Development

Chased by a Bulldozer

Ingo Muschenetz — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 07:22:00 GMT

Friday was interesting for sure...the day started off fine enough, and then our servers crashed. We had recently released Aptana out into the public, and somehow we found ourselves on Digg. One minute it was 300 diggs, then 400, then 500, and so on throughout the day. At one point, we were trailing a story about a Google talk update and being furiously chased by a story about an armored bulldozer rampaging through a small town, destroying everything in its path (A most mesmerizing story, by the way). By the end of the day, however, we'd managed to pull ahead and emerged as the top story on Digg last Friday.

So what is Aptana? Aptana is a Web IDE (Integrated Development Environment). Some people are very happy with EditPlus, Notepad2, Textmate, for web work but Aptana is about the entire development experience for "Web 2.0" applications--JavaScript, HTML and CSS, particularly in providing code assistance against the ever-expanding array of JavaScript libraries out there. People have said some exceptionally nice things about it so far, and we're incredibly happy that we've created a product people find so helpful in their day-to-day work. I'll write more about it when I have some helpful tips to post, but for now, you can check it out here.

DotText CAPTCHA, NDoc, WinFX, and the Absence of a Weekend

Ingo Muschenetz — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 19:43:00 GMT

After finally having enough of spam comments, I decided to implement a CAPTCHA system. I'm not thrilled with the thought of doing so as it raises a number of accessibility issues, but it was the quickest path. Fortunately, a very nice CAPTCHA program had already been written for dotText and CS, so I installed that. As I was using it, however, I sorely missed any documentation on the various properties, so I decided to run NDoc against the source. Of course, not wishing to spend any time outside this weekend, I also decided to create a new VS2005-style documenter for NDoc in the process. So here I've released a number of things in beta format that hope will be of use to people:

Again thanks to Miguel for a great initial control. I'll try and continue to update the documenter as time permits. It's certainly usable enough for online documentation, and I've checked to make sure it renders appropriately in FireFox as well as IE6.

Skin Update

Ingo Muschenetz — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 18:41:00 GMT

A quick note that the blog skin has been updated to include a more polished look, and a few photos along the side. The photos are some of my favorites from various trips we've taken. I hope to put up more in the near future.

Nothing to Talk About...Yet

Ingo Muschenetz — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 08:04:00 GMT

Google Talk will be on everyone's lips for the next few days, and while interesting in a way, it does initially seem....underwhelming. It's been called “clean“ but that may well be a nicer way of saying boring. I believe Google's strategy is a bit more subtle, and I'd like to point out two items that caught my eye:

1) Google talk doesn't integrate with the Sidebar. The sidebar itself is interesting, as they've now crammed a wedge into Microsoft's screen real estate. Supposedly the sidebar is coming back in Vista. Will people run two sidebars? Regardless, they've got pictures in the sidebar, they have an IM/picture chatting service in Hello (part of Picasa), and now Google Talk. There has to be some sort of connection.

2) From a post on Slashdot (I know, I know. Of course this one is buried five deep):

Another thing some people might have noticed is that reverse DNS for talk.google.com is toolbar.google.com. Now have a look at JEP0151 [jabber.org].

Virtual presence on Web pages (also sometimes known as co-browsing, while co-browsing can also mean something different) makes people aware of each other, who are at the same Web location at the same time. The basic purpose of a virtual presence system is to show names, icons, and/or avatars of people who are on a page or a set of pages and to let them communicate.

I know this has been done before, but the Google toolbar is in a lot more places than any of the other solutions were.

Of course, much of this can also be deception. With an ungodly amount of money, Google is in a perfect position to distract competitors.

Nothing To Free But Fear Itself

Ingo Muschenetz — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 17:31:00 GMT

I often enjoy reading the various Microsoft Rumor/Analyst weblogs. Joe Wilcox puts out a good one, somewhat for the content, but because he also skillfully blends writing about interesting topics, but at the same time using it as a marketing technique for his consultant services.

However, this quote caught my eye:

“Taking a page from freeware/shareware software and another from open source, Microsoft will offer a fear [my emphasis] version, SQL Server 2005 Express. Competitors and partners, there is a trend here. Visual Studio .NET 2005 also comes in a free, Express Edition.”

Giving things away is a hallmark of Microsoft product marketing, and as a third-party developer, one often wonders what piece of functionality will get folded into the operating system next (think Norton AntiVirus in the latest example). Either way, it's a funny Freudian slip.

Homestead Is Not Where My Heart Is

Ingo Muschenetz — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 16:41:00 GMT

I have to admit I'm baffled at the people who comment on how great the Homestead QuickSite demo is. Scoble feels it is deserving of a the “DemoGod” award. The Jason Calacanis Weblog calls it “the most talked-about demo,” which I guess is true if only to express, “Huh?” It's a web-based site builder. A fairly attractive one, yes, but still, a web based-site builder. Not to mention, there are already a few other products out there called “QuickSite”...

Other products that caught my eye far more were ones like “In The Chair.” It sounds very cool to be able to play along with a real orchestra. and not only play along, but have the computer analyze your playing and give you real-time feedback.

Finally, a big congratulations to the PhotoLeap team, who had a very successful presentation at DEMO this year! PhotoLeap distinguishes itself in allowing high resolution photos (up to 16 megapixels) to be transferred. Other services often tap out at 5 MB, which ignore the professional market.

.Text, FlexWiki, Glue, and a Little String

Ingo Muschenetz — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 20:59:00 GMT

After several years of developing custom web application software, I've decided to try and sample the Open Source offerings out there. Since musch of my experience lies with ASP.Net and C#, I decided to start there, though not before marvelling how easy Blogger and WordPress are to start using. Wordpress is literally three steps:

Modify configuration file
Upload to web server
Run installation script

I won't go into the process of setting up a .Text site, but needless to say, it's more complicated. So why stick with it? Partially to understand how it works, and to mix it up and make it better. So, after some amount of egregious hacking, I've totally reworked FlexWiki into a recipe database, and put together this weblog. Next will be reworking the previous software I worked on to handle all the photo gallery duties. Just from now on, FlexWiki developers, can we agree that putting HTML tags in Response.Writes in C# code-behinds is not the best solution?