Everlasting Tech Boom?

Fortune has: "This tech boom has legs: For several reasons - especially growing demand in developing countries - tech's run most probably will last many years."

Let's take their two points apart:

"First, everybody wants technology." Just because they want or desire tech, it doesn't mean people can afford to. Not just the developing nation but developed ones too. For example, yours truly would love to buy a new computer [especially one with virtualization hardware built in to play with full virtualization], now that Fedora Core 6 is released with Xen support. Unfortunately, we had to spend a lot of our savings to move and settle down in SoCal. So no tech purchases for a while!

"And second, technology has become radically easier to create." I don't think so. Some things have improved [ipod is a good example: I use it every weekday on my walking commute to/from work] but computers are so hard to use still. Just today, I had to reinstall wifi driver to restore network access to my notebook. What a pain since I had to try to restore system few times to make sure something else didn't go wrong. Probably wasted about one hour of my time. Software is all wrong: not only is it buggy but also hard to use -- I'm not talking about specific GUI but the basics like having to explicitly save files or not having infinite undo/redo.

With the economy tanking, both developing and developed nations will struggle to continue the tech growth. And until things become so easy that people "have to have it" (like the ipods), it won't take off in the way that will continue growing.

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

AutoIt: scripting mouse clicks

Autoit sounds like the kind of tool I want to make: independent but works with what's already out there.

However, I don't like the idea of being tied to Windows only [as much as it is the biggest OS share in the world]....

Copyright, 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Debug and Virtualization

Here is an incomplete thought I've been having over the past few days. When debugging programs which run on both server and client [like browser code and server code], it can be a pain to figure out what's going on where. However, somehow, I think that virtualization can be used to help abstract a layer or two so that debug can take place more independent of OS [of either or both the client and server OSes].

I noticed that when a program displays stuff on browsers, you have at least 3 layers: the code printing, the text handler and pixel handler. This is true with graphical browsers as well as text [lynx] browsers. When you have layers, then opportunities exist for virtualization. How can it be possible is something I'll have to chew on.

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Freemium Biz

"A business model VCs love: Investors are abuzz about 'freemiums' - services that lure users in with a basic product, then charge for more features." So companies like Skype had the "right" thing going for it.

Free and premium services are what they recommend but I don't see why there can't be blurring of the lines. Where a free person can get extra support or extra feature on an on-demand basis rather than once a year/month/lifetime license kind of deal. Or even monthly subscription that can be turned off and on at any time.

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Smart Card on CD/DVD

This invention "Smart-card DVDs" brings me back memories of yours truly trying to patent a similar idea and it was pretty wild since I came up with the idea but almost everyone in the office had improvements which means I had to put their name on the patent [my employer had fixed amount for patent bonus which was divided by the number of inventors so I saw my share of the bonus shrinking with every new member].

Anyway, it turned out someone else already had similar enough idea in the patent pipeline so we gave up on it. Sigh....

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Burnt Opportunity: Friendster's story

"Wallflower at the Web Party" is a great read on how Friendster had the potential for shooting for the moon but stumbled here and there and ended up playing second fiddle. Sad but educational.

10+ Years with Linux

The article "My first 10 years with Linux" reminds me that I've been using Linux off and on for almost 11 years. I started tinkering with [Slackware] Linux in December '95 and using it at work since then. I heard about it from my coworker in 91 or 92 but didn't get my interest at that time.

Now, I hardly use it these days at home....

Tagging the GUI

It would be nice if I can "tag" any given GUI with my own comments either to replace or have popup comments. Being able to see alternative languages on a menu time/tool icon would be nice, too [on the fly, not necessarily always enabled]. This feature would be great for those who are almost bilingual or trying to be one.

It would also be nice if I can lookup online of any term I'm not familiar with (like translation dictionary or in the case of Japanese or English, how a kanji/word should be read/pronounced).

And if I can change how it looks [relocate an icon from one place to another, be it an icon or menu layout] that would be very handy.

Tag, lookup and replace.

And if I can turn any given output into an input [results of a search or calculation be feed into an input for further calculation or search], that would be very cool!

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Episodic gaming

"Changing the way video games are made: Longer titles may become less common as developers adopt a 'Saturday matinee' model."

So gaming is going from 60+ hours of play down to 6 or 7 hours, which is still pretty long for someone like me who don't have all that much time to play games. However, the trend might be refreshing since it'll allow aspiring artists and gamers to create alternative story lines just like game mods allow recasting of an existing game.

Copyright, 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Social Networking and Collaboration

"IBM warms to social networking" points out the problems with collaborative software of the past and the social network phenomenon of today. The focus was on creating documents but today people look for social connections be it news groups or chat sessions or web pages [like myspace or individual blogs].

How to make this into better development tool is something I'm not sure there is an easy answer yet....

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Zune and wireless socializing

I really like the potential of Zune's wireless feature as described by Mike Elgan in "Opinion: Why Microsoft's Zune scares Apple to the core" (computerworld). However, as others are pointing out, it's got a lot going against it.

Personally I love the idea of social networking taken to the next level with a portable device. Unlike cell phones and texting devices [like crackberry] or even portable gaming devices [with one-on-one or one-to-many-yet-specific connections], a wireless social networking based on physical closeness while at the same time internet connected to the whole wide world would open up a lot of possibilities. This device will need GPRS or similar always connected network access [UMTS, EDGE, EV-DO, etc], since Wifi isn't as widely available as cell phone based data network. I guess having access to Wifi, bluetooth, wibree, and even IR might help make the device into a network/social hub. But then not all devices need such connectivity: only one hub is needed per given group [and it won't be cheap not only the device price but also power consumption].

Anyway, what does this mean for the future, I'm not sure but could make interesting meeting with friends and even strangers [aka flash mob] with such devices and then interact live with the world wide net.

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Starting Business myths

I find: Top ten geek business myths by Ron Garret, very encouraging.

However, I don't have all the right answers to make a complete business plan so I keep simmering with ideas...

Orthogonal Patching and Coding

"The Third-Party Patching Conundrum" is a pretty cool trend, in my opinion:

The Zero Day Emergency Response Team, or ZERT, stepped out of the shadows a week ago to offer a quick patch for the Microsoft VML vulnerability.

Finally, people are doing things on their own because Microsoft is so slow. It's one thing to have open source software being fixed by anyone, it's something else to have closed source software being fixed by non-authors (ZERT in this case).

Currently, doing such patching requires a lot of reverse engineering work which may not be so legal based on the various onerous shrink wrap agreements. I'd love to see [if not create my own] tools which will help any Joe write such a patch with few clicks here and there. Just as there are script kiddies who crack computers, there should be script patchers or script coders.

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Good and Ugly of Ajax

I found "Thank God Java EE Is Not Like Ajax" to be an interesting subject, esp. the quote form Coach Wei:

Which aspect of Ajax [do] we really want Java EE to be like? The difficulty in developing Ajax code? The difficulty in maintaining Ajax code? The extreme fragile nature of Ajax code? The extremely fragmented nature of Ajax support from different browsers?

Ajax is hot but it's also a pain to deal with [as far as I can tell: I haven't done any real programming but I get enough hearsay to feel the pain].