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Twitter first impressions
Continuing my explorations into social networking, for the last few weeks I have been playing around a bit with Twitter. If you want to find me I am @gfxman
As I have discussed here before I have been taking a close look at some of the more popular social networking tools to try and get a better feel for what they offer and how people use them. I have spent quite a lot of time now looking at Facebook, LinkedIn and Plaxo so I figured it was about time to have a look at Twitter. If you follow those links you'll get to my page on the respective site by the way.
So far, my initial reaction from a few weeks of Twitter use is that I have found more of the people I know on Facebook (a mix of work connections and friends from outside work) and on LinkedIn (work connections) than I have on Twitter. Maybe that's just because the user names are more obscure and it's harder to find people or maybe it's simply because a different set of people are on Twitter. I'm not yet sure about Plaxo. It seems a lot of the people I know are there but are mostly redirecting to Plaxo from other places (Twitter, blog posts, photos etc.) rather than using it as their primary "meeting place".
One thing that does bug me a bit is the way people use Twitter to update other sites, such as Facebook. While this is clearly convenient for them, it does raise the question of if I make a comment to your posting on Facebook (that you made from Twitter) are you really going to see my response? Well, probably not, unless you are also watching for comments on Facebook. Of course the same is true in reverse. There are people that update Twitter from places like Facebook.
I could go on a lot more about the things I like and don't like about each of these tools but that's probably good fodder for a future posting.
I'm curious...if you are reading this...what social networking tools do you use (and why) ?
Categories
: [ socialnetworking | twitter ]
Oct 07 2008, 01:50:44 PM EDT
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Colorado Software Summit - full agenda posted
I have posted here before many times about the Colorado Software Summit and how much I have enjoyed participating in prior conferences both as a speaker and a regular attendee. This year's conference is rapidly approaching and I am really excited to be going. Last year I had just been diagnosed with cancer and missed the conference. Thankfully I am still around to attend this year.
I'm really looking forward to the diverse menu of sessions and not sure how I am going to attend all of the ones that appeal to me. I am also planning to run a couple of BOFs while there. One will be on emerging web UI technology choices and the other on REST and Web Services.
I hope to see many of you there. This really is one of the weeks of the year that I really look forward to.
Here is a link conference agenda .
Categories
: [ conferences | programming | standards | technology | web ]
Oct 03 2008, 02:40:06 PM EDT
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Dion Gillard (5th May 1967 - 25th September 2008)
My dear friend Dion Gillard died this week after a courageous fight with melanoma. Dion was loved and respected by friends and family around the World. He had a great sense of humour, was a brilliant computer programmer, was a businessman, a husband and a father. Basically, he was just a great person to be around and he had a positive impact on everyone he met, myself very much included.
Dion and I first met at the Colorado Software Summit conference years ago (I forget exactly which year) and have kept in touch ever since. In fact we were due to meet at the conference this year, towards the end of next month. The event won't be the same without him, he has so many great friends there besides me. I have always admired Dion's technical breadth and know how and willingness to share, but it was his terrific sense of humour I think that endeared me to him even more. We also spent countless hours debating why Australia were better than England at cricket! We had even discussed meeting up in the UK next year to watch the Ashes series together to (we had hoped) celebrate both of our battles with cancer.
I send my deepest condolences to his wife, children, family and friends around the World. You have a lot of people reaching out to you at this time and sharing your sense of great loss. The World is a less good place without Dion, but we are also blessed to have had, and celebrate, the time we did have with him.
Rest in peace "dIon" you will be truly missed but never forgotten.
Categories
: [ friends ]
Sep 26 2008, 12:17:00 PM EDT
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IBM Announces New I.T. Standards Policy
I have not managed to post here for a few days due to travel, medical issues and and of course meetings!
Today IBM made a significant announcement of its new I.T. Standards Policy.
Bob Sutor has started a discussion of the announcement on his blog.
Categories
: [ standards ]
Sep 23 2008, 11:17:21 AM EDT
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The IBM Academy of Technology
I was talking to someone recently who had noticed that in my biography I mention the IBM Academy of Technology. He asked me what that was. After I was done giving a brief explanation I realized that this might be a good topic for a blog post. The IBM Academy of technology is one of IBM's key technology "think tank" initiatives and also something I am proud to be a member of. Rather than give my own lengthy explanation here, I am including a couple of links to sites that do a very good job of describing the Academy.
I hope this is of interest
Categories
: [ IBM-Academy ]
Sep 02 2008, 04:36:18 PM EDT
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Reflecting on a great week at SHARE
I had intended to post a few more times from SHARE in San Jose last week but I ended up getting so busy speaking to people and chairing sessions that I never managed to. I would like to thank all of the speakers that came and spoke as part of our SOA Project (track) for delivering what I think was as good a program of study as we have yet produced. I am also grateful to the many attendees that came to our sessions and helped make them both enjoyable and interactive. It was also great to see IBM's David Barnes get a "Distinguished Speaker" award from SHARE for his sessions on Web 2.0 at prior events.
On a personal note it was great for me to be back at an event I really care about alongside colleagues and friends that I have tremendous respect for. I missed the last two SHARE events due to the medical issues that I have documented in prior postings here and at my personal web site.
There is a lot more I could write about the week but I am now more than a bit busy trying to catch up from being away. I am really looking forward to the next SHARE which will be in my home town of Austin, Texas next March. Planning for that event is already well underway.
Maybe I'll see some of you there!
Categories
: [ conferences ]
Aug 17 2008, 10:22:31 PM EDT
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SHARE Update (Days 1 and 2)
I am out in San Jose, California at SHARE. As I mentioned in prior postings, I help run the SOA Project (SHARE speak for a track). I am right now sitting in the last session of the day for our track on Day 2 of the conference. We have had a great turnout for all of our sessions so far and we have had some great discussions on topics such as SOA, REST, Web 2.0, Web Services and the role of mainframe computers in a Web 2.0 World. Tonight, even though we are not even half way through the week, we begin our planning for the next SHARE, which will be held in Austin, Texas, the first week of March next year. It will be the first time that SHARE has been held in Austin since I moved there in 1995 so it will be great to be not just an attendee but also a host for the first time.
I'm looking forward to the rest of the week here in San Jose. We still have a lot of great sessions planned. I am also really happy that I am able to actually be here in person (I missed the last two SHARE events due to my medical woes). It is also great to be meeting so many long time friends again and also making some new ones.
Categories
: [ conferences ]
Aug 12 2008, 08:00:51 PM EDT
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Is system's programming a dying art?
I was talking to a long time friend and former OS/2 colleague today. We were reminiscing about the "old days" and I mentioned that it seemed to me that the art of system's programming is dying out. I was referring to the good old days of the early 1990's when while working on the internals of the OS/2 operating system it seemed that every single byte of memory was precious to us and we worked really hard to code up tight memory efficient routines. We had a pretty darn good release of OS/2 IMHO that ran just fine in 4mb of memory at one point (yes to all you folks too young to remember those days 4mb!!). These days, most computers come from the factory with at least one or two gigabytes as standard and a lot of people (myself included) carry 4gb (or more) in their pockets on USB memory sticks. We treat memory these days as plentiful and do not have the same respect for it we had just a decade or two ago. The problem as I see it is that a whole new generation of programmers has grown up coding Java, C# and other virtual machine based languages where you "let the system worry about cleaning up memory". Don't get me wrong, I am not knocking Java and C# as languages, in fact I like them both and I use them both. However, back in my OS/2 days when we coded mainly in C or i86 Assembler we had a maniacal focus (or so it seems to me looking back) on monitoring memory usage and tracking down and plugging memory leaks and, moreover, on writing memory efficient code in the first place. Maybe I am just old fashioned in my views but as I look at a lot of today's software I see hugely bloated install files and massive memory footprints once installed. Memory (and for that matter, disk space) may be plentiful but system performance really suffers if the underlying infrastructure that is running your code spends half its time cleaning up memory that is no longer needed after you. I am not saying you cannot write good code on a VM based language. Far from it in fact. I am just saying that what I regard as an "art" - the respectful use of systems resources to be precise - seems to be dying out.
Am I just getting old? What do you think?
Categories
: [ Programming ]
Aug 08 2008, 07:17:48 PM EDT
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Looking forward to SHARE
All being well I shall be speaking at SHARE in San Jose next week. I will be talking about subjects such as SOA, open standards and Web 2.0. I'm sitting at my desk right now putting the finishing touches to my slides. Due primarily to the medical issues that I have documented on my personal web site, this will be the first time I have actually been able to get back to SHARE since the Tampa meeting in early 2007. I am really looking forward to meeting a lot of old friends and to hopefully making a few new ones as well
Categories
: [ SOA | conferences | standards ]
Aug 04 2008, 02:51:16 PM EDT
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Top 10 portable gadgets I take with me when I travel
To provide further proof (as if proof were needed) of my "geek factor" and to complete this round of Top 10 lists, here is a list of 10 portable gadgets that I often take with me when I travel. If you are reading this, please feel free to suggest other cool gadgets I should be using by writing a comment.
- Blackberry 8800
- Pedometer
- Nintendo DS
- Sony PSP
- Palm Tungsten T5
- Canon 20D camera
- Canon Digital Elph camera
- Seagate FreeAgent Go 250gb USB drive
- Seagate 6gb Pocket Drive
- Garmin GPS III (it's old now but still a great device)
UPDATED: I should probably have included my Bose QC3 headphones in the list. Because of my ongoing medical issues I have not flown since March of 2007 so I have not needed the headphones lately and consequently they slipped my mind.
Categories
: [ Top_10 ]
Aug 01 2008, 12:42:59 PM EDT
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Top 10 programs I use on my Mac Book Pro all the time
Continuing with my theme of posting a few "Top 10" lists this week here is a list of the top 10 applications I find myself using all the time on my Apple Mac Book Pro. I bought the Mac Book (my first ever Apple computer) back in December of last year so that I had a "new toy" to play with while I was undergoing chemotherapy. I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but I have "fallen in love" with the reliability and simplicity of the Mac. It's also neat to have all of the UNIX features I knew so well back in my university days available in a 21st century laptop.
I did not include in this list the Terminal application which I use all the time to run the Bash shell (I love the tabbed terminal windows capability). I view Terminal as sort of built in to the Operating System. That said I did include TimeMachine in the list as it is a very simple and powerful backup tool with a unique (I think) interface.
- Mozilla Firefox 3
- Mozilla Thunderbird
- Lotus Notes & Lotus Mobile Connect (VPN client)
- Safari
- Time Machine (for backups)
- Text Wrangler (text editor)
- Adium (IM client)
- iTunes
- Neo Office
- VMWare Fusion
Any other Mac users reading this, what are your favorite apps? Are there some other apps I should be trying out?
Categories
: [ Mac | Top_10 ]
Jul 31 2008, 01:23:46 PM EDT
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Top 10 programs based on Open Source I use every day
Not only is this a list of the Top 10 programs I use every day that are based on Open Source, it is also pretty close to how the list would look even if I included proprietary applications. There would be a few changes, but not many. This says a lot about the quality, robustness and usefulness of standards based Open Source software. I am very grateful to all of the people that put so much effort into creating these applications. So, without further ado, here's the list:
- Mozilla Firefox
- Mozilla Thunderbird
- Vim and GVim (Great text editor that I use on the Mac and on Windows)
- CYGWIN (UNIX environment and command shell for Windows)
- Mozilla Sea Monkey (I mostly use Composer)
- IBM Lotus Symphony
- Open Office and Neo Office (a Mac port of OpenOffice)
- Perl
- Mozilla Sunbird
- Python
Categories
: [ 10's | OpenSource | Top ]
Jul 30 2008, 11:05:22 AM EDT
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Top 10 Web Based Applications I use every day
More and more I find myself "living on the web". Here is a list of some web based applications that I use every day and have probably become more than a bit dependent on:
- Google Search
- FaceBook
- Google Calendar
- Google Reader
- LinkedIn
- Yahoo! Mail
- Wikipedia
- Plaxo Pulse
- Google Gmail
- Google Maps
More top 10 lists coming soon!
Categories
: [ standards | web2.0 ]
Jul 29 2008, 11:49:49 AM EDT
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A focus on emerging software standards and technology
