but one-sided: I mostly have written for fellow developers. This new experience thrills me. I arrived at the decision to grab any opportunity to write documents for diverse audience.

Now I know why good technical writers are expensive and hard to find.

The first law I discovered for myself, and sorry if it is a commonplace, is this. Write for idiots. Idiots will like it, it make them feel adequate. Smart people will like it making them feel superiour.

Writing for idiots, as I discovered, is hard. It has to be easy to understand but not lengthy.
So I am thankful to all idiots out there. Myself included. Looking backwards, I always preferred documents and books written for idiots. So thanks to all the idiots again (idiots like repitition of important points) and authors making effort writing for them. Myself included.

Google or Zoho

2009-03-25T13:59:00.002+02:00

I tried Zoho Write this morning.

I decided to give up desktop office for an online office.
So far I used mostly Google. I use Spreadsheets a lot, and Documents less but also a lot. I tried Presentations and did not like it at all.

Now its time to see if Google is best of breed or not.

So today I tried Zoho Write . I did not try their spreadsheets or presentations.

My conclusions are as follows. As you probably know, I am a software developer and one of my company products works with Google Spreadsheets, so I might be biased.

Google Documents is, in my experience, more responsive then Zoho Write. I had to wait until Zoho loads. Zoho has a more pleaseing (subjectively) UI.

Both are far inferiour (except for collaboration and price of cause) to MS Word.
Main drawback - inability to create Styles without going into CSS (a very dirty technical term). This is not a big problem for me, as a software developer, but a no-go in a general purpose application, IMHO. Even with CSS, one can only modify headings 1 to 6 and couple of other things. One can't easily create new styles, or at least I don't know how. Zoho seems to be the same way. The difference is that Google keeps CSS with the document, and Zoho wants you to point to outside CSS, which requires someone to own a domain or at least have ready access to hosting. It makes it even harder on a non-tech user. The advantage is instant consistency of the documents look, which is good for corporate.

Which is exactly the point - Zoho is business focused. They have many more applications for business users, like CRM. Google is more consumer oriented, or at least their business focus is less obvious.

If I am to complain about Google Documents (though of cause I like it and use it), here is a short list. Editing long documents sucks. Bugs sometimes scroll you all the way up, and you have to scroll back down. "Normal" style formatting applied to a paragraph often is lost and you have to reapply it again (Ctrl-0). With long documents "Outline mode" of Microsoft Office is important. Google does not have it (neigher does Zoho). Table of content (TOC) is important and both Google and Zoho offer it, but Google's (don't know about Zoho) always have 2 levels. It is not good if you, like I, create an outline of the document first. Your table of content is too big and occupies too much space to be useful. I need to be able to have level1 only.

The big winner is Google Spreadsheet which is almost as good as Excel, if you don't need advanced features. A terrific applicaiton. I am slowly but surely move most of my bookkeeping to it.

Importantly both Google and Zoho have APIs which means 3rd party applications / addons will be available. I can personally vouch for the quality of that of Google. Google do want to encourage addons. One example, salesforce.com and its developement platform Force.com, has Google Document integration built in.

Google also wins in the brand recognition area. Everyone knows it. People learned to trust it. Zoho is a virtual unknown to most of people I bring it up with. Google has a good promotion vehicle - gmail. It offers open attached documents online.

So I shall keep using Google, try Zoho other applications and keep my eyes peeled for other online Offices. There are two more (even less known then Zoho) to review.

Online flowchart applications: Gliffy vs Flowchart.com

2009-03-14T12:33:00.004+02:00

I am slowly moving over to online office. I try and do all my new documents in Google, Spreadsheets in Google. Presentations I still do on my computer, because my last experience with Google Presentations was so painful that I'll wait another year before I return to it.

For Documents I often need pictures. Mostly those are screenshots, sometimes diagrams. Very rarely - illustrations.

I decided I want to give online diagramming a try.

There are two that I knew of, gliffy.com and flowchart.com. Gliffy was around for a while. I once fancied an idea to write my own in Silverlight, but looking around I found Gliffy and decided it is good enough for me to not bother replicating. Flowchart.com is new, currently (March 2009) in private beta.

I did a little in both. Flowchart.com is a richer in functionality, more intuitive to me, and I think more of a technological achievement being AJAX, while gliffy is Flash.
Flowchart has better collection of clipart.

Yet I decided to stick to Gliffy for two reasons. Its editing a bit snappier, but more importantly it exports vector based SVG.
Flowchart only exports PNG (raster) and PDF. I could have probably extract vector information from PDF if I had to, but Gliffy is an alternative good enough.
There is one feature of Gliffy that might annoy many - for a free account anything you create is public. If you want private diagrams, you have to get premium account. I don't care for my diagrams to leak, but some might.

For web application it is crucial to export in as many formats as possible because its results are to be used in concert with other applications, and one can make no assumptions as to which.
SVG is a standard. For a vector application not to support it is tantamaunt to not caring of its users or wanting to lock them in and deny any chance for interoperability or both. I wish flowchart.com will remedy their missing of SVG soon.

Google Document as a Web Site

2009-01-09T22:05:00.002+02:00

In a linkedin forum for startups someone asked what web framework is best to quickly create an small informational web site. Replies covered every existing technology in sight, PHP, Ruby what not.
I suggested Google Documents. Here is the rant.

I have a strange suggestion. If it is informational - start with Google Document and publish it. Google documents are versioned and can be co-edited. Granted, you are limited in your design. And it is not a way to grow into web application. But if you want to start cheap (free), make update a breath, never worry about uptime, it could be a good start. You can always get the HTML of it later, if you decide to move to a framework. I did not do exactly that, but close enough - i published my web application help (tutorial) as google document. That way I can share it with editors / translators, update instantly from wherever I happen to be.Check it out http://docs.google.com/View?docID=dfxdw68m_55c5h6hxdg&revision=_latest&pageview=1&hgd=1I made it deliberately look like print, but it is my choice. Google documents give you access to CSS (sorry for technicality) which means you can customize look no end. I did not need it so far but I like I have an option.
This is not for the lack of web skills. After all we at ggnattic are all seasoned web devs. It is for the sake of ultimate convenience.

Dog-Fooding

2008-11-23T13:19:00.003+02:00

I was reading an article about Visual Studio 2010, next generation Microsoft developement toolset. What cought my eye was not the features. It was dog-fooding practice so wide spread in Microsoft. Dog-fooding or "eating your own dog-food", is the practice of a company using its own products internally. Microsoft employees browsing internet on IE is doog fooding. It is trivial now that IE is a market leader, but it was true when IE was in its infancy and Netscape Navigator ruled the web.

It touched the nerve with me. I am dog-fooding. I use gganttic, my project mangement software, every day for my own projects.
Since gGanttic is based on Google office applications I made decision to use Google Documents and spreadsheets for everything. So I am eating Google's dog-food full time.

What is obvious to me that Google Document developers are not dog-fooding.
I am dead sure the specificaiton of the next version of Google Documents is not written in Google Documents. The sheer amount of problems I face when writing a lengthy document with a number of images shows me that I am probably in a tiny nimority of Google serious users. And that Google developers are not in this minority, at least not many of them. For which I am sorry.

For their own sake, as for their users, they should start working with those applications for real.

Economic Crisys and Google Office

2008-11-12T16:25:00.006+02:00

Economic crisys is upon us. All of us. Wherever we are. In the intangled world of today noone is exampt from feeling it. To cope one has to cut spending to what is necessary. This much is trivial.

I predict that in that environment more people then usual will want to try Google Docs which I like to call Google Office. Google got gMail and Calendar, Documents (word editor), Spreadsheets, and Presentation. They all are web 2.0 applications, which I call HTML/CSS/Javascript applications doing enough on client and use Ajax well enough to create good responsiveness.

So far I did not see users giving up on their Microsoft Office or even Open Office and marching on to Google Office.

I am working on a Google Docs integrated Project like appliction to fill the void Google left in that area. Our team made decision to use Google Docs exclusively. It was and still is a right decision. Because now I know first hands the good the bad and the ugly sides of them.

I belive that in down economy one should try it. It is free. I encourage you to do so. It allows collaboration, which is important when travel budgets are slashed.
On the same breath, I want to manage your expectations a bit. You might discover it is too early for you.

(Added on 2008-11-15, I just found the fresh Business Week article saying the same thing:

CHEAP TECH FOR HARD TIMES
By Steve Hamm

As the U.S. enters what appears likely to be a painful recession, a major shift is taking place in how businesses assess technology products. They’re under terrific pressure to cut costs. According to a newly revised forecast from market researcher IDC, growth in U.S. tech spending will decline to 0.9% in 2009, down from a previous forecast of 4.9% growth. But rather than just slice budgets across the board, many companies are switching to a handful of new technologies that save them money. These technologies existed during the last recession, but they were immature. Now they’re established, and the downturn seems likely to hasten their adoption. Chief among them are software delivered over the Internet, known as cloud computing, such as Google Apps...)

Google Office - the Good The Bad and The Ugly.

The good - it is online. It runs on every major browser and every OS. It passes the minimal requirements test in terms of usability and features. It is free. It is highly collaborative. It is, to a degree, integrated. It is constantly evolving and improving. It is versioned (Docs, Spreadsheets) meaning you can get back to old versions. It got API, meaning 3rd party applications can be added to make use of the core set and complement the missing features.

The bad - some applications are more mature then others. gMail, Calendar and Spreadsheets are better then the rest (In My Humble Opinion). Ajax, the technology Google use limits what is easy or even possible to do. No use of Flash or Silverlight makes it run on every browser with nothing else installed, but limits in many ways.

The ugly - sometimes the limitations of Ajax make you cry. Many bugs. Long documents are very hard to edit in Documents. For some reason Documents renamed my internal bookmarks. It all means that Google Office is for early adopters, not mainstream and not for enterprise where reliability is crucial.

I am prepared to live with bad and the ugly. I am set to improve it where I can (see www.gganttic.com). That is because it evolves. I see improvements all the time. Being early adopter I am more tolerant to rough edges, hoping to win by being first to ride the paradigm shift.

Wheter Google Office is right for you I can not say. And you can not say either, unless you try. Do it.

Good .NET hosting - DiscountASP.net

2008-11-07T21:36:00.003+02:00

It is hard to find a good hosting service for your .NET application. I have had serveral, and kept looking until I found the one which I want to recommend.
It is DiscountASP.net (sometimes abbreviated as DASP by the community)

I used it for my personal domain, for couple of clients and now for my new startup. All is shared hosted.
I like the price, and because of it can live without phone support. I would rather them lower prices further then provide phone support, really.

I have opend couple of tickets over time, and was generally satisfied. Was long ago, so sorry I don't recall specifics. I use FTP all the time and it is fast enough. I do stuff in control panel, define web applications etc, and it is responsive and logicaly organized.
One thing that I value is quick adaptation of new Microsoft technologies. I am on the bleading edge and need the latest stuff.
Another strength is site layout. I tried one even cheaper hosting at a company where I regsitered my domain and was very disappointed by their web site organization. I could hardly find the way to control panel, through pile of advertising and different other services. DASP focuses on hosting and is modest in their attempts to cross and up sell.

There were several small outages that I recall. With Amazon down twice this year what you can expect? Nobody is 99.999, i am convinced. DASP was IMHO well within the reasonably dependent service definition. Suffice to say my application breaks so much more then the hoster, that it will take me time when DASP becomes the reliability bottleneck.

Google Documents allow CSS editing

2008-11-02T01:27:00.002+02:00

I have noticed that recently, Google Documents allow CSS editing.
It was there for a while, I simply did not do much of Google Document writing lately.
Now I am back into it. I am writing a long Tutorial document. This Tutorial ought to look well. Hence my interest in the subject.

People reaction to it, from the comment I have seen, range from positive - it allows customization of the look - to negative. The negative is interesting. Commenters point out that CSS is too technical for a general purpose Word processor. They claim GD is on the path to becoming an HTML editor. This rubs many technical readers the wrong way - to them nothing is wrong with HTML.

I personally adore CSS and what it allows me to do. One thing, before I start tweaking my TUtorial CSS, I'll go out Googling for CSS libraries for Google Documents. I am sure someone did some good work already that I can benefit from.

There is, however, a point in the "too technical" argument.

Microsoft Word allows control over styles, but only via a hierarchy of dialogs. I would agree that CSS can be intimidating for newbies. That is why Dreamweaver, and it hard to get more professional in HTML then that, have dialogs to create/edit styles.

I assume there is somebody at google who monitors user reaction to new features.
If those who claim GD is "too technical" are the majority, then at some point we'll see Style Dialog coming to fore, and CSS hidden somewhere.

Still being able to customize styles, one way or another, is, IMHO, a huge step forward.

Google Chrome - why it can't be my default browser

2008-09-03T11:33:00.002+03:00

Google is out with the new browser Google Chrome. The most important features, for me are - it has minimalistic interface and an run web applications in a window with no "chrome" at all.

Chrome is the lingo for the UI of the browser itself. IE and Firefox are crowded with menu items and toolbars. Each add-in you add, and some are very useful, so it is not dissing them in any way, crowds the chrome. Google Chrome kills all of the browser UI for web applications. I am writing this blog post in a window where only toolbar belongs to the browser. The rest is the webtop. So Google Chrome's name is kind of tongue in the cheek thing. Google Chrome is chrome-less.

Another good feature is speed, with Google V8 JavaScript engine is said to work very fast, faster then FF3.

What disappoints me? Two things. One is my Silverlight 2.0 applciation will not work in the current implementation of Chrome. And the other is my Roboform will not work with it. Roboform is the password manager. I routinely sign into 30 web sites/ web applications. I use Google's own Documents trying to move to Google "office" exclusively and do without Microsoft Office. To be able to sign in instantly is the key for that. Roboform allowed that. And Roboform does not work with Chrome yet.

There is an open source and free alternative to Roboform, called PassKey. I did not see reports it works with Chrome. If it does, I'll switch over from Roboform to PassKey instantly.

I could have asked Chrome to remember my passwords. I don't like it. I like to be in control, that is one. I want to carry my passwords around with me on the flashdrive that is another reason.
So, currently, I shall use Chrome to browse the net, and IE / FF to actually have my work done.

Python/Django or Ruby On Rails?

2008-08-17T18:24:00.002+03:00

I am architecting a big multimillion user web service, version 2. It is going to be a complete rewrite of version 1. Its current implementation is PHP. I consider if to stay with PHP or move over to Python or Ruby. The service has reporting and administration modules so GUI framework is relevant somewhat.

My current choice is Python. And the reason why I choose it over Ruby is that I feel it is going to be much harder to find Ruby people then Python people.
I visited Israeli Ruby on Rails user group meetings. The people there are bright and passionate, but they are too few to count.

By the way here is how NOT to try and hire good Ruby developer.
Just funded company Confidela posts this killer line in job description for Server Architect
Advantage:
- Experience in Rubby On Rails

One should be really desperate to want to work for a company where people don't know any beter or where hiring manager does not proof what HR people put on their web site.

A man in the Arena

2008-05-01T16:17:00.003+03:00

Techcrunch is a place I (MK, gGanttic's interim CEO) visit regularly. I am also subscribed to its daily email. In my value scale, that is the highest mark a web site ever gets.

I recalled his post "A man in the Arena" recently. You should read it, if you want to understand what drives us the team behind gGanttic. We are going to change the world or die trying.

Analogy of a tech entrepreneur to a gladiator is a good one, to me. Following it a bit farther, a gladiator needs armor and it is the money investors provide. gGanttic is pre-seed, meaning we are a Man in the Arena going against the horrors of the world armed with nothing more then our skill. How's that for chutzpahs?

One might assume, judging on how crazy that sounds, we're a typical teenage hackers with lots of time and a readily available basement. And you'd be wrong. We are all industry veterans with 15 years of experience each, held senior positions in software development and marketing, all over 35 y.o., all married with children.

So why all of us, respected professionals, with family obligations, leave behind the tranquility of "normal" life and jump into the Arena?

My personal answer to this, is that at certain point a man who always wanted to change the world understands he can. It is a happy coincidence it happened to us individually at the same time, so that we can do something about it collectively.

P.S. And in Israel, where it doesn't snow and rails not so much, underground garage is a rarity.

Question on GData forums about Silverlight

2008-05-01T15:55:00.003+03:00

That was the question asked on Feb 6, 2008 on GData forums.
I have blogged about it in my Silverlight Blog (that is being deprecated, as I aggregate my disparate blogs back into one)

Here is my post, relevant to about 2 month ago.

I am using Silverlight Alpha 1.1 with Google Spreadsheets. You can check it out at
www.gganttic.com
It is a Gantt chart based project management that stores tasks in Google Spreadsheets. The Gantt control is SL 1.1 based.

SL currently does not work cross domain. I hit this limitation several months back.
So I started using GData .NET client library on the server end to proxy.
it was said (don't remember where) that SL 1.1 when released (it is going to be released as SL 2.0) will do cross-domain.
I did not want to wait for it. So here is the better way.

It is to do the communication in JavaScript layer, above SL.
SL is good in communicating between control and outside DOM environment.
So SL can throw an event, that is wired to a GData function, this function calls asynchronously a server (which can be any domain)
receives JSON data, calls into SL control via SL scriptable methods.
Scriptable are methods of SL that are marked so (if you are C#, it is [Scriptable] attribute on top of a method)

There is one drawback to it, the parsing logic would have to be in JS.
So for the time being I am doing it still with my server. There is a lot of guesswork involved in trying to understand which column of spreadsheet means what metadata of a task - so it is best done in C#.

A word of warning. Just like Frank (the guy on GData team) suspected, SL has a tiny subset of .NET framework. So GData .NET library would not even compile - it would need core classes SL has not gotten. It makes sense - SL is only 4.5 M download so Microsoft had to cut on everything.
I initially hoped I could use Netika control. Netika guys did a great work adding virtually all of Windows.Forms classes to SL.
It did not work. First Netika control is 900K, too much for my taste, and second it did not compile anyway. Incomplete implementation.

So the bottom line:
- In the future you'll be able to call GData feeds direct from SL, but you'll have to modify .NET library or write your own parser for the feeds.
- there is a good way of communicating cross domain using JavaScript library. GData has got JS lib for Calendar and Blogger, if I am not mistaken.

Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 impressions

2008-05-01T15:51:00.000+03:00

I am working to port our project management application to Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1.
I am almost done. Though I have not touched some areas of SL2, I touched enough to form an impression.

SL2 is a good successor to SL1.1, delivering on all the promises made.
It is in Beta, which means you can find bugs and rough edges without really trying that hard. But it is a stable product which I find I would use in production.
For all the problems I had, I found solutions very quickly.

I shall post my more detailed review in the future posts. I just this out quickly. If you develop Rich Internet Application, SL2 is ready. There may be other thing to consider when you make the choice, but technology is robust enough to be in the short list.

Google and Microsoft and how I came to write my Google-Microsoft hybrid application

2008-05-01T15:48:00.000+03:00

The story of my online project management application (RIA or rich internet application) is this. I managed development team of a startup company.
I was (still am) a fun of spreadsheets way of managing tasks and schedules)

One day my CEO liked to visually see where we are, all in real time. I could have imported excel to MS Project, but that is not real time.
So the CEO hired a consulting company to set up Microsoft Project Server. That was done. We as a team struggled with all kinds of problems until about one month later we killed the idea, cut losses and I went back to Excel.

Yet something in an idea of collaboratively manage task list over the web clicked with me and I started to sketch the list of requirements.

Top one (#1) is - easy to use, instant to start using. It should be PM for the rest of us. Many people who manage projects are not professional project managers.
And people who are being managed, those people who actually make projects succeed or fail, should have zero resistance to the tool. I don't ask for love. That will come later. I only ask for getting past all the defenses we put against anything new.

Then, it should be interactive. This means it is online, accessible from everywhere by everyone simultaneously if they want to. And it means that whatever you do you see the result at once. That is #2.

Integrated with a Calendar that other people can see is my #3. Projects are about people and time. Time one can dedicate to a task is really depends on what else that one is doing. Is she on vacation? Is she having 7 hours of unrelated meeting on every average day? Is there a holiday in India where you outsourced that particular task?

#4. Integrated with Communication tools and Documents system. Projects are about people and communication. People communicate in two ways - instantly and via capturing knowledge and thoughts in documents. So my ideal PM tool should work very naturally with email, phone, IM creating context for communication. And it should facilitate right documents being created and quickly accessed.

#5. It should be visual. Easy to grasp at one glance. I don't know if this qualifies as a separate point. May be it is part of "instant" and "easy".

These are my 5 points. Not many. But they are hard to do right. Many tried. All I have seen, and I am pro actively looking all the time, fail.

I think I can do better because I borrow from the excellent tools Google and Microsoft collectively provide.

How do you make something easy? You cut on all the fat you can find in terms of functionality. And you use the tools and metaphor the people are already used to.
Minimalistic approach is characteristic to Google Applications. I like that. And the applications are similar. I like that a lot. Every time I find differences between Documents and Spreadsheets I want to cry.

I see many posts in various blogs about the lists of RIA tools that small businesses can use. My biggest problem is that those tools each use their own UI conventions and design. So, I say to myself, my PM tool should blend into "Google Office". It will remove the obstacle of learning UI for those who use it already. With Gmail and Calendar so popular, I get a free ride on UI familiarity front.

What I wish Google would improve is the speed. And that I doubt will happen. That is because Goolge is tied to AJAX, HTML and Javascript. It is not interactive enough. And if it is a concern for a text tool, it is a dead spell for a visual tool.

That is where Silverlight comes to rescue. The application, compiled, together with as complex logic as you care to program, resides on a client. There is a download time, but other then that ( and there are ways to help that too) it is every inch is as instant as your desktop application. Flash was another candidate, but lost in a match, and I'll write about it in the future.

Another part of "instant" is to integrate with Google Spreadsheets (GS).
Many people use Excel (and I foresee many will use GS) for task management. That is because Microsoft Project is too complex. Excel on the other hand is instant. Simple. Easy. I was doing it forever, it now seems, yet felt guilty about it. Until I read Joel Spolsky's post on how to use Excel for painless scheduling.

So my PM application message to the world would be - using Spreadsheets for PM is OK. The list a convenient metaphor. Timeline with milestones is just another metaphor. Both are fine. Sometimes you need one more then the other. It is good to have both. Spreadsheets gives you one. gGanttic gives you the other.

That is where I am today - developing a PM application in Silverlight on top of Google Applications (Spreadsheets for tasks now, and Calendar for time management couple of versions down)
I find Silverlight technology, C# 3.5 language and Visual Studio tools an excellent set to develop with. I find Google Apps an excellent platform to built on top of.

Some say Microsoft and Google are two poles of todays internet.
Yet I find it easy to benefit from whatever each does best. I am a bipolar developer.

Silverlight 2.0 and Rich Client

2008-04-22T16:28:00.002+03:00

I am porting our online project management tool to Silverlight 2.0 Beta from Silverlight 1.1 Alpha and think about a heated discussion with a Javascript guru I used to know.
He said - Javascript is not a language to write complex applications with. That is because I, as an Architect pumped more and more functionality to the client. The guy was opposing it, asking to offload more and more functionality to the server.

I tried to point to what I belive is the sign of the times - Google GData Javascript library. Google, as you might know, has a number of web applciations, like Google Calendar or Google Spreadsheet. That is good. What is great, which is better then good, is that Google provides an API for 3rd parties to work with those applciations. What is super-great, is that Google wrap this raw API into an opensource libraries in several langauges, so that 3rd party developers, like I am, can bring up their applications faster to the market. That makes it good to the developers and obviously to Google as well.

Most of those libraries are for the server side. They are Java, PHP, Python and .NET. However there is a new one, for Javascript. It is limited. I think at the time of this writing it works with Calendar and Blogger, but I may be mistaken.
Yet it is a huge leap forward because if the underlying meaning that applications should be client-rich. They should be loaded from a server, sure, but then they should pull from all kind of web services on their own, from the client, eleminating wait time, load to the originating server and making for a better user experience.

So as an architect I advokated rich yet decidedly web client, and that meant Javascript. But the guru says, Javascript is not good for that. Json responses based on the injected script tag are evel. (Sorry for the tech jargon. That was the last one for this post).

Now comes Silverlight 2.0. And it is cross-domain enabled. This means that apart from rich XAML based graphics and C# coded logic and full scale of .NET controls framework, the RIA now can stop doing everything though its mothership server.

This makes wonders for the server scalability but that is a small win compared to why I am so excited. It means tru rich applciation, where communication is going to be fast, and user experience immediate.

Let us live in an interesting times

2008-04-01T15:59:00.001+03:00

We live in an interesting time. Google dominates the web, Microsoft dominates the desktop. Google builds an online Google Office currently made out of Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentation. Microsoft is #3 web property and wants to buy Yahoo, going after web ad market which is currently Google's. Microsoft has 80% of the browsers market.

So there is a titan's battle we shall be watching. For me, who is both a user of both companies' products, and a developer using both companies' platforms for applications I develop, the time is double exciting.

Both companies want you on their site. Both want you to extend their products with useful add-ons, mashups, whatever. Both want to become the platform of tomorrow. And there should be a winner, at least one.

Both powers make quick moves. The moves that change the competitive landscape for us small ISVs.

So one has to watch it closely and try to figure out how exactly a small fry like I am can manage to survive in the heat of the superpowers nuking each other.
The war like this, there is always an opportunity. One can get rich taking sides, if of cause he is not get killed by the stray bullet intended to someone else.

Should Musicians get Paid?

2008-03-23T20:23:00.001+02:00

I side with mr arrington more or less. what scares me is the fate of another kind of creative talent, namely software developers. marginal cost of replicating my program is about the same as Braggs’ song.
As a software developer i can not do live performance. What do I do?
What do I do?
Seriously speaking, developers found the way of giving out light version and charge for the pro version. Web developers try and live from the ads.
So may be, just may be musicians should copycat. Publish half-songs on the Bebo! Publish songs with off-key singing in the middle! No wait, ad model is even better. Replace the last verse with something about Coca Cola. Like:
“Hey Hey Hey you got a free version of the song, drink coca cola or better yet download the adfree song for a buck, yea yea”.

One another model I just dreamed up is for musicians to really price their free songs as an “investment”. Consider this. A musician comes to a social net and says - I want to publish on your net. Depending on my materials’ popularity I want some stock options. We are talking about some real real small micro percentage. It is not unreasonable to ask. I can imaging a social net that would like to attract people doing things like that.
Why not? Allocate 3% for musicians just like you allocate and VCs expect you to, 15% for employees. Bum musicians will not get a dime because nobody will be downloading or recommending their stuff. So it is popularity / merit based. This is truly venture based. Even better, since songs are replicable, unline VC money, a musician can place his songs in several places.

Musicians of the world, unite.

Wait a sec. It is too late. Popular social nets are already too big to cut you in. Sorry. Go performe live in a restourant. I heard that is where Bebo founders will be spending their money. That is where the money for musicians is.

Three things (two of Kant and one of my own)

2008-03-20T18:02:00.000+02:00

Thee things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me, the moral law within me and my computer code in front of me.

Joys of ASP.NET hosting

2008-02-23T22:01:00.002+02:00

I have had a half day outage of my personal domain kariv.com today. It is hosted at godaddy.com. THe reason was "application pool" starvation. I tried to figure what I did wrong for about 3 hours, before calling their support. Once I did, and spent 40 min on the line it was fixed. Of those 40 min, 10 I was waiting for an agent, 5 for identifying me (logging into my paypal, finding the numbers and reading out to the agent), 15 for her trying to troubleshoot the problem, 10 for second tier support to actually figuring it out.

It could have been worse. But I am still unsatisfied. I am going to move to discountasp.net which is the best asp.net hosting out there. lots of awards. And my experience with them for several years was nothing short of excellent.

Godaddy will stay my registrar. THe current one I use, idregister, is too small and too hard to reach.

Google Apps for small business

2008-02-20T16:30:00.002+02:00

As I keep working on gganttic (www.gganttic.com) I am more and more aware of Google Apps powers. The latest example is the use of blogger for our internal discussions.

Once I have ported all my archtectural and product managment documentation to Google Docs and shared it, I becaome to consider building our discussion threads around Google Documents. Our functional architect suggested using blog instead. So we have blogger account that non except of us insiders can read. And boy it is useful.

We dutifully tag the posts with "labels". Then it is easy to find all relevant postings using labels.

Today I discovered the Polling plugin. Create a question and 4 versions of the answer. You post in on the blog. You set the target date. One can revise one's vote at any time (i guess until the due date)

I assume that some discussions will become valuable enough to form into a document. But for the living discussions I like blogs better.

gGanttic is out

2008-02-07T08:39:00.001+02:00

My pet project, gGanttic is out
You can check it out at www.gganttic.com

gGanttic is a Gantt chart centric online project management that stores tasks in Google Spreadsheets. So you can see the Gantt chart (bar chart) or you can edit your tasks in Google Spreadsheets. Simultaneously with other developers.

I started this project after we tried to use Microsoft Project server. It did not work for us. Lots of logistical and technical problems, even though we brought in expert consultants. And all client access is ActiveX based, so no luck for our Macintosh guys.

Being fascinated about Google applications and Microsoft Silverlight technology I decided to write my own. It currenly is very bare bones. But it will grow.
It shines where it counts (for me) - collaboration and anyplace availability.

Separating Silverlight issues to a new blog - LightSilver

2007-12-05T12:50:00.000+02:00

I was blogging mostly on the SL issues lately.
Hence a new blog. I shall post on SL exclusively there.
This blog will be kept to my more general thoughts.

Google AdSense and Silverlight

2007-12-03T19:06:00.000+02:00

I was thinking about Rich Internet Applications (RIA) written in Silverlight. Think about a page with a title and big nice Silverlight control. Think about whole of Outlook implemented as a Silverlight control. It would be a great applciation, wouldn't it? Now as an author of such applciation, I would definitely want to get paid. I could charge for use, or I could use advsrtising.

AdSense is Google's adverstising revenue sharing programme. I have no experience with it. To try it first hand I included AdSense module to this blog. But right now as I write this, I rely more of what I read then personal experience.
What I understand is that google's bot (Metabot) would connect to my pages, analyze its content and then decide what ads to show. It can work great for blogs. It can work nice for average web pages based on HTML or even DHTML. It completely eludes me how will such bot peek into what is happening inside Silverlight control of mine.

Worse thing could happen. Bad guys try to defraud advertisers creating all kind of expoits. They reportedly create automatic clicking systems, or pages consisting entirely of ads etc. Google have to fight back. They also have to automate their decisions. So once i have this empty page with SIlverlight control, I have no idea if Google would not decide it is some kind of new exploit, and ban me for life.

So, what do I do?

Google Adsense help forum seems to have an answer.And the answer seems to be yes. But I am not convinced. I could believe they search XAML file. But what if I generate Silverlight elements programmatically? In my Outlook knockoff application, I'd bring the email and calendar items via JSON calls - how would their bot know that?

Silverlight Poor Man's Unit Test

2007-12-02T21:46:00.000+02:00

Everyone knows Unit Tests are good, and Visual Studio 2008 excells in that, but unfortunately the built in testing projects will not accept Silverlight Assemblies as references. There are some creative ideas circling, from sharing your Silverlight files between SL and non-SL projects to compiling frameworks (e.g. NUnitLite) in SL.

I did neither. I wrote my own SL unit test framework. It looses to standard unit test frameworks on all counts save one. It has just one method of 5 lines of code:


private void Assert(bool condition)
{
TextBlock tb = new TextBlock();
tb.SetValue(Canvas.TopProperty, 30 * this.Children.Count);
tb.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush((condition) ? Color.FromRgb(30, 255, 30) : Color.FromRgb(255, 0, 0));
tb.Text = new System.Diagnostics.StackTrace().GetFrame(1).GetMethod().Name;
this.Children.Add(tb);
}

Here is how to use.
Create a Silveright project. Don't touch XAML, it was generated with the root canvas and that is enough. Past the above Assert function inot the genrated cs file. Add any number of test methods, all void and parameterless. Each test method ends with the call to Assert with some condition. True conditions will result in the method name printed in green on the canvas. Erroenous methods will be printed red. That is all to it.

Unusual use of Silverlight in your web page

2007-12-02T07:19:00.000+02:00

For someone who is building web 2.0 application, Silverlight presentes an interesting question. Yes, it is a very powerful technology. Yes, I am sure it is superior to Flash/Flex, and far superiour to Ajax/Js/DHTML in terms of ease of developement and coding productivity. Yet Js is 100% omnipresent, and Flash is not far behind. SL numbers are not known to me at this point, but 1.1 being an Alpha, I should assume they are tiny. What does one do?

That, common wisdom goes, depends on the application. If you writing something for a controlled environment - say an intranet applet 10 people would ever use - you can insist on SL.
Else go DHTML or Flash.

One advantage of SL beyond ease of dev - C#, VS2008, all that - is the speed of execution. It is compiled and optimized. JS is interpreted. Techcrunch compares the two as a Ferrary to a bicycle.

So here is my suggestion. Write Javascript. Yet offer user an option to install SL and then use it as an invisible accelerator. You can know in JS if SL is installed. If yes - use it. If no - download your utilities js file.

It will work for everyone. Yet for the brave souls who dear install alpha technology from Microsoft it will work much faster.

Yes, it is coding twice. There are JS to C# converters There are C# to JS converters too, if memory serves me right. So it is not double work.
I assume your application is client-side heavy. It should be if you care for your user experience. Then the user experience will be so much better for early adopters. You'll be gratified with a core of reliable user base. That base will only grow becaues SL will gradually become 100%.

Silverlight and Printing

2007-12-02T07:10:00.000+02:00

I am still hot on Silverlight 1.1. One big limitation I have just found - it does not print. That is if the browser page is printed, the content of the control will be printed too - but as a bitmap, not vector. To understand how big a limitation that is, consider the resolution of a monitor - 72 dpi (dot per int) vs normal lazer or ink-jet printers - 600, sometimes 300 dpi.

One other problem - it shall only print the visible part. Say your control shows a bar chart that is bigger then your page - then you have in-control scroll bars.

By the way at the time of this writing Silverlight 1.1 alpha does not have a built-in scroll bar. I had to find one created in VB for text blocks and rewrite it in C# and extend for canvas)

Back on subject - printing the page would print only the visible part. What a bummer.

A workaround is to send to server, bake up a PDF, send it back, and ask user to print.
Another possiblity would be to create a VML or SVN, depending on what browser you have IE or FireFox, but that is all so much overhead.

There is a thread on Silverlight forums where people vote for including printing capability to the SL control. I voted. Hope it helps.

Three Monitors Club

2007-11-12T06:28:00.000+02:00

I have been feeling for a while that 2 monitors setup I have in my home office is insufficient to ever increasing complexity of my tasks. I mean browsing internet, software and web developement, graphics works and the likes. Actually i do it all except video editing (but will soon) and gaming (not plan to anytime soon)

Hm... To be completely honest it is my growing kid (Fossa) that now requires to watch cartoons on my computer, that makes 3 monitor system necessary. One monitor is for cartoons. Only then I can get some things done on my Fossa-watch. I am a perfect modern father. One monitor per toddler.

I have used Matrox G cards for al long as I care to remember. Matrox was a strong contender in the g cards once. Now it is completely blown away by ATI and NVidia. I still have G550 card and for a long time I was sure it will move to my next system as well. Matrox is not about gaming - so its GPU is weak and therefore does not require a dedicated fan to cool. I hate computer noise and I don't game - Matrox is a good solution for me.

But now that I want 3 monitors, I consider my options. The good discussion of options is here http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000740.html

Basically here are the options

Two PCI Express cards on 8x/16x slots. People recommend GeForce 7600 pro or an ATI coutnerpart
One dual mon card, plus an extra simple card on PCI. This option does not require a new mobo (mother board)
Software solution - that is if you have another computer with a monitor - there are programs that would run video from one computer on the monitor of another. Maxivista and an opensource alternatives are mentioned.
Matrox TripleHead2Go. Seems a very good solution except that it does not have "dual monitor" mode - the os (operating system, windows) sees 3 monitors as a very wide one.

My gripe, there is no ideal solution. There are good ones - but none is without a compromise.

I would buy TH2G. It is matrox, the brand i know. It is quiet. It is external. Not really imprtant for me now, but I might consider a monster laptop as a desktop replacement.

Probably I'll opt for a new system and two PCI express cards.

In the meantime I could have a slower card on the PCI bus - after all i don't need all 3 mons to be fast. It is good for text work which is most of what i do anyway. Two others i'll use when doing graphics.

Or may be while I am deliberating (which always takes time) Matrox will upgrade TH2G. Would be ideal.

Contributing to Community

2007-07-22T03:33:00.000+03:00

I was for a while thinkin how I can contribute to the community. Open Source project could be one. I shall consider this blog as a service to community when it gets more traffic then it does now. So I sitting here at WordCamp (see previous post) and the fine folks at WordPress do solicit help at their documentation area. I think I might consider using ViViD to diagram some of their lessons.

WordCamp Day 1

2007-07-22T03:20:00.000+03:00

I am sitting at the WordCamp, a two days get together. This is sponsored by WordPress.com and certain presentations are WordPress oriented. Some, not all. For 25 bucks you get so much that it is Ok with me that they do some self-promotion.

First day an interesting sessions were two. First was a panel of John Dvorak and Om Mailk, and I lerned some useful stuf from it. One is that Bloggers should not use

Matt Cutts, SEO engineer from Google, did presentation on SEO blog optimization. Nicely done. To the point, yet entertaining. One thing to remember is to use ALT tags in images. Another to use keywords as part of URL.

There was one very technical presentation about usability, not too interesting for me. There was one interesting fact menitoned. Google did A/B testing and expand number of search results from default 10 to 25. In 3 hours they lost 3 million of search advertising worth. People don't like waiting. People don't like scrolling.

ViVID for Blogger #2

2007-07-04T15:50:00.000+03:00

This posting is another example in simple vivid based diagramming.
Vivid begins.
ViViD.
"ViViD Clip Web".
"ViViD Clip".
"ViViD Web Application".
"ViViD Vizualization Web Service".
//----------------------------- this is a comment --------
"ViViD Clip" belongs to ViViD.
"ViViD Clip" belongs to ViViD.
"ViViD Clip Web" belongs to ViViD.
"ViViD Clip Web" belongs to ViViD.
"ViViD Vizualization Web Service" belongs to "ViViD Clip Web".
"ViViD Vizualization Web Service" belongs to "ViViD Clip Web".
"ViViD Web Application" belongs to "ViViD Clip Web".
"ViViD Web Application" belongs to "ViViD Clip Web".

vivid ends.

ViViD for Blogger

2007-07-04T09:28:00.000+03:00

As you know, as a hobby I write a piece of software called ViViD.
ViViD stands for "verbal to visual". ViViD, to put in simply, converts written text into a visualization. Simplest visualization is a diagram.

Currently ViViD ability is limited. To use it you have to the subset of English language ViViD supports. But once you did, you can use 10 words to crate a picture that worth 1000 words. What else gives you 10o times return on investment?

Now I am integrating ViViD with Blogger. Blogger editor does not allow 3rd party add-ons.
However the published Blog can have HTML page element. So if you paste an HTML that I wrote, visitors to your site will be able to see visualization of your top item by clicking one button.

Here is a simple example. You see ViViD button on the right hand column? Click it. What you'll see is the visualization of the text below
Vivid begins.
User creates Text. User sends Text to ViViD. ViViD creates Picture. ViViD sends the Picture to User.
Vivid ends.

Blogging from Email

2007-07-03T07:21:00.001+03:00

This is my first blog post done via email to Blogger.com

I like this feature. If only it allowed me to add a picture. It does not. Attachments to emails are seemingly ignored.

So I had to add to the blog later, via Blogger web site. The picture I attached to the email did not make it to the blog. Pity. But it was not unexpected. So I had to upload the picture again. These are my two daughters.

Silverlight, Google Gears or Adobe AIR

2007-06-11T22:49:00.001+03:00

The race to take over the world is on. It is not about who has better application anymore. It is not office live vs picasa anymore. It is not even about the suites. Live vs all of google, no it is just appearances. It has long since become clear that applications are the compoments in the grander scale game.
So it is who has better platform. Who is going to redefine the web as we know it.
Google has accumulated enough good web2 applications and more then enough gifted web develoeprs. They are borded. DHTML does not challenge them anymore. So they want a piece of desktop action, and they want you to be offline but still work on your browser. That is why they cram a tiny web server and a tiny open source database into something that lives iniside your browser and allows you to work in your web application Internet or not Internet.

Microsoft thougth along the same line. They realized they need a markup UI. It is about good looks and flexibility. So they have XAML in Vista. Now they about to cram .NET into a plugin, add the very same XAML they already know how to render and all of a sudden you have a mini - Vista inside your browser.

Adobe bought Macromedia for Flash. They always were a good graphics software company. And somehow they developed the world domination ambition. I guesss it was PDF that did it. They think Flash, installed on 100% computers gives them a decent shot. Now Appolo renamed AIR is out. AIR is DHTML that runs locally on your machine instead of the browser.

Who'll win? My crystal ball is crystal clear about it. The one who gets the developers.

Google have great web applications and they work hard to give out the API (called Google Data or GData) for developers to mesh. The problem is that the front end is still DHTML, the environment in which developers have to struggle to do something that works well.

Flash is dominant, so Adobe have some head start. And Flash has all the artistics types strongly behind them. The problem is those types do not count. And the problem is developer tools for Flash suck. Adobe tries to open source Flex3, we'll see how it goes. So far Flex was only marginally better for a pure code writer then DHTML. So people do not switch to it for the ease of use. They do because of vector graphics. Google based most beautiful Analytics reporting features on Flash.

Microsoft shall win this one. Silverlight is in the infancy. But it is conceptually the right thing. Microsoft has clout to stuff it to everybody's throat so 2 years from now it will be 100% on platforms that matter. .NET is a stable platform. Microsoft used its time well. .NET class library and runtime engine came a long way. But the real winner is visual studio. It is so much better then anything else out there except IntelliJ IDEA, and paired with Resharper it is invicible.
I didn't see Orcas yet, but it by the release time it will be 3 years since VS2005 and MS know how to do good tools. Vista will make everyone port to it, meaning developers will get to know VS2008 (orcas). Army of component vendors will be happy to sell you another version of calendar control. Book authors will relabel what they have already written about vista xaml to scream "silverlight" and push it out. The ecosystem will allow microsoft to do in 2 years what took Flash to reach in 10. By the time Ubuntu will own 30% of desktop, and they will because of the price cut Dell will pass along to consumer, it will not matter anymore. Microsoft will control the browser plugin that will be more important then browser.

Who's a looser? Adobe yes. It will vanish. PDF is not enough to save it. Photoshop is not enough. Flash will go the way of $1000 per font cash cow. Google will survive. They have a good suite and will probably be what Mac is today. An platform for the best of us.

I think one unexpecte looser is Apache and linux servers. Once Microsoft owns the client platform (silverlight) and it will, mind you, be cross-platform and run on linux desctops and on macs, they'll do the only logical thing - they'll make Silverlight only talk to their servers. So companies will have to pay up for NT servers (Vista or whatever the incarnation) and IIS.
I don't know how they'll do it. Silverlight can talk XML or Json. So it will require a clever play and I think it will not be one bold move. it will creap in. But watching how ASP.NET has been advancing, I am positive those guys still have what it takes to pull it off.

Google Analytics 2 - good software, bad service

2007-05-30T21:16:00.000+03:00

Can I complain on the defects of a freebe? And the one that overall is fantastic, unmatched and has great value?
I mean renewed Google Analytics engine. The software is fantastic overall. So much that I was frustrated some parts are not as good as the others.

Eny Analytics solution has 2 unequal parts, data gathering and data analysis. Gathering is tranditionally a step child. That is because you only should establish it once. It is the reports and analysis are constantly changing.

GA2, the new incarnation of reporting part, is fantastic. Interactvie maps, pie charts, fannels and goals, yada yada. Marketing guys sallivate over it, and for a good reason. The product is good, and for the price, it is well, fantastic.

On the web, gathering is more tricky then traditional, database driven systems. Google Analytics gather info about a page visit by asking you to attach their javascript file, and place a code snippet on every page. Once the page is loaded, the google code is executed, and the small call is made to the google site, and the call has the id that programmers pasted on every page, and a lot of more information Google provide javascript gathers about the page from the inside, so to speak.

Google gives you more. To dig deeper you can attach calls to GA functions to internal page events. That requires a little explanation. Normal GA call does not need any parameter. That is because GA javascript knows the page name, URL and everything else. Subpages are not known to GA, and it is not easy to place them insdie page-oriented reporting system. GA's solution is simple and genious. The same call CAN have a parameter - a page name. So I can tie the call to a button click, give "fake" page name to it, and then watch GA stats for how many clicked this button.

Then there are funnels. A fantastic feature where you describe the successsion of pages a user needs to visit on their way to the goal. GA then shows the abandonement rate on every page - allowing you to debug the process.

Here is exactly the point where I was (still am) frustrated. For the simple cases GA gives you web based help. Once you want to become creative, and track more complex scenarios, you are out of luck. I am sure it is possible to do what I want(optional steps in the funnel) but I could find the instructions nowhere.

I asked on the forums. GA has several. No reply.

I tried to find their support. Well, surprise, they don't provide any - insted they list partners who do. I can understand that, GA is a free product, but understanding does not solve the problem I have.
Support partners, most are in USA, and none is in Israel. I weighted relocating to california just for that, but decided against it for the time being.

What shoud I do? My wife says she never share my worries about software problems i have -she says there was never a problem i did not eventually solve. I fail explaining to her that sometimes "eventually" does not cut it. This one I have a deadline for.

There are two books on GA2 coming out. I'll buy them and read them, but I need them now, and they are not even printed yet.

That is how I end up having a revolutionary, well done and free of charge product, and I spend so many e-inc complaining about it. What is wrong with me tonight

Silverlight cements Microsoft's world domination

2007-05-20T22:08:00.001+03:00

Microsoft Silverlight is the new technology that, as my crystal ball tells me, will ensure Microsoft domination of web, just as it does the desktop.
I came to this realization not only because I have seen Silverlight spects and examples, but because two more tiny events happen. One, I took a look at Google Analytics. Two, I spoke with a buddy of mine who develop rich web applications in Flex.
Here is how these 3 independent events lead to my realization.
DHTML (HTML +DOM+client side Javascript + Ajax) is difficult to develope and results are mostly quite ugly.
Flash (Adobe Flash, was Macromedia Flash), on the web, equals beauty. Take a look at http://www.coolhomepages.com/, a site I track for more years I care to remember. All the most beautiful pages are flash. It has not always been this way. Flash was a niche technology for a while. It is a commonplace now. One would work hard to find a browser with no Flash Player plug-in installed.
Flash wins because it is vector based, has ability to manipute objects over time, looks the same on all browsers and has scripting langauge built in. Flash is binary which means compact. Flash, however, was always a designer tool, not a programmer's one. So they thought hard and came up with Flex, a different take on the same technology, geared for programmers. Well, as my sources tell me, it is a relative flop. At least one developer says - it is still hard to develop and debug.
Everybody still does just that.
So why not like it? Mostly because it is difficult to develope for, but also because it is proprietary. Still , SVG+SMIL javascript animation, went nowhere. Maybe because of size (SVG is XML) or may be because designers are used to the superb Flash tools. O maybe everyone is used to Flash, kind of locked in. I'd guess it is also because of Flash ubiquity. SVG still means plugins install for most users.

Google is one web force to be reconed with. And Google did it all in DHTML. Spreadsheets. Writely. Even calendar, where Flash would make things so much more pretty. I thought it is forever. Not any more. Google Analytics 2.0, out about 2 weeks ago, have flash based timeline, and world map. And boy it is beautiful. I praise Google for great application and also being able to break up with tradition. What it spells for DHTML is another matter entirely.

Flash seems to be ruling. This however will soon change.

Microsoft came with Silverlight. Silverlight it is vector graphics (XAML) plus C# as programming language, .NET as a framework, open and scriptable object model and Microsoft backing. Via windows updates, Microsoft will place Silverlight to any number of PCs out there in no time, so market penetration will not be an issue. Vector xml is nice. What makes the world of difference is that Microsoft understands what is the key to world domincation - developers.

Balmer was shouting "Developers Developers Developers" and he was right. Still is. Web era does not change anything and if it does it is still in favor of developers. Distribution of app has just become all too much easier, so your operations are much cheaper now. No more printed materials or even CD sleeves to buy.

Microsoft knows how to care for Developers. That is why .NET is Delphi ( Joel puts it brilliantly in http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Our.NetStrategy.html) Delphi was better for developers then VB, and they got Anders. Visual Studio is a marvel. IntelliJ is better, but costly and VS is now free. Adobe/Macromedia was always about designers. Flex just proves it once again.

So once Microsoft gives me a great environment (Orcas next iteraton of VS) , great framework .NET and convenient langauge C#, not to forget a mirriad of 3rd party controls that inevitably pop up , and I'll crank out rich web clients like dosen a day.

Microsoft does try to do something for designers - after all somebody has to design the front, and the tools are decent. No match for illustrator or photoshop or flash, merely passable. And it is not going to steal the design acclaim of Flash sites. But it will make ticket ordering applciatons and flowcharters and god knows what else pop up like crazy, games, education titles you name it.

People rob the banks because that is where the money is.
Eyeballs is internet money. And they'll be after applications. Don't show me the current usage facts - there are not too many rich applications on the web yet. Give silverlight some time, not too much, and you'll see.

Later addition: an interesting post on the same subject
http://segala.com/blog/microsofts-silverlight-end-of-flash-supremacy/

Google Personalized home page

2007-04-30T06:15:00.000+03:00

Browsers that I regularly use, Internet Explorer, Maxthon and Firefox, all have a default home page. And it is annoying. I undertand the need to promote themselves. And they all have option to change. I would rather have this option in a more prominent place though. Anyway, I always change IE home to a blank page. IE loads long enough to make it load a page every time.

Now I am considering changing that. The reason is Google Personalized Home Page. When you go to www.google.com you can see a page in 3 different ways. Most people, like me, see a simle and clean page with input for text and button.

If you however click on a line on the top right corner - personalized home, you can get to a different page, the one you can, well, personalize. But move to a next computer, or even another browser, and your personalization is lost.

If you have a google account, and I suggest you should, you can login. And then you see a third version, a logged-in personalized home, the one that is persistent to your google account, and will be with you wherever you log into google again.

In the world of web hype we're living, personalizaton is claimed by every one. For most it is no more then change of background color. Google homepage is an example of what web personalization should be.

You personalize by populating a page (or several pages, since you have tabs) with Google Gadgets.
Google Gadgets are tiny web applications. Maximized IE browser shows 9-12 such gadgets, arraged in 3 columns.
Gadgest can vary in height but most are small.

Every Gardget is planned to do one thing. There are world clocks, sticky notes ,to do lists, wather, webcam viewers.
Some are written by Google. Most are written by third parties.

You can place more gadgets then fit one page, and scroll to it. Ha. Instead you can open second tab, third etc. That is what I did. I have 2 tabs. First is for info. I have my WIkipedia search gadget, world clock showing time of my remote coleagues, news from PC Mag, CNET, techbargains, techsupportalert (a very good service I should block about some time in the future). My second tab is called Office. I have a gadget showing my recently edited spreedsheets and Writely documents. I have a gmail gadget showing new email. I have google talk to quickly IM with buddies. I have AIM and Microsoft messangers too, and soon will add Yahoo.

ViViD Clip web version

2007-04-25T21:07:00.000+03:00

I have been developing software for 20 years now. Almost all of that time I was diagramming what I do. I think visually most of the time. I better remember drawings then anything else.
It so happens that I worked with a number of packages, and was an early adopter of Visio, long before Microsoft bougth them.

There were a number of reasons that I was not satisfied with straightforward diagramming tools. One was that I had to rearrange shapes lots of times. There are others that I might some time later recount in full.

I wanted a tool that would allow me type and that would draw what I typed. I first had this idea in 1995. In 1999 I had a job that required a lot of diagramming, and web was there so I started researching it. I didn't find what I hoped to find. In 2004 I began writing infrastructures for a 200 man year project and looked around again. Same frustrating result. This time I decided to write it for myself. It took me longer then expected, after a number of dead ends, but here it finally is.

ViViD Clip takes your text from windows clipboard and creates an image and puts it in the clipbaord again. So it copy-hotkey-paste process.

For those who want to see it first there is a web based version. It is slow, as it runs on a very slow connectin and underpowered server, but still allows one to try it first online.

Yahoo Photos vs Google Picasa

2007-04-20T18:32:00.000+03:00

I have had some photos on Yahoo Pictures(see the links box on my blog page).
Yahoo Pictures is the application that predates Yahoo's acquisition of Flickr.
So after writing about Flickr vs Picasa, I went there to check on new features.
They advertize new version to be out soon. They provide a link to the press coverage of the newcoming version. And the review was written by Rafe Needleman , one of my most respected bloggers ever. You might want to read this review. what strikes me though that he wrote it almost a year ago.
I personally find Yahoo photos an Ok application, still not as good as Google, whose Picassa integration is the one to beat.

Yahoo Flickr vs Google Picasa

2007-04-20T18:16:00.001+03:00

I use online applications from Google and Yahoo. Both companies have good applications. They both add more applications all the time. They both improve integrations between them. Sometimes it is easy to use both. Sometimes one has to choose one over the other.

Here is my take on Yahoo's Flickr vs Google Picasa.

Picasa wins on price (for bulk uploads) and convenience.

Picasa does not limit uploading in terms of file size.
Flickr free version has limited size per upload per month. If you exhausted the limit, next time you'll be able to upload after a while. I had a bunch of photos I wanted to upload in one lump, and Flickr having this limit forced me to pick.
Picasa has limited space though. May be when I reach 1G they currently have, I'll change my mind. In the meantime, upload a whole bunch for Flickr would require a paid account. So that is why Picasa currently wins.

Both Picasa and Flickr have a desktop application that eases uploading process. The difference is that Flickr provides an upload widget that is one trick pony. Picasa is a top rate image viewer and organizer and can compete against the best of them (ACDSee is the top contender) on many features.

Why I use Google Applications

2007-04-19T20:21:00.000+03:00

This is my first "real" blog post. I contemplated blogging for a long while. What actually triggered this was rumors that Google has a presentation web software coming.

I use lots of Google applications online and off. Let's see. Google Mail, Writely and Spreadsheets. I have cusotmized home page full of useful gadgets. I use Maps. I use searches of all sorts, for images, and code. I use picassa now, alongside ACDSee on my computer. The reason I use picassa is its uploads to the web.

I could easily see how with very fiew missing pieces Google would become the place where I move for all the productivity applications I need.

One last bit that seals the deal is GData. It is an API to some Google applications. It means I could extend Google applications if they're lucking a feature I need. Not all apps are covered. But the list is growing fast. Blogger is there, for example. It should not be long until all of Google is API-ed. I want Writely to be there. I am waiting for this day.