Alcides Fonseca

From time to time I freak out about Windows Live Messenger also known as MSN Messenger. First is one centralized system. Everything depends on Microsoft. They’re servers are down. No MSN for anyone. They said you can only have 150 contacts in one account, you have to have two so you can connect all your friends. Then they said you were allowed 300, it was nice but at that point, you also had more than 300 contacts. After that they increased the limit to 1000 and that was enougth for some years. Then you reach the limit and have to clean up your contact list. I know you can have more than 1000 now, but I don’t know how much.

Now I get another stupid error: I got too many groups on my messenger list. Grrr I HATE YOU MSN! Only if my hot friends would change to Jabber as everyone should… MSN can’t even let me be logged in in two different computers :(

Levantar-me as 6 da manhã não foi tão doloroso como pensava. Até porque acordei as 5. Eu e os meus quatro acompanhantes (mais sobre isto no final) apanhámos o alfa e 3 horas depois estávamos a fazer o check-in no TechDays. Lá fui obrigado a andar com a camisa oficial do evento (não entra bem no meu estilo), mas tinha a vantagem de não me andarem a scannar o cartão sempre que queria entrar.

Começámos por ver a sessão do Mr. Rob Miles sobre XNA com os seus very silly games. Comparado às apresentações de Barcelona o público não respondeu ao seu humor bastante refinado. Mas todos gostámos.

Depois a sessão sobre o Robotics Studio que é uma coisa que já me anda há uns tempos na cabeça. O Rob Miles usa a plataforma XNA para ensinar os seus alunos a programar. Eu cá acho que a robótica é que era bastante útil neste propósito. E ainda quero ver se alguém estiver interessado em patrocinar um Lego Mindstorms NXT, eu dar-lhe-ei bom uso no meu departamento! Em relação ao Robotics Studio é bastante interessante o simulador que junta renderização do XNA com um motor de física usado em muitos jogos. Gostava de testar isto a sério!

A slot seguinte foi para descansar um bocado e rever a minha apresentação que vou falar num post à part e finalmente fui à segunda parte de silverlight 2.0. É engraçado, um bocadinho melhorzinho que o Flash, mas ainda não vale a diferença. Agora o 3.0 com 3d e aceleração gráfica vai fazer mesmo a diferença! E trazer os jogos de qualidade ao browser :)

Foi bastante engraçado o evento, e tinha miúdas giras, como em qualquer evento da Microsoft! Podem ver alguns vídeos sobre o evento, que dão uma ideia de como correu!

Só um pequeno rant: apenas se inscreveram 10 pessoas para ir gratuitamente ao TechDays, o que quer dizer que poucas pessoas na minha faculdade se interessam por ir a eventos técnicos deste género. É uma pena. Outra coisa que também me deixa em baixo é que dos 10 iniciais apenas foram 4 porque tinhamos uma data de coisas marcadas para o dia seguinte e não há qualquer facilitismo para alunos que faltem às aulas para participar a eventos. Já se forem professores não há problema e podem ou não marcar aulas de substituição...

First of all, it ¹ was an excellent keynote! Not that b.o.r.i.n.g keynote I’ve seen in TechEd Barcelona (Somasegar simply doesn’t have that charisma it needs to make an hell of a presentation!). And I deeply liked this keynote. Not that always-the-same keynote Mr Jobs does all the time²! They really called people to show interesting stuff made in their technologies.

From Ozzie’s talk, you get one thing: Microsoft is definitely moving from a software products to software services. I see them in 8–9 years to let go Office (the desktop app) and provide Office Online only. It has not been talking, but it’s a great solution against the piracy their been experimenting.

They did the right thing for standards, that’s true. However I will never forget that they did it one version later. IE7 would be the perfect version to make the move.

Improved scripting performance. That just the natural evolution, no big deal. It’s around the same values as the last firefox and webkit.

They also fulfilled one item of my ie8 wishlist, the HTML5 partial rendering. That’s the only nice thing I’ve seen.

Built-in developer tools. Everyone LOVES firebug. That’s just a copycat.

WebSlices. Have you heard of Safari’s WebClip? No special markup needed! They wanted to get in the microformats world, but I don’ think it was the best way.

Activities. This is the one point they wanted to integrate the social web in the browser. Although WebServices/Activities have a nice and easy spec, that’s again the wrong approach in my opinion. Search is already handled by OpenSearch and all the interactive context should be handled by microformats. Which I haven’t heard of in the entire keynote (and hSlice doesn’t count!).

Microsoft talks all the time about innovation, but the truth is I haven’t seen any in IE8. Has anyone noticed that the interface is exactly the same as IE7? Even the searchbox is the same! I really hope that changes until the Gold.

Just bare with some quick notes about SilverLight2. They’re focusing it in video, that’s what I learn from the news. They also showed some RIA examples, but does anyone see any real advantage comparing to Flex? Apart from being .NET? Me neither. The only thing I really wanted from Silverlight is years away: 3D. Is even any Silverlight Papervision3d clone around?

Oh wait, there was one lovely thing I predicted: Silverlight went mobile and also for Nokia’s. That’s the only way I’m gonna be using Silverlight for now.

¹ Silverlight apps have the same problem as Flash. You cannot easily have a direct URI for each page. Microsoft should have made it better for Mix Sessions!

² Before you zealot guys start to call me a Microsoft clone, I proudly own a macbook, and I wouldn't trade it for any other laptop running XP or Vista!

Well, tomorrow in MIX08 keynote, Dean is going to talk about IE8 and even show it (rumors say at this time there is already a private beta program running).

The IE8 team (and some other guys at MS) noticed that the webdesigners and developers didn’t particularly like the IE8 behavior towards standards, and with MIX coming up, they definitely want to please designers, so yesterday they changed their minds and IE8 will follow the standards rendering the pages for default. This is a huge news! When everybody says that Apple listen to their users (regarding 10.5.2), Microsoft does the same about their ever-hated browser.

There is also one thing I guess their going to announce tomorrow: the fact IE8 will ship with the silverlight plugin. Everyone is expecting this, but it’s their way of convincing more designers to enter the silverlight wave. And Apple will also announce the same for Safari in next mac event…

After yesterday’s announcement, I’m already please with Microsoft, but there are a few things that would make me even more happier. First it would be the Microformats UI. After Mozilla dropping microformat UI support for Firefox3, this would be an excellent news to higher IE in people’s consideration.

Another news I would love to see is the OpenID support. Right now, I get the feeling Microsoft is becoming a security freak. They already have Cardspace support, but for regular internet surfers, they will only use it, if attached to an OpenID. So we could expect a Cardspace+OpenID support, but I guess not now.

The final feature, and this one would be the one I would really fall in love with MS, but I know it’s impossible, is the HTML5 (even if partial) rendering support. There are already a few folks wearing html5, so it would help people to move forward, and even pressure the standardization process.

John Gruber shared his thoughts on why Apple doesn’t want Flash on the iPhone and I believe that this should be reason for Microsoft to get Silverlight on the Mobile world.

In Microsoft’s events I’ve seen that they are trying to get people to use Silverlight (until now, they’ve failed in my opinion. Only a bunch of their partners is using it in the real world). In terms of results, you can achieve the same with Flash and all designers know it already. They believe it will be used because their desktops apps will also be built with the same technology (XAML), but I also haven’t seen those yet… Who knows if MIX08 will bring some big news?

Back to the mobile world, Microsoft is loosing to Apple’s iPhone mainly due to the user interface everybody complains on Windows Mobile. Nokia, LG and others are already following iPhone’s design patterns, and even the Android has some similarities. Yes, the “G Phone” that will be the main competitor for the Windows Mobile, since it will run on the same mobile (HTC and others). There are even some plugins to make WM more user friendly.

So I guess WM7 (or 6.5?) should have this astonishing interface and Silverlight based and if possible making it available to the Android Phones and even Symbian. That’s how they could make Silverlight a ubiquitous platform.

I’m sure all of you who have tried Ubuntu or other user friendly linux distro in the last years have enjoyed how easy is to install new software. First, because it’s free. Second, because it’s not painful. Any user can Add/Remove software though this simple GUI. And terminal geeks can also with apt-get command (or whatever package manager you use in your distro). Well, I believe this is another concept Microsoft should import to Windows, but adapting to their users needs.

To begin with, Windows 7 should come with a proper folder structure (Vista improved a bit, but I’m still stuck with Program Files and Programas and other stuff). I really love how Apple have done it with the OS X. Second, get a new MSI kind of files, that include dependencies. In today’s world it’s a must! If I develop a IronPython software (I assume Windows 7 wouldn’t come with IronPython, which is disappointing, but expectable from MS), I want it to be downloaded and installed automatically (and no damn Next,Next,Next processes! Just a big Install and a small Advanced buttons). I’m aware there is win-get but that’s just a non-usable patch to our problem here.

The new idea here is to bring commercial software to this environment. You could browser a list of opensource, freeware, shareware and paid software by your needs. And you could buy the latest game, or that productivity software you need, right in some desktop app. Ok, the idea is not so new, since Apple is selling iPod games via the iTunes Store. So may I expect this idea to be implemented in the back soon? Macports can’t really do it for regular users.

Back to my idea, this would be the right way of fighting the software piracy. People download software through bittorrent, emule or another P2P technology faster than they move their asses to some software store. You just have to make that process damn easy. And indie companies would win also, since if their software is worth it, it will be voted or recommended to other users. Oh, and sysadmins would also be able to remotely install some software in all the N machines they’re responsable for.

This post is a best-of my feedreadings of today. Some people do del.icio.us posting and I’m getting infected too.

I found about Port25, a website where is explained why Microsoft hates OpenSource! (NOT) I’m curious about what will MS say about OpenSource in 10 years. When maybe Ballmer is enjoying his retirement and someone from a different background (and younger) will decide what direction will Redmond’s still-big Giant take.

IronRuby vs Ruby.NET, a nice post by the IronRuby developer John Lam, a bit more of what I mentioned between IronPython and Python.NET.

I want the new Windows Mobile 6.1 new interface! I guess 6.0 should be called 5.1 and this one it’s the one that is the real 6!

Developer’s Hymn: pretty much self-explanatory.

A fan of Desktop Tower Defense? And you also like World of Warcraft? There you go: Hordes of Orcs! But OS X only for now…

Feeds still messy. Sorry but no time to fix it. Please bear with me and come visit my wonderful website :)

Stay at Home Servers’ book is one of the most brilliant pieces of advertising I came across lately. Do click an read the flash-based book!

I already hear the voices: “Now they are brainwashing kids to get their parents to buy them the server , right in your faces!”. This ad is targeting end-users without geek skills, not the kids themselves… But it true they can see it and get the wrong impression. But I believe kids are smart enough not to buy it.

A small note: Flash? Where’s that so incredible Silverlight? Not even in Microsoft websites? And I bet the guy who did the design stuff used a mac! Can you spot the iPhone?

Regarding the product itself, I am not a believer. Why would I buy one more big fat box, just to be connected? I have my desktop backing up the notebook’s file. I can access my files from school through FTP. Why would I need that HomeServer? I am doing fine with my Windows XP desktop.

What I believe is more of a Apple mini/tv server. A media center that has a nice storage capacity serving as a backup for everyone (would be used mostly for storing movies and series, I bet), a well designed media player (to be seen in televisions), a smart and cute browser, bluetooth to sync mobile devices on the fly, and even some games. Not that hardcore games like Halo (MS has Xbox for that), but some casual games wouldn’t hurt anyone. Even the iPod has them!

This would be the “home server” I’d buy my family this Xmas. Ok, ok that I would make my dad buy… It would be really useful and meaningful.

This last week was quite exciting! I didn’t have much time to post stuff as I wanted, most of the times it was from my TyTn, others from a borrowed-for-one-minute laptop. I also haven’t included photos so the posts might be hard to read, but if you are interested, you can check Flickr or PicasaWeb. This post contains my impressions and conclusions of this week that was pretty remarkable.

About the city

Barcelona is a pretty nice city, with a lot of monuments, especially Gaudi’s art and lots of gardens. Metros every 3 minutes and Starbucks every corner astonished me! There was also a great cultural variety and that special people at Ramblas.

About the guys

They were amazing company (excluding the fact they didn’t want me to return—) and pretty interesting folks! There was the goodies girl, the always-on-the-pc geek, the pervert , the Responsible guy and the girly socks fetishist.

About the event

Microsoft did in fact organized a pretty good event! No logistic problems, there was a lot of sessions at the same time, so I always went to those I like the most and in every slot, a HTC touch was offered. Too bad I wasn’t one of the lucky ones!

The presentations were pretty good and they were managing them according to our feedback. They did thought about the “users”! They also brought independent speakers (from dev, blogging and communities). They didn’t brought from the competition, but thinking again, it wouldn’t be such a good idea, as I have experienced.

About Microsoft

From TechEd I notice that Microsoft is really improving and upgrading into this Web2.0 age. Open APIs for live services! Popfly’s mashups for everyone! REST, MVC pattern, ActiveRecord, History support for AJAX and a bunch of things that developers want to use. They are also worried about Firefox and Safari support!

From what I learned from the experts they are also starting to worry about non-office end users (I might write about this soon) and worried about the experience they are giving the user.

About the After Event

One of the highlights of the event for me was the two nights we went out. The first one with all the MSPs from the EMEA and with some speakers and Microsoft staff. We went bowling and as we didn’t care too much about it, we learned a lot about other countries with each others. The second night was with all the Portugueses there and I met very interesting people and even from Coimbra!

I really want to thank Microsoft for giving us this opportunity to improve both technical and personal experience. There aren’t that many companies offering this trips!

Opening up Windows Live Data & Protocols

Windows live is now releasing some APIs, for now IM control and Presence messenger, Windows Live Contacts and Windows Live Spaces Photos. They are also offering developers free Silverlight Streaming at 1.4 TB per second. Wow!

They also revealed some more numbers, as the 2 billions of photos there are in Windows Live Spaces, and they want people to start to move from Flickr to there. Yeah, right…

There is a WebDAV support for Photos that is very cool for desktop applications, but when it comes to webservers, you must stream what you get from the API. It sucks in terms of memory and bandwidth limits! I wish a REST approach was also used…

Windows Live Photo Gallery had both Windows Live Spaces and Flickr support that is a really nice thing, it shows that they-re not afraid of the competition and I haven’t found the trick that is making them so confident in their product!

There is also a API for getting (and modifying) Windows Live Contacts in a way that social networks like Hi5 and so stop asking for our live credentials to import our friends contacts. However they made the allow panel with such an hard security (like warnings and stuff) that makes users suspicious about services (and forget if you have no SSL!). I believe this is a issue they should think of, but not as much as they did! It will make people not to do mashups as they want them to do!

There are also weird Terms of Service that you should check up, one of the things is that if you allow sign up you must have a revoke link! Pretty good hein?

The next release of ASP.NET

This session sucked pretty much. Matt Gibs just announced stuff that already had been spoken of in other presentations. First, Astoria, the new project that serves webservices as a RESTful API. Pretty thing, but should already be done for a long time, just like MVC framework! There have been others for years and only now Microsoft got in this web2.0 thing following Rail’s innovation. At least it supports both static and dynamic languages, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see a “IronRails” coming up really soon. Another thing they copied from it was the Scaffolding. Yes, now ASP.NET also has dynamic data controls, the Scaffold from Rails.

There are also real new stuff: you can interact Silverlight controls, that is pretty hard in Flash+other language. Another good thing is the history control so that users don’t blow everything up when using the back button on the browser.

Blogging Panel

Tom Mertens gathered up Clemens Vasters, Patrick Lowendahl, Patrick Tisseghem and Tom Raftery on stage to talk about blogs.

Well, I have been to a few discussion panels about blogs and I don’t ever see the point on discussing it. In the end I don’t learn anything new and everyone agrees on pretty much the same thing. This one was no exception… Maybe their target were developers who don’t blog, but those wouldn’t be there in the first place.

Building Applications using the Identity Metasystem Security Model

Vittorio really knows about this stuff. It was a Q&A session where the audience asked about some problems implementing this kind of security model (and using CardSpace) and some issues it might raise. I really learned a lot about security models on this session. If you ever have the opportunity to attend one of his presentations, don’t miss it!

SOAP/WS-* and REST: Complementary Communication Styles

First there were the WS-* over the SOAP Protocol, and everyone was happy. Then, the RESTafarians came up presenting this new simple way of using webservices over the web using its standard. The beauty of REST stands in the syntax used, that is the HTTP itself. Using HEAD, POST, PUT, GET and DELETE associated with the URI and everything is in place.

Well David Chappel believes that the battle between the two should end and they should be both used when needed. REST guys are more younger and inexperienced in corporate business than he is, and so he defends that a corporate level it’s pretty hard to implement everything in REST, specially synchronization between various services, and SOAP will still be used for more complex systems.

Improving Software Safety and Reliability – Applying Ergonomics to the User Interface

Chad Hower made this traditional usability presentation where he went through a lot of examples where bad design has lead to some minor and major problems. One thing that he focused is that one simple click every hour in a large company, when summed all up together, the time/money thrown away is too big.

Building Fun, Cool Applications with Popfly

I had tried Yahoo Pipes a while ago and I didn’t find it easy enough for simple users to use it. Well, Dan Fernandez did a demo how to make widgets and gadgets (isn’t it the same thing after all?) with Popfly and integrate it in your space. I found the interface (built on silverlight) pretty cool and intuitive, but the notion of blocks and how they should connect to each other is too easy for me and too complicated for regular users. I find it however a good step in bringing the power of programming and semantics to them, but is only the beginning of a great path.

Communities? Can they really help my business, my day-to-day job, and my career?

Bart Martens has been working for a long time as a manager of a big IT community and has help several others to start and grow up. He focused the importance of sharing knowledge and taking the opportunity that communities give you to get a fast answer to some common problems.

Although I find him a great person, I guess the presentation wasn’t particularly well done in the perspective of making geek IT guys to gather more and take advantage of that. He focused a bit on managing communities, but only a few in the audience even participated on those.

A developer diary on implementing Windows CardSpace

Dominick Baier did a great presentation on a subject that matters to me: Identity 2.0 focusing (of course, this is a MS event) on cardspace technology. Cardspace works a wallet where you have your cards you need to sign in your services. He showed a bit how to make a small web application that used Cardspace as login. However, as he suggested, you can’t make this direct transition. You have to support both Cardspace and traditional login/password system. Well, I guess I already heard this one for OpenID.

At the end of the session, I talked to Vittorio Bertocci about this and as cardspace is user-centric and openID is based on independent providers. At the end he agreed that for now the best authentication for my blog, forum, website or something with a “normal” level of security is OpenID. He also mentioned something I wanted to build that is alreay done on signon.com. Another thing I think cardspace lacks is the capability of loading a card from a server location (protected of course!).

Silverlight, ASP.net and web services in IronPython and IronRuby

Following latest presentation, Mahesh this time focused the development of websites using IronPython. First we had a silverlight presentation made using IronPython to add handlers to XAML parts. Then we created a ASP.NET project but instead of C# or VB.net, we used IronPython (Ruby is now available for download) and it really makes your life simpler! C# guys, please try IronPython or Ruby for a week and then you’ll change for sure!

Understanding Software + Services

David Chappell shared with us his vision on the close future on the informatics. He believes software will leave single-tenant (where they are local and expensive) to multi-tenant (in the cloud and cheaper due to flexibility of shared resources). He also raised this question that it’s to me the main issue in this transition: What about trust?

Single-tenant has the major advantage that you develop for only one platform that you’ll manage for sure. It gives you more control of the environment where it will run and also it will be easier to change or add features. Users are in the need for fast updates of the product is this is the answer for that. The dynamic capacity is the key for this change that decreases the costs of software. For example, the Christmas shopping boom may be handled dynamically.

There are already some examples like EC2 (computing), S3 (storage), salesforce and dynamics (CRM applications) and a lot more. He focused a bit on Microsoft that is moving gradually with Dynamics being hosted on premises, partner hosted or Microsoft hosted (Dynamics Live).

He also highlighted Salesforce.com, a CRM that is now SaaS.

IronPython and Dynamic Languages on .NET

After spending more time in getting from the hotel to the event than getting from Lisbon to Barcelona and losing the first session slot, I attended Mahesh Prakriya’s presentation on the Dynamic Languages .NET supports, focusing IronPython (being my language of choice for now!).

He started to introduce Dynamic Languages that have no strict definition, it’s kind of a intuitive thing developers know how to distinguish, but is about types, being interactive, metaprogramming, etc… but is NOT about typed vars as many may think! Well, IronPython is the implementation of the Python language on the .NET framework, but still supporting (almost) all the standard modules. He showed us a bit of its internals and it’s based on “how do I do this?” and learns it, so it has never to research it again. That’s maybe why IronPython is the fastest implementation of Python (even over CPython and Jython)!

The session had a lot of simple demos that showed how the language has a REAL integration with the framework. First he imported MSAgent (That little merlin 3d guy you might know from Microsoft Office) and made him wave, think and move. He also created this form and made it inkable (he was using a tablet) and a minute after it was reading what he had wrote (using Microsoft Speech). All of this in a dozen of lines and on the fly! Makes you rethink about C#, doesn’t it?

What about tools? Well it will be available a SDK for IronPython (no out-of-the-box, sorry…) for both VS2005 and VS2008. It will generate Winforms and WPF (2008 only) code, that is a great advantage! If you want more on this you can check Aaron’s blog. Another thing that is really interesting is debugging that is pretty difficult in standard python (that means you’re only using print statements). VS allows you to use breakpoints, check the stack and variable spaces! It even includes a console for your interactive plays! And guess what I am really missing when working outside VS? Intellisense! Python with everything I love!

Let’s get back to demos! This time guess what? XNA! That’s right, pretty cooler than PyGame in my humble opinion! With some short code, we added asteroids to the default demo in the SDK! Unfortunately, it will only run on Windows and not on Xbox360… Yet! Another demo was using Microsoft Robotics, that with a simples form, controlled the robot via bluetooth and all in IronPython!

In the end, we had the experience of a real developer, Michael Foord, that developed a kind of Excel software with a console and a code area where PowerUsers could develop their own stuff. Was pretty good the example that this kind of language is being really used and not only as some proof of concept or for some kids to play around. Really enjoyed the session in its whole!

Why Software Sucks?

David Platt really knows how to get you focused on his talk. For 45 minutes he talked about what it’s wrong with software development right now! People who build software are pretty different from those who use it and this tend to generate some conflicts. In general, users don’t want this or that feature, don’t want it to use the latest technology, but to just do the job! He showed a kind of examples that software didn’t helped people and may be improved to solve people’s problems.

He gave us some advices: Adding a “virgin” to the design team, based on the idea that “blindness improves your vision”; Breaking the convention, but only when its really needed; Don’t letting edge cases complicate the mainstream; Instrumenting—carefully.

Pretty astonishing presentation and I hope to hear him soon! And maybe read his book with the same title.

Improvements in Visual Studio 2008 and .NET compact Framework 3.5 for Windows Mobile developers.

This presentation was a roadmap over the new stuff Microsoft is launching right now that affects Windows Mobile development! Visual Studio 2008 is coming really soon and .Net compact framework has reached its 3.5 version! 3.5 is about distributed and data aplications! Despite not having real performance improvements, it has far more capabilities! It includes 90% of System.Net and System.Data, LINQ and WCF!

You can have a few LINQ stuff, XML and datasets, but unfortunately no Linq2SQL due to the limitation of RAM in mobile devices! Some stuff that users asked for are included in this version, just like sound APIs, compression and device security and certificate managers. From the tools point of view, it includes unit testing and the 3.0 version of the emulator that can be used together with the Managed CoreCon framework to create different emulator controlled environments! Pretty cool stuff that I liked a lot!

A traditional issue with mobile computing is the wireless connectivity. If you have a GPRS or 3G connection, each time you change your cell to another access point, the connection brokes and a new IP is given. To solve the problem connecting applications with webservices, we now have ActiveSync with a Exchange server over email (using SOAP). In my opinion this is just a work around, not a real solution that I might agree with Vitor Santos that is IPv6. But is that time now?

I found out another cool stuff is that there are already asp.net server pages running on mobile that is quite an impressive thing, but not pretty much usable. A cool website to check when I get back home is OpenNETCF.org.

Microsoft Student Partner Presentation

As a MSP I had to skip the normal presentations to attend an interesting one with all the MSPs in EMEA that were in the conference. The program managers did their usual talks that I’m not a fan of and then included some testimonials from MVPs and guys who did the internship in Redmond. I really like to learn from them!

In the second half of the session, They invited a panel of (the best) speakers in the events to answer some of our questions. It was pretty cool to listen to them about stuff that matters to us (and also joking aroung!). I got to know that Mahesh thinks that in the near future Dynamic Languages will be more and more used by .NET developers and a language with future may be the one with the best of Python and Ruby together.

After that I’ve talked to David Platt and Rob Miles that I find very inspiring and shared some thoughts with me on the future of technology. I’d like to highlight that Platt believes that Computer Science and Engineering are breaking apart. As engineering not being science, but what technology can do to solve real live problems, it is strongly important to pass that idea to students.

Later we all gone to bowling, a nice way of socializing with other students, program managers and, guess what, some speakers! It was nice to meet students from all around Europe and learn stuff that is going on there. I also had the pleasure to know Jennifer, the responsible for the program all over the world and she is indeed a enthusiastic person that I loved to met! And she listened to my suggestions and thoughts on the presentation! It’s really good to know they care about what you think!

Keynote

TechEd started today with a keynote by S. Somasegar, Corporate Vice President of the Developer Division of Microsoft. He focused that in the next year, MS will focus on getting designers and developers working together. Another good thing they want to work on is the community. He wanted every developer that asks a question on the forums to have a question in matters of hours of two day maximum. Good news in this area: Microsoft is launching a wiki for users to contribute for documentation and a code gallery so you can share your code samples. Looks like Redmond has been learning from opensource’s documentation.

He also talked about technologies starting with the Visual Studio 2008 that, apart from features like LINQ, includes built-in support for AJAX and Javascript as well (intellisense!) and it is possible to debug it on both Firefox and IE. Other thing it was cool to see was WPF 3D stuff running inside Microsoft Office that might be useful for a lot of companies.

It was shown a video showing that Microsoft is using Visual Studio 2008 tools to build the release of visual Studio itself. They showed like it was some fantastic and innovating step, but perl6 and pypy are examples of that (at least!). However it was a good prove that it worked with a large company like Microsoft, so it was a kind of test.

Regarding partners (to which the event is targeting), they are allowing them to see the source code of the Visual Studio IDE (with a non disclosure agreement) and allowing them to develop using VS to non-Microsoft platforms (Mono?). I wonder when will this come to the general public…

Dan Fernandez did this awesome demos of the power of Visual Studio! First he opened the IDE with World of Warcraft inside it, then he visually added a dialog and then he coded in LUA and guess what? Visual Studio had intellisense for that language! He then played some WoW to test what he had coded. And afterwards he even opened emails and blogs inside WoW, so you don’t have to leave it!

Moments after, when targeting the enthusiastic users, he revealed the VS support for Popfly, including a special explorer that allows you to drag and drop your Popfly project and even your friends’. And by the way, Popfly is sooo mcuh cooler than Y! pipes! Mainly because it’s silverlighted.

Together Developer and Designer

The session starting by knowing the differences between the work of a developer and of a designer. Only about 5% of the audience was a designer, but it’s nice they’re coming up to this kind of events. They showed us their project: the French Euronews player that looked nice indeed! They showed us then the 5 possible scenarios for developing a simple video player concept. There were a lot of solutions to get the Expression Design design and the Visual Studio code together. The “Integrator” used was Blend and they showed us a lot of techniques. From the “quick and dirty” button on top with opacity 0, to templates and brushes they showed a lot possible solutions, the advantages and disadvantages. For me it’s pretty clear that this is a area not yet mature and I hope to see Expression 2 and VS 10 working perfectly fine!

Building Great Web Experiences with Silverlight 1.0

Silverlight 1.0 has no managed code yet, so everything must be created using declarative language XAML and event handlers with Javascript. Well the session was pretty much the basics of this. Creating a rectangle in XAML and giving it some live with transforms and mouse events. The presenter was quite nice, but the content of the session was too superficial. I also had the idea that everything he did, I could do with javascript + canvas element in HTML. The advantage of Silverlight that is the video and multimedia wasn’t shown.

This sunday was spent visiting the city. Instead of a short tour in the touristic bus, we decided to walk and use Barcelona’s public transportation system (metro every 3 minutes!). In the metro ads, I found out that another event was happening here: The manga festival! And I found a Ichigo Cosplay leaving the metro! I wish I could be there!

We visited a lot of monuments like the olimpic village, industrial park, sagrada família, the “Spanish people”, park de Montjuic, and a lot of stuff. You should follow our photos (links soon). I noticed a lot of art stuff around, so if you have interest for this, you should visit this city.

We also tried to hack macdonalds wifi with no success for now while Miguel and Nelson went to FCBarcelona’s match.

Just a short note about a long day that I loved!

As I wrote before, this week I will be at Microsoft’s TechEd for developers in Barcelona for this whole week! You should expect daily updates on both the personal side and also on the topics focused on the talks I will attend.

This adventure started yesterday when Miguel and Susana caught me up at Coimbra and we drove to Alcobaça, Miguel’s hometown where we hung out in some nice small cafes and played some Chinese shadows on the Monestary. Late that night we continued our trip to the TechEd to Lisbon where we crashed at Miguel’s. This morning we woke up really early (so almost no sleep, and I slept on the floor, something I really missed and I recomend you all to try! It’s good for your spine and backs!).

We met there the other MSPs with who we will be sharing the trip: André(who drunk beer as breakfast), Bruno and Nelson. Moments later we also met the guys from the MLDC who shown to be really cool and will be sharing the flight and hotel with us. The time to fly had come and in my way to the gate I found João, who will be attending Web2.0 Berlim where I also wanted to be. Unfortunately no cool company offered me that trip…

The flight was short and okay and some minutes later we found ourselves in the hotel checking in(that appears to be in the opposite side of Barcelona where TechEd is being held). We then decided to take a random walk around the city. Barcelona’s public transportation system is pretty good and in one bus we found ourselves in the Diagonal. From there we walked to the Ramblas, a nice street where there were a lot of small shops and cultural animation. People playing statues, grinch or even famous people gathered a circle of people from the crowd (when I write crowd, you should read thousands of people walking by the streets!). One thing that I also noticed about one year and an half ago when I passed through Barcelona was the fact that the cultural variety is enormous and it makes you want to interview everyone you meet and learn their story.

After lunch we went to Starbucks, a shop where I always wanted to visit (since there aren’t any in Portugal), and there are at least three here! Unfortunately the WiFi was not free as it is in the USA and one thing I found interesting is that you need a security code to access the bathrooms that is given in your ticked only when you buy something! After that we continued walking and we saw a lot of architectonic monuments by Gaudi which I intent to revisit tomorrow together with more monuments.

One thing that made my day worth it was the books I found on this statue that I guessed to be book crossing, and they really were! I took one, in English, that I wanted to read since I was a kid, a true classic: “The Treasure Island” by Robert Louis Stevenson. It was lucky to found a bookcrossing (we don’t find this in Coimbra) and a English book and one I wanted to read! We also found other books around town. It seems that the IV Encuentro Bookcrossing is happening here until 4th November. I find this concept interesting and I will contribute once I go back home.

It was a extasing day both the anxiety and the excitement from being here and having a great time with such cool people. I also thank Microsoft (and the Student Partner) for giving me this opportunity to visit such a nice place and be part of this great conference. Other companies should follow their example and give this kind of opportunities to students!

Well, all this time ASP.NET has been forgotten for real. Ruby on Rails, Django, Symphony and many others implemented something developers just loved: MVC. As Django’s co-creator Adrian noticed in Snakes and Rubies (and RoR’s David agreed) is that the MVC pattern has the obvious advantage of having both webdesigners and developers working on the same project only on the stuff that matters to them.

When I tried to do something cool using ASP.NET, it just didn’t fit my needs. It wasn’t MVC nor had the AJAX support I could have from rails, for example. I wished Microsoft (or anyone) had this awesome MVC framework!

Well, they have answered my prays: Scott Guthrie announced in his blog that yet this year the ASP.NET MVC Framework will be released and in the first half of next years it will be launched as a ASP.NET feature. I can’t say I’m not happy about this (obvious) decision to move ASP.NET into the MVC pattern! But somehow I just feel like Microsoft is always a step behind in this new web2.0 age.

I came across Ript, a simple yet very cool small application that may look like (yet another) GTD, but is only a place where you can drop stuff.

As you can see in the picture, it’s perfect for planing stuff like shopping, classes, works, whatever… I believe this could be awesome if it worked collaboratively over the web, but for now it works pretty good for single-player.

Although it has some wild effects (as it’s based on WPF), I guess I’ll just stick to Flock’s Web Clipboard as it’s good enough for my daily annotations.

(Post original)

Não seria interessante a Microsoft estar presente para (tentar) defender o seu OOXML ou então aprender alguma coisa? Também seria interessante trazer alguém da Adobe para ver se também alinhavam numa de abrir os formatos.

Thanks to the MSP program I will be attending Microsoft TechEd Developers 2007 from 5 to 9 of November in Barcelona, Spain.

Microsoft’s European biggest conference will join over 4000 developers and presentations are organized in the following areas:

• Architecture


• Business Intelligence


• Database Development


• Designer


• Infrastructure for Developers


• Mobile & Embedded


• Office System


• Security


• SOA and Business Processes


• Tools & Languages


• Unified Communications


• Web Development


• Windows and Frameworks

I am very enthusiastic about this, since is the first international event I am attending and I am very interested in both the technical subjects as also the people behind it. And I will have the company of another four MSPs: Susana, Bruno, André and Nelson. I will keep you posted on TechEd ;)

Early this month, Jeremy Keith posted about a invite-only gathering Microsoft threw in London. Jeremy shows a critic look on this event that was really enjoyable! You should really read it.

The post includes notes of the presentations he attended, including Lars Lindstedt, researcher at Microsoft, Brent Hoberman, CEO of lastminute.com and Steve Balmer himself. Apart from this, there was a Silverlight demo that included mashups with Virtual Earth and Flickr. Seadragon and Photosynth were also shown. Microsoft is really trying hard to get to the web2.0 guys.

At the end there was also a interesting discussion
Saul Klein, Ben Way and Cary Marsh, moderated by Ryan Carson that you can read in his post too.

Microsoft has now realized Web2.0 huge success and that are (now) small companies that are making the difference (apart from Google). They want to be the platform on which startups build their web applications (IIS, ASP.NET, Silverlight, ...) but seems to be failing. Let’s see if the take any action in order to provide better solutions that are available by OpenSource tools.

Hoje na aula de Sistemas Operativos, o meu professor abordou o facto de quando acabarmos o curso (Engenharia Informática) nos depararmos com uma feroz competição a nível global. Cada vez mais entram no mercados licenciados indianos e chineses que são 10 vezes mais baratos que um português, por exemplo. Temos então de nos diferenciar pela qualidade. Uma empresa pode ir ao Rent a Coder pedir um trabalho a um indiano que o faz ao preço da chuva. Mas se quiser qualidade vem aqui ao português e paga bom preço.

Ora eu a semana passada ouvi exactamente a mesma coisa pelo Vítor Santos, no lançamento do programa MSP, quando apresentava o concurso ImagineCUP e dizia que era uma óptima oportunidade para mostrarmos ao mundo que somos mesmo bons no que fazemos. Fazendo a comparação com a Teoria dos Búlgaros (em que um ganhou, mesmo não sendo da Bulgária e ficaram conhecidos todos como sendo bons programadores) que precisamos de nos destacar nestes concursos para darmos alguma reputação ao nosso país. Mesmo quem não gosta da Microsoft ou deste senhor em particular tem de admitir que é verdade. De facto este concurso exige que sejam usadas, para além da imaginação que é fundamental, tecnologias Microsoft (que eu até gosto bastante), mas para aqueles que não sentirem assim tanta afinidade existem outros concurso a nível global que poderão apostar, como o Google CodeJam, o TopCoder, ACM-ICPC ou o IEEE CSIDC.

Se acham que fazem programas de topo, não perdem nada em concorrer. Para não falar nos fantásticos prémios que oferecem!

Na última quinta-feira estive na Microsoft no lançamento do programa MSP deste ano. Já aqui falei do projecto e realmente achei o dia muito enriquecedor. Começamos por ouvir umas apresentações do Vítor Santos e do Miguel Vicente sobre o programa, como ia funcionar e o que esperar dele. Depois ouvimos uma apresentação do Bruno Gonçalves, dos Recursos Humanos, sobre os Valores Microsoft, e não, não mencionava Opensource nem Software Proprietário. Eram valores bem superiores.

Tivemos também ainda a experiência dos MSPs do ano passado, transmitida sobretudo por um filme do Ricardo Calejo. Gostava de salientar o “Eu faço a diferença”, um fim de semana na praia de Matosinhos, com jogos de futebol, escola de surf, concurso de fotografia, e mais importante: uma limpeza da praia. Os lucros foram doados à Associação Casa do Caminho. Podem ver mais informações sobre o evento no blog do Calejo.

Depois tivemos um almoço oferecido pela organização, no sitio mais original possível! Foi muito bom e deu para trocar ideias com várias pessoas, incluindo malta que trabalha mesmo na Microsoft! Depois voltámos ao auditório e fizemos as nossas apresentações pessoais. Foi bastante interessante ver que havia pessoas de várias áreas, e com interesses completamente diferentes, mas muito interessantes. Com a aposta da Microsoft na suite Expression, tivemos direito este ano a vários MSPs na área de design, o que para mim é muito bom, para me ajudarem onde me falta o toque criativo. Até MSPs que defendiam OpenSource ali estavam!

Depois tivemos uma apresentação do Vítor Santos sobre o Concurso Imagine Cup em que incentivava a inovação e eu acho sinceramente que qualquer pessoa deva concorrer. Uma coisa que achei curiosa, foi que a Microsoft não faz publicidade muito activa sobre este concurso pois nas categorias de software, é necessário usar tecnologias Microsoft. Acho que mesmo assim é uma óptima iniciativa e devia ser mais divulgada.

Como o dinheiro para as nossas actividades tem de vir de algum lado, este ano tivemos como patrocinadores do programa a XBox360. Como tal tivemos direito a uma apresentação de três meninas de marketing. Para mim foi o momento baixo do dia, pois não abordaram o público como deveriam, dando a ideia que iríamos ter de fazer marketing para as nossas universidades. No final o Miguel lá explicou que não era isso, e simplesmente queriam a nossa ajuda para dar a conhecer a XBox ao público, pois acreditam que não tem sucesso porque não é experimentada. Ajuda essa puramente opcional, mas que pode ser recompensada com prémios. Também achei piada a frase de uma delas “Nós adoramos a concorrência, aliás, nos detestamos mesmo o monopólio”.

Finalmente tivemos a apresentação do Pedro Rosa sobre tecnologias Microsoft, nomeadamente .NET 3.5 fazendo várias demonstrações das capacidades do Visual Studio. Dá gosto ouvir falar disto por quem realmente gosta e sabe do que fala.

Finalmente fomos todos jantar juntos (sim, MSP não é só trabalhar :P) e de volta a Coimbra. Uma experiência enriquecedora, sobretudo pelos contactos. Mais fotos no Flickr do Calejo.

Everyone knows I’m not a fundamentalist and I’ve been contributing to Opensource. I believe both OpenSource and Proprietary Software should co-exist. However I do not believe in Free Software (as described by Richard Stallman), he thinks all software should provide the users the freedom to use it, to edit it and to share it.

Well, let’s imagine I own a software house and I make this applications with this incredible algorithm. I spent one year paying for developers to study and come up with my product. I would want to make it profitable, so I have to sell it as a closed-source product. If someone needs this special feature, or improvement, I would be happily to sell a special version to them. That’s the way of making enough money to cover for the investment. If I had released it in opensource, I could have saved 75% of the time with external help from other programmers, but I wouldn’t make enough money, because some other company that had better implementation in the market would sell the service of setting up my application, and custom modifications. I wouldn’t like that.

Let’s make this analogy: when you go to the restaurant, you pay for the meal you have. Let’s imagine ti was a OpenSource Restaurant. You would choose from the menu, enter in the kitchen, see them cooking your meal, change the ingredients if you want. You might want to chop something for yourself, for example. You would pay just for the time it took for the cookers to prepare it, eat and take the recipe with you back home. Well this doesn’t happen. If this fancy restaurant has this fabulous dish and it’s the reason everyone goes there, they wouldn’t share the recipe with no other restaurant. Same happens with software code.

However I do believe in OpenSource in some situations: In education, mainly in the informatics field: you need to know how some kind of software works, and OpenSource gives you that power, which is very important when you are learning something that program has. And if OpenSource software exists already, why not use it? It’s a good deal software for free.

But if you demand a good support, you should think twice. Imagine a program that does something very specific this one guy has ever coded, and only a bunch of people use it. You need it for your enterprise, and you install it. Well if it has a bug and the developer has retired or has this awesome job and don’t care about it anymore? Hiring a company to guarantee the software quality wouldn’t sound so bad after all.

Another example where Free Software might probably fail: games. If games were opensource, the best players would be programmers that read the code (or change it) and hack into it, not those with gaming skills. The good thing about games is the difficulty it has to go to the next level. If it’s as easy as to change one number in the source code, It would not be fun as it is. But what about game platforms, they can be opensource right?

Yes, I believe opensource platforms are better than closed ones, because they allow people who program on top of it to know how it works better and use it’s full potential. Guess what, seems like Microsoft thought the same and they are sharing .NET source code!

Well this is my opinion on this issue, and I’m glad Microsoft is thinking in the same way. It makes me really happy about going tomorrow to the Microsoft Student Partner Program Launch Event as one of them :)

Michael wrote about how Silverlight is meant for designers. In fact, you should read it before you continue.

I believe Microsoft thinks software should be developed in team. It doesn’t matter if it is a pair or a big company with thousands of people working on that product. If you want to produce some good software, you need people to work on its different sides ( programming, design, database, etc…). More and more, the user interface is becoming a lot more important in software development. Microsoft is answering this demand with Expression Blend, a great tool for designers to implement good interfaces. It might be harder for a hardcore programmer to catch up with all its power, but it is possible! I took a look around Blend Expression and it was pretty familiar to me.

Regarding Silverlight as a RIA platform, I believe it will not be as used as Flash unless they come up with true 3D functionalities. Designers are used to Flash and if they don’t see any advantage, they won’t change! Maybe that’s why Microsoft doesn’t see Silverlight targeting the web. And on the desktop, .NET+Silverlight+WPF+... can’t be compared to AIR+Flash…

And by the way, if you are in Portugal, Expression European Designer Tour is coming up October, 24 and you can see some details in Filipe Freitas blog.

Microsoft has been using their Passport, now Windows Live ID since Hotmail become popular, and a lot (and when I say a lot, I mean A LOT!) of Internet users do use it.

Recently, Microsoft has released the Windows Live ID Client/Web Authentication SDK that allows users to base their authentication systems on Windows Live ID. This is a great solution for a single sign-on, but all the authentication is relied to Microsoft. Most users won’t find this a problem, but other will.

Well, there is a more open solution to this problem: OpenID. I’ve wrote about this before but now, I have an idea for a new project and I wanted to hear some feedback.

I know that Microsoft has been working together with OpenID to improve the system and make both systems compatible, but I can imagine a quick way of making live ID work as an OpenID: I’m thinking of making my own OpenID provider that uses Windows Live ID as a authentication. Yeah, it will re-delegate the authentication, and probably will take more time, but it will use the authentication you already have (thinking about liveID users).

I wonder if you have any suggestions, or are interested in helping out :)

Ontem surgiu-me um convite para ser Microsoft Student Partner pelo Miguel Vicente, com quem passei cerca de hora e meia ao telefone sobre o assunto.

Para quem não sabe o MSP é um programa em que a Microsoft apoia certos alunos, dando-lhes certas vantagens (como formação, todo o software MS, acesso a eventos, e muito mais) acreditando que possam ser uma mais valia para o resto da comunidade estudantil. Quem melhor que “clientes” satisfeitos, para cativar outros clientes? ;)

Para começar devo dizer que não sou um “mslover”. Há coisas na Microsoft, quer a nível de produtos como de filosofia, com que concordo e outras com que discordo, mas no geral acho-a uma empresa com que me identifico. Como alguns de vocês já sabem, sou a favor do software proprietário (e também do opensource em certas situações. Sou capaz escrever um post dedicado a este assunto em breve) e a Microsoft desde sempre que tem impulsionado a tecnologia no seu todo e creio que tenho muito a aprender com a empresa.

Tinha, erradamente, na ideia que ao ser MSP teria de me cingir a tecnologias MS, coisa que não concordo, mas pelos vistos não é nada assim. Claro que se é fomentado a usar tecnologias MS, através de workshops, por exemplo, mas considero isso uma vantagem. Também gostava de ver a SUN, a Apple e outras empresas do género a ter o mesmo tipo de iniciativas. Continua nos meus planos comprar agora um macbook e experimentar o mundo apple, mas no meu desktop (workstation) vou manter o Windows que acaba por me ser essencial a nível de testes e de desenvolvimento na plataforma .NET. O grupo de MSPs de Portugal parece que se dá muito bem e incentiva esta troca de ideias.

É por estes motivos que vou aceitar ser MSP e espero não só trazer-vos novidades do mundo Microsoft, mas também para contribuir com as minhas ideias para melhorar a relação com os estudantes.

2 months ago I introduced Microsoft DeepFish, the new browser for Windows Mobile devices, still in beta. Thanks to Fábio I was able to try that version in my TyTN.

Once you navigate to a website, the first thing you’ll see, is a overall image of the website. Like a resized screenshot of the desktop browser. Then you have to zoom to the part that interests you. To read some text, you’ll have to scroll both horizontal and vertically, what just sucks! And regarding the menus, it requires various clicks for something basic. One thing I really enjoyed was the scrolling drag of the page.

Pocket IE is the traditional browser that renders the content for the PDA resolution. Almost all the websites fit the window and you only need scrolling vertically, which is very good while reading text (and the TYTN scroolwheel is just marvelous!). The left button has also the most probable action you’ll take (favorites or back, depending on the situation) and that makes the navigation truly easy and fluid.

When on my PDA I visit almost only blogs, twitter, gmail, google reader (ok, and flickr once in a while), so I’ll keep using PocketIE that gives me exactly the kind of presentation I want for the content I visit. I guess Microsoft is on the wrong path here.

Before putting my hands in the ejaki project, the previous version of the website was pretty old-fashion but used Google Maps API. Wow I though, but then I saw it was only used to get thumbnails for each ejaki (Point of Interest). Well, in my opinion, the map should be the center of the website, just like it is on the mobile app, since Geography is the background of our shared information.

First I had to evaluate the existing APIs: Google Maps was indeed good, proved by the fact it is the most used, and includes features like GeoCoder, remote GML overlays, traffic and driving directions. This should be useful features to add in the future for our application.

Yahoo Maps AJAX (Flash was not an option) was pretty good, with almost all the features as Google’s but with integration with Y! Pipes and GeoRSS. This extras were not relevant since we intend to use only our database (in which other information can be added).

Microsoft’s Virtual Earth shown to be a really nice platform. Microsoft is known by being left behind in the web2.0 age, but this one is from far the most powerful engine. Since 3d visualization, “Birds eye”, powerful information finder, and all the features from both Yahoo’s and Google’s APIs. But there as a downside that matters. Since this is a scientific research project, we don’t like to use proprietary formats, and Microsoft is known for that. We wouldn’t like the possibility of in the future their API would only work on IE.

Open Layers is a free and opensource library, a project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As an opensource alternative it would be nice to use and foment it, but it’s too poor for now. No Satellite view, no geocoding and nothing that would make it more useful for our users. Maybe in the future in another project…

As so, we sticked to Google Maps since it had the basics and some extras that might be useful in the future. Later working with it, I found out it was really nice, but one function was missing: To set the zoom depending on the geocoding answer, and so here you have it for free ;)

After some posts ranting about Microsoft, in this one I will defend them. First of all, I don’t like Microsoft Policies ( as I don’t like Google’s), but as a real company, it has some very good products as well as bad ones.

As for windows, all my live I’ve heard people saying it sucks and so on. Well, I don’t quite agree and for the record, when I say “windows”, I mean v3.1, 98SE and XP, not those unstable versions like ME and that so-called Vista windows. As for this versions (I only used this ones) I only had BSOD when connection some weird hardware (like my webcam or my old external cd drive), but for the time it was awesome. I didn’t even bother me at the time. With Windows XP, the only crashes I have are Firefox ones (Opensource btw).

When compared to Linux, it has this huge advantage: Everything has drivers for Windows! ( linux don’t ) Yeah, I know Linux is opensource and so, but for non-coders there is not much difference, and os X is a great OS and it’s not opensource. Yet regarding Linux, I don’t need to compile anything, and if I do some software with a MSI, it will install perfectly on any windows computer. Only if Linux had a standard for folders….

When compared to os X, there are two things I don’t agree with. First, Macs run out-of-the-box. Yes, but windows do too. If you buy a standard PC, almost all the times (unfortunately) it comes with Windows installed, ready to work. Shop technicians install it together with the drivers just how Apple does. The second thing is that os X is so cool because you don’t need an antivirus or antispyware or anti-malware or so. Well, with windows you also don’t need them. For an year now I am running Windows without any anti-virus nor anti-spyware and I’m happy. (Tip for windows users attacked by virus: Change to some trusted pr0n sites).

Well, I like my Windows where no terminal is needed :)

Quem tem estado atento a blogosfera nos últimos tempos, tem notado que têm sido publicados uns poucos de posts relativos ao OOXML e a um abaixo assinado. Como é normal, muitos dos que reparei estavam escritos em geekês (linguagem de geeks) e nem toda a gente percebeu aquilo bem. Para esses vai aqui uma breve explicação do problema:

A Microsoft com o seu Office 2007, começou a usar um novo tipo de ficheiros (os documentos Word em vez de doc, passaram a ser o docx e igual para os outros). Isto na esperança do novo formato Office Open XML ser usado como standard nos documentos do género. No entanto já existe um, o ODF (OpenDocument Format) que já é usado em vários softwares e é completamente aberto.

Fazendo uma analogia, de momento é usado o metro(ODF), e há várias réguas padrão (OpenOffice, KOffice, AbiWord, StarOffice, etc…) grátis e livres, mas a microsoft tem uma régua (MS Office) em que não usa o metro, mas uma medida proprietária deles em que não disponibilizam totalmente a definição da medida.

Quando já existe o metro, qual o sentido de optar por uma medida esquisita e proprietária? Ou seja, se já existe o ODF, um formato totalmente livre, porquê mudar para o OOXML que está apenas na mão de uma empresa?

A Microsoft está a pressionar os órgãos de certificação do mundo para aceitar o novo formato. No entanto os utilizadores têm uma palavra a dizer. Está a ser organizado um abaixo assinado para ser apresentado. Já assinaram pessoas, esperamos contar com a sua.

Petição online

Multi-Touching is being very fashionable this days. Although this technology is already 25 years old (That’s true!), It’s only being now sold to the end-public. Past year it was presented at TED by Jeff Han and it was there that it took the attention from the big companies.

In the January, Apple announces the iPh0ne [1] that would have a multi-touch screen where you could use special movements to zoom in and out, slide across, etc… In may, Microsoft replies, launching the Surface, a living-room centered table, with a multi-touch screen on the top. When Apple bet on the pocked device, Microsoft went for a big and expensive device (Wouldn’t they had the skills to make the technology smaller?). For the time being, Apple’s phones are being sold out everyday while I don’t hear anymore about surface.

Also this year, ReacTable mas presented to many people, when Björk used in the live presentation of her last album, Volta. This project has been going on since 2003 and depending on the moves given, it produces music or sound effects. Also in the music area, Lemur is already being sold to the public.

There is also another art form of multi-touching that can be seen in Helsinki. It’s called CityWall and acts as a collaborative and playful interface for the everchanging media landscape of the city. It gathers information regarding the city in Flickr and Youtube, so everyone can have their content displayed there. Another impressive device is iBar, maybe the largest multi-touch screen made so far!

As for the future, Microsoft is researching a multi-touch laptop [2] and seems that Apple patented the multi-touch mouse.
Let’s see and wait.

[1] I wont right the name in the right form because I dont want to be a part of the hype. In my opinion, the product has this new things ( Multi-touch, Full-safari on the thing, Pretty design user-oriented) but there are things that dont make sense for such a promising produt like no copy+past (this one is simply stupid! Even the first nokia symbian had it!), 3G and a SDK. That’s why between and iPh0ne and my TyTN, I’d still keep my PDA.

[2] Quoting his first words: ”...It’s a completely new technology we’ve been developing here..”

Following my last post, this one will also be about Microsoft Browsers. However this one is for mobile devices. As a Windows Mobile 5 user, when surfing the web I get all freaked out because a lot of websites aren’t rendering properly on the PocketIE (most because of frames, flash and image-based layouts btw). Well microsoft is getting ready the solution for these problems: Microsoft Deepfish.

Deepfish is a Windows Mobile browser in which content is displayed as in a desktop one, and then you can zoom, pan and cue map for quick navigation and browsing. It will also have new interesting features like ActiveX controls, AJAX, cookies, Javascript, and HTTP POST that will make webdevelopers like me truly happy.

After reading this, you surely are thinking the same I did: Microsoft is putting a full browser into mobile devices just like apple did with Safari for the iPhone and copying the same navigation style. I bet in a near future multi-touch PDA running WM6 will be released.

As every single webdeveloper that doesn’t work for M$, I hate internet explorer and the fact that doesn’t follow standards and rendering changes a lot between versions. Well, here are a few news regarding version 8:

• Office 2007-like interface (SUCKS!)
• Full support for RSS, AJAX e CSS (Is this new?)
• Microformats ( Thank god something new and useful! But wait… microformats or some proprietary Microformat$? With M$ we never know…)
• Customizable Interface (Let’s see what this means… Skins maybe?)
w3c compliance (This is great news, and will be very nice if everyone had to upgrade to IE8, even if they’re not original copies!)

Well, just a “let’s keep up with firefox features” new version. Microsoft is going down more and more…

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