ScottGu's blog continues to be an excellent source of ASP.NET and Atlas info. Some good stuff coming soon, including an Atlas update and an Atlas Control Pack.
March 2006 Archives
The New York Times has an article today "Windows Is So Slow, but Why?". Among other things, the article mentions that there are thousands of engineers on the Windows team today. Even without the enormous complexities caused by the need to maintain compatibility with existing hardware and software, a software project this large is extremely difficult to schedule and manage. Delays are pretty much inevitable.
Gnashing of teeth aside, there's a history of Microsoft seriously underestimating the time it takes to get out a new release. It goes all the way back to the first version of Windows, when we finally shipped Windows 1.01* more than a year late. There were about twenty engineers working on Windows then. Like the Vista project (but on a much, much smaller scale), there were a couple points during the project when a major component had to be rethought and rewritten. Ultimately, of course, the product got out the door, in November 1985.
* Windows 1.0 was "Windows Premiere Edition" and shipped a couple months earlier to certain customers; it did not go to the retail channel.
Microsoft is running a couple interesting contests for application builders:
Mash-it-up with “Atlas” -- build a mash-up application using Microsoft's "Atlas" Ajax technology, and win an Xbox 360.
Made in Express Contest -- build an application using one of the (free) Visual Studio Express tools, and win $10,000.
I've got a bunch of ideas for stuff that would be fun to build for these contests. Now if only I had some time!
TitleZ is a new (Atlas-based) web application that uses the Amazon Historical Pricing web service to generate historical reports on an Amazon title or search.
TitleZ has a simple and clean interface, and generates good-looking reports (using data from Amazon ECS as well). It's free for now, but they plan to charge after the beta period is over. Also, links from TitleZ to Amazon products use TitleZ's affiliate code, so that's part of their revenue model as well.
This is a nice implementation of an application Amazon obviously had in mind when they made the Historical Pricing web service available.
Recently I mentioned that I received a copy of the first part of Irène Némirovsky’s novel Suite Française, as part of Knopf’s "First Reads" program. Here’s a brief review.
Suite Française is a remarkable novel -- remarkable not only in content, but in how it came to be written, and eventually, published. Irène Némirovsky wrote Suite Française just prior to leaving Paris, as the Nazi’s advanced into France in 1940. Némirovsky intended Suite Française to be a five-part novel. She was able to complete the first two parts ("Storm in June" and "Dolce") before being arrested by the Nazi’s and then dying of typhus at Auschwitz. The manuscript survived, was finally published in France in 2004, and is now being published (in English translation) by Knopf in the United States.
"Storm in June" tells the story of a number of families fleeing Paris at the same time Némirovsky did. Each of the families deals with the threat of the approaching Germans in various ways, and copes with their situation that tells us as much about themselves as their circumstances.
A wealthy porcelain collector worries more about maintaining his social status than about what’s happening all around him. A couple employed at a bank suffer not only the tyranny of their employer but the pain of not knowing whether their son is still alive. The most touching character is 16-year-old Hubert who sneaks away from his family and hopes to join the French troops in fighting the Germans.
Némirovsky renders all of these characters with care. Her writing is clear, and crisp, and heartbreaking as you contrast Irène Némirovsky’s real-life story with those in Suite Française.
I'm just wrapping up another trip to Las Vegas, for a trade show -- this time at the Venetian. (I wish I were here next week for MIX.06 -- that would be far more interesting!) I've been to Vegas a bunch of times for various industry events over the last year or so, so I thought it would be fun to sum up my impression of some of the mega-hotels along the strip I've stayed in. I tend to have very little time to enjoy the facilities, so don't take these mini-reviews too seriously.
Bellagio - Beautifully done, with good rooms although mine was a bit small.
Mandalay Bay - The best rooms. The location way down at the end of the strip is kind of away from the rest of the action. But great if you like watching planes take off and land, because it's the closest to the airport. Excellent pool area, although it can get crowded around the beach area.
Mirage - Having been built way back in 1989, the Mirage is starting to show some age. Needs an update to compete with all the newer hotels. One of the best pool areas.
Venetian - "Suite" rooms, which means you get a bedroom area and a living room area separated by two steps and a fence. Comfortable and you get a lot of space. Decent if unspectacular pool area. Indoor Venice environment with shops, restaurants, canal, etc. is enjoyable. Be sure to eat at Bouchon -- have some oysters and order the roast chicken.
Wynn - The newest for now. Very nice rooms. Attractive grounds. No expense spared. Incredible attention to detail everywhere. The Wynn is one of the world's largest VOIP users.
One of the things I'm trying on this site is the use of TrackBack as the primary means for readers to respond to a post. For most posts, I am leaving comments disabled, on the theory that anyone who has a significant comment to make can do so on their own blog, and send me a TrackBack. This has a few drawbacks -- namely that some readers won't have their own blog, and those that do may not use TrackBack.
My photo blog, which has been around for a few years, regularly gets hit with big doses of TrackBack spam. The same is starting to happen here on jkeyes.com. I am pleased that Movable Type has automatically blocked every last junk TrakBack so far (on both sites), and has let the legitimate ones (small in quantity though they may be) through. However, TrackBack spam is one of the areas that needs to be addressed by the TrackBack working group and standardization process.
Comments on this post? Send me a TrackBack!
Speaking of the Orange, back when I was at Syracuse in the early eighties, the Carrier Dome had just opened, and Big East basketball was just becoming huge.* It became routine to have crowds of 30,000+ for a basketball game. As students we camped out overnight for season tickets, usually starting about 24 hours before they went on sale. Some combination of pizza, frisbee, and Jack Daniels kept us going through the night. At some point in the wee hours of the morning they would typically let us into the Dome to wait in a little more comfort. Fall weather in Syracuse can get pretty cold.
* Remember the epic triple-overtime win against Villanova, in the finals of the first-ever Big East tournament? That was in the Dome, before they started having the tournament in Madison Square Garden every year.
Taking a brief break from web services talk, my college basketball team, the Syracuse Orange[men] just completed a fantastic (and unexpected) run through the Big East tournament. On to the NCAA tournament -- first up is Texas A&M. IF the Orange can get past the Aggies, and then maybe LSU, it could be a big game against Duke. Hey, if they can beak the Huskies, why not the Blue Devils? Let's see if Gerry McNamara has a couple more big games in him.
Update: Nope.
Off the top of my head, here are ten ideas for applications one could build on top of Amazon S3:
- virtual hard drive with web-based management UI
- background automated backup application
- historical index of items from favorite RSS feeds
- photo storage vault
- iTunes/mp3 library
- generic virtual database with SQL interface
- searchable email archive
- Amazon product tracking database
- automated web clippings database
- clipart database
No doubt others have thought of many of the same ideas -- it'll be fun to see what folks do with this.
Amazon has introduced another new web service -- Amazon S3 (“Simple Storage Service”), which provides a web services interface to Internet-based storage and backup. This is very cool; it's easy to imagine a lot of great uses for this. Amazon provides the web service -- it's up to the rest of us to build the applications. I think a we'll see a lot of interesting applications for a variety of purposes (not just traditional backup). As usual, Amazon provides both SOAP and REST interfaces.
A while back, I signed up for Alfred A. Knopf's First Reads program. Each month they pick some of those who have signed up to send an advance copy of a new book. Apparently I was selected this month, because I just received a copy of Suite Française, a novel by Irène Némirovsky. Némirovsky wrote Suite Française in the early 1940's while living in France and fleeing the Nazis. The Suite was originally planned as five parts, but Némirovsky was only able to complete the first two before dying of typhus at Auschwitz. The first part, Storm in June, is what Knopf sent me; I am looking forward to reading it.
Scoble says the question should not be how to get more traffic. It's "write a better blog" and traffic will follow. Pretty relevant for this modest little blog -- brand new and no traffic at all yet, so it's all upside. Let's see whether I can write a better blog.
Mark Cliggett at Microsoft shares his thoughts about Embedded Windows. Mark was one of my colleagues on the Windows 1.0 project in the mid-80's -- he wrote the original Windows "shell" (MUSH). It would be interesting to see how many other members of that team have blogs. Mark must be the only one at Microsoft today (unless you count Steve Ballmer)! One of these days I'll post the story of my time on the Windows team at Microsoft.
Using REST with Ajax, at ONLamp.com. Some examples using Python.
Mark O'Neill summarizes a talk he did at the recent RSA conference, on security for REST web services. He talks about "true" REST vs. how it is typically used:
... when people talk about a "REST style" Web Service, they usually mean a Web Service that presents a HTTP GET interface. This is very different from the original intent of REST, where GETs are only supposed to be used for fetching information, not for changing server state.
He then makes the point that security is easier to implement when only POSTs are using for changing server state.
The full set of slides from his talk (linked to from Mark's post) is worth a look.
