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January 29, 2004
Gates lates SPAM solutions
The Register does a passable job of working through the issues with the three approaches to SPAM solutions that Gates has been talking about. Of course Bill thinks that long term, micropayments for e-mail is the right solution. Now Microsoft has been trying for quite some time to come up with a valid reason to be in the middle of millions of transactions. And to scale micropayments. Now every e-mail needing payment, now THAT is a micropayment system! Don't think Bill doesn't want to run it!
Posted by Martin at 4:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
EU has two year old SPAM law that still is not working
This article talks about how the EU is "getting tough" on spam now. Finally after two years of a spam law that makes unsolicited mail illegal. The problem they say is enforcement. So I bet they need good filters.
Posted by Martin at 4:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Remember moon shoes? Here is what you need for today's generation
I am ordering mine right now! Poweriser.
Posted by Martin at 3:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wondering what to do in a WMD attack?
On Sept. 11, the first thing that went through my head when I saw the twin towers on fire was "how do I protect my family?" The first thing was not to "contact local officials" as the Homeland Security office would now have you believe. They all have their hands full. The Rand group has published a PDF file for personal use that is very helpful. It turns out that basically hunkering down in your house in as sealed a room as you can get is the best thing to do. I probably should put a Panic Room in the new house...
Posted by Martin at 3:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 28, 2004
More time wasters...
Play Smack the Pinguin Great for long hours of entertainment during conference calls and after that particularly infuriating board meeting. Click mouse once to set up the batter, second time to hit the sucker! I know everyone in the executive office at Microsoft is playing this one...
Posted by Martin at 3:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
WiMax coming
I have been starting to see WiMax start-ups. IDG likes it too.
Posted by Martin at 12:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 26, 2004
Google is joining the social network craze
Posted by Martin at 3:25 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 20, 2004
Digital music muzings
I haven't posted about digital music lately, but a friend mailed with a bunch of questions on what I thought today, so here are my current thoughts:
I believe that we will see many more places selling music in download as well as subscription form. In the end you will probably buy from someone who you already have a billing relationship with. That bodes well for Walmart, your phone company, your cable company, and your broadband provider. It does not bode well for music only sellers like Rhapsody, iTunes, etc. Remember, why do we shop in superstores instead of boutiques most of the time? You can get lots of different things in one place. For example, would you like to shop for music, videos, and related merchandise in the same place? Probably. What about playback devices? Can you get all this at a download store? No. Digital music will be used by people like Walmart as a loss leader to sell the more profitable consumer electronics. You already see that. These guys will take all the margin away from music because they make it up on other things. There will be no business for digital music only retailers. This bodes well for Loudeye Technology as an arms supplier to them all.
Also, the first round of these services are built around proprietary codecs and limited selection and limited playback devices. I am not going to sign up for any of these services until I can access any of the music on any platform or device I want at any time. And I want a complete catalogue. Today to get a comprehensive catalogue and playback all the places I want (PC connected, PC not connected, portable music player, car, friend's house, second home, office) would require multiple subscriptions to multiple services. It just ain't gunna happen.
Posted by Martin at 3:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
You can also donate to M&A foundation by Paypal now
Posted by Martin at 2:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Now part of Walmart
My Foundation now is a Walmart affiliate and any of your purchases there will go to support the Foundation. Happy shopping!
Posted by Martin at 2:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Apprentice Episode 2: Jason
So last week was Episode 2, still men against women. Jason Curis, the affable slum lord hunk was the men's team captain. Tammy Lee, the Seattle whiner during the first show as appointed Women's team captain in part because she thought she could do such a better job. The task was to develop a new marketing campaign for NetJets. It was not as obvious from the get-go which team had the advantage here.
Again, the women started out in turmoil and the men went right on task. Each team got a photographer, video person and some graphic design tallent to help produce their ideas and pitch for the CEO of NetJets. I thought Tammy Lee would be a disaster as a team leader and the start looked that way. She was so impressed with their ability to use sex to sell lemonaide that she wanted to take that path as well with the jets. So she designed a campaign that photographed the aircraft in all sorts of ways that were falic and sexual. One picture of the engine hole was subtitled, Can you fit in? Another has a middle aged businessman with a sexy flight attendant sitting behind and above him on the plane wing with "Get on top" as the caption. When the girls walked into pitch the deal, they also went with flight attendant outfits and lots of leg. Their idea was that the CEO would love it or hate it, but either way it was a BIG idea. When they finished I thought they had made fools out of themselves and acted like silly little girls. The CEO was noticable uncomfortable with all the sex and hated their idea to use direct mail.
The men went with a much tamer campaign. It showed a sucessful businessman getting great service and avoiding the delays of commercial flights. Very straight forward value and benefit sale. They came in in suits. After they pitched, I said "they nailed it". It was a much more practical campaign. I would have chosen the men.
Again I was wrong. The CEO of NetJets summed it up very well: The men were steak and the women were sizzle. When you buy an ad agency, you buy the people. You want to buy sizzle. You can always tone down the sizzle, it is hard to sex up steak to sizzle. He chose the women. He is obviously right.
So the women go back to the suite and the men back to the board room. Again Donald asks everyone to rat on everyone else. Everyone hated Sam again for going to sleep during a task and not even completing it. Jason the team manager was there as well for failure to meet with the client before the pitch. Those two had obvious complicity in the failure. Nick Warnock was thrown in there by Jason just because they needed three. Donald realized immediately that Nick didn't really need to be there. So it was between Jason and Sam. I though Sam would go this time for sure. But old Donald threw out Jason. The reason was that Jason made a bad judgement in not going to see the client before the pitch. That was an active decision to do something stupid. Now Sam fell asleep and may not have contributed, but he did not do anything really wrong or destructive to the cause while Jason did. Again the right decision, with me missing the mark. Well there is always this week.
Posted by Martin at 1:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Time to short Microsoft?
Had an interesting drink with a Microsoft friend last night. He re-iterated the concern others have pointed out that Microsoft is having trouble getting renewals on many of their Enterprise agreements. Upgrade Advantage is especially troublesome being as that Microsoft is pushing so many things into Longhorn and that keeps getting delayed, there are few new products coming out to support the cost of those agreements. The fear is that there will be a significant fall off in those agreements in June and Sept of this year. Deferred revenue has always been one of the big strengths of Microsoft. It allows them to smooth out their earnings as they please. Now that bucket is emptying out. And what if Longhorn gets pushed too far out? Will the people who have been paying for upgrades hoping for Longhorn get anxious and complain? What if they want a refund for the years when Microsoft didn't ship any new products? I believe Microsoft is in for turbulent waters.
From the latest Goldman Sachs report on Microsoft:
Changes to our model: 1.) we have presumed the $770 million decline in deferred rev from $9.0 bil at the beginning of the year will fall $200 - $300 mil further in each of the next two quarters, followed by a moderate seasonal increase in the June quarter. This will likely hurt EPS about $0.02 per share this year and $0.04 next year. 2.) Also, we have made a separate change in the model to reflect the presumption that with no major new products (except for the Yukon release of SQL Server a year from now) shipping over the next 2 1/2 to 3 years, that customers currently under multi-year license agreements may become more reluctant to renew their maintenance agreements. The category most at risk is the Upgrade Advantage contracts, the bulk of which come up for renewal in June and September. As we detailed earlier (Oct 20th comments), we believe the Upgrade Advantage contract renewals could hurt fiscal 2005 EPS by about $0.08 per share if none renewed. We have now assumed that two-thirds do not renew, or an impact of about $0.06 per share. We might have been more optimistic were deferred revenues to show better near-term results, but it does not appear we will be getting any near term offsets to this exposure so we have now baked this into our 2005 forecast. 3.) The third change we have reflected in our 2005 model is a more optimistic assumption of PC demand given the strong showing in MSFT's consumer business this past quarter and the anticipation that PC demand in the corporate sector should also begin to show signs of stronger recovery.
Posted by Martin at 1:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Technorati Beta site
Ever wanted to search blogs? Technorati: Web Services for bloggers. Or figure out who is linking to you? Or how "authoratitive" you are on a particular topic? Or how a blog you reads ranks in relation to others? Check out the world's largest Blog index and author tool.
Posted by Martin at 9:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 19, 2004
The Apprentice Show 1 review...
The Apprentice has gotten me. I am somewhat ashamed that I sat the first week with 27 million of my fellow Americans and watched this new twist on Reality TV. During the first 15 minutes I switched over to Tivo and set up a seasons pass. This is real drama! Here are all these young people from all over the country trying to impress the self-styled King of Capitalism. I am not sure you would want Donald's hair or his garish apartment, but I am sure many would want his money.
Being a venture capitalist, it is in part my job to try to figure out who would make a good CEO and who would not. That is the whole purpose of this show! So I watch and try to figure out who will likely win the weeks competition and who I would fire in the end. Now this task is complicated by the fact that you only see the highlights of what went on and not all of it. Also, the question of what Donald Trump would do and what Martin Tobias would do are two different things. But it is a fun mental exercise to see if the criteria by which I make the decision match up with Donald's. I don't expect a 100% correlation, but I do expect to understand the logic behind my decisions and hope to figure out the logic behind his (if different) and see if there is anything to be learned. In this case there is MUCH to be learned and that is the surprising AND fun part.
OK, Episode 1, the Phantom Menace. We get introduced to the plot and the characters. The producers did a good job of mixing up MBAs with corn fed bootstrappers. To keep things interesting they threw in a few wild cards that begin paying off right away. The first task Don gives them is to sell lemonade. Men against Women. Each team gets $250 bucks and one day. The one with the most money at end of the day wins. I like the idea of pushing people to do something they have never done, never thought about doing. It sees who is creative and can think under pressure. But lemonade on the streets of NYC? Of course the women are going to win. That was my first thought, sex sells. Then the teams get started and the women are totally confused and disorganized. The men get right out there and start selling. So I think the men actually have a chance. But they choose a crappy spot by the Fulton Fish market and sell their drink for only $1 per cup. Sam, the loose cannon, tries to sell one cup for $1,000 and goes down in flames. Dr. David Gould, the venture capitalist runs after people on the street hounding them with different (increasing) prices. He looks like a sports mascot. At the end of the day they have doubled their money, but are dispirited.
The women, meanwhile are being caty and have trouble finding each other. But they choose an uptown location and start selling their lemonade for $5 per cup. Kisses extra. they all tie up their shirts to expose their belly buttons and take their shoes off. Of course they make 4X their money! The women won and all got to stay even though the girl from Seattle was a disaster.
So the first thing I was wrong on was thinking the men had a chance. The second was on who would get fired.
So the men go to the board room to face Donald Trump hatchet. He uses a very interesting technique of having everyone in the room talk and say who they thought was responsible for the failure. It gets people to say difficult things in front of their peers. Very interesting. Donald was fishing for who was most responsible for the failure of the men's team. I was rooting for Sam to be killed. I thought Don would pitch him for being an ass. He chose three to keep, David Gould, Sam and of course the team leader Troy. Troy led the team poorly. David admitted he was not a good sales person and would not be a good leader. Sam just was an asshole. Everyone on the team voted for Sam to be fired.
Donald went for Dr. David Gould. He said because he didn't step up at all. Sam he said was a loose cannon and he didn't know if he was going to be a disaster or a star, but was willing to give him another chance. I called it wrong because I forgot that Trump is a gunslinger. He is a risk taker. He is not a cerebral thinker and intellect like double PHD Dr. David Gould. He doesn't have any time for people without guts. Or for people without discretion. So he let Sam live another week just to see how it would turn out and he fired the person who was the most wet noodle. The VC. ouch.
Posted by Martin at 3:30 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Now here is a cool digital media gadget
The Aireo. It has built in WiFi, built in FM transmitter AND receiver, dual headphone jacks, 1.5Gig hard drive AND SD card slot. Now that is EVERYTHING I need in a portable music player!
Posted by Martin at 12:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
An interview with Chad Waite, OVP partners
Chad Waite funded me at Loudeye Technologies. He was a great partner in building the business. OVP, his firm is celebrating their 20 year anniversary this year. The interview is a good one for anyone wanting to understand some perspective on the VC business.
Posted by Martin at 11:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Segway Clone
A Segway Clone was launched at CES. Not really a clone, because it doesn't have gyroscopes. It has four wheels. Just two big ones and two small ones. It looks like a Segway though and is cheaper. It is a clone in the way that it is a scooter that can get you from point A to point B. But not in the way that it is a true revolution in transportation. Which I still believe the Segway truly is.
Posted by Martin at 10:05 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 15, 2004
The future of IM and SIP etc...
ACM Queue - A Conversation with Peter Ford - The IM world according to a Messenger architect
Very useful to see where Microsoft is driving IM and SIP through Longhorn, etc.
Posted by Martin at 3:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
fun time waster
Got a few minutes to waste? Try the Oddcast TTS Demo. Type in any set of words and the on-screen personality says them. Their eyes and head follow your cursor. Fun to make them swear!
Posted by Martin at 3:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Brain/Computer interface moving along
Cyberkinetics Inc has apparently applied to the FDA for approval to test it's brain to computer interface on humans. It works in Chimps. Remember Strange Days? This is Strange Days come to reality...
Posted by Martin at 3:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
1TB external for $1,199!
Wow, you can now buy 1TB for cheap! Lacie 1TB. I don't need it for two years at which point I bet it is less than $500 bucks.
Posted by Martin at 3:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Yahoo have the pull to solve spam?
Interesting Slashdot thread. Slashdot | Yahoo and Unilateral Anti-Spam Technology?
Posted by Martin at 3:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 10, 2004
Big ISPs say SPAM not slowing
This article says it is not stopping. Cloudmark is mentioned, but not correctly in the scope of what they are doing. They have done such a good job positioning themselves as the community approach to SPAM that sometimes people mention them as just one approach among many. In fact it is the ONLY approach that works and scales.
Posted by Martin at 1:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 9, 2004
Amazon's 800 number
Props to Kevin Kelly for this:
On average I've ordered from Amazon once a week for the last four years or so. Not just books, but power tools, toys, kitchen stuff, the whole lot. Given the volume of my orders I think their customer service is super great; it sets the gold standard for other companies. No other merchant online or offline has provided the ease and accuracy of ordering as Amazon does. Still, in my experience there are occasionally glitches that their email-bots can't deal with, usually entailing a minor billing snafu. In these rare cases you need Amazon.com's almost-secret real-person customer service telephone number. You won't find it on their website. I once got it by calling 800 directory assistance. In any case, they make it hard to find because a call costs Amazon more, so you should jot down this number for those special moments when only a human will do: 800-201-7575.
--KK [recommended by Joseph Stirt]
Posted by Martin at 10:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
SPAM keeps coming
A new report surveying ISPs and major corporations suggest that SPAM has not changed and in fact may have gone up since Can-SPAM. This means that my own reduction is probably a holiday thing. And the FCC hasn't had any time to draw up enforcement actions yet anyway.
Posted by Martin at 4:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 6, 2004
My notes from Microsoft VC summit 11/19/03
Here are some of my notes from the Microsoft VC event, November 19, 2003
Favorite comments:
"What the hell are you leaving us?" Chad Waite, OVP
Notes:
Big bets at the platform layer:
1. For interoperability web services
2. Data store XML unified
3. Smart client
4. Trustworthy computing, security.
What do we do in those bets.
On Interoperability:
1. Web services 1.0 in standatrds now
2.0 later
Then longhorn with Indigo
Unified data store path:
1. SQL server
2. Yukon
3. Longhorn NFS new file system
Smart Client, presentation layer:
today: Web Forms
Whidby implementation of visual studio
Longhorn Avalon and Aero Tui)
Longhorn API is all .net framework
Trustworthy computing:
1. Not as clear a path
Last quarter .NET usage surpassedJjava usage for first time. 38 percent vs 24 percent. We turned the corner in terms of platform, developers and customers. Now drive momentum.
Win XP was not a dev platform. We are putting all dev platform stuff in Longhorn. 10 years of it. The rate of cloning of windows apis by linux will slow with longhorn. The intergrated platform is hard to replicate. Longhorn is a platform for development. That will compete against linux os only.
Go to longhornblogs.com and pdcbloggers.net
Longhorn API or WinFS is the next step of Win32. It is that simple.
Longhorn has
Aero UI
Avalon, the database
Indigo, the XML interconnect
Win FS
RTC
Fundamentals
All wrapped in APIs.
Longhorn does not require new Hardware, but could take advantage of new HW for trusted computing portions.
Microsoft Business Solutions, Darren, Mbsisv@microsoft.com
First MBS application ships 6 months after Longhorn ships. This is the Great Plains, etal group.
Targeting Small biz to corporate.
Four acquisitions integrated into one unit.
Msft will build the pieces everyone needs.
Four industry solutions, mfg, distribution, prof serv, retail.
MS will build, ERM, CRM, SCM, Analytics.
MS will do 2 digit SIC codes, not do 4 digit or 6-8 digit SIC code industries. The 2 digits that ms will do is four industry solutions above. Will not today do state and local gov, telco, energy finance, etc.
Anoop Gupta, VP RTC group.
RTC is in JeffR's Information worker group (office).
RTC business unit has two products, Live Comm Server 2003, Live Meeting. These products are about presence based multi-modal collaboration with context and seamless transitions between real time and non real time.
Partners:
IM Logic for name space and compliance.
Descartes vertical ap for truckers.
Areas for future RTC enhancement. PC and phone integration.
Enhanced meetings.
Roadmap
Live meeting 2004
Live communication 2004
Softphone and OPA 2004
Presence + I'm + av + web conf 2005
Iworker comm client 2005
Ringcam
RTC goes into Office Longhorn
For all this to work, ms will have to work with Cisco, Nortel, Nokia and others who are not friendly. This is going to be hard. Microsoft will not adopt CCX from Cisco. Msft wants standards.
Conclusions:
I left after the first three presentations. It was clear that Microsoft was there to sell their vision of the platform to VCs. When we asked the obvious questions of "what should we invest in" they said what they always do: "Reportind and Vertical Applications". Outside Crystal Decisions, I haven't seen any really valuable companies created at that layer. They are going to do the big verticals and leave the small ones to the start-ups. Many start-ups that are partners today (like IM Logic) will be road kill when Longhorn comes along. Microsoft is going directly after the businesses of Oracle, IBM, BEA, PeopleSoft, SAP, Macromedia, Borland, RedHat, even Google. They are sucking so many things down into the OS that there is little left.
Posted by Martin at 5:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Microsoft's description of the main components of Longhorn
From one of their MSDN articles
It is important to understand the capabilities of three key innovations in "Longhorn"—Presentation, Data, and Communications—and then work to determine how an application can take advantage of them. By analyzing an application from these three perspectives, one can best understand how an application can benefit from the new features of "Longhorn." Consider the following questions with regard to a given application:
Presentation. How is the user interface currently rendered? Can users navigate this user interface adroitly? Is the interface pleasant to interact with? Is data visualized in a way that is tangible to the user? Would it be appropriate to provide different skins on the user interface for different audiences?
Data. How is data from the application stored on the local PC? How does the application expose metadata to other applications and to the operating system about files it has encountered? How easily can users search for this data?
Communications. How does the application communicate to the server? Are there security or reliability enhancements that could be made to this communication pattern? Can the application work offline? Are there third-party services or services that could benefit the application?
The following three sections ("Avalon," "WinFS," and "Indigo") provide a brief summary of the innovations in these areas. Again, further information about the capabilities in "Longhorn" is available in the "Longhorn" SDK documentation.
Avalon (Presentation)
"Avalon" is the code name for the presentation and media technologies in "Longhorn." "Avalon" represents a significant evolution of presentation technology, with the goal of allowing developers to easily build rich and compelling user interfaces that can seamlessly integrate high-quality document and multimedia content.
The presentation technologies in "Longhorn" enable developers to deliver an exciting and compelling user experience by providing a full set of the prepackaged UI components, multimedia support, and smooth integration of applications into the user interface. "Avalon" is designed to take advantage of the capabilities of local hardware, so that all applications use the power of the graphics processing unit, rendering high quality, next generation user interfaces.
WinFS (Data)
"WinFS" is the code name for the new file system that provides data and storage model for "Longhorn." "WinFS" simplifies the process of finding and storing important user data. In addition to streamlined APIs for accessing relational data, "WinFS" introduces a new centralized storage subsystem and API for storing and searching documents and contacts.
By defining common schemas and a centralized API for metadata access, "WinFS" enables different applications to access each other's data in a previously unrealizable way. Metadata, including categorization and linking across items, can be added to any object in the file system, allowing for more powerful search and organization functionality.
This new storage system builds an everyday information schema describing the items stored in the computer and allows users to organize and relate items based upon attributes represented in the schema. The schema describes entities such as images, documents, people, events, tasks, and messages. These entities are combined in meaningful ways through relationships. For example, a document and person may be related through an authoring relationship.
By using the schema and attributes present in items and relationships, a user can pose questions to the system to locate information rather than trying to search various folders as they do today.
Indigo (Communications)
"Indigo" is a set of technologies for developing connected applications on the Windows platform. It provides a complete and flexible messaging platform for building connected applications independent of network topology. It is based on broadly-adopted XML Web services protocols, thus fostering interoperability with other XML Web services platforms.
Developers can write applications on a simple yet powerful programming framework to use these communication features that exchange information across clients, services, and devices.
Summary
"Longhorn" is an important release for Microsoft that lays down a solid foundation for building the next generation of applications. It features WinFX, a set of managed APIs for developing this new type of smart, connected applications. WinFX provides advances in presentation, storage, and communications that enhance the writing of these applications. Existing applications will be able to take incremental advantage of the new capabilities in "Longhorn" through a range of different approaches depending on the scenario and feature.
Posted by Martin at 1:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Microsoft best of PDC highlights
Near the end of last year, I went over to Microsoft for a one day Best of PDC seminar. Basically a shrunk down version with all the smart guys from Microsoft. Here is a link to all the presentations: best of the Microsoft PDC 2003
As expected, this was all about Longhorn and how to get there. What the platform looks like today, what the interim steps are and how we get to Longhorn. All the heads were talking in sync, so it shows that Microsoft knows how to keep it's boys on message. Here are my impressions of the day along with some high level summary points:
Lightbulb moments:
I do not say that lightly. The entire thrust is how does Microsoft add more value to the OS and make it easier to write applications using their tools for the Microsoft platform. Multiple examples were given of applications that today required thousands of lines of code and under Longhorn would require a handful. I could actually hear the giant sucking sound pulling functionality down from the graphics, data, communication, and even application layer into the OS. If Longhorn gets traction, the biggest losers will be anyone in graphics software (Macromedia), middleware (BEA, IBM), database software (Oracle), Developer tools (Borland), or any other "value added" function today that is not a true end user application. Like the security, VPN, gateway, message bus, single sign-on, web services, or integration guys. At the end of the day, the only way to "add value" to the OS is to take it away from someone else.
Linux is still trying to replicate 20 year old features of Unix. They are doing a great job and are getting lots of traction from people switching over from higher prices proprietary UNIX implementations to lower TCO Linux builds. But there is still allot of work to do to get it up to enterprise grade on many levels. Meanwhile, Microsoft is offering a completely new and different programming model. Write less code. Use a generation of tools way more advanced than anything available on Linux or Unix. The investment in developing this model and getting it to scale is enormous and the open source community will be hard pressed to follow. Microsoft realizes a fundamental truth about IT development: The largest cost is in programmer and tester time, not in the tools or platform. If they can present a programming platform the performs satisfactorily and requires an order of magnitude less time to develop on, they can charge whatever they want for the platform. And we will all buy it.
Traditionally Operating systems have simply dealt with the lowest level interfaces between hardware and software. Allowing a developer to write to a (fairly thin) abstraction layer to get access to the hardware resources. Maybe you put in a few higher level functions in software that accessed multiple hardware resources (like a data get) but you were still at a pretty low level. Data that is used by applications was stored outside the OS in a database. Communication between software programs is done with middleware. Security is programmed in the application. Backup/restore is an application. VPN is an application. Network management is an application. Display and rendering of images is an application. User Interfaces require allot of coding.
In Longhorn you can do almost all this stuff directly in the OS. It is all in there. The level of abstraction has been raised significantly. The OS now is primarily an abstraction layer for software functions versus hardware functions. THIS IS A GIGANTIC FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE. The major architecture change Microsoft is calling Services Oriented Architecture (SOA). Nearly everything you need as an application developer (local or across the network) will be a "service" that you can call with a few lines of code. I know lots of developers who will not want to re-write their applications because 90% of their code (read value) will go away. This puts application developers in a conundrum. Do you rewrite your app and lower it's perceived value or face a competitor who develops one on Longhorn quicker and cheaper? Tough times ahead for app developers.
Some data on Longhorn:
Hardware Requirements:
Minimum requirements for the Longhorn preview call for
800-MHz Pentium III processor,
256MB of memory,
and a graphics card with 32MB of video RAM
The actual configuration they are building for is MUCH more beefy and pretty damn unbelievable today, although I am sure you could get one for under two grand in 2006.
Bill Gates showed a slide in his PDC keynote a month ago that they were targetting the following (desktop) hardware configuration for Longhorn when it ships in 2006:
4-6 GHz CPU, dual core
1 GB RAM
1 TB Hard disk
Radeon 9800 style graphics (all the PDC Longhorn demo's were on a 9800)
What is Longhorn?
Microsoft's high level description of what Longhorn is can be found here. Some of my impressions of each piece include:
Microsoft has defined there to be four main parts to the new OS. Presentation, Data, Communication, and Fundamentals. That is how they are now talking about all their OS's and how their current product plans migrate to the new architecture. In each bucket, the migration paths are roughly:
Presentation: Today Smart clients, Webforms, 2004 Whidbey Visual Studio, 2006 Avalon in Longhorn
Data: Today SQL Server, application specific data stores (Exchange, etc.), 2004 Yukon for SQL Server, 2006 WINFS in Longhorn
Communications: Today application specific protocols (IM, email, application) and middleware, 2004 a bunch of patches and little things, 2006 Avalon in Longhorn.
Fundamentals: Today API's in Windows and core stuff, 2004 various subsystem updates, 2006 Longhorn new kernel and Service Oriented Architecture.
Presentation:
What is the problem today?
There is no standard way to easily write a user interface separate from it's application. If you have to access resources in a local database and some across the net with web services, it gets even harder. You use HTML or Java/.NET for web front-ends and C for local application front-ends.
How does Avalon solve it?
Avalon is a single architecture for development of application User Interfaces, document viewing and media presentation. There is a new vector-based composition engine. There is declarative programming. There are security APIs in the presentation layer so you can handle access control with one line of code instead of a whole separate subsystem. Visual Studio will be the development environment of choice for all presentation layers. In VS you can develop front-ends seamlessly to local as well as network applications. Visual Studio will come with IIS built-in so in development you won't have to be running separate servers (this actually comes in in Whidbey VS). Expect allot more XML support and extensions to XML. Microsoft says Whidbey (2004) will allow you to write UI's with 2/3 the code you need today. Expect a further decrease in lines of code and a significant increase in what you can address with Avalon.
Data:
What is the problem today?
There is no unified file system. Search is different by application even within Microsoft suite. You search differently in Internet Explorer than inside Excel or Word, or SQL server or your local hard-disk. For applications, databases are very complex things. You need DBAs. Separate whole companies to support them. Many applications have their own data stores (Exchange). Everybody handles record locks differently. Cross datatype searching is a pain in the ass. Metadata is usually stored separate from the actual data and is usually easily accessible. Writing and retrieving data is non-standard. Why isn't there a unified way to find, relate to and act upon data?
How does WINFS solve it?
It is a unified file system. Documents, data, metadata, multimedia, custom datatypes all in the OS. Lots of data functions as well like sync, Transaction SQL, and many traditional DBA functions. You will be able to search ALL your data and datatypes local AND remote (tied with Active Directory of course) through a single interface. The OS will come with many pre-defined data abstractions that you can access through your application very easily. Like Contacts and Calendar. These will no longer be in your Outlook.pst file. That means that applications other that Outlook will have easy access to them. Great for Microsoft! The pitch from Microsoft is that now that you can access data through the OS, MORE applications can be written which are impractical today due to the amount of gluecode that must be written. As a VC investing in application companies, I hope they are right.
Communications:
What is the problem today?
There are tons of incompatible messaging protocols. Even within windows. The Instant Message protocol of MSN is not even the same as that in Outlook. There are various e-mail protocols. And application incompatibilities have given rise to a whole category of companies that focus on middleware. The other issue is trustworthy computing and the nature of trust between applications and systems. One of the main functions of middleware is to authenticate users and transactions between systems. And to handle things like transaction integrity, restart-recovery, presence, transaction state, message encryption/decryption, etc. The problem becomes especially acute if you have two applications talking with each other and maybe sharing executable code? How do you know you can trust the other system? Or the code? What level of authentication and authorization is required for what functions?
How does Indigo solve it?
Everything in Longhorn is a transaction. There is a unified messaging bus. Remember it has a Services Oriented Architecture. That means that every time you want something you send a message to a service that will provide it. Presence management is built in as well as state management. So is authentication and authorization. So when you sign-on to a device, any device, all your profile goes with you (think Active Directory +++). There is allot of stuff happening at the hardware level (through WINHEC) including new hardware encryption chip and secure memory subsystem that will be exploited by Longhorn to provide the improved level of authentication. Two Indigo servers will be able to exchange messages securely, quickly and reliably allowing them to share applications, resources, data, services, everything. Non-Indigo servers will be outa luck. Or have to write to the new message formats.
Fundamentals:
What is the problem today?
The basic things that an OS is supposed to do are at times shaky. Like stability. Think Blue Screens. Handling memory locks, record locks, application failures. Security, back-up and restore, network interfaces. There are many protocols that require add-on applications like HTTP (IIS) and IPSEC (a VPN server). Think about all those buffer overflow bugs.
How does Longhorn solve it?
Tons of focus on security and stability. A new transaction engine. Upgraded back-up and restore. More comprehensive support for network services. Many more protocols supported in the core like HTTP and IPSEC. There is also something happening with addressable memory and disk space (basically making them much larger). Remember, now under Longhorn your APIs won't just get you access to low level abstracted hardware resources, now you will have a couple levels higher up of abstraction and MANY more software services available!
Conclusions:
Longhorn is a bet the company strategy. It is a real innovation in the programming model. Only someone like Microsoft could come up with it or have a chance in hell in getting it adopted. But it grabs stuff pretty far up the stack. Will developers be willing to give ceed yet another major chunk of functionality to Microsoft. In the end, I don't think it matters because if current developers are not, competitors will be. Microsoft has enough resources to wait it out and fund plenty of upstarts in the ecosystem. Change is a'come'n. Now we gotta figure out how to deal with it.
Posted by Martin at 1:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
AICPA says Security and Anti-Spam in top 10 IT priorities for 04
CPA2Biz - AICPA Announces 2004 Top 10 Technologies
Posted by Martin at 1:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 5, 2004
top 10 trends in 2004 for VOIP
VOIP is on everyone's 2004 tech trend list. But what are the specifics in VOIP? VoIP in '04 :: Voxilla.com :: A user's guide to the VoIP revolution The most intriguing and I believe potentially disruptive is the increased FCC regulation of the providers.
Posted by Martin at 2:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 4, 2004
Fed Law against SPAM might actually be working...
So I know that the last week has been a little slow as most people are off for vacation (even some SPAMMERS), so these numbers will probably change next week, but I thought I would check to see if the CAN SPAM law has had any affect on my SPAM volume. There has been a major change in the number of SPAM I have been getting since the first of the year. Down by about 2/3. Not enough to ditch my excellent anti-spam software from Cloudmark. Here is what the caught in the last four days of 2003 and the first four days of 2004.
Jan 1-4 2004: 22
Dec 27-31, 2003 67
The pundits are saying the same thing...MediaDailyNews 01-05-04
Posted by Martin at 9:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
My brother Chris has interesting comments on life
My brother Chris just got a blog. An entry from today caught my eye on Lifestyle diseases. A friend of his is a doctor who often travels to Africa. He points out that most of American healthcare dollars are actually spent to treat diseases of our own creation because we eat, smoke, and lay around too much. wow...
Posted by Martin at 8:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 1, 2004
Cute little example of adware that is sorta useful
My brother sent me this one: WeatherBug.com. It installs a little application that talks to their servers and gets you local weather. That is not revolutionary, but you get the current tempreature for your zip code in your task bar which is pretty cool (geeky).
This is the cleanest least offensive implementation of adware I have seen yet. They tell you right up front it is a free download, but you will need to see some ads. During the download they offer you two configuraiton screens, one for what category of offers you want to see and one for a primary sponsor. You basically get to choose your poison. But it is not offensive, and you can't download it without configuration, so you know what you are getting. I will try it for awhile and see if they have any sneaky back-doors in there that are going to piss me off.
Posted by Martin at 8:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Ever wanted to be a bubble boy?
Kudos to Kevin Kelly for finding this gadget. "waterball". You zip yourself inside this thing and can walk on water or roll around town inside a great big bubble. Fun... Gotta try this one soon on Puget Sound!
Posted by Martin at 8:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack