Web 2.0

I've been reading about the Web 2.0 for the past year and finally found a decent article that sums up what this means, What is the Web 2.0. This article is well written and summarizes the how the web as platform the 2nd time around is much different than the Web 1.0 (which in many accounts ended during the dot-com crash in early 2001). For me personally, the Web 2.0 is much closer to reality than the Web 1.0 was just due to how mature the companies, technologies and attitudes are today compared to how things were in the late 1990s thru 2001.

The web-based office (thru AJAX and other webapps)

AJAX is still in it's infancy however, the number of AJAX web-applications is increasing rapidly. Check out this ZDNet article containing a listing of AJAX applications available today. I found this while perusing Slashdot this morning and saw the article "Early AJAX Office Applications".

I primarily spend most of my computing time on notebook computers and recently handheld computers that are Wifi capable (my Sony PSP). Even at work I prefer to work on notebook computers over desktops due to the mobility.

Open source technology goes mainstream

The most recent Information Week has an article "Open Source Goes Corporate" which makes Open Source mainstream in the corporate world. Open source technologies (i.e. Linux, Apache, MySQL, etc..) have been used for years, however, in the corporate world was eyed by managers with suspicion. Now that Information Week has a major article about it, it is now politically correct to talk about open source technologies. That is my dab at those clueless managers who make decisions based on reading the first page of an article in a weekly trade magazine primarily geared towards pushing technology. The biggest factors mentioned in the article is lower costs, greater performance, adaptable and extensible technology that removes the single vendor dependence.

I was surprised at how many well known big companies are planning to migrate to Linux. The article mentions E-Trade, Fidelity, UPS, Continental Airlines, Walt Disney, Yahoo, just to name a few.

Know your audience (5-year olds and managers)

I've done quite a bit of technical writing over the years and have recently noticed parallels between how managers and 5-year old Kindergartners think. When you are writing a document for justification or a technical specification you have two distinct audiences. In most companies, a justification document is written to get something or approved or funded. A technical specification (i.e. design spec, use-case, test-case) is written for a completely different audience (Normally with specialized details about a specific topic).

Most 5-year olds do not read yet. Most managers do not read what you write. 5-year olds must talk to you and try to get you to believe what they want is OK by any means possible. Getting some candy or buying something at the store comes to mind. Managers must get their jobs done by talking to you and having you do most of the work. See tha parallels.

What point am I trying to discuss? When you talk to a manager, you should know your audience and always keep a background thought process of "who am I talking to and what do they want me to do for this". The same applies to 5-year olds.

By the way, my son just started Kindergarten this fall. I'm sure there will be more interesting observations related to this topic.

IBM, Java, and AJAX research

Like everyone else, IBM has been doing some really heavy research into AJAX. Here's and excellent article "Build Dynamic Applications with AJAX at IBM DeveloperWorks with UML diagrams and all. It provides yet another high level overview of AJAX and with some design challenges related to AJAX technology. I've recently been picking up the research time spent with AJAX and have been able to implement some pretty neat stuff.

Developing AJAX applications with Java

I was perusing one of my favorite Java sites (OnJava) and found a few interesting articles about developing AJAX applications in Java, "Developing AJAX Application the Easy Way" and "Introduction to AJAX". DWR looks to be interesting and plan to do some research about with it. The rate of change with AJAX in the past few months has been very fast paced. The Java community is jumping on the AJAX wave just like everyone else this summer.

More about our intelligence and the internet

Here's a followup to the intelligence and the internet topic, Are we getting smarter or dumber?. There are some good points about our future where brain fitness excercises will become more important and possibly highly recommended as the technology we use in the future will get smarter and more intuitive.

Evolution. Homo-digitas vs. Homo sapien

The evolution of human intelligence and the 'new skills' of using the internet is under heavy research. Here are a few recent articles of interest ("From ape to homo-digitas?", "Intelligence in the Internet Age" ). These 'new skills' are knowing how to effectively search on the web, heavy multitasking, compiling and organized vast amounts of information in a structured manner, and perform analysis/evaluation on retrieved information to derive an reasonably intelligent conclusion in a timely manner are important modern survival skills. All this while reading a newspaper, watching a DVD or cable TV (or both simultaneously, while also possibly listening to music) without compromising any of these tasks.

All the above must be done while being able to sort through all the junk information that constantly bombards us daily from all directions. This is creating a new 'skeptical analysis' skill when reading and absorbing information. In other words, don't believe everything you read, be skeptical and know what is good information. Our kids are acquiring this skill through their natural modern digital environment. We must learn this skill or acquire it through self habitual change.

How many times have you read a document or specification where you detected a 'copy & paste' for the most important parts. This used to be called plagiarism, however, today, it takes quite a bit more skill to detect this scenario due to the ease of acquiring digital information. Like my Dad always told me, 'read the newspaper everyday, it will make you smarter.' To this day, I still live by his advise with a few slight modifications. I still subscribe and read the physical newspaper daily however, I also read articles, websites, mags, etc. on a daily basis.

Extreme Programming and Agile Development

I have to mention the sites that have provided me with the best information about Extreme Programming (XP), Agile Software Development, and Refactoring. Researching and applying these techniques have yielded very positive results in the past few years.

Hiring the best people, effectively

This article was a decent discussion about the complexity of hiring discplined and competent developers in the modern IT world. I've always had a problem with this just as anyone else in IT and it provides some decent recommendations for making this process more objective.

This reminds me of auditions or try outs (i.e. sports). In other discplines where your performance is more critical than anything else (i.e. music, dance, theatre), the audition weeds out the candidates who 'just don't have it'. The same can be said for trying out for a sports team. Many people just don't make the cut even with their good intentions. They may have the right credentials, experience and references however, they just could not deliver when required. This is the same problem that exists with hiring good knowledge workers and software developers. It takes too long to find out if the candidate can perform.

The team and chemistry aspect of hiring is not discussed here.. that is a whole other set of management topics.

Art and Programming

Here's a relatively recent article (06/30/2005) about a topic that I revisit frequently. It discusses the relationship of art with respect to programmers, computer science, IT workers, and software engineering in general. During the boom years of the 1990s, as a computer scientist and software engineering manager I had a tremendous problem with hiring the 'right person' for the job. When jobs were plentiful, there were too many people who 'did not have what it takes' to be a disciplined and competent developer. Well, this article goes into detail about how creativity and art may relate to programming and provide excellent references about this topic.

Domino web applications and AJAX

This past weekend, Linda (my significant other, her blog), handed me the Oct2005 issue of Lotus Advisor which has my favorite topic of late, AJAX, on the cover. Looks like AJAX has found its way into the powerful world of Lotus Domino/Notes which I have always liked since I got involved using Lotus Notes in the early 90s. In the late 90s, I lost interest in Notes/Domino development when IBM did not appear to have a web or Linux client in the works. I was side tracked with Delphi, Linux, Citrix, Java, and the web in general during this timeframe. Don't get me wrong, I continue to use Domino daily, however, just lost interest in development anything in it. After reading Oct2005 Lotus Advisor article "Developing Domino Web Applications The AJAX Way" by Richard Schwarz, the combination of AJAX and Domino has reinvigorated my interest in Domino development.

IBM released Domino7 and made a clear statement about the future Lotus Domino 8, IBM Workplace and their planned Linux/Eclipse integration. (InfoWorld article, PCWorld article) I found some great resources for Domino and AJAX. I just might get back into doing more Domino development with AJAX since it now appears that the future Domino 8 release code named Hannover will be the full integration of Domino and the java-based IBM Workplace. IBM even mentioned full browser and Linux client support. This would have really been nice in 1997. Better later than never.

AJAX

Like the rest of the web development world, I've been inspired with AJAX after seeing Google Maps reading a few articles and getting my feet wet with AJAX this summer. I think AJAX is the single most disruptive force to shake up the status quo of software development in the past 10-years since the web became critical. At least that is my initial reaction. In the next 12-months, we'll see how well this technology integrates itself into the IT world. My vote is that it will become significant. It may even force all various browsers to come to some type of Javascript behavioral common ground.