...more recent posts
KISS: Keep It Simple and Sloppy.
Adam Bosworth has been writing some interesting posts lately. He used to work at Microsoft where he was responsible for developing Microsoft Access PC Database, the HTML engine for Internet Explorer 4 and 5, as well as directing most of their XML development work from 1997 to 1999. He later worked as Chief Architect and Senior Vice President of Advanced Development at BEA Systems. And he now works at Google. (Slightly out of date bio link.) In other words, he knows a few things!
He recently spoke at the 2nd International Conference on
Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC04,) and reprinted his speech on his weblog. It's long but very interesting. Well, okay, interesting to me at least. He is able to look at where the web is going from a very high altitude without losing touch with the finer details of implementation.
If you think about web architecture you should read this piece. It is basically the same as my philosophy of how to build things, except I'm not so smart or experienced (understatement of the year) to have put it as well as he has.
The Treo 650 is on sale now directly from Sprint (warning: link to very dorky treo message board.) Might possibly be only available to current Sprint customers (there is some mixed experiences here.) $599 with $150 rebate for Sprint customers of 18 months or longer.
Okay, this phone rocks. The question is: does it make any sense at all to buy such an expensive mobile device when it can't be used on any of the new high speed wireless networks?
Mobileburn has an article, with lots of pictures, comparing the output of some 1 megapixel camera phones. The phones are the Sony Ericsson S700i, the Siemens S65, and the Motorola V710, with some extra shots from the Nokia 7610 and the Sharp GX30 thrown in at the end.
The Motorola definitely proves that more pixels don't always equal good pictures. The others do a pretty good job though. The S700 seems particularly good. Of course now I can't wait for the 2 megapixel untis shipping in the 2nd half of 2005.
I have been eagerly awaiting the debut of the Treo 650 cellphone. It has been officially announced, but isn't on sale yet. The big disappointment with the specs is that the camera did not increase in resolution. It's still just a VGA (about 1/3 of a megapixel.) When I first heard this I thought it was a deal breaker and I started to look for other possible phones (more on that later,) but now I am not so sure. It may turn out that the sheer number of pixels the camera can resolve is not the only factor.
Palm (who makes the Treo,) said they had planned to include a 1+ megapixel sensor, but could not find one that operated well in low light conditions. As the owner of a Treo 600, I can say that this was that cameras greatest failing. It is basically useless when not in bright sunlight. So Palm stuck with the VGA sensor, but they say it is different, and that the second generation VGA sensors, combined with a new lens, and new software, make for a better camera than the first generation 1 megapixel sensors that are out now.
Here are some side by side comparisons of pictures from the 600 and 650. It really does seem much improved. And the 650 shoots very small videos as well.
Now I am back to undecided. Certainly seems very usable.
Still working on the new layout. Not that I care too much, but I am trying to use my page to learn non table based CSS design. I made something I really liked, but then it turns out that it is completely borked in IE. So I dropped back to this non-design for the moment.
This is the madness of designing for browsers. It's not as bad as it used to be (specifically because you can safely forget about the hell that was Navigator 4,) but it is still a pain. For anything but the most simple design you probably have to do some browser sniffing and serve up different CSS files for different browsers/platforms. That is a change I had sort of wanted to make anyway (putting the CSS into a separate file rather than including it inline,) but it will be a slightly more involved operation to do it this way.
Yeah, I know, pretty interesting...
The new page design is still coming, but since I want to start blogging again I'm not going to wait for that. Here are some things I have been thinking about, and what I suspect this blog will focus on:
Serious bandwidth is on the way to the end user. Both fixed (like fiber to the home,) and wireless. I know it has always been the case that this is "on the way," but it's really true now. Honest. Here is a pricing page for Verizon fibre service. 30Mb/s!!! This is already deployed in some areas, and some non trivial number of people in NYC will have access to this in 2005. A lot more on this, as well as 3G wireless rollouts (also happening as we speak,) in the days ahead.
The one true device is sort of limping towards us. I wish this would go faster, but it is happening too. I mean the convergence of your computer, phone, audio/image/video player/recorder into one device you can put in your pocket. The U.S. is maddeningly behind much of the world on this, but we'll see some big strides in 2005. Something more than SMS has to fill up all that 3G wireless bandwidth. The Treo 650 and the S/E K700a are pointing the way, even if both are crippled in serious ways. Soon we are going to be able to take it all with us. Lots more on this.
And while this might not seem connected, the rich web application has arrived ahead of time. I thought we had to wait for entirely new sets of standards (like what WHAT-WG is working on,) but it turns out that today's browsers, CSS, serious javascript/DHTML magic, and even the first judicious use of Flash (!), have all ushered in the rich web application: websites that have the look, feel, and usability of a standalone desktop application. Google Mail and Flickr are leading the charge, but there are a ton of other very interesting things out there (del.icio.us, bloglines, etc...)
And finally one that I don't have a good name for yet. Something like the convergence of weblog communities with smaller, private, P2P networks. Bit Torrent and RSS are heavily involved. I guess I think of it as the dawn of the tribal age on the net. This is spurred to some degree by oppressive legal actions by those in power, but I am mainly going to steer clear of politics. Perhaps I am overly pessimistic at this point in time, but I just don't think it matters any more. Building safe, private, transparent networks of friends (extending the connections blogs have provided to connect not just words, but all media, and all the content on each of our computers,) is what I want to focus on.
Lots of bandwidth, pocket sized always on computing/media devices, rich user interface web services, all connecting people into increasingly private networks. That's how it looks from here.
So, yeah, more on all of that to come....
New page and new posts are on the way. No doubt you can feel the excitement in the air.
The United States government and the Semantic Web are a perfect match: imagine all of those senators and representatives, each query-able by age, party affiliation, bills proposed, committee membership, and voting record. For the last few years, I've wanted to collect as much data on the U.S. government as I could, convert it to RDF, and build a site and a web service that make it possible to explore that data. This will be my goal over the next year, and I'll document my progress here on XML.com.Paul Ford's personal site is the amazing Ftrain.com.
Treo 650 pictures and specs revealed. Here is the initial thread with the info, although there is no point slogging through all those posts just to get the facts which are summarized here: 1.3 MP digital camera, 320 x 320 screen, bluetooth, removable battery, and possibly push to talk technology.
Here are some pictures: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Is Verizon 1xEV-DO high speed wireless working (unofficially) in Manhattan? "...[W]hen you go to the Triborough area and get over a Gig/Sec reception... Yes... thats right.. you heard it here first...."
