I know YOU know … but when will they?

I am sure that you have heard of RSS and that you have probably even used it today (more than twice??), you may have even developed some RSS content.  If you have seen it, used it and/or built you … You Know!  You can see what is going on here.  When you look at it, RSS is such a powerful technology it gave Firefox (a faster moving software company) the ability to compete against a monumental giant.
Yeah I know, the tabbed browsing … faster loading pages … standards based support … the security aspects; sure those are all valid points.  Combine those with what I find to be the easiest way to distribute the power of RSS.

Seen this icon before:  

This icon (which IE7 has remarkably adopted to display its "live bookmark" content) will help push RSS to the masses.  The people who _don't_ know.

If you read less than 10 websites on a regular basis then maybe you don't need it.

If you read less than 10 websites on a regular basis then … you are boring … step aside and get in line.

Seriously, though there is a TON of information out there and it is impossible to keep up with it.  RSS gives you what I feel, the only way to truly discover new information on a regular basis.

I have been interviewing some smart people recently and I am utterly amazed at the number of those smart people who know nothing about RSS.  Only 1 of the last 7 people that I have interviewed for various TECH positions at a Web based CMS solution knew what RSS was.  Yes, Web based!

Getting this type of technology (which dates back to 1999) to the masses is critical.  The more people that know what a news reader is (My reader is Sage – more on the Firefox Extensions), the better.

If you don't know … then ask … we want to help. 

Has anyone been paying attention lately?

Ok, so I have been in a shell for a few years, gliding around entrenched in my work and traveling. I pop my head up for a minute and all of the sudden there is this software revolution going on! What the heck.

For the past 4 years I have been working for a Web based CMS written in ColdFusion. Since our product has been around for so long (since 1999) our architecture supports pretty old technology. When new stuff comes out I usually read about, fool around with it and the watch it pass by. I am amazed at what is available and what is still being built. It seems if you want you can find an application to manage your shoe collection. It's amazing.

Well I have been reading a lot more (a lot of the sites listed to the right) and I am psyched! I feel much like I did back in '96 when I realized the power of web applications and started building them. It was a ton of fun building, architecting, testing (yeah right).

It seems that there is a rejuvination of that spirit. Just read TechCrunch, SolutionWatch and the Read/Write Web. If you don't get pumped about the software that is available your dead or boring. Some of my new favorites:

- Zillow
- Google Calendar
- Box.net (a bit scary but cool)
- Google Earth
- Anything IPod Related

Will this increse in software development produce the same type of tech fever that was created in the mid 90's? Without a doubt. We have a ton of smart people out there who have been studying the social aspects surrounding our increased use of the Internet. With the renewal in VC funding in the past few years, it is only a matter of time before applications become more main stream.

Correct me if I am wrong but … Google is hot!

Is Google merely doing everything that we are thinking about doing or are they truly leading us down the next phase of the Internet. It would be safe to say that Microsoft lead the way. They did things that other people truly never dreamed about doing. First the OS, then the Software now the Internet. Oops…. wait, Microsoft does not lead us in the Internet anymore. But who does??? Is it truly Google or is it someone else? Netscape, AOL and Yahoo certainly lead for a long time. In order to lead you need followers. You need copy cats. Does Google have any real copycats and does it go beyond their "simple UI" (check out the recent changes at the Duke Blue Devils web site – yeah I said Duke)?

When it comes to things that are new you would have to say that Google is having its way. But of the things that they have touched, what is truly groundbreaking. Certainly the Google Appliance, certainly the Advertising scheme, and most certainly their ability to stand up to the Justice Department (yeah I am tossed on that decision but at least they are groundbreaking). Yeah Google Video is hot and I guess they did create Maps 2.0. By the way has anyone seen the new Yahoo maps? Very good implementation (if you have not tried it yet http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/index.php). Well then they are groundbreaking I guess.

What I believe is remarkable about their success is that they have done a lot of this on a mostly open architecture. What I mean is that they are gaining all of this momentum without selling much of anything. What they are proving, I believe, is that there is truly a place in this world for the Service Oriented Architecture. Duh! Anyone can see that, I know. But think about it, the architecture has been around for a while and many (successful) software companies utilize the architecture on a daily basis. Heck we are even building it into our next release. But if you sit and think about it they are creating a huge demonstration of what life will be with this architecture available to developers all over the globe.

So, back to the debate, are they leading the way? Were the first or just the biggest. Read around a bit (even through links on this site) and you will see what is going on. It is all over the place.

Quite frankly, I could care less who created it, marketed it, stuffed it in our bellies … it tastes good!

We don’t need no stinkin’ navigation

I have been implementing web sites for what seems like forever and I have to honestly say that this is the first time I have ever heard this "Do we even really need a navigation".  The crazy thing about this statement was that the client was honest.  The other crazy thing is that the client was not your normal crazy customer they were serious and they had a point.  Why would really need some complicated navigation.  If you represent content in a logical way each of the "jump" pages in a web site should be good enough.

Obviously, they did not remove the nav all together, I think that would be suicide, but they bring up a valid point that I think needs to be brought to light.  This is not a new point, gosh, google has made this point since its inception.  What the exercise gave them (the "do we really need a navigation" exercise) was that they evaluated their content at a high level and realized that they were managing links in a complicated navigation that were not even being used.  Their theory was that the navigation at a minimal needed to offer some high level access to areas so that users that were unfamiliar with the site could "get around".  They concluded that they really needed just 2 levels of navigation for their entire site.  Note: this site is a prominent site that you would all know and receives millions of page views a week and has thousands (if not 10's of thousands) of pages so, it this is a big decision.

I liken their decision with the recent changes in the Duke.edu site. They have "googleized" their home page to have "search" as a prominent part of their "navigation".  Duke has been in the lead in other areas of their use of digital media.  A few years ago, they were one of the first Universities to give their freshman each an IPod so they could record their classes.  Other universities have begun to offer Podcasting of the lectures (I think Stanford even sells them on ITunes).  Maybe Duke (and the client above) are on to something.  Maybe we have become more sophisticated as web users and we don't need elaborate navigation's.  I will leave you with one note though (since I am currently undecided on the need for "full" navigation elements) – recently this client during a very high traffic time, created an image that linked to a major point on their site.  After a few days of low links to the major portion of the site, they added some text "Click here for more info >>" in the bottom right corner of the page – in one day with the new image they received 3 times as much traffic to the major area.  Maybe we are not so ready, but I still like the idea of "trimming" navigation's based on actual usage.  Certainly makes the CMS implementation a heck of a lot easier.

IPOD’s are taking over the world

Ok another link to mikull.com but this one is cool:

Your IPod and Your Privacy

Very interesting read. I have to say it is far fetched, unless you think of one thing:

We have seen an incredible (almost scary) increase in the usage of this device. We talked about it at the Dev Training. No other single product name has spread this fast in our life time. My conspiracy theory, that "numbers station" stuff… what if Jobs found a connection with that and some nerve center in the brain. An almost "brainwashing" style nerve center. What if these IPOD's are communicating with our brains at a subliminal level and thats why everyone (including folks older than my grandparents) are using them … huh … I will be purchasing my IPod within the week … yes master!

And I wasn't even coming here for this post!

How much effort does this take to build?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU0xC8M3CwA&search=Super%20Mario%20Reloaded

Ok I have no time at all to even find content like this on the Internet (if it wasn't for mikull.com I would have never found this). How would you ever have the time to build this. Hopefully the person who made this entered it into a contest or received some college credit for this work, it seems like there was a lot of effort put into this. Actually, I thank them, because being a Matrix fan, this was a very entertaining clip.

The new world of Games

If you have any opinion (good or bad) about the role Games (specifically video games) play in today's society than you need to read the articles written in the April issue of Wired magazine. I have always been a proponent of video games. We didn't have a game console in my house until I was in high school but I had plenty of opportunity to play them at my friends house growing up. I started playing video games in the 4th and 5th grade in a computer club after school but since those were Apple IIe computers I was easily bored with the 2d green screen displays. I wasn't until my friend across the street got his NES that I really started to enjoy the challenges provided by video games.
The early games were cool and offered general pattern and skill challenges. I can remember playing hours of excitebike and moving from level to level by learning how to jump and land properly to keep speed. Games like double dribble and blades of steel offered a great opportunity to challenge the mind and coordination of an opponent other than a computer. It was fun to defeat all of my friends at every video game possible. I can remember my cousin (who is 6 years my junior) getting a Comodore 64 when he was like 8. I loved playing simple games like (the paint bucket game) and even learned how to do some basic programming. When I finally got a console for my own I spent countless hours mastering Super Marios 1 2 and 3. I was a wiz at Contra and Metroid. Then came Zelda! Oh my! At the time my best friend and I were into D and D so the complex worlds of Zelda and the "adventure style" play was incredible. I wasn't a "junky" per se I just enjoyed the mental challenges of conquering worlds and boses. The trial and error style play was intriguing because while I was not playing I could think about the problem and then when I got back to the game I was excited to try my solutions out. I think it was at this time in my life that I truly understood the meaning of insanity and that if you tried something a hundred times in a row and did it exactly the same way each time to no avail that I could truly go insane.
Up to this point in my gaming career everything was 2D. And I loved it. When I was at arcades or the bowling alley my two favorite games were R-Type and Galaga. Again 2D games. I remember the first time I saw a "3D" game – Dragon Slayer. It wasn't 3D in the sense that we know of today but it had depth. The backgrounds were not as linear but you could not move in 3 Dimensions. I actually thought it was kind of stupid (and so did many other people because the game was not at the arcade for very long). The first true 3D game that I can remember playing was "Foxfire" on the Super NES/ That game rocked! I would play that game for hours. I can not remember if I ever completed the game but I know that I got real far. Some of my favorite early 3D games were Pitfall Harry (not the original one although I found a secret place in that game where you were transported to the old game in what I remember as the first "Game in Game" experience – truly amazing experience), Super Mario Bros 4 for the Super NES ( the one were Yoshi was introduced – boy was it fun hopping around on that guy – even named a cat after him), 720 (one of the best skateboard games ever) and Skate or Die.
My gaming experience began to taper off after I started college and except for a few stints on Quake and the recent PS2 I received 2 years ago for Christmas I don't have much time for playing games. Currently I own only a handful of games – NBA 2K5, NHL 06, GTA Vice, Grand Tourismo 3 and Ghost Recon. I know that I will get back into gaming (in a big way) when my two boys get good enough but for now I play maybe once or twice a month. So why am I posting this? Well the articles have sparked some interest in a few ways. One is that they are a great set of articles on the current state of gaming, everything from the past to the future, the gamers, the game inventors, the pioneers, the social acceptability (and unacceptability). A few of my favorite articles from the Magazine were
"Dream Machines…"
I like this article because it spoke to the "society" aspect of gaming. Gaming gets such a bad press from everyone except the gamers. We only hear about the bad things that games do – the GTA style killings, the immersion into "virtual worlds" and lack of reality. We never hear about the benefits of gaming – the fact that the nature of games today provide immense improvements in childs imaginations which is probably one of the single most important parts of your ability to learn and think. I am sending this article (and a few others) over to my sister in law who has two boys who are by far the most amazing game players I have ever met. A little over a year and a half a go, I had the opportunity to watch them play a computer game centered around the movie "Toy Story". The game had like 8 levels. It started off in Andy's play room (I know the boys name because I have seen Toy Story at least 30 times). Buzz lightyear is tasked with getting around the room by jumping from one area to another. You start in the crib and have to trigger the switch on the crib which drops one side of the crib wall down which enables buzz to get out. You then needed to jump over to the dresser, and then on a few more items and on to the door where you had to open it with some crazy jump move. Seems like an easy game but one thing that made it amazing was that my nephews were 4 and 5 years old and they beat all 8 levels without any instructions or help from the parents. In addition, they played together. The game is a single person game so one of them would take the arrow keys and move Buzz and the other would take the Space and action button to make Buzz interact with the game. I know that a lot of brothers their age can play constructively together but I also know that no two people play a video game the same way. For those two to work together as well as they did was amazing. My sister and law is concerned about their game playing time so I hope that the article helps here understand that there are some benefits to the gaming industry.
"Geekonomics"
An excerpt from the article:

"To spice up life in Habitat, developers added money and pawn machines. For a while, you could buy crystal balls at one machine and sell them for nearly twice as much at another. Of course, someone coded his computer to run a character between sellers, quintupling the money supply overnight."

For real? That is awesome. I can picture the geeky guy/girl behind the keyboard coding that with a wicked huge smile on their faces. The article also talks about how Sony ordered EBay to stop auctions of Everquest currency because it was screwing the games economic system. Like any good corporate move online, it only prompted other auction sites to sell the currency for more as it now became a scarcity ("choice under scarcity")
"My Second Life as a Muckraker"
The last article that I found interesting was one on the Social Aspect of MMORPG's and how some of the cyber society rubs off on our real society. Do a google on "Linden's crackdown on Ballermomo's crew". Seems like the game creators are only happy when the game is played the way it was intended. Sounds more like 16th century religious oppression to me.
My recommendation: By the magazine it is worth the 5 bucks. As a note the above article "My Second Life…" does not appear to be online nor is the cool "pull out" in the middle of the articles which has a history of games.