TweetDeck

Many of the folks at the Thinking Digital conference I'm attending are using Macs and running TweetDeck. So while sat here listening to yet another great talk, I decided to install it. Wow! I've been dabbling with twitter for a while but now I can see that others have been tweeting at me and I've not seen them until now. Apologies to everyone to which that applies! Now I may start using twitter more.

My next phone?

Last October I decided to upgrade my phone. At the time the iPhone wasn't available through my provider, so I went with the HTC Hero, running Android. It got good write-ups and I've had an interest in Android for a while. Since getting it I've enjoyed it, but it's not a match for the iPhone. The hardware is too slow, it's not as responsive, the store isn't as good, you can't (couldn't) store apps on the SD card, and there are a few other minor issues.

But I like the phone, so am glad I got it. That is until recently. My phone is running Android 1.5, and over the past 6 months we've seen 2.1 and now 2.2 come out. Now of course I could go and install these on my phone, but the "preferred" route is to get the official release from HTC, which would include their SenseUI, which is a great selling point over other Android phones and the iPhone. Yet to date there is still no official release from HTC for 2.1 and there may never be a 2.2 release for it.

Now I understand that technology can get dated and old things can't always run the new stuff. But just over 6 months after I got it I refuse to believe that my phone is outdated! Maybe this is an HTC specific issue and they really just need to get their act together. But it appears that Google would disagree and that fragmentation is inevitable. If it is then I am concerned for the future of Android.

For now I'll wait to see what comes from HTC. But when my contracts up I will likely move to an iPhone and mark my journey with Android down to experience.

Paul on PaaS

It's been a while since Paul Fremantle and I caught up, but it's good to see that we're still thinking along similar lines on a number of topics. This time it's PaaS and vendor lock-in. In fact there's a growing concern that this is something that may not be obvious to users given the amount of hype that's builing in the atomosphere.

Interesting Cloud announcement

It's another week and we have another announcement around Cloud, this time from Google. Quite interesting but the underlying message is pretty much what I said in an earlier entry: if you want to move to this type of cloud then you'd better be expecting to re-code some or all of your application. Oh joy. Here we go again! Even the tag line of "... write once, deploy anywhere" is a lot of smoke-and-mirrors. "Deploy to any one of four vendor specific Clouds, but don't forget about the lock-in potential there" would be more appropriate.

Come on guys. We really cannot afford to reinvent the world again. So as a prospective user, unless you really aren't interested in leveraging your existing investments in software and people, this looks like another non-starter. Maybe 2 out of 10 for marketing buzz, but 0 for effort.

Duane tells it like it is

I've known Duane "Chaos" Nickull for many years. He's a great guy, a good friend and knows his stuff on a range of technical and not so technical (excellent musician, for instance). His most recent post made me laugh out loud! A good entry to say the least.

Rich Frisbie

I met some really great guys when Bluestone acquired Arjuna Solutions. It was a great culture and family, one with which I'm pleased to have been involved. It's therefore very sad to hear that one of the friends I made during those years, Rich Frisbie, has passed on so suddenly and at such a young age. I wish his family all the best and will have a silent toast to Rich. 'nuff said.

The Chewbacca Defense

I use it all the time when I run into things that just don't make sense. It's a light-hearted way of telling people they need to think more!

Philip K Dick Journals

Very interesting! Though my favourite book of his has to be Now Wait For Last Year.

Plan 9 operating system

While reading about cult movies I was suddenly reminded about the Plan 9 operating system. It came out while we were deep into the original Arjuna development and a heavy user of Sun Sparcs, so naturally it was something we had to investigate (along with the Spring operating system)! It had some interesting ideas, and with distribution at its heart it was very relevant to what we were researching (the University was the home of the Newcastle Connection, with some similar aims from many years before.)

Anyway, it was an interesting time and I'm pleasantly surprised to learn that there's still work going on into Plan 9, twenty something years after it began. Very cool!