All posts by onlyconnect

internet

VOIP from a mobile without Wi-Fi

Here’s a good offer from UK Voice over IP provider Voipfone. Call any number from a mobile at landline VOIP rates. The potential savings are huge, especially as the service works internationally.

The deal is described here. The first one aims to make use of included minutes on contract phones, for calls that otherwise would not be included in the bundle, like international calls. Voipfone customers dial a UK access number, and get a dial tone. Dial the number you want and get connected.

The deal for pay-as-you-go users is more cunning. Customers call a special number, which is never answered: you get an engaged tone. Voipfone calls you back and you get a dial tone. You dial the number you want and pay the cost of the VOIP-to-mobile call, currently around 14 pence per minute, plus the cost of the VOIP call, say 1.1 pence per minute for a call from the UK to the USA. For international calls that is likely to be a big saving.

Hmm, don’t the big mobile providers have small print about schemes like this? Still, I’m right behind it. Mobile call costs are a disgrace, and the profits from them subsidize a horribly inefficient and non-Green contract system which encourages users to trade their perfectly good phones for new ones every time they renew. Voipfone says:

We think that mobile telephone calls are not only far too expensive but also priced and sold in deliberately confusing ways. In particular, calls to and from mobiles and all international calls are wickedly expensive.

Can’t disagree there. Now, how about a scheme to make data transfer more reasonable as well? I have a phone here with all sorts of neat Internet features which I can’t afford to use.

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microsoft

Lessons from Microsoft’s WSUS blunder

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What happened: Microsoft pushed out an update to Windows Desktop Search (WDS) through WSUS (Windows Software Update Services, used to keep large Windows networks up-to-date), but made an error.

I found I had to read this explanation three times before I understood it, so here’s my attempt to re-phrase it.

From time to time, Microsoft issues updates to WDS. One of these updates came out back in February. Sane administrators approved this because it applied only to desktops that already had WDS installed.

Last Tuesday another such update appeared, and was automatically approved on sites where the February update had already been approved. Microsoft’s error was to make the new update applicable to all Windows XP SP2 or Windows Server 2003 machines, rather than just those where WDS was already installed.

Why was it such a big blunder? Many Enterprise PCs are set to redirect the My Documents folder to the server, where it can be backed up. WDS always indexes My Documents. Result: heavy network traffic as all these new indexes were being built. Furthermore, Microsoft’s track record for unobtrusive background indexing is not particularly good. Crippled network = lots of support calls.

The lesson: Susan Bradley says never auto-approve patches. I tend to agree, though it is a dilemma since with security-related patches time is of the essence. But here’s another case. I noticed on a Small Business Server 2003 box recently that Windows Server 2003 SP2 was waiting to be installed. Before clicking OK, I had a quick look for any issues, and came across this support note:

After applying Windows 2003 Service pack 2 on Small Business Server 2003 you may see the following issues:
1.  For both Standard and Premium:
     Missing Help and Support service
     R2 patch approve console has error on approval
2.  For Premium with ISA Server 2004
     Networking issues including NAT and VPN connectivity programs, Outlook not connecting, RPC errors, etc.

Ouch. There are solutions; but that’s definitely one to defer for after hours maintenance.

apple, microsoft, software, windows

Two spins on Microsoft’s excellent quarter

Microsoft has delivered an excellent set of results, showing growth in pretty much all areas.

It seems to me that you can spin this in a couple of ways. First, you could argue that Microsoft is alive and well and still in the race. Certainly, with figures like these you can hardly suggest that it is out of the race.

Second, you could argue that the figures demonstrate how monopolies can continue to make good profits even when their products disappoint, especially in a buoyant market like computing.

The truth? Somewhere in between. It doesn’t matter how good the financials are: the disappointment with Vista is real. Personally I have Vista working fairly well, though annoyingly slowly at times, but I notice plenty of people advising one another to stick with XP, for performance and compatibility. Maybe the long-awaited SP1 will fix it, but some are now resigned to waiting for Windows 7 (you know, odd-number release theory) for a really good upgrade. Vista’s problems have created an opportunity for Apple and even Linux to grab some market share.

Other shadows hanging over Microsoft that come to mind:

  • Lack of clarity over Internet strategy
  • Continuing security problems centered on Windows (for whatever reason)
  • Losing the search wars
  • Governments mandating ODF
  • Apple’s increasing market share, especially among thought leaders
  • Bureaucracy and litigation
  • PR and image problems

On the plus side I’d mention the strength of the .NET platform and languages; Silverlight’s promise; and the fact that most people still want to use Microsoft Office rather than Open Office (in my experience).

I am absolutely not a financial analyst; but I observe that having a good quarter does not fix what strike me as deep-rooted problems. At the same time it is a reminder of Microsoft’s huge resources and entrenched position; that’s not going to go away quickly either.

TechEd Europe the week after next; no doubt some more Microsoft reflections then.

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internet, multimedia

A musician speaks out to defend Oink

Seen the reports of a major file-sharing site getting busted? You should also read this post from a musician and it seems a former Oink member, DJ/ Rupture:

About a week after I shipped out orders of the first live CD-r Andy Moor & I did, it appeared on Oink. Someone who had purchased it directly from me turned around and posted it online, for free. I wasn’t mad, I was just more stunned by the reach… and usefulness of the site.

I don’t doubt that Oink breached copyright laws. However it appears that the powers that be have been misleading the public in some respects. It particularly irks the Oink community that the site was widely described as “extremely lucrative” – in the BBC story this is part of a remark made by “A Cleveland Police spokesman” – when in fact it was an enthusiast affair.

DJ/ Rupture comments on the new economics of the music business:

My library metaphor for Oink makes more sense than economic analogies: for digital music & data, there’s lots of demand but no scarcity at all, which either requires that we rebuild an economic model not based on supply & demand, or start embracing commons analogies. I like living from my music but I also like libraries, the ideas behind libraries…

Personally I have long believed that only an all-you-can-eat subscription or license makes sense for legal music downloads and sharing, if indeed people will pay at all. The success of iTunes seemed to disprove that, but debate has reopened, following the opening of Amazon’s DRM-free music store, and Radiohead’s whatever-you-want-to-pay experiment. I appreciate that neither of these alternatives is an all-you-can-eat subscription, but the possibilities seem wide open again, and I still think that is where we will end up – something close to the library concept described above.

microsoft, software development

Microsoft Ruby

In what is partially a response to my earlier post, Bob Warfield asks:

Sun has “cultivated and vigorously supported” Ruby.  When will we read something similar to either announcement from Microsoft, instead of reading things like they’re going to quit shipping the JVM at the end of the year?

At least this one is easy. Microsoft announced Iron Ruby back in April.

But Iron Ruby runs on .NET. Right, so what does Sun’s Ruby run on? The JVM, of course.

By the way, I cannot think of any good reason why Microsoft should revive its JVM – withdrawn, you recall, at Sun’s insistence. Microsoft’s JVM was horribly out-of-date anyway; and there are several perfectly good JVMs that run fine on Windows.

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microsoft, open source, software

OOXML vs ODF: where next for interoperability?

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Gary Edwards of the Open Document Foundation has a fascinating post on the important of Microsoft Office compatibility to the success of the ISO-approved Open Document formats.

It is in places a rare voice of sanity:

People continue to insist that if only Microsoft would implement ODF natively in MSOffice, we could all hop on down the yellow brick road, hand in hand, singing kumbaya to beat the band. Sadly, life doesn’t work that way. Wish it did.
Sure, Microsoft could implement ODF – but only with the addition of application specific extensions to the current ODF specification … Sun has already made it clear at the OASIS ODF TC that they are not going to compromise (or degrade) the new and innovative features and implementation model of OpenOffice just to be compatible with the existing 550 million MSOffice desktops.

More:

The simple truth is that ODF was not designed to be compatible – interoperable with existing Microsoft documents, applications and processes. Nor was it designed for grand convergence. And as we found out in our five years participation at the OASIS ODF TC, there is an across the boards resistance to extending ODF to be compatible with Microsoft documents, applications and processes.

Summary: in Edwards’ opinion, there are technical and political reasons why seamless ODF interop cannot be baked into Microsoft Office. Therefore the Foundation is now working on interop with the W3C’s Compound Document Format, about which I know little.

Surprisingly, Edwards also says that ODF will fail in the market:

If we can’t convert existing MS documents, applications and processes to ODF, then the market has no other choice but to transition to MS-OOXML.

Edwards is thoroughly spooked by the success of Sharepoint in conjunction with Exchange, and overstates his case:

If we can’t neutralize and re purpose MSOffice, the future will belong to MS-OOXML and the MS Stack. Note the MS Stack noticeably replaces W3C Open Web technologies with Microsoft’s own embraced “enhancements”. Starting with MS-OOXML/Smart Tags as a replacement for HTML-XHTML-RDF Metadata. HTML and the Open Web are the targets here. ODF is being used as a diversion from the real end game – the taking of the Internet.

I find this implausible. At the same time, I agree about the importance of interoperability with Microsoft Office.

I would also like clarification on what are the limitations of OOXML / ODF conversion. Here’s a technique that does a reasonable job. Open OOXML in Microsoft Office, save to binary Office format. Open binary Office format in Open Office, save as ODF. The same works in reverse. Not perfect perhaps, but a whole lot better than the Microsoft-sponsored add-in that works through XSLT.  Could this existing Open Office code be made into a Microsoft Office plug-in, and if so, what proportion of existing documents would not be satisfactorily converted?

Note that Sun’s ODF converter seems to be exactly this, except that it does not yet work with Office 2007. It could presumably be used with Office 2003 and the OOXML add-in, to provide a way to convert OOXML to ODF in a single application. Some further notes on Sun’s converter here.

internet, microsoft, software development, web authoring

Considering Microsoft’s “rift with the web”

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I enjoy the SmoothSpan blog but I’m not convinced by this article on Microsoft’s rift with the web.

Bob Warfield says:

Ever since their spat with Sun over Java, Microsoft has been on an increasingly proprietary path called .NET.

I am not sure why .NET is “increasingly” proprietary. Why is it more proprietary now than it used to be? Arguably it is less so; Mono is more advanced; and in addition Microsoft is going cross-platform with the CLR, by bundling it into Silverlight. That does not make it less proprietary in itself, but means that it is less closely tied to Windows.

Warfield does not quite say, but strongly implies, that .NET is failing in the market:

It’s symptomatic that you can find about 18 million Google hits on “SQL Server” but there are 77 million hits on mySQL.  There are 2+ billion hits for PHP and 135 million for Java.  C# gets a modest 15 million hits.

Right, so by the same logic PHP is vastly more important than Java. For some reason, I get different results on MySQL, which reports 171 million hits. Just for fun I tapped in Oracle, which gets only 105 million, inflated by all sorts of non-database references, so we must conclude that MySQL is far more important in the Enterprise than Oracle.

No, this sort of Google-diving is lazy analysis. Sure, the results are interesting, but they are skewed in all sorts of ways.

I am not suggesting that .NET is bigger than Java. Nevertheless, it has been a success story for Microsoft, particularly on the server which is the focus of Warfield’s comments. So too has SQL Server; in fact if I remember rightly, the server side of Microsoft has been showing healthy growth versus the more stagnant Windows/Office side of the business.

Look at what Netcraft is saying: in its October 2007 web server survey it show gaining market share for IIS and implicitly .NET technology, and has done for several months. Don’t take the Apache drop too seriously; Netcraft’s figures are skewed by the decision to remove Google’s servers from the Apache figures. Nevertheless, Microsoft seems to be growing its web business on the server side.

Jobs? I track these from time to time in the UK, and C# has shown remarkable growth since its introduction, partly at the expense of VB, but also versus Java. Yes, Java is bigger, but you would expect that.

Why has C# succeeded despite Java? Ease of use, productivity and tools. All of these can be debated; but there is some consensus about the excessive complexity of JEE, which has benefited Microsoft. I’ve also noticed innovations in C# being quietly adopted in Java. Given its false start with Java in the early days, I think Microsoft has done well to establish its new language.

Now, I do partially agree with Warfield. Microsoft is an island and I notice strong polarization when I attend conferences and the like: there is a Microsoft crowd and a non-Microsoft crowd. And I agree that the open source community builds largely on open source technology, within which Java is more widely accepted than .NET. However, the .NET island is relatively large and so far has proved resilient.

Should Microsoft drop .NET and embrace Java or PHP, as Warfield kind-of implies? No. There is no technical need for it, because .NET works well. It is not really a rift with the web, because it is server technology and actually plays pretty well with others, through web services for example. The key thing on the web is to be cross-platform on the client. Writely, acquired by Google, was a .NET product. Did anyone care? No; in fact I doubt many were even aware of it. Now Google has incorporated it into Docs and I should think it has been rewritten in Python or something. Few care about that either; but if it did not work properly on a Mac or in FireFox we would all hear about it.

I don’t mean to minimize Microsoft’s problems. More than any other company I can think of, Microsoft has difficulty in balancing the needs of its OS and desktop application business with the migration we are all making to the Web. Further, it has big PR and image problems, and poor market acceptance for Vista must be a headache. Yes, there is a Microsoft crisis brewing. I’d suggest though that the company can succeed best by building on .NET, not by abandoning it.

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internet, microsoft, software development, web authoring

A tale of two Adobe conferences

I am just back from Adobe’s MAX Europe. The previous Macromedia/Adobe conference I attended was Macromedia DevCon in 2002. Remarkably, the gold sponsors at the earlier conference included Microsoft, there to promote .NET technology to Dreamweaver designers. Such a sponsorship seems impossible now. Back in 2002, the big product announcement was Contribute, and its competition was FrontPage. Today, it’s war. Adobe is talking “platform”: hosted services, web applications, desktop applications, and none of it dependent on Windows; while Microsoft has suddenly got the cross-platform habit with its own Flash-like browser plug-in called Silverlight. On Adobe’s side, an amazing, ubiquitous, graphically-rich runtime that just works. On Microsoft’s side, huge resources and armies of .NET developers.

Max Europe was a good conference. There’s a buzz around the products, and I didn’t meet any disappointed delegates, although there was a little bit of concern that strong designer content was getting squeezed out by the new focus on developers. The Adobe speakers seemed very approachable, and I appreciated the willingness of senior executives to talk to the press. In fact, the company has retained something of a small company feel, at least among the ex-Macromedia team which seemed to dominate at MAX. Adobe also has a clearer focus than Microsoft, which comes over as more bureaucratic and internally conflicted.

Nevertheless, it is possible that some at Adobe are under-estimating Silverlight. One speaker assured us that it only runs in one browser (false). Flex Builder is slow and awkward in comparison to Visual Studio. Adobe does have a big advantage in mobile devices – Nokia was at MAX and is putting Flash in all its high-end phones – but I am not yet convinced of the merits of Flash Mobile.

Mac count at MAX: about 50-50 with Windows on a very rough estimate. That’s proportionally fewer Macs than at FOWA earlier this month, which was maybe 80% Apple.

Uncategorized

Now I understand what a rich internet application is

For a while now I’ve been puzzling over what exactly is meant by the term “Rich Internet Application” or RIA. Microsoft wants the initials to stand for “Rich Interactive Application” but it is losing that battle – see this great post by Dare Obasanjo. It is Adobe’s term, but it has never been clear to me exactly what it means. I’ve seen it refer to everything from internet-connected desktop applications, to Flash applications running in the browser, or even plain old HTML and JavaScript.

The way to understand a term is to look at its origin, and here I got a big clue from Adobe’s Chief Software Architect Kevin Lynch. At a press briefing during Adobe Max Europe last week, Lynch described what happened:

The whole move of Adobe to rich internet applications was actually driven by the community. It was people using the Flash player about 2001, 2002, to start creating not just interactive media or animation experiences, but application experiences. The first one at that time was something called the Broadmoor Hotel reservation system. It was a 5 or 6 page HTML process to check out and they were having a lot of drop off. They turned that into a one-screen check out process in Flash, and they saw their reservations increase by 50%. We actually named that trend. We thought OK, we can do more to support that, and we called it Rich Internet Applications. Then we focused on enabling more of those to be made with these technologies, so a new virtual machine in Flash player, the Flex framework, Flex Builder, all of that was driven by some of those early developers who were pushing the boundaries.

So there you have it. The Broadmoor hotel case study, which I recall seeing demonstrated at the 2002 Macromedia devcon, was apparently a significant influence on the evolution of the Flash player. The first press release about it was in November 2001. The case study is still online, and the application is still around today.

I don’t think we will get closer than this to a definition. Adobe will continue to use it to mean Flash applications; Microsoft will continue to try and de-brand it – the same way it tried to use “blogcast” in place of “podcast”, according to this article. I tend to agree that the concept is bigger than Adobe; but language is organic and cannot be so easily manipulated.

gaming, internet, software, software development

Flash, Silverlight the future of video games?

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According to the BBC, gaming giant Electronic Arts is fed up with having to code the same game three, four or five times over. That’s the downside of the console wars – several incompatible systems.

The article says that streamed server-based games will be increasingly important.

A few observations. First, the PC is the nearest thing to an open platform right now, and it’s interesting that PC games typically cost around 30% less than those on the top consoles. For example, the hot new FIFA 08 typically sells for £40.00 on PS3 or Xbox 360, £25.00 on PC. It’s cheaper on DS or PSP, but must be considerably cut down on these low-powered devices. The Wii is somewhere in between.

Second, I’m writing this after seeing the amazing things being done with Flash. Microsoft’s Silverlight is also interesting in this context, as is Canvas 3D – OpenGL running in the browser.

That’s still three separate platforms; but since they are all cross-platform, there would be no necessity to code for more than one of them.

Third, Flash games are already very popular. If you calculate market share by time spent playing, I guess Flash games would already show a significant portion (I’d be interested to see those figures).

Fourth, the success of the Nintendo Wii proves that although geeks care deeply about who can shift pixels and calculate transforms the most quickly, the general public does not. All they want is a playable and enjoyable game.

All this suggests that the business model behind Microsoft’s and Sony’s console strategy is flawed. The idea is to buy market share by subsidizing the hardware, then profit from the software sales to your locked-in users. What if users can get the same games by subscribing, say, to a hypothetical EA Live, and play the games on a variety of devices? The money is still in the software, but there is no hardware lock-in. Prices could fall, and game developers could spend more time being creative and less time re-implementing the same game for different platforms.

Flash is actually in the PS3 and PSP, but appears to be an old version. If Microsoft isn’t thinking about Silverlight for the Xbox 360, then it should be. But if my logic is correct, then the investment Microsoft and Sony have put into game studios is actually more valuable, long-term, than the money they have put into hardware.

That said, the online experience is not yet good enough to threaten the consoles. I doubt it will be long though. A key point is hardware acceleration in the Flash player. H.264 video will be hardware-accelerated in the forthcoming Moviestar release of Flash 9. I am confident that a hardware accelerated gaming API will not be far behind.