IronRuby to ship at OSCON this year
In the end, I think that it’s important to judge our effort based on the code that we ship. We’re going to ship our first CodePlex release of IronRuby at OSCON this year.
There has been a lot of speculation about Microsofts intentions towards our daughter Ruby. Will they try to turn Ruby into Ruby++ the same way they tried with Java? John has been VERY transparent about the process and his intentions. I can safely say that if the project gets derailed (pun intended) in any way, that it won’t be because of John Lams efforts.
That being said, I have no idea how Rails would work inside the CLR. Would your Rails app run as a service on the server? Would it be a new type that gets filtered and executed by ASP.NET?
Thinking differently about Google Gears
A good nights sleep, and a nice hefeweizen last night, have caused me to start to think a little differently about Google Gears and persistent client side storage. From a comment on my earlier Gears post.
I’m actually starting to think differently about Google Gears. I still don’t see a need for taking a web application offline BUT… think about storing data on the client where it can be accessed by either desktop application or a web based application. Say if NNW could access the Google Reader offline store? Or if Zoho or Google Writer stored my documents locally and I had an Office plug in that could load my documents from that local store?
What about storing credit card information on my local hard drive instead of on a merchants server?
What do you think about that?
Review Board – Code Review workflow from VMWare
I noticed via Reddit:Programming that VMWare has released an online code review workflow system called Review Board. It’s been released under the MIT license and includes hooks for Perforce and Subversion. It’s written in Python using the Django framework.
Very cool. Code Reviews are usually a time intensive activity involving lots of print outs. This application looks to streamline a lot of that.
Google Gears – Offline web applications
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life – Google Gears: Offline Support for AJAX/Flash Apps: “”
Dare Obasanjo talking about Google Gears, which enables web applications working against it’s Javascript API to be used offline.
It may prevent other developers from adopting the technology but I doubt many developers would look this gift horse in the mouth, after all it is freaking offline support for Web apps.
Welcome to the future.
Which future, the one where we run applications on our desktop when we aren’t connected to the internet? 
See, taking a web application offline isn’t as neat as it sounds. Why would I want to work with my document using Google docs offline when I could just edit it using MS Word and upload it later? Why would I want to use Google Reader offline when I have NetNewsWire or RSS Bandit? If I’m going to work with data offline, I sure don’t want to use a browser interface. I want something that’s snappier, richer, and mo’ better. I want a desktop application.
If you want to see the future, look to the hybrid applications that Brent Simmons talks about. These applications work with data online but run on the desktop. Most of them have an offline front end as well as a web based front end. Twitter is a good example of this. You can choose a Twitter client to run on your desktop but if you are on the road or don’t have access to a desktop you can use the web interface. But Twitter is a pretty trivial example. No one will fail or succeed based on access to Twitter.
No the real future of applications, in my opinion, is found at Zoho.com. Zoho Writer and Sheets provide plug-ins for MS Office which let you work with the documents directly on their servers. If you need to go offline you can just save the document to your hard drive and re-save it back to their servers when you get connected again. They hit the same sweet spot that Twitter does in terms of access. Work with your rich client when you’re at your home base, work with the web client when you’re on the road or in a pinch.
I’m still struggling to see the benefit to taking a web application itself offline?
Google street view
Not done yet
Google Street view – Great! Blurry pictures of cities I’m not in. I’ve never been to Times Square and really had it look the same way twice. Oh sure, there are a couple of landmarks. The big video screen. Good Morning America. The biggest freakin’ Hershey Kiss I’ve ever seen. But it’s not that hard to get around Times square and you can’t really make out any of the store fronts with those pictures anyway.
I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with the “street view” aspect of the maps. If I see some wonk standing out in front of my house taking pictures I’m calling the cops. Google photographer or thief casing the house?
Microsoft Surface
http://www.microsoft.com/surface -> “Find It”
“While the first Microsoft Surface units won’t hit the market until Winter 2007.”
- announced Spring 2007
Man, some days the jokes just write themselves.
Some of the stuff they demoed is possible now. Why can’t I use a mouse to put push pins on MSN Maps (or whatever it’s called now) or Google maps? Why can’t I push photos around on my Windows or OS X desktop? Oh that’s right, because putting photos in a big pile and pushing them around doesn’t work that well in real life. Maybe churches could use this in their stained glass windows. Walk up to the temple or cathedral, touch the glass, and have it tell you a story.
The real question is: Can you actually get the Aero Glass interface in Microsoft Surface?
argh, need coffee before the meeting extravaganza starts.
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Herding Code Podcast
- Herding Code 88: Julie Lerman on Entity Framework 4 7/21/2010
- Herding Code 87: Jeff Atwood on Area 51 and Stack Overflow 7/8/2010
- Herding Code 86: Saqib Shaikh on Accessibility and Developing with Limited Sight 6/27/2010
- Herding Code 85: Clint Nelsen on Startup Weekend 6/27/2010
- Herding Code 84: Ex-Microsoft Developer Panel with Mike Moore, Jeff Cohen, and Scott Bellware 6/27/2010