Inlet Media

Another year has passed, and I’m looking forward to what the next one has in store. Here is some of the new tech stuff I will be following, and hopefully buying in 2009.

Mac OSX 10.6 “Snow Leopard”

Announced briefly on June 9, 2008, this upgrade to the Mac Operating System is going to have no new features. Snow Leopard will focus on improving performance, efficiency, and speed. Snow Leopard will be an all 64 bit system which means that it can support up to a theoretical limit of 16 Terabytes of ram as opposed to the current limit of 4 GB.
The OSX file system will be rebuilt and stabilized. New developer tools such as Open-CL will be introduced, giving direct access to the GPU. Snow Leopard will also feature a new programming technology called Grand Central. Grand Central will allow the OS (Operating System), and developers to take greater advantage of multi-core CPUs which are currently underutilized.
Almost none of these improvements will be immediately noticed by the end user. Some people online have complained about no new features. They have forgotten that speed, and efficiency are features. How much time do you spend waiting for your computer to load? How much time do you spend waiting to open this document or that movie file? When you add it up, we spend a lot of time doing nothing but waiting for our computers. Any work done to improve this is a huge new feature.

Windows 7 and Azure

Windows 7 is not just Vista in new clothing, thats being to harsh. It is true in some ways, but I think that Microsoft is taking a bold step like Apple is with Snow Leopard by focusing more on improving performance, and reliability. Microsoft is actually removing programs that were once included, and moving those into their online “cloud” services. A move towards more simplicity is something I see as a good thing.

Azure is Microsoft’s new Cloud Computing Operating System. Now I know thats a mouthful, and hardly explains anything, but I will summarize by saying that it is incredibly cool. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a big fan of Microsoft but Azure has seriously piqued my interest. Azure brings together all of Microsoft’s various online services into one place, and enables web developers to plug in and play.
I believe Azure is going to be a starting point for a purely web based operating system. As bandwidth continues to increase, and the internet improves, there will be less need for individual programs installed on your computer. Document writing, picture editing, spreadsheets, and email. All of these things can already be done through your web browser. How long before everything you do goes through the internet and nothing is done locally on your computer?

The Death of Web 2.0

Please oh please just let it die.

As a full time web developer I have been very much aware of the web 2.0 phenomenon. The term itself is bogus, and holds almost no significant meaning I believe that like most buzzwords, it is now just a cliche. Your website is not “web 2.0” if you have community involvement. Your website is not “web 2.0” if you have user created content or comments. You website is not “web 2.0” if the layout features rounded corners and gradients. You just have a website. Most good web sites have these features now. In development I take it for granted that these will be there. “Web 2.0” was an amorphous idea that has almost universally been reached.

Drupal 7

I use Drupal as my primary CMS, and am very excited about the next version which should be out in the spring of 2009. Drupal is already feature rich but lacks a good administration, and user interface. If you know much about web development then Drupal is great to work with. However, anyone who doesn’t know much will be at a loss in Drupal’s cavernous menu system and obscure language. It can be frustrating but Drupal 7 should include some huge usability improvements.

Android

Google released the Android Mobile Operating System in 2007. This OS is mostly Open Source, and its goal is to bring open standards to the world of mobile devices. In October of 2008 the first Android based phone, the T-Mobile G1 was released to widespread acclaim. Android is a great OS and its initial success means many more phones will be developed using it.
What makes Android so interesting is that is the exact opposite of the closed nature of the iphone. Apple has one piece of hardware that is allowed to use their OS, and they have a closed App Store. Android is open and can be installed and used on almost any mobile phone. Their applications do not have to go through a gatekeeper. Users are free to modify many aspects of Android that the Iphone just won’t allow. In 2009 I hope to see how the more open Android system will fare against the closed and proprietary iphone.

Solid State Drives

A Solid State Drive is a data storage device that is beginning to rival traditional Hard Drives. The largest generally available hard drive right now is 1.5 terabytes and Solid State Drives are only now reaching the 250 gigabyte range. SSD’s are currently far more expensive than Hard Drives, and store less. They also crash less often, and are often faster. SSD’s are something I hope to see move into the mainstream. Their cost will continue to drop and their storage capacity will increase. Soon they will be a common thing inside most computers. Laptops will be first, and then desktops.

Browser Wars

I’m in no way supportive of arcmed combat but the current war between the browsers is a wonderful thing. After the death of Netscape, Microsoft, and its Internet Explorer browser became dominant. IE (Internet Explorer) reached almost 90 percent market share. Today there are a wealth of different browsers, and all of them are better than Internet Explorer. Microsoft rested on its laurels, and is now losing users to other browsers like Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera. These other platforms offer better virus protection, extensibility, and new features.
This browser war is important because it helps move all browser makers towards web standards. Web Standards makes the job of the developers, the designers, and the users easier. It makes all websites function the same, no matter what browser the user has. This saves everyone time and money, and it is such a simple solution to a relatively complicated problem.

These are just a few things I am excited about. What tech trends, or products have caught your eye for 2009?

Well December 4th is my Birthday, and I am quite excited about it. Unfortunately my birthday is in the middle of College Finals every year so you probably won't see me out on the town anytime soon. So today is just a fun post. Space Beer.

Sapporo Breweries, one of Japan's largest brewers used barley, grown on the International Space Station to make the world's first "Space Beer". While this is mostly just a publicity stunt. The majority of the ingredients were not grown in space and the beer itself was not brewed in space, it is still great fun. Most of all this brings up important issues regarding long term space exploration. What sort of food grows well in space? Is fermentation possible in space? These are all great questions and need to be explored and discussed, even better over a beer.

Full Story at Telegraph.co.uk

I got up early to help my mother cook Thanksgiving dinner. By help of course, I mean that mostly I just observed. Afterwards we mindlessly watched the Macy’s Day Parade for a while until the stream of performers were hard to distinguish from one another. Bad pop singers and runner-up American Idol contestants does not make a good show in my opinion.

I then began to wonder about what I was really thankful for this Thanksgiving Day. A cliché, yes, but one of the few I actually enjoy. Besides the obvious friends and family, besides my good health, wonderful clients and business partners, what was I thankful for? What popped into my mind first was another group of people, another community that had over the last year made my business so much better, and consequently my client’s websites so much more successful. The Open Source Community.

What most people don’t realize about computers and the Internet in particular is that Open Source software runs a huge amount of things we don’t even think about. The Internet is mostly powered by computers running Linux. Linux is an Open Source operating system that powers more than half of the servers in the world. Linux is also used in a huge array of other devices such as the TiVo television recorder, and cell phones such as the G1.

Apache is the most popular web server software, it is also Open Source. As of November 2008 Apache served 50.34% of all websites. One out of every two websites you visit relies solely on this community project to work.

PHP is an Open Source scripting language ideal for producing dynamic web pages. PHP is the language that both of my content management systems, Wordpress and Drupal are built with. PHP is currently used on more than 20 million websites, and again this language is completely open and available for use by anyone. It is developed by the community and supported by their efforts.

The final large Open Source project is MySQL. MySQL is an Open Source Database system. MySQL can be used in a huge host of applications but is most famous as the backbone to almost 10 million websites. Some web sites that use MySQL for their data storage and logging of user data include Flickr, Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube.

Together these four big projects provide a huge foundation for Web Development.

I also use two Open Source content management systems for my websites. Wordpress and Drupal. Wordpress is the preeminent open source blogging platform and for most websites this platform is simple to use, powerful, and efficient. Drupal is a more complicated content-management framework, and for more complicated sites it makes it easy to plug and play. To learn more about content management systems and what their purpose is please see my earlier posts on the subject.

These massive projects are not centrally controlled. They usually started off as solo projects but then became so big and so popular that the entire community is needed to make them work. The Open Source community builds them and they are freely available for others to use, modify, fork, play with, or contribute back to the project.

I belong to a business networking group called BNI. The core philosophy of BNI is giver’s gain, the more you contribute to others the more they will contribute to you. Open Source Software of any strain is the epitome of this principle. You can use the software freely and the software is so good and so important that you can’t help but want to contribute back to the community that has helped you.

So that’s what I’m thankful for this year. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to making these products successful. Thank you for making it so much easier to design and manage websites. Thank you for making the world a more open place.

I have a number of projects I am working on and hope to release to the community in January 2009. I look forward to your feedback.