Piece of my thoughts..

Jan 11, 2009

Silverlight vs Flash

Million dollar question. Can Silverlight raise to the glory of Flash and eventually surpass it?

As a person incharge of recommending technology to clients, it's been a tough time making a case to build websites using Silverlight. Primarily being a new technology, there are certainly questions about investing those dollars. Whether to build using ubiqutous Flash or the new comer Silverlight remains the big question. I have been following the debates on Silverlight vs Flash to help make decisions on technology for Web 3.0, which is of course RIA. Prospects, Risks and Speculations from my understanding for the curious:

Silverlight doesn't have any great showcases for technology adoption except NBC Olympics and Net Flix live streaming. Ironically, these two demostrate the streaming capability and not the power of Silverlight (maybe, this is the best MS could do at this point of time). RIA has played the role delivering media, rich user experience and ease of use. But, not to a great extent on Enterprise applications front. Leaving aside the question, whether RIA is ready for Enterprise, how can Flex and Silverlight fair in Enterprise setup. MS does have a strong position with a well entrenched Enterprise software market such as SharePoint and all-popular .NET platform. Since, Silverlight is tied to .NET, Silverlight is obviously well tied to Enterprise. Silverlight already connects or integrates with SharePoint, making it easy to RIA enable existing SharePoint Enterprise infrastructure.

The biggest selling point of MS has always been its clout over the Enterprise market with its interconnected software spread all over the Enterprise. It makes to easier to add something that extends the existing infrastructure rather than build the entire infrastructure from scratch. Hold on. In what way is this argument connected to Silverlight? You may ask. Transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 resulted in upgrading apps(including Enterprise) from simple always-post-back web pages to interactive AJAX. With Web 3.0 on the horizon, RIA is the much anticipated replacement/upgrade for AJAX(don't know how google is going to manage the tide). There comes the Silverlight. MS will obviously push Silverlight into every single product you can imagine from mobile, desktop, servers to Web Office on the software services side. By moving to RIA, MS will be in a better position to tackle Google with much richer and intuitive web apps. MS couldn't crack the AJAX the way Google did. So, Silverlight is going to be their best bet.

With all those reasoning, i am bound to believe that Silverlight will become as ubiqutous as Windows, .NET etc.

Couple of interesting points from web(references at the end):

"In Silverlight 2 we have integration with SharePoint 2007 and Microsoft's Azure Cloud Platform. What is Adobe going to integrate with beyond PhotoShop??? In the works we have Reporting Services 2008 R2 integration (think Business Objects XCelcius dashboards). The Office Web will be powered by Silverlight 3. Where is Adobe's suite?Silverlight is going to be on mobile devices: Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Symbian. Does Adobe have a mobile OS? Next version of VS 2010 integration enterprise services and workflows (WCF/WF) all under a SINGLE environment. Does Adobe have something similar? (not counting shelling out extra for 3rd party add-ons). Silverlight is getting F# a multi-threaded/statistical language...pick your choice how you want to code in Silverlight 3 first class languages plus dynamic ones. Flash/Flex needs to support true multithreading first before we can talk :)"

Read the complete thread here for an exhaustive technical debate.

Jan 10, 2009

Mind Map - Simple Analysis and Decision making

Image via WikipediaFew months back, came across the term 'Mind Mapping' in Wikipedia.

Digging further revealed, its an approach for analyzing a given situation and eventually making decisions. I have been trying to use the approach in situations as trivial as choosing between two mobile phones to a relatively complex software requirements study.

There are many software in the market bringing Mind Mapping to life. Wikipedia gives an exhaustive list. Personally, i feel comfortable using FreeMind. Its simple and powerful user interface just blew me away. Its very easy to work with just the keyboard and flowing through the maps.

Some organizations are using Mind Mapping as organization-wide tool for analysis and decision making.

Do give it a try. Its worth the time!

Nov 20, 2008

Arkansas Driving License Test

Image via WikipediaI have been scouring internet for study guides and information on getting driving license in Arkansas. Getting a driving license involves a two step process - Written test + Driving test.

Having gone through the written test and cleared it in second attempt, i have put together list of things that might help others in passing the test in first attempt.
There are lot of unwritten rules by testing center, which you will get to hear only from the officer's mouth. These rules are not posted in the guide nor in the website clearly. I believe they should for the potential candidate to plan his tests.

For written test,
- Read the test rules and guide from the URL
- The test booklet is also available from the local driving test center free of cost
- Take the sample online test from the URL
- Take another sample test(exhaustive; focused on statistics) that i created for my preparation from the URL
- Failure in written test requires you to wait for a week before next attempt

For Vehicle driving test,
- Vehicle test can be taken 30 days from date of passing written test. I don't think the duration varies based on the number of written test attempts.

I am in the process of signing up for a driving course with a school nearby. My idea is to take few classes with the instructor beside me to get familiarized with driving and rules. I would rent a car after that till the time of test to feel more confident during the test.

Wish u all the best! Wish me the same :)

UPDATE:
Road test was a breeze and i am ready to drive a car LEGALLY!

Here is the link to questions and answers for the sample test that i prepared myself. I am not sure whether the contents are accurate. My prep notes should come handy to highlight the important sections of the DL guide, but shouldn't be used as the only prep material for tests. Wow! That's a disclaimer.

Hope this post helps someone someday.

Oct 6, 2008

What caused the Lehman Brothers collapse?

Image via WikipediaMust read article to know the cause of Lehman collapse. Simple and detailed in layman terms.

Shyams Column on Lehman

Looks like the run of the mill. The picture is the Lehman HQ, a company with more than a decade of wall street presence and suddenly, vanishes overnight washing away billions of dollars investor money.

Sep 2, 2008

Google enters browser war with Chrome.

GLASGOW, UNITED KINGDOM - APRIL 12: (FILE PHOT...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife It was anticipated and speculated. Now, its here!

A browser from the Google stable. Google Chrome.
Officially public on Sep 1, 2008, Google has posted an awesome comic illustration of this radically different (claimed) browser. The comic strip was pretty interesting explaining the typical problems we are living(forced to live) with even modern browsers such as Firefox. Some of them are very fundamental, but very important. For eg: Current browsers are single threaded, in spite of multiple tabs. So, browsers do one operation at a time; JavaScript execution, Plug ins, HTML rendering. One at a time, while the others wait.

The other interesting problem, they claim to have solved is the sand boxing of tabs, preventing the entire browser crash or hogging. But how? Simple. Each tab is a process and therefore sand boxed from others. H mm.. doesn't it sound like back to history? Prior to multi-tabbing days, a browser window can open one website at a time. To view multiple website, we have to open multiple browser windows. So, the windows were isolated and therefore different processes. Then, the came the buzz of multi-tabbing, avoiding the need to open multiple windows. It was celebrated and accepted.

Now, in Google Chrome, each tab is a separate process, but just glued together by 'Chrome Browser'. Haa.. it sounds like a simple play of words. But, Google seems to be aspiring to a bigger dream of having its own OS or Platform on top of platforms such as Windows, Linux, Mac et al. The Google Chrome has a process manager allowing users to view the processes/tabs running within Google Chrome, giving control to users. This has a huge potential to develop into a full blown platform for web apps. After all, Google is all about web apps.

Having said that, i am curious to get a hands-on with Chrome. One quick thing to note is that, they have used Apple Webkit as the rendering engine instead of Gecko or its-own-from-scratch. Googlers have showered praise on this Webkit engine. I am also curious about the plug-ins support. Having lived with the ActiveX and Firefox add-ons flavors of plug ins, i am scared to hear about another 'X' type of plug in for Chrome. I guess, Google would have done something to support the two plug in standards for time being, at least to draw the crowd initially.

So, what happens to the Google support for Mozilla foundation and all that buzz going on around Firefox. Is Google and Firefox going to lock horns? I am curious and worried equally.

Here are some references worth reading about Chrome.

Updated: Chrome now available for download here. Go grab it. I am on it.

Aug 17, 2008

Firebug for Opera

Image via Wikipedia

Firebug has become synonymous with web development. Its so popular that, there are plugins for Firebug itself. Y!Slow is a great example.

For the newbies to Firebug, learn more about it from my previous post here or the Firebug page. There are Firebug fans and evangelists all around the globe, including me.

In plain english, Firebug is a web development/debugging/design add-on for Firefox browser. The add-on has made client-side development and debugging a breeze. Its importance has grown exponentially with the wild popularity of AJAX.

At the sametime, Firebug is available only on Firefox. This limitation has and still puts many web developers craving for Firebug's incarnation on IE, Opera and Safari browsers. Yes, all of these browsers are winning on their own grounds. Nowadays, it has become a norm to make websites compatible with these browsers.

Alright. With all those background info, i have been constantly searching for Firebug for IE, Safari and Opera browsers. Maybe, its the powerful and open Mozilla platform that fosters great tools like Firebug.

With the latest version of Opera 9.5, comes the developer tool Dragonfly, which is very similar to Firebug in terms of DOM inspector, JavaScript debugging and CSS changes. This would propel compatibility of more web pages with Opera browser. More information on the Dragonfly can be found here.

Jul 25, 2008

Evaluating Project Server 2007

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I have recently started evaluating Project Server 2007 for enterprise wide deployment. The tool seems to provide lot of features on management artifacts and collaboration. But, not user friendly, atleast the first cut opinion. The most difficult part seems to be with the documentation and resources on the internet. The documentation in MS site and books from SAMS seem to throw light over the entire feature set of the product, but not good enough to get started.

We all evaluate new tools as a part of our job or out of interest. Whenever i evaluate a tool, i take the approach of identifying the jargons, identifying the actors and use cases. I walk through the jargons to get the basic understanding of the tool and then to actors and use cases to evaluate the completeness of the tool. I couldn't find any such books/resources on Project Server 2007 till now.

This approach has worked well for me in the past. Trying to find similar resources on Project Server 2007.