I’ll be going to the Windows Connections conference in April, which looks to be an interesting session on Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Exchange 2007. I’m also attending some SharePoint 2007 sessions that are being held pre & post conference.
It’s a 4-5 day conference, mainly for Information Technology professionals focusing on deploying technology within a corporate environment. But even so, it can be a lot of fun – the speakers are some of the best on their topics.
It should be a pretty great time – let me know if you’ll be there!
Well, I’ve added at least a dozen new feeds to Google Reader, simply because of Twitter. With only a mention and a link, I’ve discovered many new sources that I find interesting. Fantastic!
Mark Evans asks if Vista is the beginning of the end of Windows, and I think he is asking a very good questions. I’ve mentioned this before, and believe that the new OS is the browser – actually the ‘net because that is where the applications and solutions are.
Operating systems should be “seen and not heard”, to steal a phrase from generations past. An OS only needs to perform a few specific, but important, functions. Namely, an OS is the software needed to interface with the hardware, to provide a stable platform on which to run task-specific applications, and to secure the entire environment from intrusion or compromise. Anything more than that is bloat, simply serving to slow the entire system down.
While there probably is a move by many to the Mac, I believe the true winner in the long run will be Linux. Since many distros are free, the price of entry is right compared to the Mac. Also, the level of sophistication is far enough along to provide the base services that an average user will need. Ease of upgrade or migration still needs to be dealt with and some rough edges in the environments will also need to be smoothed out and polished up.
The real challenge for Microsoft is to, of course, make Windows appear to have value to their customers. To them, this means adding features, making it better looking, and other items including more secure. Yes, I truly believe Microsoft has made great inroads in this area. To be fair, MS has the largest installed base, hence the largest availability of systems to learn how to subvert. The installed base also supports the largest number of applications that were written to the original Win32 API, and if you break that – guess what. So MS has some real hard work patching the system without breaking the API (documented and undocumented).
At any rate, as people discover that they can have all their applications served on the Internet, store all their files on storage services that are always backed up, and everything is accessible from everywhere, the importance of the operating system will be drastically reduced.
After finally checking out PageFlakes and comparing to NetVibes, I just prefer NetVibes. It seems that there are more widgets to add to a page, and they seem more flexible. Adding my custom hosted GMail account was easier on NV than PF for example.
Easton Ellsworth has discovered and converted to Google Reader as his main feed reader and has followed a post from Web Worker Daily and asks How do you read RSS feeds? So, ok I’ve got my own method or pattern for reading my feeds in Google Reader – which is the only feed reader as far as I’m concerned.
So, here it goes:
Morning: Start with the All Items “river of news” style view going from top to bottom using my mouse scroll wheel, marking posts started (s), and shared (shift-s).
Daytime: Keep following the All Items view, refreshing a few times to see what’s current.
Evening: Focus on reading A-List feeds, and then technical feeds, then mobile device related feeds.
Overall, I really have become enamored of the river of news view that Dave Winer pioneered (thanks Dave!). Thanks for the question Easton!
As to why I read feeds, it simply is multitudes faster than individual sites. It’s also much more up to date than traditional media, which has caused me to cancel or let expire all my magazine subscriptions. They just can’t compare to the information shared by bloggers, or published to the news feeds.
The Democrats running for Governor must have failed their math classes. The “high speed rail” boondoggle in California already cost the state taxpayers billions of dollars. The mess there shows that I saved the hard-working taxpayers in Wisconsin from a scam that would have cost
