tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-148581562024-03-07T22:29:47.128+01:00Stephane's BlogI work as designer and front end developer at IBM. Here you can read my rants on tech, design and digital life.Stephanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13929029597920339937noreply@blogger.comBlogger229125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-21599648372127622662015-09-11T20:14:00.001+02:002015-09-11T20:14:58.999+02:00Let's go full screenQuite a few things changed this summer... I got a new job role in a new position, finally officially taking part in IBM Design. The folks who follow me know this had been a long time in the works. Now it just begins, I have so many new things to learn. On the technical and on the design side, there are tons of subjects I'd like to learn about and master. I feel like on a continuous learning mode currently. Lots of input, few output - for now. I expect this to pay off quite soon.<br />
<br />
Until last week, I had been moving my work computer to a Mac. As expected, this is really a bliss to use. To transfer, that was quite more work, as my previous laptop, running Linux, was quite customised with many apps. Org-Mode, Node, Eclipse...<br />
<br />
All that took quite some time to reinstall and configure. Now I'm done and I can start the fine tuning. It's not like I do not know Macs, I've had one at home for the last 5 years. But the Macbook Pro has some subtle differences, like in the keyboard layout.<br />
<br />
What I notice, is that with the high number of applications I have open at work, and the fact that I navigate between the Macbook standalone and connected to the Thunderbolt Display, the management of the windows has gotten a mess. I was used at the Linux version that manages windows per virtual desktop. Very handy when you have like 5 different Firefox windows open... OK, maybe there lies the problem. And then, when using the 15" screen, the problem gets even more accurate.<br />
<br />
So I started by reducing the number of windows open. What I noticed then, is that I was just better off having almost all set to full screen and then navigate through Ctrl+Tab between the windows.<br />
<br />
I have done this for around a week, and it works really well actually. My screen is less cluttered, I spend less time navigating through windows. In the end, I can work more focused. So I'm keeping it that way for now.<br />
<br />
On Sept. 30 (spoiler!), El Capitan is getting released. This is a very good news for me, especially on the performance aspect. But one cool feature I cannot wait for is the split screen mode. This feature is really cool, because it will just fix the problem of context when working full screen. Sometimes, just one window is not enough, and two would be preferable. If I really need more, I can still switch back to non-full-screen mode, but I think this will stay occasional. Being able to combine two apps that way will permit to have the needed context without the overall distraction, so I'm really looking forward that feature!<br />
<br />
Let's see how long I'll stick to full screen...<br />
<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-69652889923508255202015-03-21T16:05:00.000+01:002015-03-21T16:05:10.730+01:00Time Is Ripe for DisruptionOf course everyone is now talking about the Apple Watch. I do too, on Twitter, at lunch and occasionally with friends. Somehow it's not clear to me how much impact it will have. Other smart watches have had, I would say, mixed success. Are they really smart actually? I would say informed at best, and only on certain points like your heartbeats, position and other yet underused metadata.<br />
<br />
And also there's the look. Luxury watches are incredibly elaborated from the visual point of view, and have been the result of decades of design work. I don't see the smart watches there in the next years, but that's only my point of view. I mean, <a href="http://www.alange-soehne.com/assets/GalleryImage-2880x1800-px/_resampled/SetWidth1680-LANGE-ZEITWERK-MINUTE-REPEATER-MINUTENREPETITION-UW-147-025-1.jpg" target="_blank">this is where the bar is</a>.<br />
<br />
But let's suppose those wearables get really smart. Let's say my calendar is integrated. The device also knows my position, and follows me every day. Like Google Now already does, it will understand where I live and where I work. So the watch can just notify me when to go to work and back home. Integrate your todo list and your mail in this, put a base time management principle (I do <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique" target="_blank">Pomodoro</a> and go to lunch at 12am), and you almost don't need the time anymore. Why should you? That way you can keep your head free of managing your time and work on being creative and productive. Someone wants to meet this evening? Surely your wearable can tell you if you have enough time to do it, and can even tell from your health data if you rather need a nice evening with friends or to stay at home and sleep early. It could help you prevent burn out by identifying patterns, so you can work efficiently without going too far. Possibilities are basically endless.<br />
<br />
Meeting with friends is just a matter of notifying each at the right moment to go and where to meet. Getting a train is just a matter to arrive at the train station at the right time, and if you have still time to get a coffee before. A train "arriving at 15:40" is quite useless, better is to know that you have already done half the way and you'll be at your destination in 40 min.<br />
<br />
Many tools, like video streaming tools, or the Kindle software, show you what percentage you have accomplished and can evaluate when you'll be done viewing/reading - depending of your own speed for books. So deadlines can be evaluated much more precisely with automation, instead of having to calculate an approximation. Appointments are dying. Most people used to agree on appointment to meet, and those were commitments. Now we adjust by messaging 30m before that we'll be late or early, or will meet somewhere else. TV is in decline, YouTube videos don't have a prime time, neither does Netflix. So knowing "what time is it" is getting irrelevant.<br />
<br />
At the end, you might forget what noon is, and not know at what time you have to wake up. Because this is not a goal in itself. And the importance of time with named hours might just get back to something reserved to some people or dedicated activities, but irrelevant to most in their day to day life. This will probably not happen in the next one or two years, but let's review this in ten years.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-56458309112884144302013-03-02T11:29:00.000+01:002013-03-02T12:55:57.784+01:00Everyone is Fighting Their Daemons<br />
Many economies in the world are struggling currently. It may have to do with lots of different things, and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chris-martenson-peak-oil-could-limit-economic-growth-2011-11">probably peak oil plays a big role here</a>. That will probably be the topic of another post.<br />
<br />
Living abroad, I usually read from different sources, mostly Germany, France, USA and UK. And I always get a good laugh at how other countries always know better for the others, but no one knows how to reform itself.<br />
"France should lower its work cost, reform its pensions, simplify work laws", "Germany should try to get more children", "UK should move back to manufacturing", "The US needs to update its infrastructure".<br />
<br />
Still, none of this happen. Or almost nothing. Interestingly enough, local journalists (as well as local people) are not so enthusiast about discussing or even promoting those topics the way they deserve. We all concentrate on gossip, tragic events, the usual political fights, but in the end, the real important issues are never really discussed.<br />
<br />
Mainly, this is because those deficiencies are linked to much deeper anchored traumas or legends in the country history. You cannot understand the french economics without knowing that social benefits were established just before WWII, and that a good part of the rules the country now live by have been brought by De Gaulle, just after the country was freed from an invasion. The aversion of the US from a big government has also deep rooted reasons, as old as the country itself. That plays a role preventing a simple unified and - at first sight - costly infrastructure renovation. An airport is so much more standalone and self-reliable than a 500 miles high speed train way.<br />
<br />
The good thing is, there are not much countries who haven't their own daemons. Imagine if the US had a top notch electric grid, if France had an economy so dynamic no one could counter it, or if Germany had the birth rate of the US. But it's not just the case, so every country is dealing with a limited growth, but somehow there is a glass ceiling that cannot be broken. All engineer know that every solution, whatever good it is, brings its own problems. Cultures have the same issue as well. Live with it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-40798224497114441612012-12-14T09:48:00.004+01:002012-12-14T09:48:45.792+01:00Tech Needs To Get More SustainableThis week, I declared the home button of my iPhone dead. It still has actually some signs of life, but it's more similar to coma. You have to press it hard up to 20 times to get back to home. Double press is even harder. So I activated the accessibility features, and now I have a white round permanently on my screen which emulates the home button. It works well, but it's still a pain to live with, as this button uses space on my screen. It's not 20 clicks to get back to the home screen, but 2. I wonder how Apple could mess so much here. After years, my Playstation controller X button still works, despite heavy use. Reports I've read mentioned that the engineering save costs on that feature. Too bad. By the way, I know <a href="https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2595841?start=660&tstart=0">defective home buttons can be fixed</a>.<br />
<br />
Other situation, other outcome. My Lenovo work laptop was swapping like crazy (disclaimer - I work at IBM, which sold the Thinkpad unit to Lenovo). I went to the hardware department, the woman servicing the hardware switched the memory in two minutes, and told me how she like the modular system the Thinkpad have. Not only the robustness make them liked for businesses, they are also easily serviceable by the IT departments.<br />
<br />
Other hardware fail: recently, my washing machine failed. Computer dead. Too expensive to replace, would cost the price of a new one, said the repairer. He was a really nice guy and not searching to make money at all costs. Instead, he advised me to buy a Miele washing machine, even if used and 8 years old. Because it (arguably) lasts more than 20 years, this is a safe buy.<br />
<br />
Miele is a German company known for building appliance that are costly but last decades with very few maintenance. Traditional German engineering, so to say. A new simple washing machine costs around 800 EUR. So this is not cheap, but in the long term this is actually a good investment versus a 500 EUR one that gets broken after 6 or 7 years.<br />
<br />
Let's get back to the laptop and smartphone topic. I upgraded my laptop memory because the rest is fine. It's actually working great. I don't need more power. I may not order a new laptop next year, because there is no real need for it. Same for the phone. The iPhone 4 is *fine*, really - outside of the home button. The battery is still in good shape and can hold around 2 days - so much better than the iPhone 3G after the same time. Would not be the defective hardware.<br />
<br />
What we'd need is a Miele for high tech. A german company doing the (durable) hardware and a US division doing the software, at best. I remember having had a Bosch phone a while ago, it was just great. Probably Loewe, or Bang & Olufsen are nearer to that. Too bad they don't produce laptops yet. Also they seem to be more triggered toward luxury and exclusiveness than plain, simple, boring quality.<br />
<br />
The computer hardware has reached maturity, and the smartphones will soon do. There is no need anymore to upgrade every two years. Too often hardware break is the only reason to buy a new item. So this the question to answer: if I want quality electronics, to what shop do I get? Or is someone going to create that soon?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-15599772157324421222011-12-28T22:50:00.000+01:002011-12-28T23:12:01.536+01:00New Place, New LifeIf you follow me on social networks then you may have noticed that, well, I was silent. Actually, I was more busy than ever - in the real life, so to say. I moved to Stuttgart. I had that plan for a long time, but if I ever supposed what it looked like, I would have done that a while ago. Life teaches...<br />
<br />
I moved to Stuttgart this month, and I don't need to explain you that adding to the Christmas stuff and closing the work year, this is not really a human amount of stuff to execute. But I'm raving. Stuttgart is much more than I thought it would be. The place is in a roll currently. Heard of the German export dream lately? It's clearly manifesting here, and Stuttgart which was a pretty shy city until recently, seems to be in the up and comers. Why then?<br />
<br />
Stuttgart is the German capital of the car. This is home to Daimler Mercedes, which invented the car, but also to Porsche (do I need to explain that name to anyone). Bosch, one of the main automotive supplier, is also from here. Audi is around the corner with a major plant in Neckarsulm.<br />
<br />
So people drive around with all kind of luxury cars, mostly German, and of preference Mercedes/Porsche over BMW, the traditional enemy. Take that with a grain of salt of course, but this is very marking when you come over here. Beside that, I thought Stuttgart was not much more than a grey city between hills.<br />
<br />
Oh, the hills! They make actually the magic of the city. As the usual, the higher you live, the more expensive it is. The hills offer such incredible views of the city! There are magnificent villas to look around, including one built by Le Corbusier. And the Bauhaus began here, also. So there is quite some architecture that you won't notice at the first look but that are actually outstanding. The hills offer some place for some wine from the city itself - and their wine is very much tasty.<br />
<br />
Cars, Bauhaus. Stuttgart lives on a kind of simplicity melt together with excess. Things are not always what they seem to be, a lot of richness is hidden. The German "discipline" comes a lot from the south part of the country, and that still lets its marks nowadays. What do I mean with excess and modernity? Well, Stuttgart has two majors modern art museums, but no dedicated big classic museum. And the Mercedes and Porsche museums, both landmarks of architecture. That's the "do one thing, but do it well" applied.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, the 2000's boom has changed the city. 10 years ago, Stuttgart was still marked by its architecture from the 50's. Now, much of it has been integrally renovated, or even rebuild. New neighbourhoods have been and will appear. A new high speed train station is going to be built, integrally under the ground. And when so much is going on economically, other things follow. You know, like culture... It's not that it was ever as bad as told. Germans like to see Stuttgart as the car guys, but not with not much taste for culture. Actually, the Stuttgart opera has been named best German opera a few times for quite some times already. The theatre is getting completely renovated, there are also a few other very good concert halls, like the Liederhalle.<br />
<br />
You get me, I'm raving about this city. And don't start me with the awesome connections opportunities, around 2 hours from Zurich and 3.5 from Paris by train. Munich and Frankfurt is around the corner, France less than 2 hours away.<br />
<br />
So I have to say goodbye to Tübingen, the town that made me feel so very welcome in Germany. I'm still not far and will still be around there. But I needed to be in a place where I can meet more people and do more things. Now it is.<br />
<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-49062545692418517942011-12-10T21:04:00.001+01:002011-12-10T21:28:26.463+01:00Do Speeches, Go Without Slides.This week I had to present our latest features to a group of IBMers from tech sales and services divisions. Those are the guys working with clients to get the stuff to work - in form of demos or production systems with a defined, often customized, architecture.<br /><br />They asked clearly to get as few charts as possible, so quickly I had my decision - I would make this presentation without slides. I would make it a speech. And discussion. Not a slide-based presentation, in any case. <br /><br />So I just stood in front those people, and at the beginning that was a bit unusual, but as I came into the topic, two things struck me:<br />
- People were looking at me, not the charts. They were actually listening, and I could clearly see that they weren't struggling understanding the charts - there were none. Instead, I got a bunch of questions, and we got in a deep discussion about the topic. Which was very useful for them to understand well the new features and their impact.<br />- You avoid the usual question: "Can I get those charts?", "what does this chart means?". Instead, the whole discussion was based on what I spoke about. Much better.<br /><br />Looking backward, I see other fantastic advantages to not use any charts at all:<br />- It is much more flexible. If a question comes in that may influence further points, just go to those directly. You are not a slave of the chart ordering anymore. Because a presentation rarely runs as intended.<br />- It saves a lot of time! How many hours did you spend in your last presentation? Was it really worth it? Think about it. Getting this cool picture from a colleague, and then adapting the whole style, readapting the template. Should I mention the colleague in chart 12? etc etc, you know what I mean. Without slides, you just have to prepare yourself an outline on a few post-it. 15-20 min of work max. Mastering the topic is quite more work - but you'd have to master it as well if you use slides, wouldn't you?<br />- It is so much reliable! You don't need to care anymore if there is a VGA cable, or if the resolution is fine, if you have backups, etc. You only need to care not to faint, but that is also the case if you use a<br />slideshow ;)<br /><br />Of course I am not arguing that you should never use charts. They are sometimes useful. But do you need slides for all your presentation, or are they oy needed for that for showing some particular point at one or two moments in the presentation? Try it!<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-17508755804930037202011-10-30T11:34:00.000+01:002011-10-30T11:37:21.701+01:00Twitter and 140 characters. It's not about content.The idea I want to expose is probably nothing new, but still I think worth to explain again - in a different light given the recent moves from Facebook and Google+.<br />
<br />
In this post I argue that the 140 character limit has not so much to do with the fact that such short texts are fast and easy to read. Neither that it limits "chatty" comments. Rather, I think it has all to do with the visual flow. 140 characters allow to display content in boxes of very similar and regular size, and it allows to display a flow even on smaller mobile devices.<br />
<br />
So let's discuss first how I discount the importance of text size:<br />
- To get around the short size, people are using all kinds of hashtags, using lots of abbreviations, squeezing punctuations. <i>That makes tweets actually hard to read.</i> For a matter of facts, I often see people not familiar with Twitter looking at my timeline and saying "I don't understand what they write". The keyword here is <b>obfuscation</b>. Sure, when you're using Twitter a lot, that helps, but for the average user, that makes tweets no faster to read that longer, but clearer ones.<br />
- Is 140 character a sanity limit against too chatty people? Probably not, they write just much <a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_men_follo.html">more tweets to compensate</a> (You're probably in the 10% if you know that story from 2009).<br />
<br />
So now why has Twitter been so successful? I'll argue that its decisive advantage against Facebook and MySpace is the visual design. More specifically, it's table design. In short, Twitter is like Excel. And it's no coincidence that Excel is still one of the most popular software out there.<br />
<br />
Table are quick to proceed, and an extremely efficient way to navigate through information - even if it's text. You can also see that with the popularity of the table in HTML since it's early days. If tag clouds were more efficient to parse, they would have dominate the web. But they are not efficient, so they stay as a neat gadget out here.<br />
<br />
In current visual design, grids are everything. And are the base for visual consitency. The iPhone resolution is based on the grid that widgets based on. So it's really rooted into the device.<br />
<br />
So now take a look at those screen captures:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d6H_uZ9uL00/Tq0mCs5GxtI/AAAAAAAAACo/Zp-aTxu2aB4/s1600/IMG_0512.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d6H_uZ9uL00/Tq0mCs5GxtI/AAAAAAAAACo/Zp-aTxu2aB4/s320/IMG_0512.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<br />
This is Google Plus. I can only see one and a half post, and those are relatively small ones. Some post may cover many screens. Also the bottom bar is taking up more space.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qOC0Riv7kdk/Tq0mDktBjwI/AAAAAAAAACw/wds-YhOHmHI/s1600/IMG_0513.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qOC0Riv7kdk/Tq0mDktBjwI/AAAAAAAAACw/wds-YhOHmHI/s320/IMG_0513.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<br />
This is Twitter. Despite two posts being very near 140 characters, 4 tweets are fitting on one screen. There is a difference in height between a one liner and a full 140 characters tweet, but it's not that big.<br />
<br />
So if your goal is to follow quite a big quantity of different sources, Twitter is definitely more efficient, because it enables such a fast raster between tweets. Google is more seeking depth and content richness, which is fully ok, but in my opinion the reason Twitter is not going to disappear yet.<br />
<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-9800698846909919392011-10-22T18:51:00.000+02:002011-10-30T11:37:58.596+01:00My IAA ReportThis post comes a bit late as I have been kept quite busy lately by private stuff... So finally here it is, with a few weeks delay: <br />
<br />
So again this time, I went to the IAA in Frankfurt. This is the biggest motor show in the world, so I thought it would be worth getting there again. And of course, I'm interested in cars, so I wanted to see the last developments.<br />
<br />
There's a lot to report about. And I didn't try that hard to seek information. So I'll go over a few different aspects of the show. <br />
<br />
<u><span style="color: #444444; font-size: large;">General</span></u><br />
<br />
Like last time, I was impressed by the sheer size of the marketing involved. Millions invested in making huge boots, with huge screens, loud music, and all the like. Well, this time again. I'll describe that in the booth section. Going there a Friday, I was surprised of the crowded attendance. It seem to have been quite a successful year for the show. So let's begin with the report:<br />
<br />
<u><span style="color: #444444; font-size: large;">Booths</span></u><br />
<br />
Some things have changed obviously since two years ago. Going by some brands, my impressions:<br />
- <b>Audi</b> got outside with a mega-booth that was quite impressive from an architectural view. They have an integrated driving circuit in the building, which has its effect, but the expo space inside was quite limited. It was incredibly crowded, so it was hard to even see entire cars. Two years ago, it was almost quiet at the Audi booth.<br />
<br />
- <b>Mercedes</b> had a HUGE booth. It's gigantic. Very impressive scenery, actually mimicking their Stuttgart Museum. Lots of people there, but enough space to enjoy the models and go into the cars:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-e3-5DOD4n_Y/TqLtzgbeh7I/AAAAAAAAACg/u3g2iW72lc0/s1600/IMG_0491.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-e3-5DOD4n_Y/TqLtzgbeh7I/AAAAAAAAACg/u3g2iW72lc0/s400/IMG_0491.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
- <b>BMW</b> presented something similar to two years ago, slightly modified. They seem to still run on the investment they made two years ago - also on the environment side. No big new things there.<br />
<br />
- <b>Porsche</b> had a booth open to everyone - in contrast to other luxury & sport brands like <b>Ferrari</b> or <b>Aston Martin</b>. You may argue that those are more luxurious, I think partly this has to do with the desire from Porsche to be in the hearts of the nation. They're proud to be considered a popular car maker. I was told by friends "you can drive to work with a Porsche, not with a Ferrari". So kudos to Porsche on that. I could step in a Panamera by the way, where the brown leather on the console was quite blending the outside view. Better take that boring black, it's mostly used for a reason!<br />
<br />
- <b>Renault</b> had a quite laid back, well organized booth. And it was full of elegance. Simple but beautiful cars, with original but very trendy colours. Also they have a lot going on on the green side. More on the next section. What I also really liked on their booth is both their attention to design, with quite a few concept cars that are much more original than the German ones, as well as their attention to the past. Mercedes used the history trick in the former IAA, Renault presented a fantastic R4 this year:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mfznKHQMQV8/TqLshQE9HnI/AAAAAAAAACY/I3yW8ZPQH_0/s1600/IMG_0500.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mfznKHQMQV8/TqLshQE9HnI/AAAAAAAAACY/I3yW8ZPQH_0/s400/IMG_0500.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #444444;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><u>Design</u></span></div>
<br />
There were not many breaking new designs to see. One effect I could notice is that corners are now a property of very expensive cars. May there be <b>Lamborghinis</b>, <b>Rolls Royce</b>, or <b>Mercedes</b>.<br />
<b>Mini</b> is going bold with the new coupé serie. <b>VW</b> presented quite some interesting variations of the Up, but those are just artist works that will never land in a store.<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #444444;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><u>Environment</u></span></div>
<br />
Of course, everyone is doing a pitch on environment. Except maybe Rolls Royce. Still, I saw nothing completely new. On the evolution side though, there quite some changes to observe. For one, there were a whole hall reserved for alternative energies, said the entry panel at least (well actually, once I was in, there was only a half hall).<br />
Personally, I think the big change now is that major cars company are now selling electric cars. Yes, Renault, I'm looking at you! Renault comes with <a href="http://www.renault-ze.com/">4 different models</a>, some from scratch, other basing on existing traditional models. Not all are available now on the market, but should soon. Renault was by far the big company putting its electric strategy in the forefront, but <b>Opel</b> was there also with the Ampera, which is now available for sale, based on the Chevy Volt.<br />
There are also some new accessories appearing: SolarWorld makes a product called the SunCarport, and as its name suggest it, it's a carport with a roof made of solar cells. So you can park your car under it, and the carport produces clean energy that can be either fed into the utilities or used to recharge the car. We'll see how that second use case goes as people usually drive away with their car at day. <br />
Outside the "electric hall" there were a small fleet of e-cars for test drives. It struck me how silent those cars are, especially when driving slow. Sure additional sound will be needed to make them secure for pedestrians.<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #444444;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><u>Tech</u></span></div>
<br />
Actually, while there were not that much breaking news on the green side, for the me the great novelty was the explosion of driving assistants. Mercedes was doing a live demo with a full simulator to present its concept while showing a car driving on the highway.<br />
What is very interesting here, is that a few companies now do have a technology for self driving car. Audi was mentioning the technology but I didn't see any demo. <br />
<b>IBM</b> had a small booth around Smarter Transportation (disclaimer: I work there). I wonder why <b>Google</b> wasn't there with their self-driving technology. Tech is invading the real world. Actually, it is quite interesting that car makers are telling a lot "We're not taking you the control", because in many cases they have. Many of the tech presented on the show is actually very near self-driving tech. <a href="http://www.audi.com/com/brand/en/tools/advice/glossary/audi_lane_assist.browser.html">Audi lane assist</a>, for example, was recently shown on TV more or less taking the car alone through a curve. We're going to see much more discussion around that in the next few years.<br />
<br />
Also the cars do now have a very impressive connectivity. All kinds of players are connectible by default, many cars propose WLAN in the car, etc. The iPads and iPhones are invading the in-car electronics. How long before an entertainment system or even car information goes on the smartphones or tablets? Not long, I think. It's happening right now in the planes, but that's a topic for another post.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-61334266943420196182011-10-09T15:22:00.001+02:002011-10-09T15:23:45.632+02:00Mobile!Thanks to Blogger, this blog is now accessible from mobile devices - smartphones, iPods and similar. Tablets should be able to use the usual desktop formatting. Enjoy!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-10216296938052065872011-10-04T20:21:00.000+02:002011-10-08T11:14:40.620+02:00Plain HTML: Back to the RootsForget application servers, content managers, JSF, ruby on rails... When I work on a web page or small web app for me, I try as far as possible to go with plain HTML and JavaScript. I think I need to justify myself now to why I'm mostly sticking to that tech.<br />
<br />
- <b>It's elegant</b>. Probably my favorite reason - the code is all consistent because there's no other dependency than the browser. So the code can be capitalized correctly and formatted properly. It's very compact, so it has probably less bugs than in some more chatty format that many frameworks usually produce.<br />
- <b>It keeps you in contact with the underlying technology.</b> And the web technology is advancing fast. Chance is your plain content will be able to do always more (CSS animations anyone?) with so less code than a non-native framework. Why using any framework function when the browser can do it alone? It's often faster and more reliable with the browser technology, and that way also doesn't need bridge technologies like external renderers (Flash! Silverlight!). Often, frameworks are a bit behind, so it's always good to be up to date and know when to do simpler.<br />
- <b>You can use your usual tooling</b>. You never know when a framework will need a strange compiler or Java library that is cumbersome to get and use. That risk just isn't there with plain HTML/CSS/JavaScript. You can just start your favorite editor and push updates to the server with any tools you're comfortable with, from the file manager to an automated rsync script.<br />
<br />
Of course, almost the same could be said of Unix tools - except that the Unix command line doesn't have ground-breaking changes anymore...<br />
<br />
<i>Edit 10/08/2011:</i><br />
Thinking back about this post remembered me how Amazon made <a href="http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/02/host-your-static-website-on-amazon-s3.html">EC2 available as a static page host platform</a>. Of course, EC2 doesn't imply a back to the root approach - you could use GWT's compiler, over even a homebrew code generator to produce a static site from dynamic data - but it fosters it. Github is also <a href="http://pages.github.com/">proposing static page hosting</a>.<br />
<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-8979933395567310372011-09-18T15:30:00.001+02:002011-09-18T15:30:24.155+02:00The Society Of Anticipation - The Loss Of Spontaneity?There was a very good comment this morning made on the French Radio <a href="http://www.franceinter.fr/">France Inter</a>. I like to hear this radio channel because of its very high quality content.<br />
<br />
So the chronic - you can even listen to the French podcast - argues that iPads, iPhones, the need to consult feeds and Twitter all the time have to do with our desire to anticipate the future - at least the near one. They also link the 9/11 to the time this anticipation came to be a political decision, translating in lots of money being invested monitoring networks and all kind of monitoring data in almost real time to find out who is about to do harm. Notice that's also short before <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/">Minority Report</a> came out. Also there is a similar trend going on in finance, and now other areas - medicine, police investigations, etc.<br />
<br />
But one might argue also that this is no new fact, and also do to with the wide use of the Web, which allows such processes in the first time. Actually, people always wanted to know the future, that may be for winning wars or for getting the seeds planted at the right time.<br />
<br />
One side effect of that, is that all this tech gears has quite some influence on people behaviors. It's harder to meet people spontaneously it seems to me. Many tell they're busy while they're actually probably checking out Facebook or playing online games (or blogging...). Friends used to just come by my apartment. People used to just meet at the local bar around the same time every week.<br />
<br />
It seems to me that I meet less people that I used before I was on Facebook. I may be biased. But we should remember that personal relationships matters more than things happening online.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-4125113407381196642011-09-10T16:32:00.000+02:002011-09-10T16:32:54.464+02:00How local newspapers should answer to the digital eraMy local newspaper, the "<a href="http://www.tagblatt.de/Home/nachrichten.html">Schwäbisches Tagblatt</a>" is one that I like and that provide unique content about my town and what's happening around me. I like to read it now & then. But I almost never buy it. Why?<br />
<b>- It's a pain to get the physical version.</b> I have to stop by some local store just for that newspaper. I get early to work and often come late when many shops are closed - and I work in a different area where this newspaper is not available, so lunch break is not an option to get one.<br />
<b>- I don't want an subscription.</b> I'll never get the time to read the paper version entirely every day - moreover, I want diversity. Sometimes I'll read the <a href="http://stuttgarter-zeitung.de/">Stuttgart newspaper</a>, sometimes Le Monde and sometimes Forbes. I have no will to pay for stuff I'll not use. Also, in Germany, you have to put your paper in a separate trash that gets emptied only once a month, so it's also too much paper for me to keep at home.<br />
<br />
What would I like? The same as big newspaper are providing. <b>A model where I can buy single issues</b> as PDF, iPad app or HTML5 page without subscription for a price well under the paper one, because there's no printing, shipping etc. included.<br />
<br />
The Tagblatt already has quite a good online presence. With
top articles, movie theater schedules and so on. It's quite good and
provides a lot of value already. Still I'd like to have access to the
entire content, and pay for it. <b>I'd be more than happy to pay</b> for
it given it offers me the needed flexibility - like do Forbes, Le
Figaro, and many others (not Business Week though - they offer only
subscription. Probably they can afford that now they're part of
Bloomberg). <br /><br />
<br />
<b>But it's too expensive for small newspapers!</b> Well, yes, if everyone do its own solution for scratch. There are more than <a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regionalzeitung">300 regional newspapers</a> in Germany only. They could all use a couple frameworks to deliver their information to widely used format, and also do the payment system together.<br />
What do I care about the local information? I care about the information that's in, not the design. There are very defined sections that most newspapers need, and I don't buy the local newspaper because it's shiny and well designed. Adopting a format like <a href="http://treesaver.net/">Treesaver</a> should provide enough quality to display the information a newspaper needs to publish. <br />
<br />
Many local newspapers are slow to move, because they have the monopoly in their area. But this could be a hard landing for many of them, like this is has recently been in the United States. Our local information matters, and I'd like to keep it alive.<br />
<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-90399160867860443002011-08-18T13:40:00.002+02:002011-08-18T13:48:26.475+02:00You need to try out technologies...... To understand what their ups and downs are. Yet another example came to me recently. I was just reading my iPad on my couch, with the iPad on my legs - I didn't hold it at all. Why should I hold it?
<br />
<br />So I remembered that discussion I had a few months ago with a colleague about the iPad before I bought it. He said: "that's a cool gear, but it weight quite a lot and must be tiresome to hold a long time, for things like reading". Of course, when you read a pocket book, you have to hold it. It's not a real problem because it's light, but one of the biggest reason you hold the book is to keep it open. <span style="font-style: italic;">But you don't need to keep the iPad open</span>. So holding it is unnecessary. But who would have thought to that without trying?
<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-44191121142443862622011-07-28T10:51:00.002+02:002011-07-28T11:00:59.855+02:00A European Rating Agency?There has been quite some discussion lately about the supremacy of the US rating agency, and why there should be a European rating agency to counter that. Many politicians over the EU even argued that this agency would rate less aggressively Greece and other countries with debt difficulties.<br /><br />So let me try to get it straight... A European rating agency wouldn't do much for Greece and similar European countries, where it couldn't pretend the least independence. But it would have already downgraded the US.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">This post is building on a </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="https://twitter.com/#%21/rodet/status/95401375713857536">tweet</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> from a few days ago.</span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-73532126625641742692011-06-19T16:19:00.004+02:002011-07-28T15:02:53.061+02:00Cities should copy the High LineRecently I came across a few articles related to the new High Line section opening. I already noted to see the High Lane next time I'll be in New York, so I had a look at these articles. Inhabitat has a <a href="http://inhabitat.com/video-inhabitat-takes-a-walk-on-section-two-of-the-high-line/">great article</a>, with video including an interview of the landscape designer. Also the press across the world <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/reise/staedte/0,1518,767965,00.html">reported</a> that opening.<br /><br />I find that very interesting, because... Who would think a refurbished railroad would provoke such much enthusiasm and curiosity across the world? Just because it's in New York? There are many parks in New York and no one mention them outside the city boundaries (Tompkins Square anyone?).<br /><br />So there must be something else. One is that the design is really modern and ambitious, with very well designed paths, vegetation everywhere, places to socialize. Another one is that it is higher than the rest of the streets, giving a new view on the city - and New York is probably one of the very best places to make use of good perspectives!<br /><br />Also it is not really a park - it is more a way, making de facto a pedestrian street in New York, which is definitely not common.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Highline_NYC_3705376658_529a375621.jpg/800px-Highline_NYC_3705376658_529a375621.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 497px; height: 372px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Highline_NYC_3705376658_529a375621.jpg/800px-Highline_NYC_3705376658_529a375621.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />(image from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Highline_NYC_3705376658_529a375621.jpg">Wikipedia</a>)<br /><br />So in many sights, the high lane is really innovative. So what if others could cities could take inspiration of that? In my town for example, there is a big debate about doing a stair between the river and an former hospital from the middle age, building a whole new path above the historical city wall. I think that is a wonderful idea, as it will create a whole new street in a town quarter that hasn't seen much new streets in the last 500 years.<br /><br />Creating such attractions also makes people curious, and make them come there. It's not needed to say that many city centers need to attract people back. That won't happen without changing anything. By reusing the existing infrastructure and being creative with it, magic things happen.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-55942798728621934772011-01-04T20:44:00.004+01:002011-01-04T21:23:04.712+01:00Words MatterAs I visited my parents in France, it struck me again that my father asked me how he could do a "Powerpoint" with his Ubuntu system. I had to explain him that Open Office can also do presentation, that what he is actually wanting to do is a presentation. Sounds like an easy task, but it's not. Microsoft has won the vocabulary of the office software, and that is not going away soon, making life harder for competitors - even in 2011.<div><br /></div><div>You'll probably argue that my father means actually he wants to do a Powerpoint - which would mean that not only he would like to create a presentation, but also use the exact same software he's used to. Could be, but I don't think that's the case. Actually he seemed pretty open to use another software. He actually likes to use Chrome, which is not a browser he was used to. But he only knew of a presentation as a "Powerpoint".</div><div><br /></div><div>Let's accept it, we all use, at least sometimes, "word" or "excel" as common nouns. That makes a whole difference for web search, for example. You're unlikely to find Open Office if you search for powerpoint.</div><div><br /></div><div>The vocabulary in itself is locking people into one brand, without any file mechanism involved yet! The question then becomes - what is the alternative wording to Word, Excel and Powerpoint? Well there isn't really one. At least not one so succinct. "word processor"? Too long. "Open Office Writer"? How can you put that in a discussion: "Can you give me your writer about the economic crisis?". "Spreadsheet" is appropriate in English but it doesn't translate well in German or French for instance ("Tabellenkalkulationprogramm" anyone?). So we've got a problem here.</div><div><br /></div><div>Someone will have to find new, better words for that. The more common the words, the most chance it fits to some more open document format - because that's what it's all about. Find standardized nouns for standardized formats. But enough of that topic. Maybe the best names are already used by Microsoft, and we'll have to move further to a new paradigm. Would it be better pushing people to just make "web pages", wherever local or not? Facebook is using "messages" and "updates", and is actually almost owning "friends". Words matter.</div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-51806545805119246792010-10-17T11:05:00.002+02:002010-10-17T11:47:36.865+02:00Where are the feeds? (And why there is a lot of potential in RSS)As you know, I'm <a href="http://dpsamd.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-information-system.html">using feeds a lot</a>. And it's not new. In fact, my base sources of information are feeds. I like it because you can couples different sources in a single interface and presentation flavor. It may be linear like <a href="http://www.google.com/reader">Google Reader</a> or widget based like <a href="http://www.netvibes.com/">Netvibes</a>, but you can also produce read-only pages like Dave Winer's <a href="http://nytimesriver.com/">River of News</a>.<div><br /></div><div>Many folks write <a href="http://www.techcrunchit.com/2009/05/05/rest-in-peace-rss/">RSS is dead</a>. I don't believe it. Why then?</div><div><br /></div><div>- RSS is an open protocol. At some point in time, people will see closed data (think Facebook) is as evil as DRM. With DRM, you could understand as soon as you had a new computer and couldn't transfer the music on it. When the first big social network will close down or have a big data loss, the masses will get it. And it'll be painful for many.</div><div><br /></div><div>- Not enough Web pages are feed enabled. There are two use cases that have a huge potential for me. The first one is a feed of artists events. Maybe some event companies have them, but that would be great if I could just go on Beyoncé Web page and subscribe a feed of her concerts across the world. Justin Timberlake has <a href="http://www.justintimberlake.com/events.rss">such a feed</a>, but it's far from standard. So Ping and MySpace are covering that use case partly, but damn I want to use my own feed reader for that! The second use case is companies intranets. If any internal resource had a feed, one could monitor much more stuff happening, and thus would be able to connect different news across the company, and so generate more ideas. Or find out what stuff is duplicate, understand what techs are growing etc. A separate post would be needed for that topic.</div><div><br /></div><div>- Mashups are still in the early adopter stage, wait till they come to wide adoption. The mashups interfaces are not completely clear, still need a bunch of coding. Wide repository are still missing in the enterprise use-case. Netvibes and Google Homepage are the best examples I know of mashups applications, still they miss a lot of features, like connecting widgets with each other.</div><div><br /></div><div>What can we do to fix that? Maybe kill the word "RSS" and just replace it with "feed", which is much more user friendly - in case we want the RSS tech to appeal to the masses. And implement new solution basing on the integration power of feeds, providing value for user that goes across just publishing titles from news sites.</div><div><br /></div><div>This post is still a kind of a draft, "think aloud" article. Correct me if I'm wrong on some points. But give me your thoughts ;)</div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-38916914012975475232010-09-25T23:11:00.006+02:002010-09-26T20:46:51.928+02:00Gastartikel über Stuttgart 21<i>Von Dr. Nikolai Weber:</i><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Seit über 60 Jahren haben wir in Deutschland eine parlamentarische Demokratie. Und wir haben damit sehr gut gelebt; nicht zuletzt, weil Entscheidungen verlässlich waren und nicht von der momentanen Stimungslage "auf der Straße" abhingen.<br /><br />Die</span></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> Entscheidung für eine parlamentarische Demokratie war auch kein Zufall, sondern sie wurde ganz bewusst getroffen, da gerade wir Deutschen wissen, wie kurzlebig und anfällig für Manipulationen die Meinung "der Straße" ist. Letzteres, also gezielte Manipulationen der Meinung "der Straße", erleben wir gerade durch die Gegner von S21.<br /><br />Wenn nun aus purer Angst vor dem Ergebnis einer bevorstehenden Landtagswahl bewährte Grundsätze unserer Demokratie und damit die Verlässlichkeit politischen Handelns von einigen Politikern in Frage gestellt werden, gibt dies Anlass zu größter Sorge!<br /><br />Bedenken sollten alle, die jetzt nach einem Volksentscheid rufen, daher vor allem, dass eine Öffnung unserer Demokratie für Volksentscheide auch noch ganz andere Entscheidungen ermöglichen könnte als die Frage, ob ein Bahnhof gebaut wird oder nicht. Insbesondere die Reaktion der Grünen wäre interessant, wenn es in Deutschland durch Volksentscheid - wie jüngst in der Schweiz - zu einem Minarettverbot käme.<br /><br />Man mag zu S21 stehe wie man will. Aber es wäre mehr als töricht, wegen eines Bahnhofsprojekts bewährte Verfassungsgrundsätze einfach über Bord zu werfen! Mögliche wirtschaftliche Folgen werden in <a href="http://bit.ly/bfIYaP">dem Artikel</a> beschrieben. Mögliche politische Folgen mag man sich besser im Detail erst gar nicht ausdenken!</span></span></span></span></div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-69011679475279727572010-09-18T15:10:00.003+02:002010-09-18T15:42:08.999+02:00What I think Sony did wrong with the PSP and the PS3I've been owning a PSP two years long, and I have a PS3 since last year (which I also use as low-maintenance, no-burden, not-expensive media center). These are both marvelous of technology, proving that Apple is not the only company doing good hardware. Actually, back in 2005, the PSP was a fantastic innovation that had so much potential. But unlike Apple with the iPhone, Sony did almost nothing with that. So this is here my opinion on what they did miss.<div><br /></div><div><b>- They could have killed iTunes.</b> Sony have content - they are music publishers and they own Columbia Pictures, not less. They have the hardware, the providers and, what Apple not even has, <i>the content publishers</i>. Also the PS3 is much better than the iPod Touch or the iPhone when it comes to viewing movies. So since some time, there is finally a small media store, which is not bad at all, but it all came too late when iTunes was already dominating the whole market. Too late, folks, and also too small.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>- Where is the App Store?</b> The PSP and PS3 firmwares are so capable, how hard could it be to add functionalities for third-party apps? Would there be a need for an iPod touch if one could install apps on a PS3? The interface of the PS3 has some advantages on the one of the iPod Touch, mostly for playing games.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>- They aren't trying to "eat" the other hardware channels</b>. For example, why is Remote Play only working with the PSP? I would like to access it from my iPhone. Instead I buy my content on iTunes then - which I can better expose back to my PS3, at least for the audio content. Now there is also the possibility to view movies on YouTube - but that isn't a competitive advantage because almost every other device also can.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Which is interesting here is to see that Sony have the perfect technology and content to change the game, but they didn't. Why? It seems like it is big corp culture at work: never question your business model, never do actions that could impact other departments. It seems like they are missing executives with a vision and an understanding of the culture of the 2000's. Somehow they seem still stuck in the 90's business model, but it has long disappeared.</div><div><br /></div><div>All in all, it seems like Sony is pretty resistant to user advices and market pressure. They're already suffering, but they should rather change to survive at all. At least they're not lacking good engineers.</div></div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-11648201985335035402010-08-29T00:02:00.004+02:002010-08-29T00:52:01.308+02:00Are programmers problem solvers or just builders?Again, it all began with a <a href="http://twitter.com/rodet/statuses/22360230639">tweet</a>. Well, almost.<br /><br />A few days ago, I read some forum where someone described programmers as "problem solvers", and how you have to really like solving problems all the time to love programming. Some responses were a bit intimidated by that perspective. "Problems" all day long - bah!<br /><br />To me, this sounds quite like a normal reaction. People want to do something positive in their life, particularly when this is about work - the most time consuming occupation one generally has. So I began thinking about that - Are programmers "problem solvers"? In my opinion, not really.<br /><br />Of course I'm taking the "problem solving" in a very mathematical sense. Not everyone may agree with that definition, but that is how I understand it.<br /><br />When I think about programming something, I'm not often doing that to solve a problem in the mathematician sense. I'm not searching for a solution. Instead, I'm rather working like an architect, putting together pieces to form a home. An architect is not "solving a problem" when he provides a house for a family but rather "fullfilling a need". I rather see programming as lego building. If you ask someone to build a lego house, some will do something very basic and ugly with a few bricks on non-matching colors and scales, and other will do a fantastic medieval castle. Same for programming. This is quite different of maths were the proof and result is, mainly, right or not. That doesn't mean that programming is more simplistic, rather that it is a producing task rather than it is a solving one. The solving part is actually more part of the computer science, and less of the programming, or software engineering.<br /><br />There is another reason why I think that programmers, while they tend to like qualify themselves as problem solvers, are not so much such. If they were, wouldn't they enjoy fixing programming defects and debugging all day long? Of course most of us prefer writing code - that is, building something new, assembling, creating.<br /><br />I also got a good comment on Twitter where someone asserted that programmers are also partly artists, and I think this is also true. Hackers program sometimes for political reasons. Some to produce new graphic effects. The creativity component should be integrated here.<br /><br />So if you're beginning programming, and find this is some hard task - don't get discouraged, because this is actually an interesting and funny task that is rarely as frustrating as a hard math assignement!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-50349641810942530712010-05-16T16:55:00.005+02:002010-05-17T22:56:06.619+02:00JavaScript and cloud computing - the cost factor.In these times of on-demand computing, with services like <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/">Amazon Web Services</a> or <a href="http://code.google.com/appengine/">Google App Engine</a>, one could wonder why <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript">JavaScript</a> gets a sudden regain in popularity. There are lots of reason to use JavaScript on cloud related projects. Besides the use of <a href="http://json.org/">JSON</a>, which is more readable and consumes less bandwidth than XML, and the fact that JavaScript toolkits are pretty nice to use as a developer, I'd like to pinpoint the cost advantage JavaScript can bring in the game.<div><br /></div><div>With PHP or Java, you let your business logic runs on the server, letting the client download most of the HTML already prepared. The user browser then just has to download and render that data. It also means that your server has to produce all that stuff, including pretty CPU- and memory-expensive HTML and XML.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now what can you do with JavaScript? JavaScript (JS) will allow you to serve a very simple, naked HTML page, which will also reference the JS code (you can separate it in small modules that will get loaded dynamically to save bandwidth). The client JS code will then ask for the raw data almost directly to the backend database - with a small security and data transformation layer in the front. This data should be produced in JSON to reduce the CPU usage on both server and client sides. With that data, the JS code will then be able to build the user interface dynamically, either by building markup dynamically or basing on HTML templates.</div><div><br /></div><div>What does that mean for the billing costs? Basically, you can save CPU usage on the host - thus having less billed, and also you can save bandwidth either with code lighter than the generated HTML, or code that makes your page application-like and not website-like. Let's picture that this way: with JS you can make your site load the code only once, and after that it will only exchange light JSON data with the server. With a Java or PHP implementation, you'll have many pages downloads. So the gain with JS is higher when you intend your user to stay longer on the site.</div><div><br /></div><div>It may not be the silver bullet though - feel free to comment that and show cases where server- generated markup is better. I miss detailed numbers to present as case analysis. What I was just trying to show is that JavaScript should play a role when you do a cost or performance optimization of your website, especially if it's hosted on dynamic billing environment.</div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-70248285273767103572010-05-16T10:12:00.002+02:002010-05-16T10:30:01.239+02:00Fantastic colour pictures<a href="http://citynoise.org/article/10598">This site</a> really deserves a post. This morning I've stumbled upon <a href="http://citynoise.org/article/10598">fantastic colour pictures</a> from the beginning of the 20th century. Not only the pictures are beautiful to view, but some of them are a real interesting clue on big changes across the last century.<div><br /></div><div>On a first look, the architectural changes: The picture showing the building which is now the famous Plaza Hotel in New York, with the south-east Central Park corner, presents such a completely different neighborhood than today, that I couldn't recognize it first. Everythings has gotten bigger in New York. Also look at this fantastic picture of the Eiffel Tower with the Trocadero being huge compared to the current one. It's gotten smaller in this part of Paris. Also look at these pictures from England with a falling roof, the same place that would live an housing bubble hundred years later.</div><div><br /></div><div>You can spot some pretty big cultural changes also. Europeans were clothing very differently, most of that has been lost in between. But the most impressing pictures were the ones from the Iran and Iraq, where you can see how women are clothed in a modern way - if you compare the way women are clothed on these photos in Holland and Iraq, it almost gets incredible. It should remind us that cultural changes are not always getting forward.</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, some other photos are not quite so happy. War, destruction and death, that was just the beginning of the 20th century which was quite violent. It's important to have memories of that though, and colour pictures are the best way to remind us that all that was real and not so far away.</div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-52472003541007600002010-03-21T17:09:00.002+01:002010-03-21T18:52:51.248+01:00New layout, comments working againToday I finally repaired the blog comment links by putting a new layout template. It was about time, after all. The new template is slicker, the fonts a bit bigger, and think in overall the whole gives more accent on the content than before. Have fun reading & commenting!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-90819965752560556062010-03-13T19:20:00.003+01:002010-03-13T19:22:53.113+01:00Comments not workingI'm sorry, I was told newly that comments are not working anymore. This will be corrected, but for now comments are not working. If you want to discuss with me about stuff published here, please feel free to contact me on <a href="http://twitter.com/rodet">Twitter</a>.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14858156.post-55672474669518543032010-03-13T18:54:00.003+01:002010-03-13T19:25:31.744+01:00Sentence-long paragraph: a new trend?This morning I was again struck by <a href="http://bit.ly/9rnmgL">that article</a> from the CNN website. No, it wasn't about the topic. Rather the format. Look at this, there is a new paragraph for every sentence. I am somewhat use to read, a person you'll call a moderate reader. From what I learned in school, I use to make a break between two paragraph. A paragraph marks the end of a topic or an argumentation, and the break is here to mark that, and also let you a short time to digest the overall content. The second reason of a paragraph is to mark visually the different parts of a writing to allow a quicker navigation and overview of the content.<div><br /></div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/am44oh">So</a> <a href="http://bit.ly/b8wmw4">look</a> <a href="http://bit.ly/99jvDL">all</a> <a href="http://bit.ly/c48h2z">these</a> <a href="http://bit.ly/ceAb1n">links</a>. It's not an inadvertence, or a single editor messing with the editing rules. It's a trend. And quite worrying actually. The problem with these articles is you can't understand them. Why? Because if you're asked how many points the article made, or if it does have a these and anti-these, you won't know without rereading the whole article. This type of writing messes with your head, hiding the important information and flooding you with clusters of words without much structure. It probably won't make you wiser, because you'll find hard just to parse it.</div><div><br /></div><div>So where does that comes from? I suppose it has some roots in micro-blogging. Of course that derives from the original sense of micro-blogging. I came to that idea because that comes at around the same time medias begin to integrate widely Twitter and Facebook in their publication model. But that may also be from texting. Maybe even some expert found out it was better to get the young crowd reading. Thoughts?</div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0