There is nothing standard about innovation. It usually comes with a need, a need to solve a problem. I have always wondered does standardization cripple innovation or does it abet it? On one hand, to introduce new network technologies is a very expensive affair and marred with patches that need to inter op with legacy systems. But at the same time standardization of wireless protocols like 802.11, has bought so many new products to the market as product developers can abs tact the wireless communication. Same applies for Web Services, they are not most efficient but the are standard compliant and that makes them easier to implement as the “reuse” factor is high and tools can be made available for things that are standard.
While I may change my stance , I strongly believe that standards aid innovation. There are some trade off, like with everything else, but if one had to choose between standards and a hooch pooch of proprietary (but more efficient) options, what would you choose?
I had been to the SQL server 2005 launch event this morning. Bad weather, but I was keen to know what they had done in terms of avalibility. And to be honest while some of it was techno marketing, there where three things that I reallly thing were good:
High Avalability, and concurrent recovery.
Security, to the database and feature to encrypt data in the database (like CC no etc).
Improved user interface to the way one can interact with SQL, no more coding in MMC
Thanks to the hacker, they have really paid a lot of attention to security.
For all your money need, you have to go through the bank. Right? Well I wish the answer was Wrong, but for most parts it is very true. When you have money, banks are your friends; when you don’t they could care less. If you want it for a business the interest rate are criminal.
In comes Zopa a startup from the UK for a change! A simple concept, towards which the Internet lends itself, very well in fact.
Connect “consumer” with “producer” in the most efficient and economical way.
We have seen this with eBay to say the very least. Now Zopa is doing it with money! the best there is. Let people give to other people, while it can manage the risk and manage the platform. Neat.
Innovations in computer science and the ability of entrepreneurs to make business sense to connect the dots will really change the world. Imagine life without computers and worse yet with out network connectivity!
Shopping, musk, lavender, rose, reading, cooking, travelling, etc etc.
And did I mention chocolates?
The gallery is working together with WP, but the layout is messed up. *sigh* wish this was easier. Too much time spend in configurations etc. Maybe a intelligent design for configuration management or a simple engine that translates a non-tech requirement into applicaiton specific configurations.
Like “Setup WP with a most popular image gallery” and it can translate to defaults and ask for specifics if needed. We are close with inivisual applications being able to run wizards, but integration is still hell. Dream on about SOA.
While WordPress has a great interface and some cool features, it is lacking in file management and a simple photo gallery. They have a lot of documentation about integrating various photo gallery scripts but without any recommendations. I know that is hard to do, but it would be nice to know that gallery2 works well with it. I had to spend quite some time to figure it out. Once I was able understand the elements gallery2, WPG2 plugin, every thing went well (except the mod_rewirte). For now I will live without it.
The should work:profile/hobbes.jpg
For a change I decided to move from Mambo to Word Press. It think it is better for blogging, as compared to Mambo. Somehow playing with CMSs is one of my favorite hobbies!
“Though shalt not operate on a window from other than its creating thread.”
After wasting so much time developing a architecture that will update UIs from threads that did not create it and not thinking about the fact that MDI children should be created on the Same thread as their parent, I stumbled across the above saying 
.
Well if I had thought it through, the Window handle has to be valid on the main thread for it to be become a child. Hmm….
This article really explains this well
Wonders Of Windows Forms