Even my links to old archived comics are broken now: http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20080402.html points to a 404 comic strip… It’s very funny and all – but this is not the droid I am looking for!

This epitomises all that I think is wrong with the whole Web 2.0 concept and increases my worries about what is coming. The whole thing is so open to abuse / misunderstanding and plain ignorance!

One the one hand it’s quite possible that the creators of Dilbert (or the publishers or whoever is ultimately responsible for the online presence) decided to jazz up the site and having heard that everything is going Web 2.0 and that Flash and pretty shiny interactive widgets are the way to go, they decided to get someone in to mess up their web presence…

The other scenario that springs to mind is the situation that is going to arise all over the place in the next year or two (if it hasn’t already started). There is an agreement between the creators / publishers / whoever is responsible and the web developers. A road-map is in place of all the extras and functional parts that they want and the developers have been working away until one day for some unknown reason (usually the chance to make a few extra shekels) the developers turn around and say “we can’t do this unless you go Web 2.0″. This statement would then be followed by, “you mean you haven’t heard all the benefits of Web 2.0″ wow – we can do great stuff for you with Flash”, and “oh yeah – you have no idea how good it will look with widgets and you’ll have so much more control!” this sales pitch would then end with, “and don’t forget – you’ve been planning for this functionality for a while – it would be such a shame to give up on it because your site isn’t ready to move with the times!”…

Now, of course, said imaginary conversation is a bit overblown and a bit over the top but I don’t think it is a long way away from the truth… The only thing that gives me a little bit of hope is that I know quite a lot of people involved in web development these days and there is actually quite a bit of integrity out there! Hopefully integrity wins out over the cowboys and gombeen men  and Web 2.0 turns out to be a beautiful thing rather than new shiny stuff for the sake of new shiny stuff (and a few extra Euro for the web dev industry).

Closing Date is Tomorrow!

Caveat: There is no data protection notification on the post in question, I didn’t read the article in the magazine so I don’t know if there is one there. I do not know what they intend to do with the email addresses harvested this way but I assume they are going to be responsible about it? (Positive thoughts, positive thoughts!)

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated in any way. I have entered. I will be winning (still with the positive thoughts positivity) but go ahead and enter anyway – you never know

I have been thinking for some time of posting a list of “improvements” I would like to see in Reader. I think there are some pretty glaring holes in the functionality that are begging to be filled in. For example – if I’m going to be sharing stuff from my feeds, I’d like to be able to comment on them in some way so that people who look at my shared links (people who may not really know me) have some idea why I have shared something… Do I think it is an absolutely brilliantly written post or a shocking story or do I just love the graphics? If I find something through a friend’s “Shared Links” feed I like the fact that when I re-share it the link still goes directly to the original article but I’d love to be able to annotate and say “thanks to X for pointing this out to in his shared links”! Reader is a bit weak on this front – it’s really just a “noise filter” so that I end up sharing approximately 10-20% of what comes in on my feeds so my friends won’t have to read all the stuff I don’t judge worth sharing…

Enter Google Shared Stuff! http://www.google.com/s2/shared/stuff (The URI is a bit unwieldy at the moment but I’m sure at some point they will tidy that up.) This will hopefully allow me to share things I find interesting from a bookmark on my toolbar (works FINE in FireFox, unfortunately Internet Explorer seems to have some issues with it – I may just need to update IE so I’ll come back about that later) and a neat little dialogue pops up asking if I want to share a link only or an excerpt; there’s also a box for a comment which allows me to annotate with whatever I have to say about the article.

Getting Set Up
First, set up your Shared Stuff by logging into Google (Gmail / Reader etc) and going here http://www.google.com/s2/shared/stuff and clicking on “My Updates” (make a note of your RSS feed for your shared stuff). Put the “Share / Email” widget on your bookmarks toolbar (as per instructions on the page) and then open Google Reader and add your “Shared Stuff” RSS Feed (as found in Step 1)

This seems to fill up one of the holes quite nicely. There are a few others I’ll post about later (a Google Reader “wishlist” as it were) but for now I’ll briefly explain how this can be used with reader (so people don’t need to have 2 different links to visit to see your “Shared Stuff” and your “Shared Links”). I’ll be sharing this post as well as an example through my shared items (and through my Reader “Shared Links” page, the feed for which you can see on the left sidebar).

Sharing Articles / Posts in Reader
Step 1: Go to an article you want to share (with you own comments) through Reader or navigate to the link some other way if you prefer. (NB – You have to actually go to the article – you can’t just share it from within reader)
Step 2: Click the “Share / Email” bookmark installed above.
Step 3: Back in Google Reader go to your Shared Stuff feed, where the article you just shared should now show up and click “Share”

For more information go here: http://www.google.com/s2/sharing/resources/static/html/help.html

Overall Judgement
It’s a slightly unwieldy process but if Google could incorporate the two sets of functionality into Reader it would be great! Oh and if it could work on IE too it would be nice! *grin* According to the help page above there is a little icon that will be shown on posts that will allow you to share them but the observant reader will ntice that there are no instructions for putting that link on your site and there is no sign of that link even on the Google Blog. I couldn’t find any mention of this functionality on the Google Blog at all in fact, which would indicate to me that this functionality is very much in a kind of “limbo state” where Google is letting the public play with it to get feedback without at any point really acknowledging it or saying what it will be like as a finished work… Seems pretty much like standard practice with Google but at the same time it would be nice if there was a little blurb to tell us if this will ever get any more TLC…

Chain mail emails are spam! Please tell anyone you know that forwarding chain mail emails (especially ones for advertising purposes) is propagating spam!

After a couple of short promo videos and a statement or two from “the man in brackets” (does he have a name yet?) Paul Rellis (Microsoft Ireland MD) got up on stage and gave a nice short speech to kick things off. He was followed by David Lowe (Senior Product Manager with Microsoft) who reminisced about his days as a DJ in Dublin and then took off with a pretty good run down of the benefits of Server 2008 (considering he had about 15 minutes it was a pretty remarkable speech) and a recap of the time-line for the next 6 – 12 months.

After that it was off upstairs to the Silverlight room (the first Visual Studio 2008 session was full before we even got close) where I got to play around with a couple of demos I hadn’t seen before. I liked the fact that the laptops were there and it was up to you to just jump in when one came available and have a good look for yourself but I think my colleague would have preferred if there was a bit more “demo” given. Martha Rotter was doing a storming job as an [Ask the] Expert but with a room full of curious techies her time was a spread a bit thin. We skipped off early downstairs to grab some finger-food and catch the end of the demo being given by Dave Northey and Aiden Finn on Server 2008. The talk was interesting (but pretty much the same stuff as covered in the Longhorn Academy) and the snacks were nice (my vegan friend was even surprised to find that there was plenty she could eat…)

Next stop for me was Visual Studio and LINQ (my colleague wanted to catch the SQL Server session so we split up – all the better – more ground covered that way). I was pretty impressed with the LINQ demo. Pretty good showing of the LINQ to SQL functionality but I was left wondering will the LINQ to XML and LINQ to Objects really work “pretty much the same”? I was especially curious about the LINQ to “other stuff” that is planned but not implemented yet; it sounds good in theory but is it really going to pan out as simple as the LINQ to SQL? Still – all in all I was pretty impressed with the ease of use and the code generation.

Further on and further in! SQL Server 2008 – I have to say I was really impressed here by the HierarchyID data type. From the point of view of both query speed and ease of use it really seems to hit the nail on the head… Still, I’ll need to use it in anger before I make any judgments – as was pointed out last night – the demo may well have been a “best case” scenario. The change tracking and database protection look really useful as well. Impressive to see people actually giving live demos at that speed (especially when they have had to type the same code 8 times already in the day) in front of a bunch of techies. Fair play!

On the way out we got a good look at the sponsors’ and vendors’ stands and then went to hand in our feedback forms and pick up goodies… Besides the Expression Studio evaluation and training DVD and the Windows Mobile development kit I picked up inside we were also given copies of the software being launched and a pretty cool book entitled “Heroes Happen Here” with photo articles about IT Pro’s the world over and the work they are doing… Finally a proper techie coffee table book!

All in all, well worth the afternoon it took up and definitely a different event to the ones I’m used to!

To support us “early adopters” getting up and running (and because we were enjoying the discussions) we decided to put together a User Group. Aiden Finn, one of the attendees of the Longhorn Academy, took the bull by the longhorn as it were and has hit the ground running (with the help of Dave Northey from Microsoft). The website for the Windows Server 2008 User Group (Ireland) is up and running with a nice regularly updated blog, the mailing list seems to be working nicely and best of all – we’re having our maiden event in the Westin!

The first event will be on Wednesday 12th March. It’s billed as “a technical session” and will apparently involve a “very interactive” discussion with David Lowe who is the keynote speaker at the Windows Server 2008 Launch the day before! I’m going to the launch so I’m looking forward to having loads of questions for him…

If you want to go along to our first event go to the site for instructions or email the user group at ws-ugi _ at _ live _dot _ com

To Recap:

What: Windows Server 2008 User Group (Ireland)
When: 12 March 2008 at 19:30
Where: The Westin Hotel, Westmoreland Street
Who: David Lowe (Keynote Speaker at the Launch) and You! Oh – and me…

Found here on The Daily WTF

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a conference that brings together some of the great minds in all three of those fields and runs talks, showcases and demos. I’d love to go someday! Until that day, over on www.ted.com they put up some of the highlights for free viewing and that will have to do me! When you’re finished here pop over there and have a look at the biggest item on the front page right now… I can’t believe I nearly missed this; thankfully Claire Dillon pointed it out on her blog and I got the heads up on the thing that “made Robert Scoble cry“.

Microsoft are launching a new toy for the hardcore geeks, the casual nerds, the sky lovers, the star gazers, the astro dabblers, the average Joe Soap, the “big kid inside”, the teachers, the alien seekers, the physicists and above all the children! The “WorldWideTelescope” (clever naming too) is a digital representation of the night sky that you can scan and pan around, zoom in on, zoom deep into (no really, really deep – like think “Space Porn“). I don’t know how far the zoom goes or to what resolution but Ray Gould mentioned, “the worlds best telescopes (on Earth and in space)”, in his talk at TED so I would assume they are pretty much the best you can get without your own observatory. (See the talk here.)

I have been a sky watcher since I was a very small kid and while I never learned all the constellations, I did regularly fall asleep at the window while gazing out at the stars wishing I had a telescope. Later I used to sneak out at night to lie on the lawn (or the sand dunes or a handy golf course) and watch the stars. Now, while I wouldn’t have replaced that with booting up an application and panning across the sky (warmer but far less fun) I would most definitely have given the tooth fairy all my teeth (and those of my friends and neighbours) to have been able to zoom in and look deep into the nebulae and star clusters or to have been able to pull up fascinating facts right there and then without hitting the books and trying to reconcile that wonderful, beautiful, deep vista of space with the boringly flat and comparatively unfulfilling pictures and diagrams.

All in all this is fantastic news and I’m pretty excited to see how it actually flies! Forget Google Earth (one of my favourite apps of the past few years) I’m waiting eagerly to get going “where no man has gone before”!

Edit (01:40 04/03/2008): Robert Scoble has just commented on Claire’s post that there is a “better” video of the World Wide Telescope on http://www.fastcompany.tv – unfortunately I can’t confirm that because all I get is a “Sorry” page. (Scoble did say today that they are having “some technical difficulties — our engineers have been up all night optimizing databases and getting things turned on”)

Further Edit (01:50 04/03/2008): Scoble’s video seems to be up and running now and looks pretty good

There are videos of some other sessions up there from the same user. Some of the sessions are ones I attended and they were pretty good…