Category: Blogs

Nerd Humor

~ rbonini

If you don’t read the Official Playstation.Blog from Sony, you really should be. Its really good and is a daily staple of my blog diet, along with the Gamerscore Blog from Microsoft. I don’t have either console ( 360 or PS3) , but I really enjoy reading the posts.

Take this recent post from Jason Coker, Associate Producer of the PlayStation Network title PAIN for PS3:

What I CAN tell you is that it has been a blast to work on. It hasn’t been easy, but it sure has been hilarious. Here are just a couple of the gems I’ve heard (or said):

* “Coker, can you write up a description of a little person hip-hop pirate right quick?” (Yeah, I had the same reaction. You’ll see.)

* “Ummmm….who did the voice-over for that? That’s nasty.”

* “Hey man, if I get you a big glass of water, can you step into the recording booth and belch for about half an hour?”

* “Check the Leaderboards, Son. Spank. The. Monkey.”

* “Dude, I just really don’t think the farts are loud enough.”

* “Did you just grab that Granny by her head? Do it again! Do it again!”

* “That’s him right there. We call him the Ooch Master. He can’t be touched.” (You know who you are at Idol Minds, and I’m coming for you. The student has become the Master, baby!)

* “OH, *&%*!! THAT *^&%*#@ DONUT!!!!!!”

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Good Microsoft, Bad Google??

~ rbonini

Taking a break from the innards of TCP/IP, I bring you two interesting blog posts.

First Verturebeat’s Matt Marshall asks: In history revision, Microsoft now a friend of the valley?

Second, Robert Cringely opines: The Future is Cloudy: Google’s plan to host ALL our applications.

Both may seem to be unrelated, but lets consider them both.

Matt says:

But now that Google has emerged as the all-pervasive menace, Microsoft has been transformed into an aging, less threatening knight, albeit with pockets and interests deep enough to help you against the Google onslaught. Microsoft’s alliance with Facebook — which calls for Microsoft to invest $240M in that company — has capped the transition.

Interesting inversion, don’t you think? Kind of like America springing to plucky little Britain’s aid after Pearl Harbor. In this case Microsoft’s Pearl Harbor was Google’s huge IPO and the raft of  highly successfully geek-drool-inducing products they released. And the Britons are everyone else in the Valley that have yet to go over the the Dark Side ( 🙂 ).

Think of the perceptive transformation that Microsoft has gone through. 3000 Microsoft Blogs (last I checked, which was while ago) and Robert Scoble have done loads to bring a human face to Microsoft. I remember once emailing Robert just after Office Live had its public debut for some specific details ( I was looking for a platform for a company web presence) and got a reply from the program manager 8 hours later.

Microsoft has done plenty to reach out to the community. Think of Mix06 and Mix07. The entire conference is on video with slides available from visitmix.org so anyone can take a look (I’ve still to get round to watch the sessions I downloaded 🙂 ).

Now take Robert Cringely. He looks at what Google’s Data Centre build out means, taken together with their MySQL contributions and their agreement with IBM to promote Cloud Computing to Universities.

By working with IBM to promote cloud computing to universities, Google is accomplishing two very important goals. It will first put them in touch with every graduate student doing work Google might find interesting. So it is first a hiring tool. But by teaching students about cloud computing Google and IBM are also seeding the technology in the companies where those students will take their first jobs after graduation. Five years from now cloud computing will be ubiquitous primarily for this reason.

But Google wants us to embrace not just cloud computing but Google’s version of cloud computing, the hooks for which will be in every modern operating system by mid-2009, spread not by Google but by a trusted open source vendor, MySQL AB.

Mid-2009 will also see the culmination of Google’s huge server build-out. The company is building data centers large and small around the world and populating them with what will ultimately be millions of generic servers. THAT’s when things will get really interesting. Imagine a much more user-friendly version of Amazon’s EC2 and S3 services, only spread across 10 or more times as many machines. And as with all its services, Google will offer free versions at the bottom for consumers and paid, but still cost-effective versions nearer the top for businesses and education.

Google’s goal here is to help us, of course, but along the way the company will have marginalized most higher-end computing vendors, especially Microsoft. They will have also made us totally dependent on Google services in such a way that we’ll never, ever, be able to extricate ourselves. We’ll be slaves, but happy slaves, and Google will come to dominate all computing for the next generation.

Now if Microsoft ever tried anything like this, I’d probably have to turn off comments to avoid the Death-To-Microsoft chants from the virtual mob.

This, of course, risks taking a left turn into the whole Dependency on Microsoft Question. But, for the sake of argument Leopard and Linus’ Every Flavor Linux settle that question just fine.

I use Google Mail for correspondence, Calendar for scheduling , Search for the obvious reason, iGoogle for my dashboard-view-on-the-world, Webmaster Tools.

What if we’re all reduce to running dumb terminal emulators connected to our Google-Instance on their servers? Fascinating idea, I’m sure. I mean what’s not to like about carrying your whole computer around with your Google Account and password (would save my shoulders lots of grief that’s for sure 🙂 )???

Taken with Google’s insatiable hunger for startups, is Google Microsoft-that-everyone-loves-to-hate 2.0???

Facebook and Microsoft

~ rbonini

I was tempted to tell everyone who thought 15 big b’s for Facebook was excessive to look at Google’s $100 Billion valuation at IPO.

But then, it struck me, rather forcefully I might add, that Google and Facebook are completely unrelated in terms of price. Google, despite being mostly a search page, actually gets stuff done. Look at Google Earth, Product Search, Their Wifi  work both in San Francisco and with the FCC with regards to buying that spectrum, Desktop Search, Google Co-Op, Reader, Analytics, and, much, much more. The GooglePlex is a daily gathering of the brightest dev’s on the planet.

Google, in other words, has  plenty of reasons to justify its price tag.

What, pray, has Facebook done?

The question stands, but Kara Swisher beat me to the observation already (albeit from a slightly different angle):

Facebook is not Google: Although many in the tech sector make the comparison to the search giant, it is simply incorrect.

Is Facebook like Yahoo a bit? Certainly. A newfangled version of AOL? Absolutely! A very well done media play with all sorts of interactive bells and whistles hanging off of it? Yes, ma’am.

Indeed, it is growing its media business nicely, with $30 million in profits on $150 million in revenue.

But in comparative terms to the search giant, Facebook is a lemonade stand. Google brought in $3.9 billion in revenue in just the second quarter alone and, um, is increasing its dominance over the search sector in a mighty scary way.

Facebook, on the other hand, gets half its annual revenue right now from a sweetheart guaranteed revenue deal with, drum roll, Microsoft. No matter what either Facebook or Microsoft says, it is a money-losing deal for Microsoft so far.

How do I know this? According to many sources, Google is struggling to make ends meet in its own sweetheart guaranteed ad deal with Facebook rival MySpace, which is much larger, and Google has the best monetization engine out there.

A Word about Link Blogs

~ rbonini

Scoble, in his latest post, reflects on what a resource his link blog has become as a database of all things technological.

It has almost no noise, just much of the best blogging that’s been done over the past year in the technology field. But, whenever I think about moving feeds to a new reader I start thinking of that database and start thinking about the value it has to me as a way to search back on what caught my eye over the past year.

 

Then it struck me that since I’ve subscribed to said link blog over the past year, and since I use Google Reader, I can access that same database as well. The addition of search by the Reader team just makes it better. It has some invaluable stuff in it. I share stuff in it more than in all my other feeds. I find plenty of bloggable materiel in there as well.

Which brings me to the question: What is a link blog?

I know, it sounds idiotic, like something web 1.0 guys would ask.  But think of it. Do you a use a link blog to share posts with others? Do you use a link blog as reference for yourself, to point to things that catch your eye? Do you use it a reference, but don’t mind if others share it?

The way we see the utility of a link blog determines what we will use a link blog for, which in turn determines the quality of our link blogs.

On the one hand if we take it seriously and only add stuff that is truly worthy of being shared, not just stuff loosely related to what we blog about. In other words:Are you in the business of simply observing the world go by, or is the welfare of your blog and link blog taken seriously? Do we/you intend for our/your link blog to be a resource – personal or public?

On the other hand, Scoble can be easy on his link blog – he’s posted cat photo’s there more than once. Do we fill it with stuff that’s not really useful ( and I am definitely a cat person)? Do we linkblog just for the sake of it.

Lets take a look at the old school link blogers I have in my reading list.

Larkware News: They put their links in blog posts. They’re up to 1227 posts today. lets see what yesterdays post post looks like:

Software

Information

Community

 

Simple. Clean and neat. The three categories are particularly useful allowing you to skip right to the meat of the post. The RSS Feed is here.

Christopher Steen. Same deal. His latest Link Listing:

  • LINQ to SQL (Part 9 – Using a Custom LINQ Expression with the control) [Via: ScottGu ]
  • Obscure ASP.NET Problem – AJAX Control Toolkit, CollapsiblePanelExtender, Image controls pages loading more than once…….

    • RSS feed here.

    Kent Newsome posts “Evening Reading”. its not so much a link listing as a running commentary of the stuff he’s read. An excerpt from his latest:

    Larry Borsato talks about a recent focus group in which college students said MySpace is over, Facebook might not last much longer, and their best source for information is word of mouth.  Paul Stamatiou is one college guy who has chilled on Facebook.  Thank goodness there’s all those grown-up bloggers to keep the hype going.

    He posts this in the middle of his other stuff in stead of a completely separate feed. I tend to give it is quick scan and see if there is anything interesting, or else ignore it completely.

    RSS feed here.

    Sam Gentile often posts his “New and Notable”. He’s up to number 180.

    SOA/ESB

    WF

    The great thing here is that they’re grouped by subject matter. You can skip right to what you’re interested in. RSS feed here.

    After that review, I still much prefer Google Reader’s Shared items. All they need next is a taging for your shared items. ( I think someone’s already suggested that somewhere in Scoble’s link blog 🙂 ).

    But one thing is sure – link blogs are invaluable tools to finding information because  the information has already been used and promoted as useful.

    There ain’t nothing like an oft used piece of information.

    So. My link blog has a new lease on life. (RSS feed here)

    PS Scoble says TechCrunch aren’t happy about linkblogs. I think this a first for a content producer to complain about link blogs.

    Multi- Gigabyte File Copy Operations

    ~ rbonini ~ 1 Comment

    Copying more than one gigabyte in one operation is tedious, frustrating and agonizingly slow. Not that there is all that much you can do.

    Scott Allen was having a little bit of difficulty so I’ thought I’d help a little.

    Scott Hansellman has a post on 3 utilities you can use to copy files without using the windows explorer.

    First, Robocopy. If you have XP or Windows Server you can easily get this in the Resource Kits. If you have Vista, it’s already in your path. That’s always nice. It’s Robust, indeed (hence, Robocopy) but it’s legendarily unforgiving

    …

    Second, for repeatable jobs, I love SyncBackSE. It’s $30, but there is a free version with less features available. SyncBack is option-ful and literally moves nearly every important piece of data in my house around weekly.

    …

    Last, but certainly not least, XXCOPY. It’s huge. Epic even. It’s even got a nice windows progress bar that pops out of the DOS Box. The Technical Reference is comprehensive to say the least. Here’s a summary of the features. It’ll sync directories, maintain short names, qualify by date/time, copy security info.

    I’ve used Robocopy. The GUI frontend is next to useless (either that, or I’m doing something wrong).

    I’ve yet to try the other two.

    Hope this helps someone.

    On Blogging

    ~ rbonini

    Hugh Macleod, in his imitable way, has a list about why we now blog less:

    Here is Reason one:

    1. We got busy. For many of us, blogging created opportunities for us in the offline world, just like the early blog evangelists predicted. And as we found out the hard way, it’s actually quite hard to do stuff and blog about it at the same time. As my father, a very smart and observant man once quipped, “A lot of these bloggers seem to have a lot of time on their hands”. That may have been true in 2002, back when the recession was still on. It’s certainly less true with a lot of people I know.

    Check the other reasons out.

    [via Shel Isreal]

    Open Source at Microsoft

    ~ rbonini

    A contradiction in Terms? Well, no. But I can’t blame you for thinking it.

    Port25, Microsoft’s open source blog, is worth subscribing to because of posts like this:

    Today, Microsoft has published 175 projects on CodePlex, we have written a pair of open licenses that are under a page in length and over the 500-project mark in adoption as others in the community have decided to use them

    As Microsoft’s engagement with open source grows, we have to move from being trailblazers to being road-builders. When you’re blazing a trail, organization, bureaucracy, and majority rule are a burden. In the beginning, a passionate group of people with strongly held beliefs and the will to persevere in the face of doubts and doubters is what it’s all about.

    Never thought I’d see the day when this was corporate strategy at Microsoft.

    In my view this about-face has come about because of a change in the environment that Microsoft operates in.

    Think of it. Sun completely open sourced Solaris. The rise of the blog,  the wiki and the Twitter (perhaps not in that order, but humor me) has lead to an increasingly networked community where people’s calls for change can gain plenty of traction. And if Microsoft wasn’t going to do something about them, others would – and did. Think of Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and Open Office – or even Linux.

    Secondly, Microsoft had a huge pool of untapped resources in the form of techies who had a great deal of experience in Microsoft products and blogged about it. I mean what better to find out what gripes (or ideas, for that matter) people had than by reading their blogs. And Microsoft could always hire the best ones.

    And finally, the perception that Microsoft was opening up and actively engaging with the community has done wonders to its once-flagging reputation.

    So while Microsoft may not be on the road to open sourcing its flagship products (Windows, office, Visual and Expression Studio), it is opening up.

    The Echo Chamber

    ~ rbonini

    I read this post from Shel Holtz last night suggesting that the Blogosphere is akin to an echo chamber. At this point I’d like to congratulate Google for NOT including search with Google Reader since I had to go looking for this post manually from my long list of feeds, which wasn’t easy – but I digress.

    So, bearing in mind that I’m doing some echoing myself here:

    One of the dominant criticisms of the blogosphere is that bloggers just write about what other bloggers have written about; it’s nothing more than a huge echo chamber.

    I’ll give you an example of said effect. last week, Windows Home Server was released to manufacturing. I got virtually the same post from the WHS Team Blog, We got Served, Ms Home Server Blog and Ramblings of a Home Server Tester. And by the way, they all arrived in my feed reader at the same time.

    Shel argues that The Echo Chamber Effect is nonsense:

    I don’t buy the echo-chamber argument. Based on the 10% rule, which suggests that 10% of a blog’s (or Wikipedia’s or any other collaborative property’s) readers contribute to the content, that leaves 90% who are passive consumers of the content.

     

    And gives an example:

    read a blog called Brand to be Determined. Many of you—readers of this blog—probably don’t. So when I point you to a resource I learned about on Brand to be Determined, you’re getting information you probably wouldn’t have otherwise received.

    Take Facebook as an example.

    The tech blogoshpere has run amok with Facebook posts (A Google custom search of my 140 subscriptions gives me 1500 posts, a Google blog search gives me 437,000 posts).  Facebook has been analyzed from every conceivable angle, probably several times over.

    So if I now write a post echoing Scoble and a few others, do I add value to the conversation, or noise?