I need to start off with a stern warning to EVERYONE that this is the first, last, and ONLY place I better see the Hulu gene@#$. Anywhere. If we all agree never to use those three words in that combination and file it away with (CENSORED) and other words we thought would be best to never be formed and soon to be forgotten. Still where am I going with this? Simple. My credibility. This is what I think of the Internet and the people that comment on it. I may not always be right but I am rarely ever wrong. I have a thing for contrast as well as well -embed- joke, sometimes so obscure I don’t remember it the next day.

I fit into a group that is networked differently than most. This causes me to take a somewhat unique view of the Internet. Now I was thinking about saying something like, “this doesn’t mean it is any better than the next guys, it is just my view …” But I am not because my view is a bit more enlightened than most. I have more experience with a wider range than most people. I have been programming Flash since 1999 and have experience with Flash 3 through Flash CS4 AS3. I worked diligently to ensure that our component of Disney Online looked the same on Netscape 4x as it did with IE 4. It was 2004 before Disney Online permanently banished the 4x browsers. Due to Netscape’s poor successor to its 4x browser and its pacular skip to Netscape 6.

I worked to retire detect.dll a proto web service before web services were defined. I worked even harder to dispel the myth about “magic” components that go inside the computer and get the “real” information about what the computer was. The transition to Flash 4 to 5 was painfully slow because people believed that this DLL running on a web server was better than JavaScript. When I learned about headers and packet sniffers I was able to convince the director of engineering that detect dll looked at the user agent and based upon a yes no question put out code to determine if it has Flash or not. This was communicated to the browser via JavaScript.

I had to explain to the staff engineer the difference between JavaScript and JScript. The differences was as subtle as window.document.boo and document.boo. The same differences that separated  IE and Netscape

I saw annoying differences that had to be filtered through if then statements as I was trying to push for integrating new features for newer browsers while maintaining the same Disney experience one would expect from a 2004 disney.go.com/today/index.html

This is the Internet I see. Not the Internet I read about or an Internet explained to me by a smarter co-worker. The browser war of today is not the browser war of 2004. I isn’t about who got online first, but about who has done the most while online. Only a handful of people have been in meetings with marketing, VPs, developers, and engineers.

There is an inherint dager to the Internet. It amplifies group think to unimaginable lengths. Take Hulu for example. I see executives scrambling to make sense of this technology while completely ignoring all the lessons learned in the past. It goes like this.

Prime Time shows this time last year were broadcast FREE. Hulu is a logical place to view Lost. This is where the greatest concern of the big ugly revenue gobbler is. Now due to the poor management of the Entertainment industry I did not know when Community was on. Is saw some commercials for it, looked funny, and I missed it. The permire of Office too. I was relived to find them on Hulu. I might have paid for the Office but not Community. I had all the seasons of the Office and really wanted to see it. Community, I was on the fence for and $1.99 for standard def on Amazon. Really wouldn’t do it for me. I would not have had the patience to hunt down and install plug-ins to view it on NBC’s site (granted this can be interchanged to annoying ABC NBC FOX players) So I am waiting for episode 2.

I remember when the Microsoft pitchman came to talk to us about .NET. Enthusiastic about it, we had nothing to build on, no compilers, and no intrest. That really never stoped us though. We were always building our skill set, using what was new to see if we can use it to improve our work and then see if we can get management to buy into it.

Background

I don’t remember the first time I heard the phrase Wen 2.0 however I remember when I first mustered the courage to ask somebody what Web 2.0 was. It was the fall of 2003, I was working for Disney Online and our executives just returned from a conference talking about Web 2.0. The response to my question was “Ajax”. I was puzzled so I then decided to seek harder for a definition. I found that it was indeed Ajax.

Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. learn more

Basically, Web 2.0 is data driven web based applications. What separates these applications from a simple web page is more than the user just staying on one page and bits of the page update instead of having to reload the whole thing. The main selling point of this technology is the ability to download and change only that what needs to change. The idea was to do a number of micro requests instead of one giant request that anticipates all possible choices that can be made. Needless to say a number of well placed micro requests require a lot less to be downloaded.

The first web based application to catch the eye of executives is Gmail. I remember when the Director of Application Technology at Disney Online asked me how the heck Gmail was able to do what it did. The funny thing about 2003, we did not know that we were using Web 2.0 for a couple of years. Learn More

What is Next

Web 3.0

A key fact to technology that is yet to be realized by the masses the the impact the World Wide Web Consortium (http://w3c.org) has had on application development. The W3C is a collection of key innovators in the industry that has given us one of the most revolutionary concepts known as Web Standards. Granted that Web Standards are not 100% fully accepted, they are at least 99% accepted, which is mind bogglingly huge. Web Standards are an agreed upon way browser rendering engines use HTML, CSS, Javascript, as well as other minor areas.

Almost by accident this concept has given a long needed unifying graphic user interface which allows for the same application to be used on Unix based systems such as Apples OSX, Internet Explorer on PC’s as well as FireFox on Linux, Windows, and OSX. The list goes on.

Web 2.0 gave us insight on how to arrange web based applications by the division between the logic of an application which would exist on a hosted service and the GUI (Graphic User Interface) that would exist on the client machine.

With this technology an applications could use a combination of a web browser such as FireFox or Internet Explorer and web services that would be hosted outside of the clients machine. I cannot stress enough how fundamentally big this is. Though it might not be transistors to microchips, but vacuum tubes to transistors. Though we no longer use transistors we would not be where we are today without them.

One of the most outstanding applications of this concept is Adobe’s Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR). Adobe made the decision to not reinvent the wheel and build a browser rendering engine from the ground up. They figured that since they want to court web based application developers already familiar with HTML, Ajax, CSS, and Shortwave Flash it would be silly to code something to web standards when there were already available rendering engines.  Adobe decided to use Web Kit, which is the same rendering engine used in the Safari Browser. AIR also gives an API to allow for the user to interact with the operating system. Since there is no standard for communicating with the clients file system or system resources AIR for the Mac is coded different than that for Windows. Since the API used to communicate with the front end the burden for cross platform falls upon that of Adobe developers and not on the application developer.

Another high point of this technology is a lead in to Web 4.0. This is the interchangeability between a web based application and an AIR based application. The best example is Adobe’s Acrobat.com platform. There is a web based version as well as an AIR based version. The AIR based version is more convenient to use and requires less resources however, the functionality of the application is almost exactly the same. With Adobe’s Flex Builder a developer can build within the rules of a web based application while having the ability to integrate specific functionality specific to AIR such as communicating with the operating system such as loading a file into the application.

It is important to note that AIR is not the first of the new generation of web applications. Google, Yahoo, Mozilla, Apple, Windows, and a couple others all have been developing this idea.  It is also important to note that it is not the first time we have seen an integrated platform either. Java has been doing this when Internet Explorer 3 was struggling against Netscape. AIR is the best example of the exploitation of these concept.

What makes this better than existing web based applications?

We all go to those web sites in which we need to jump through several hoops before we can do what we want to do. A good example would be updating your “Tea” blog on Blogger.com.

First you need to open your browser, if you are like me and use a portal site as your home page, you get distracted by stock prices, sport scores, your email, current news, weird news, and a quick sudoku game.

Next you got to http://blogger.com. Since my wife and I share computers I cannot take advantage of the “remember me” feature thus, I need to log back in. Since my passwords are protected I need to give FireFox permission to pull down my log-in and password information.

The great idea I wanted to blog about is fading.

If you are one of those people that don’t delete old blogs and have spent the past few years finding the right blog for you are then faced with a clutter issue.

If you are one of those people that work on several blogs you are too faced with a clutter issue.

By the time that you open the browser, navigate away from the distractions, log in, find your blog, start a new post, the topic you wanted to blog about is nothing more than a reminder that you had a great idea.

The alternative would be to have an AIR application that is set to log you on automatically, and select a specific blog. This then gives you instance access to your Tea blog and there is only one click that stands between you and blogging about the new Russian Tea at the Tea Rose Garden.

to be continued

Next: web 3.5

Currently the score is OSX 10.5: 6 and Windows Vista: 0. (Unintended Crashes)

Does this prove that Window’s Vista is a far more stable operating system? is this proof of the superiority of a PC over its Mac counterpart? Absolutely not!  The only thing that this statistic proves is that I have been using my MacBook far more than I have my Window’s machine. One of the best ways for me to crash an operating system is trying to use two or more programs that are competing for the same hardware resources. If the software I am using is cousins, like using Adobe Premiere and Adobe Soundbooth at the same time I have no problem. If I am using Premier and Sony’s Soundforge I don’t immediately get a problem, however the more intense the work gets and more I am maxing out my hardware the greater a chance for a crash occurs. On my Window’s machine I have learned not to use certain applications at the same time as other applications. Is this a problem inherentt to Microsoft’s Windows? No, how do you think I am causing my Mac to crash? A crash is more likely. The best way for me to get my Mac to crash is trying to use Garageband at the same time as Adobe’s Soundbooth. I am not trying to pass myself off as a hardware guru, however, it doesn’t take one long to figure out that both applications are competing for the same hardware at the same time. Another great way to crash a Mac is to overburden it. You know you have achieved this step when you hear the fan going and it feels like you can fry an egg on the bottom of the computer. I am well informed on computer hardware, however, by no means a master. I think it is safe to say, having your computer run that hot for an extended period of time is never wise, especially if you are dealing with the restricted space of a laptop. Still unfamiliar with my Mac Book, I do not know the limits of the hardware just yet, however, I do know that a crash while under this kind of stress most likely came from the hardware not the Operating System. Doing so would be as foolish as someone blaming windows for their blue screen, nine times out of ten, it is hardware failure or misconfiguration. This by design will happen more to PC’s with cheap hardware. Remember when you by a $600.00 computer, you get a $600.00 computer.

Finally, the number one reason that my Mac Book has crashed more than my Window’s desktop is the amount of time that I have been using my Mac. I use it more frequently than my Window’s machine.

I strongly believe that Mac and OS X will follow Window’s as it mature, and that is by no means a bad thing, but the nature of the world we live in. Even now with Leopard there are uninstall procedures for more professional software and the days of just dragging it into the trash can are coming to a close. Enviably inviting third party development will expand the Mac software library, but you will also get a bunch of poorly written software that will drain your systems resources, monopolize the hardware, and cause your computer to crash. For my Mac friends not yet familiar with this, talk to your PC friends, they have been dealing with this for years.

When someone mentions this common argument, nine times out of ten they are reading a headline and did not dive too deep into the article. Upon hearing this argument immediately ask, which PC? Are they talking about laptops or desktops, if so, what kind of desktop, is it a home made computer or is it from Dell or HP. If they answer “HP” then what kind of HP? You would need one with a similar processor chip and video card. There is no use comparing an HP model with an Athlon processor and a shared video card, you would look for a similar core 2 duo chip and an Nvida graphics card similar to the Mac that you are testing.

You most likely will never get that far into the argument, the person citing this misunderstood fact will most likely point out how expensive Vista is and how there are all these different versions. First of all, they were forced to come out with different versions in accordance with the monopoly claims, brought forth in large part my the Mac front. However, you don’t need to wage that point, simply point out the fact that there have been 5 upgrades to OSX. If you estimate 100 bucks per upgrade you put the price above Windows Vista Ultimate. When Apple ran the ad about the PC upgrading his components to be Vista compatible failed to point out that a computer that can run OS 10.0 will not run OS 10.5 and OS 10.5 will not run OS 10.0. Where was Internet Explorer 8 will run on XP machines, Safari 3.0 will not run on non-intel machines, or on 10.3 or below. If you want the latest Safari browser you will need to run 10.4 or 10.5.

Make no mistake, I enjoy working with Macs and I really like Window’s Vista. I think a lot of people that  slam Vista has spent as much time working with Vista as people who slam Mac have worked with Macs. Instead they recycle poorly thought out arguments. Transitioning between operating systems takes some time especially when there are fundamental changes. Going from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 took some time, since 98 was not much different, that transition was easier. I heard the same poor arguments as a challenge to the now glorified XP. The main difference between XP and Vista is that there is a real challenge to Vista; there wasn’t one for XP. The same people that argue that XP is far better than Vista are normally the same people that argue that Star Wars episode one was terrible, the worst, and think that the original films were far better. This is an obvious case of group think, and I can prove it.