Yahoo,Microsoft,Buyout,Ichann,2

Some things in life I don’t think I’ll ever get. What is so wrong with getting the silver metal, or #2 in line.

I’ll start off the post with saying that everybody should strive to be the "winner" (if they want to, of course).  I do it all the time.  There is something to be said about being on the top of your game.

But with the recent turn of events at Yahoo, one of my favorite companies, it seems that being the second biggest search engine is not good enough for investors. The "market" (which for the most part seems to be WallStreet tycoons that barely know how to check their own email, and ultra-geeks who shun anybody whom dosen’t use Linux) has pretty much told the world that Yahoo is useless.  Let alone the fact that they are still listed as the most popular website globally, they are tagged as being "non-innovative", "stagnent", or "dead". If you read Slahdot (which *always* has the most accurate information, ahem), you will leave thinking that Yahoo gets all of 10 hits a day.

Yet, Yahoo is being forced into a corner with their backs to the walls for being the #2 search company on the web. Does Google garner more searches? Yeah, probably.  But the Yahoo portal (which includes just about everything under the sun, such as News, Yellow Pages, Travel, Socal Networking, Mapping, most of which they are pretty good at) is much more than search.  This would be akin to a car coming with the #2 brand tires and told that it is useless, although the rest of it is far superior to every other car out there. 

While I do blame most of the Yahoo problem on day-traders and bump-and-dump stock holders, the internet community as a whole is not helping. Saying that they are not relevant when it is only true for themselves will end up hurting the community as a whole.  I don’t blame Microsoft on this one — they are looking out for their own interests, and I respect that (they are in a distant 3rd for search, almost #4 behind the FaceBook). 

Let Yahoo keep their Silver metal.  They meet the needs of very many people who just don’t like the others. They do good in many places, and seem to be a very wholseome company.

Flex,ActionScript,Flash,Adobe,ColdFusion,PHP,.NET,Java,Usergroup,Michigan,BarCamp,FlexCamp

Registration is filling up at the Michigan FlexCamp!  Are you signed up yet?  With presentations from Nick Kwiatkowski (that’s ME!), John Farrar, Joe Johnston, and speakers from Adobe,

The Michigan Flex Camp is a day-and-a-half "boot camp" that is designed for Beginners to Flex and Web 2.0 technologies.  $25 gets you in the door for one day, and $40 gets you in for two days. 

Hope to see you there!!

Flex,Camp,BarCamp,FlexCamp,Adobe,Flash,ActionScript,Michigan,Technology,Conference

Well, it is officially happening! The Michigan Flex User’s Group is hosting a Flex Camp, which is essentially a ‘Boot Camp’ for Flex, Flash and ActionScript technologies.  It’s happening on the 30th and 31st of July, in Lansing, Michigan.  Cost is $40 for both days, and $25 for a single day.  Day 1 will be mostly beginner stuff, and Day 2 will be intermediate. The Camp series from Adobe is completely hands-on, and extremely interactive.

ColdFusion,CFML,Adobe,CFUnited,Free,Education

I’m watching the blog-o-sphere as to what is happening at CFUnited, and I saw people note that Adobe has decided to make their ColdFusion Enterprise Application Server free to Faculity and Students. 

This is great news!  I’m still waiting on the details, but this move has the potential to mitigate the biggest complaint people have on learning the language : the cost to learn it. 

FITC,Flash,Conference,Adobe,Flex,Design

From the FITC Conference that is coming over to Chicago next week:

FITC ‘Last Call’ Contest:

The first 10 people who answer the skill testing question "What does FITC stand for?" get a free ticket to FITC Chicago, June 22 - 23 at the Doubletree Hotel Chicago (formerly the Chicago City Centre Hotel).

Deadline to enter is Thursday, June 19 at midnight!

To enter, go to http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pBk-8Hvbj8g-tQLuXWg_Gaw&email=true 

Winners will hear back by end of day Friday, via e-mail.

For complete event details, go to http://www.fitc.ca/chicago.

ColdFusion,Flex,Flash,LiveCycle,Adobe,CRUD,Breeze,Connect

I finally got a good recording of my presentation on 5-Minute CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) on Breeze! This demo was doomed, for some odd reason, as every other time I was plagued with bad audio, messed up recordings, or demos that didn’t work right.

I gave a presentation to the ColdFusion Online Meetup Group that Charlie Arehart runs this last Thursday.  I normally do this preso in two hours, so I became kinda rushed at the end, but the main concepts and demos still were there.  Enjoy!

Link : Online Recording

Downloads : ZIP File

ColdFusion,Flex,AIR,LiveCycle,Data Management

I am going to be speaking at the ColdFusion Online Meetup Group on
Thursday, June 5 at noon EDT.  I will be presenting my ‘5-Minute CRUD’ presentation, which is an hour-long presentation about how to quickly create CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete from a Database) based Flex applications using ColdFusion, LiveCycle and of course, Flex.  The meeting is free, and during your lunch hour, so you should stop by!  This meeting will be recorded with any luck for those who don’t like to interact.

** Editor’s Note: I normally do this talk in two hours, so I will be pruning some of the examples I normally give, but the most important ones will stay.  I eventually will be recording the 2 hour version one of these days.

Flash,Security,0-Day,Exploit,Flex,Adobe,ActionScript

It turns out that the “0-Day Exploit” that was touted by the media about the Adobe Flash Player really wasn’t.  The latest Flash Player (9,0,124,0) was NOT effected by this exploit.  This was related to a previous security bulletin that was announced before 124 was released, and was therefore fixed. 

Please update your Flash Player to the latest version to avoid the nastiness that may occur with this exploit. Don’t install “FlashBlock” or any of those program; you will miss some of the best content on the net.

Microsoft,Windows 7,Vista,Silverlight,WinFS

As I perused the morning blog feeds, I had the feeling that I lost all hope in Microsoft.  I used to like them, I really did.  Back in the 90’s they truly were an inventive, innovative, leader in the industry. Products like Windows 95 brought computing to the average consumer, and finally made computing fun and easy to use.  Sure Apple was around with MacOS, but at the time they were really spinning their wheels with an expensive product that really didn’t have the power that Microsoft and their software partners offered.

Innovations kept rolling off the shelves, such as Microsoft Office 95, Microsoft Bob (hey, I didn’t say there were all good), Encarta, etc.  Microsoft really seemed to know what they were doing, and really made products that people wanted and needed. Sure some of the products weren’t the first of their kind, but they were all leaders in the industry for good reasons.  Even Microsoft’s landing into the ISP world was greeted as something different (although they were late to the game, and never really got the market share that they needed).

Then something happened.  I can’t put a date on it; I think it started happening over time.  Microsoft just started becoming less innovative, less exciting, and more of a ‘me too’ company.  A lot of their products starting to arrive on the scene after the turn of the century had less and less of the innovative, fresh smell to them, and more of the ‘You will like this because it’s a Microsoft product’. 

Active Directory was the first ‘feature’ that I noticed this mentality with. Microsoft saw the inroads that Novell was making with their NDS (now eDirectory) system, and they wanted it too.  They threw together a half-baked system and served it up. The first AD systems out there were buggy, slow, hard to use, and most important of all, hard to manage.  But, if you were a Microsoft shop, you had to use it, because, well, it was Microsoft.

Product after product, it seemed like MS was caring less about their customers, and more about customer lock-in. Microsoft CRM, which required BizTalk, which required MS-SQL, which only ran on Microsoft Server. Oh, and you had to buy them all from a Microsoft Certified Implantation Company.  Most of these mediocre products, but again, if you were a Microsoft shop, you HAD to run them. By this time, the world had changed to the ‘You can’t get fired for buying Microsoft’.

Now we are in 2008. Analysts, and others that don’t drink the Kool-aid are starting to see the overall problem.  Microsoft is trying to blaze their way into fields that are already charted, but unknown to them. Microsoft OCS (Office Communication System), if a funny one… Microsoft decided that they wanted to create their own voicemail / PBX system that runs on top of Exchange.  They don’t have the know-how, or experience in the field, so they are making the same mistakes that Cisco, Avaya, Nortel and Siemens made 10 years ago.  They don’t care, because the industry loves them.  They are trying to re-invent the wheel with Silverlight and replace an already stable and popular product.  They feel that now they have people addicted and invested in their products that they can simply make so-so products and people will love them.

And now, I have to bring up the news story that made me write this post. Windows Vista, a consumer operating system (because business still won’t touch it after a year and a half) is a horrible mess.  I hear more stories (including my own) of people switching FROM Vista than people switching TO Vista.  People are installing XP or getting Macs in droves.  They are REFUSING to get locked into this product any further. 

Simple things like asking the user if they want to really perform this action over and over again.  Things like forcing the user to index their hard-drive to do simple searches.  Things like making the computer harder to use by making it ‘too easy’.  This was not a product that was innovative, as Microsoft would like you to think; it is a product that looked at the landscape, and tried to be just a hair better. 

Today came the first official previews of "Windows 7", which will be the successor to Windows Vista. Earlier press releases mentioned lots of innovation that will be going into this product to make it better than Vista.  We heard nothing for almost half a year.  So, what is innovative?

• Windows 7 will not be using the new MinWin kernel Microsoft touted as the replacement of the Vista kernel.  Whoopsie
• WinFS is no more.  The revolutionary file-system that was going to change computing will never see the light of day.
• Windows 7 is already delayed. All were were told we had to wait was until 2009. Current timelines put it at late 2010. 
• We will see Windows support Multi-Touch.  This is about as good as Microsoft Windows running my HTPC. This is such a minor feature, I personally wouldn’t even put it on the box.

That’s it.  Mind you this is still 2 years out, so more may be included, but you think Microsoft would have grander plans than this. 

But, you can’t be fired for running Microsoft.  Well, not yet at least.

Adobe,Flash,Beta

Just a quick note:  Adobe Flash Player 10 beta has been posted to Adobe Labs.  This beta of the next-generation of web media includes some great features such as native 3D support, and a brand-new text engine. Download is free.