- OSMdroid — The OpenStreetMapView is a (almost) full/free replacement for Android’s MapView class. Also see this tutorial. (via Simon Gianoutsos)
- 10 Immutable Laws of Security (Microsoft) — an oldie but a goodie. Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it’s not your computer anymore.
- What’s in The Trough? (BERG London) — as a predictor or similar tool for action, the Gartner Hype Cycle is comically useless. As a tool for brainstorming, as BERG point out, it’s fantastic.
- JP Rangaswami’s Enterprise Gamification (Livestream) — video of JP’s “Enterprise Gamification” talk. As Kevin Slavin points out, the introduction is cheesily bad but the talk is pantswettingly good.
"Microsoft" entries
Five digital design ideas from Windows 8
With Metro, it's clear Microsoft has put a lot of thought into touchscreen design.
Microsoft's Metro interface offers plenty for digital book designers to study. The best part? Whether or not Microsoft actually ships something that matches their demo, designers can benefit from the great thinking they've done.
Promoting Open Source Software in Government: The Challenges of Motivation and Follow-Through
I have posted a prepublication draft of my article “Promoting Open Source Software in Government: The Challenges of Motivation and Follow-Through,” published by the Journal of Information Technology & Politics.
Developer Week in Review: Windows 8 Developer Preview goes public
Win8 for free, Google throws a Dart, and Congress whiffs on patent reform.
Microsoft changes tack on a Windows 8 alpha, Google is darting away from JavaScript, and the great Patent Reform of 2011 reforms little.
Four short links: 31 August 2011
Maps on Android, Security Laws, Trough of Potential, and Enterprise Gamification
Developer Week in Review: Mobile's embedded irony
Who really profits from Android sales? And does the world need another source control system?
Microsoft profits from Google's toils, why you shouldn't put older developers out to pasture, and a new source control system enters the fray.
Developer Week in Review: Mobile’s embedded irony
Who really profits from Android sales? And does the world need another source control system?
Microsoft profits from Google's toils, why you shouldn't put older developers out to pasture, and a new source control system enters the fray.
Four short links: 18 July 2011
Organisational Warfare, RTFM, Timezone Shapefile, Microsoft Adventure
- Organisational Warfare (Simon Wardley) — notes on the commoditisation of software, with interesting analyses of the positions of some large players. On closer inspection, Salesforce seems to be doing more than just commoditisation with an ILC pattern, as can be clearly seen from Radian’s 6 acquisition. They also seem to be operating a tower and moat strategy, i.e. creating a tower of revenue (the service) around which is built a moat devoid of differential value with high barriers to entry. When their competitors finally wake up and realise that the future world of CRM is in this service space, they’ll discover a new player dominating this space who has not only removed many of the opportunities to differentiate (e.g. social CRM, mobile CRM) but built a large ecosystem that creates high rates of new innovation. This should be a fairly fatal combination.
- Learning to Win by Reading Manuals in a Monte-Carlo Framework (MIT) — starting with no prior knowledge of the game or its UI, the system learns how to play and to win by experimenting, and from parsed manual text. They used FreeCiv, and assessed the influence of parsing the manual shallowly and deeply. Trust MIT to turn RTFM into a paper. For human-readable explanation, see the press release.
- A Shapefile of the TZ Timezones of the World — I have nothing but sympathy for the poor gentleman who compiled this. Political boundaries are notoriously arbitrary, and timezones are even worse because they don’t need a war to change. (via Matt Biddulph)
- Microsoft Adventure — 1979 Microsoft game for the TRS-80 has fascinating threads into the past and into what would become Microsoft’s future.
Developer Week in Review: Start your lawyers!
If the lawsuit fits, the Kinect SDK for Windows arrives, and IPv6 day fails to excite.
The legal community continued to feed off IP disputes among software giants, Microsoft brings the Kinect SDK to Windows, and the web switches IPv6 on for a day, but did anyone notice?
Developer Week in Review: Are .NET programmers going extinct?
Microsoft embraces HTML5, selling a startup at 15, and a new version of Java looms.
For Microsoft programmers, the week brought fear, uncertainty and doubt regarding their future as an elite class of developers. For a lucky teen, it brought a big paycheck. And for fans of Java, it brought a new version of the popular language one step closer to release.
Four short links: 2 June 2011
Windows 8, CC YouTube, Corporate Innovation, and Crypto Lifetimes
- Building Windows 8 – Video #1 (YouTube) — lovely to see Microsoft’s operating system finally leaping past a 2002 look and feel.
- YouTube Offers Creative Commons Licensing (BoingBoing) — bravo!
- Redefiners Capturing Media Growth Dollars — Anil Dash’s corporate presentation about innovating within large (media) companies. The initial slides are money posturing to get the attention of the audience, but after that there’s some heavy-hitting drumming of the message: how to make startup success happen within big companies. Nothing new, but well said.
- Lifetimes of Crypto Hash Functions (Val Aurora) — in Nelson Minar’s words, “spoiler: not long”. Love the lifetime table at the bottom. (via Nelson Minar)