Every few months you find a hand wringing article about "the next generation" and how they are being influenced by technology. Sure enough, I ran across the Times fretting about the impact of IM and social networking on the younger set:
"I worry that young people won't be able to summon the capacity to focus and concentrate when they need to," said Vicky Rideout, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which will release a sweeping survey on the technology and media habits of children and teenagers this month.
Way back in the late 60's and early 70's, this researcher's predecessors were fretting that TV was doing the same thing to my generation. Later on, video games were doing it. The symptoms never change, just the technology being ranted at.
I watch the way my daughter consumes video, and I realize that the broadcast model is on its last legs. I'm sure there are people in her age group (high school) who watch a fair amount of TV, but here's what I see:
Lots of iTunes usage
Interest in Streaming (we just got Netflix)
Virtually no "channel surfing" or regular watching. What watching there is, is via the DVR
The broadcast model is being shaken up now. Over the next decade, I think it's going to shrink dramatically, to be replaced by more of an on-demand model. No one under twenty really expects to have to wait for anything they want to see. Heck, I've gotten to that point myself...
Well, Flash is sort of coming to the iPhone. But, it's enough to start a small tidal wave. TechCrunch reports:
Adobe is going to bring its 2 million Flash developers to the iPhone, with or without Apple's blessing. As it announced in October, the next version of its Flash developer tools, Creative Suite 5 (currently in private beta), will include a "Packager for iPhone" apps which will automatically convert any Flash app into an iPhone app. So while Flash apps won't run on the iPhone, any Flash app can easily be converted into an iPhone app. (Microsoft is taking a similar approach with Silverlight). This is a bigger deal than many people appreciate.
For good or ill, Flash is the standard video format on the web. HTML5 may change that over time, but not soon. For the forseeable future, Flash is pretty much where it's at if you want to hit the majority of browser users. More importantly (and this is what Apple feared early on) - it'll "flood the zone" with potential iPhone developers:
Once Adobe publicly releases CS5, Flash apps and video still won't run on the iPhone. But those 2 million developers will be able to keep working with Adobe tools and simply turn them into iPhone apps automatically. In contrast, there are only an estimated 125,000 or so iPhone developers.
Heck, I have the Flash SDK on my Mac inside Eclipse. I have the Glare code that hooks that up to VisualWorks. That means that with a fair amount of ease, I could probably package up a "Smalltalk Daily" app for the iPhone that drove itself off a VW back end once this comes out.
No sooner had we decided to get a new dishwasher (arriving Thursday) than my wife's car decided that it needed a new tire - fortunately, she was only 3 or so miles from the house when that became obvious. If it's not one thing, it's another....
I'll be heading out to do some roadshows with the Smalltalk team at Cincom - we'll be in Seattle, Toronto, and Baltimore:
Date
Location
Time
January 21, Seattle, Washington
Crowne Plaza of Seattle
Corner of 6th and Seneca
9 AM - 1 PM
January 26, Toronto, Ontario
Hilton Garden Inn Toronto City Centre 200 Dundas Street East
9 AM - 1 PM
January 28, Baltimore, MD
TBD
9 AM - 1 PM
You can register to let us know you're coming - it's free. We'll have plenty to say about the new releases of ObjectStudio and VisualWorks, as well as WebVelocity. See you there!
Looks like a new video site devoted to Pharo has popped up - the videos are all Vimeo embeds, so there's no feed for iTunes, but you can watch over there.
Here's Niall Ross, talking about new features of SUnit at ESUG 2009, held in Brest, France last summer. You can grab a copy of Niall's slides here(PDF). To watch, click on the viewer below:
Heroes used to be good - season 1, when the cast was a reasonable sized ensemble. Since then, the writers seem to have been working with the theory that "more characters are better!"
Many, many more characters. So many characters that we get to spend tiny bits of time on each plot thread - so little that we can't really maintain much interest in any of them.
Kill half of them, and maybe the show will have meaning again....
I really thought that Microsoft was going to settle with i4i after they were given a hard date to comply with, but no - they've pulled Office instead:
Microsoft Corp. has pulled almost every version of Office from its own online store to comply with a court order requiring it to remove custom XML technology from its popular Word software starting today.
The powers that be at MS are either overly prideful, or very convinced that they are correct, because this is a really expensive move for them...
This patent, which was originally filed on July 7, 2008, describes a new system for promoting ads in online mapping applications. In this patent, Google describes how it plans to identify buildings, posters, signs and billboards in these images and give advertisers the ability to replace these images with more up-to-date ads. In addition, Google also seems to plan an advertising auction for unclaimed properties.
This is the kind of technology that could have some hilarious end resuts. FailBlog should do very well off this :)
If you're trying to port code from Squeak or Pharo to VisualWorks and/or ObjectStudio, one thing you may have run across is the Brace Constructor syntax for arrays. i.e., instead of:.
array := Array
with: 3+4
with: Date today.
You get:
array := {3+4. Date today}.
Today's screencast looks at adding support for that syntax to VW and OS:
The system isn't one. It's all very ad hoc and not very reliable. Nobody yet has the right formula to reconcile their own costs and programming with the barely-known users and usages out there. How many streams should they support? Should they stream at 128kb and be audible only over ethernet and good broadband land connecitons? Should they stream in lo-fi at 24kb or 32kb so they stay audible on iPhones over 3G connections after those go away and the connection drops down to GPRS? (That's my recommendation, generally.) Should they have multiple streams? (I also recommend that.) For radio on the Net (which also includes podcasting and on-demand), there isn't enough common usage yet, much less common wisdom about how to serve it on the supply side. It's like AM radio in 1924. The difference is that much more of it is outside regulatory control. The rules that matter are copyright more than engineering. Ever notice how little popular (or even known) music is on podcast? Thank the DMCA for that one.
I don't follow this field like Searls does, but I can certainly note that I listen to a whole lot less radio. I tend to have one of three things on, whether I'm in my home office or the car:
iTunes
Pandora
AM Radio (I periodically listen to talk radio to get an idea as to what the outrage of the day is)
The thing I spent most of my younger years with - music radio - I almost never have that on. As Searls says though, things are in a very ad-hoc state right now, and they haven't settled down into anything like what they'll look like in, say, 10 years. Getting rid of the DMCA would help a lot, but I don't expect that to happen. Too bad, really; the whole shape of the future is constrained by that stupidity.
SpiderMan is getting the reboot treatment instead of a 4th flick:
Mike Fleming and Nikki Finke have just confirmed that Sony Pictures decided today to reboot the Spider-Man franchise after franchise director Sam Raimi pulled out of Spider-Man 4 because he felt he couldn't make its summer release date and keep the film's creative integrity. This means that Raimi and the cast including star Tobey Maguire are out. There will be no Spider-Man 4. Instead, Mike Fleming is told, the studio will focus on a Summer 2012 reboot from a script by Jamie Vanderbilt with a new director and a new cast.
Of course, "Batman" has been rebooted a nearly infinite number of times now, so I shouldn't be surprised :)
A group of Santa Fe residents recently attempted to get all public Wi-Fi hotspots in the city banned by arguing that the APs irritated their supposed "electromagnetic allergies."
How he's managed to survive with all the TV and radio signals in the air is anybody's guess. One can only hope that these idiots don't find a judge stupid enough to play ball with them...
I spent the morning working on a demo I'm building for the upcoming roadshow events - which is why "Smalltalk Daily" isn't up yet. It should pop up within the hour.
James Governor notes that Google's latest announcement, allowing you to shove any kind of file into Google Docs for storage, isn't solving a useful problem. There is a problem worth solving, just not the one they are on about:
Tools for automatic file migration and syncing between multiple folders and devices? Now *that* is a use case. See DropBox, Evernote, Mozy, SugarSync etc. I want Google to offer me the Synchronised Web, not a USB stick replacement.
Exactly. While I've seen some sales people who run around without laptops (and then have their email auto-respond that they are traveling and "away from email"), that's a shrinking population - and, to be honest, not the most clueful one - the sort of person who does that isn't a great candidate for Google's use case, IMHO...
With the release of OS 8.2 and VW 7.7, Glorp is not only a supported O/R library - it has ActiveRecord support as well. Today's screencast looks at using it withing VW.
The video linked here is making the rounds, and being used to promote the idea that "HP must be racist" - because the face tracking software on the unit in question doesn't seem to track a black guy in front of it.
I rather suspect that HP just did all of their testing with lighter skinned people, or in much better lighted rooms, or both. So blame them for incomplete testing and sloppiness, sure. But racism? Be serious.
How long will it be before we can buy an iPhone on other networks? Will it be available on all networks? It'll be interesting to see the sales numbers for iPhone when it does open up.
I'm not convinced that the iPhone will come to Verizon before the next generation (converged with GSM) network rolls out. Why? Well, Apple would have to go with CDMA, which is useful in North America, and pretty much nowhere else. I can tell you that I wouldn't jump to Verizon if they had the phone, because I've had enough of carrying a useless brick overseas.
Now, they could make it a tri-band phone, I suppose, and have it work overseas - but that just adds to the potential expense. I rather expect that Verizon won't see the iPhone for awhile.
So, you crafted a campaign to drive people to submit your form, but they did not? That's ok. Within Eloqua, you can easily set up a follow up email to target people who landed on a specific page, but did not submit a form.
Here's a better thought: How about you don't bother people who expressed no interest? How about you don't require the form, and just offer the information? This whole concept of "lead generation" is just wrong headed. If you want potential customers to know something, let them know. If the information is actually useful, and you have a product/service that solves a related problem, they'll come back to you.
When you get treated this way at the car dealer shop, does it fill you with joy? What makes marketing people think it will make anyone happy?
Update: When I described this to my wife, and asked her how that kind of followup would feel, she said "I'd feel stalked"
Travis Griggs is talking about Smalltalk Superpowers again - lightweight classes, specifically - in order to solve a problem involving VisualWorks LookPolicy classes. Check it out - it's interesting stuff.
Next week (on the 21st) we'll be at the Crowne Plaza in Seattle, Washington, 9 AM to 1 PM. You can register for the event (free) here. We'll be covering cool stuff in VisualWorks, ObjectStudio, and WebVelocity, so come on out to see what the Smalltalk team has been up to!
As for not having luggage, many people (including me) ship it via Fedex ahead of time. [More...] United Airlines has an easy feature on their website where for $79., Fedex will come to your house or office, pick up your suitcase and deliver it to your hotel or other place in the destination city. Considering the airlines charge $25.00 or more to check the bag, and the requirement that you have to check it 45 minutes ahead of departure, the extra $50 is well worth it.
I try hard not to have to check anything, but some people have issues carrying heavy things - like, say, a person with knee or hip trouble. I can see it being well worth the time of someone with minor health issues to just ship everything to their destination.
Yesterday, my iPhone suddenly started playing the same song over and over, even though it was on shuffle. I could manually proceed it, but by itself, it repeated. I put it in recovery mode after an attempt to reboot it ended in a lockup, but it retained the same setting. I had looked under iPod prefs and seen nothing, so I was starting to get frustrated.
As per usual though, I should have turned to the web first. A quick search showed me this, and - sure enough - the little loop button under the the time showed "repeat 1". I hadn't even noticed that there was a setting there before :)
I have no idea how that setting got turned on, but I suspect I did it accidentally. At least I know it's there now.
When you specify the type of an input field as "Password", the "Read Only" setting becomes a problem in VisualWorks 7.7. Today's screencast looks at that, given that the two worked in VisualWorks 7.6
Click to Play
You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?
Now, a very few of those lines are getting even more appealing with Amtrak announcing that Acela lines between Boston, New York, and Washington will be receiving WiFi upgrades in March. That the service will be free is great news -- that the word "initially" is inserted before the word "free" isn't so very great
So the next time I have to head to NYC, it looks like I'll be able to stay online. Cool!
We'll be broadcasting the next podcast tonight at 9 PM EST on justin.tv - it's going to cover the new Xtreams work that Michael and Martin Kobetic (fellow Cincom Smalltalker) have been working on.
See you then! It'll be posted for download on Sunday, as per usual. You can get more of a feel for what Xtreams is all about by loading the bundle from the public store - and by checking out video from Martin's recent presentation on it.
Here's an interesting little new media legal dilemma for you: apparently there are several paid apps in the iPhone App Store that bill themselves as "readers" for publications like the New York Times, CNET, and the BBC, but aren't actually licensed or official in anyway -- they're just pulling RSS feeds. That means people paying for an app like The New York Times Mobile Reader aren't actually getting an app from the Times -- and, perhaps more importantly, the Times isn't getting anything from anyone. Seems like Apple should probably just shut these apps down, but that's the interesting part: all these apps are pretty much just custom-built feed readers, and you can generally access all of the same content using Safari.
I noticed this because the idea of a "Smalltalk Daily" reader like the ones discussed above seemed like a good idea, and a friend of mine built a proof of concept that I like. White label is one thing; this gray label thing is the sort of thing you would think the app store approval process would weed out.
I find this whole Leno/Conan thing terribly amusing. The entire contretemps was set into motion years ago by Zucker himself, when he promised the Tonight Show to Conan. Then, he let Conan find out about the "bring Leno back to 11:35" move via media reports. Now, he's "talking tough":
But now the NBCU chief has been talking tough during the negotiations with Team Conan. To counter O'Brien's principled public statement which the late night host issued this week, Zucker "is threatening to ice Conan", according to his reps. "Zucker said, 'I'll keep you off the air for 3 1/2 years.' Which doesn't have a chance in hell of happening.
I've written about Zucker before; he might well be the dumbest man in the TV business. He's certainly a living example of the "Peter Principle" in action...
The big winner in all this? CBS and Letterman. The more Zucker does, the bigger they win, I think.
You know, I should really know better than to buy anything that involves a service visit from Sears. After all, there's all of this history.
Sigh. We bought a new dishwasher last week, because ours has been doing a terrible job, even after a repair recently. installation was scheduled today between 2 and 5. That's fine; I work out of the house, so there wasn't any issue that way. However....
it's now 5:01 PM, and nothing. I called the local number, and got their "closed for the day" answering machine (that's the contractor, not Sears). So I called Sears. That was moving along untill they tried to transfer me, at which point they dropped the call. So, it's back to the phone.
I wonder how long this saga will last?
Update: The installers showed up at 5:30 with the new dishwasher, and it's going in now. So the main question is, how frakking hard would a short "we'll be late" phone call have been?
This series of before/after satellite photos of various parts of Port au Prince makes it clear just how much damage the earthquake did. If the "after" shots were black and white, you might think they were WWII era photos of some European city that got bombed a lot...
The Cincom Smalltalk team will be coming to Seattle for a one day event on Thursday the 21st - you can register here (free). You can get more details over on the Cincom Smalltalk Events Page- the event will run from 9 AM to 1 PM
Searchlight is a new search tool for Cincom Smalltalk - instead of separating senders/implementors, it unifies results for them. Inspired by Apple's Spotlight, it's a new take on finding things in Smalltalk - learn more about it below:
Click to Play
You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?
I have a question - you can either email me, or leave comments if you want to answer it :) When you go to a site, and see an an offer to watch a video, or read a document (assume for the sake of argument that it's about something of interest to you) - how do you react to a mandatory form? Do you:
Bail on the content, even though it sounds interesting
Fill in the form, but with bogus information
Fill in the form
I know how I react, but I'm curious as to how other people see this.
Our good friends at the RIAA are back, trying to help us:
ISPs should have authority to block subscribers from sharing music and other files without permission of the copyright owner, the RIAA said. "ISPs are in a unique position to limit online theft," the RIAA said in its comments. "They control the facilities over which infringement takes place and are singularly positioned to address it at the source. Without ISP participation, it is extremely difficult to develop an effective prevention approach."
Right, and we can trust that no false positives would crop up, and that no innocent people would get caught up in this. Just like with their "sue the world" strategery...
I guess that price drop to $199 helped Nintendo move units:
According to The NPD Group (via Wired), Nintendo moved 3.81 million Wii consoles in North America last month. That's 1.66 million more units than December 2008, and the record for most consoles sold in a single month. No surprise, then, that the games industry had a record month overall, besting December 2008 by 4 percent.
I like the XBox, but the Wii is still very cool. Apparemtly, lots of other people think the same thing
All I can say is - wow! George Martin keeps his story moving, and keeps throwing curve balls at me. I was pretty well stunned by the final paragraph of the book A Storm of Swords
. I've ordered the next book, and I'm hoping that he gets the next few books out as soon as he can.
On of our car's has to get its emissions checked, and the deadline (before a fine) is Tuesday. So, I went down to the station this morning... only to discover that they are closed today and Monday for Martin Luther King observance.
Well, this is what I get for putting things off to the last minute, I guess...
Ever since Christmas, my daughter and I have been spending a lot of time with EA's Dragon Age: Origins. It's a pretty immersive RPG we have on the XBox. The kid is positively obsessed with the game, and - I must say - I've spent a fair amount of time with it as well. I liked Modern Warfare 2 and Gears of War 2 well enough, but this is a much bigger game. I'm not even all that far into it - I'm dealing with the last battle in the tower of the magi right now. Speaking of which, I think the XBox is calling me...
A San Diego school vice-principal saw an 11-year-old's
home science project (a motion detector made out of an empty
Gatorade bottle and some electronics), decided it was a bomb, wet
himself, put the school on lockdown, had the bomb-squad come out to
destroy X-ray the student's invention and search his parents' home,
and then magnanimously decided not to discipline the kid (though he
did recommend that the child and his parents get counselling to
help them overcome their anti-social science
behavior).
I have a better idea: fire the
idiot vice principal, congratulate the student for trying to build a cool science project, and send the entire staff at that school back to grade school. Or let them and the students swap places.
Seriously, what the heck is wrong with the staff there? Based on
the
reporting, it looks like the
vice principal is listed here. After someone fetches him
clean underwear, can they also hand him a remedial education
course?
This week Michael and I spoke to Martin Kobetic - he's one of Michael's fellow Smalltalk engineers here at Cincom. The two of them have been working on Xtreams as a side project for awhile now; Xtreams is a "Streams library reboot", applying the lessons learned from the existing Smalltalk streams library after the many years of use across domains they weren't originally designed (for instance, network protocol work).
There's a bit of crackling in the audio whenever Martin talks, that I couldn't do a whole lot to get rid of. It's a bit annoying, but it's all easily audible.
To listen now, you can either download the mp3 edition, or the AAC edition. The AAC edition comes with chapter markers. You can subscribe to either edition of the podcast directly in iTunes; just search for Smalltalk and look in the Podcast results. You can subscribe to the mp3 edition directly using this feed, or the AAC edition using this feed using any podcatching software.
To listen immediately, use the player below:
If you like the music we use, please visit Josh Woodward's site. We use the song Effortless for our intro/outro music. I'm sure he'd appreciate your support!
If you have feedback, send it to smalltalkpodcasts@cincom.com - or visit us on Facebook or Ning - you can vote for the Podcast Alley, and subscribe on iTunes. If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!
After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.
While I understand the need to make money, I'm just not sure this is going to work for them. The problem for the Times is that they desperately want to preserve their existing business model in an environment that will support a lot fewer employees nad overhead. Then there's the loss of influence problem - I ran across this commeneary from Ann Althouse:
For me, reading on line is tied to blogging. I'm not going to spend my time reading sites that I can't blog, and I'm not going to blog and link to sites that you can't read without paying.
Now, I'm a very small player, so the loss of links from me won't mean much, but I feel the same way. During the baseball season, I've often linked to stories about the Yankees (and the pennant races in general) in the Times. With this change? I can't link to stories that are going to be invisible to most people either,
Douglas Putnam is looking for a hosting solution to run Seaside:
I recently rented a 256MB slice from Slicehost for my SmalltalkTheGoodParts.com work. I have a Wordpress blog running there, and I'll be installing Smalltalk and Seaside as part of my self-taught Smalltalk course.
I can heartily recommend Slicehost, the service I use.
I know people are anxious to see the new releases - ObjectStudio 8.2 and VisualWorks 7.7 - and we should have them available soon. The holdup has to do with the commercial orders going out to customers - we didn't want to have a situation where paying customers were getting the product after non-commercial users.
The holiday slowed that process down a bit, but things are getting back on track now. I'll make an announcement when it's good to go, so stay tuned.
The new bundles of course don't skimp on the goodies, particularly with the 35Mbps up / 35Mbps down symmetrical service that should be a boon to HD video chats, big torrents and medium-sized torrents.
After each of the upcoming Smalltalk Technology events (check the schedule here; the first one is in Seattle this Thursday), we'll be hosting a short live stream to talk about the event. If you can't make the events but would like to know a bit about what we're on about, head to our Ustream channel.
Apple is holding an event on January 27th to show off something the company is calling their "latest creation."
Unless a completely out of left field play on AppleTV is in the works, it looks like all the Tablet Rumors are going to converge into a real device. We'll know soon; I should be back from Toronto just in time to find out :)
I've added a new link over in the sidebar - "Where in the World". I'll be listing upcoming events and places where I'll be. If I'll be where you are, and you would like to meet up, you can drop me a line via email, or message me on Twitter
That's also the best place to look for updates on all things Smalltalk that I'm involved in, because I can update it as I get confirmations. So - either keep track of that page, or subscribe to the feed.
With the changes to the Cincom Smalltalk website, you might want to know how to keep track of the audio and video I produce there. On that front, nothing's changed - down the right hand side of the new site is a set of links pulled from the RSS feeds for the media products. To summarize all of that:
You could fail to see how the Samuel story on Heroes was going to end up if you haven't ever read or seen anything created in, oh, the last few millenia. It's time for this sorry mess to fold the tent and shuffle off the stage...
