It’s always kind of tough coming back from a backpacking trip. It was a great trip, so it is kind of jolting going from peaceful solitude to the frenzied pace of the web world. But, I like them both, so being able to transition is the name of the game.

While on the trip, I got to thinking about how Web 2.0 really hasn’t touched the outdoors yet. There are trip reports on sites like Backpacker and GORP but there isn’t much of a social aspect to it and all of the reviews reside in the sandbox of those sites. I wondered why that was and I think part of it may be that people want to keep the good spots hidden. But then I search for washington trip reports on Google and come back with a lot of results. Unfortunately, it’s tough because they are often ust web pages with no dates or reference points. The trail they enjoyed so much could be covered with downed trees.

So as hyped up as Web 2.0 is, I think there’s a void in the outdoor recreation world for the kind of social, open, tagged application that Web 2.0 embodies. My plate is very full, but I’ve scoured some domain names, and I think it would be a fun project to work on. An outdoor portal that combines a subset of features from Facebook, Digg and del.icio.us while incorporating GPS coordinates and Flickr photos or YouTube videos. It ranks about 3,000 on the priority list, so if someone knows of a site like that, I’d love to hear about it.

[tags]outdoors, backpacking, hiking, web 2.0[/tags]

I’m taking a mini-vacation so I’ll be away from email and phone (as well as blogging) for a couple of days. Ciara and I are going on the first backpacking trip of the season out to Olympic National Park. I’ve left some hanging email, so if you haven’t heard from me, I apologize, and I’ll get back to it as soon as I’m home! I’m hoping that I’ll get some mobile service so I can blog some pictures to Flickr as we go, but I doubt they’ll have it at the national park. Otherwise, we’ll just post them when I get back. I’m also bringing the GPSMap 60CSx (and probably my Zune), so I’ll still be geeked out.

[tags]olympics, backpacking, washginton[/tags]

I saw Brendan Dawes post about his trip to Microsoft and it echoed my own experiences, so I thought it was a worthy thing to talk about. My favorite quote was:

I have to admit I didn’t know what to expect meeting people who worked at Microsoft – a company that many people love to hate. But without exception everyone was passionate about what they were doing there – with creativity and the love of good design seeming to be at the heart of everything they do.

Before meeting the people over in Redmond, I had the impression that everyone at Microsoft was out to squash any bit of competition and wanted nothing more than Windows to be everywhere. While that is probably still the mantra of a lot of people in the management, all the people I met simply want to create a great product and empower users with it.

When Scoble was there, it was a bit easier to see inside the company, but since he’s gone, I think it’s been tougher. But after getting a chance to talk with people like Tim Sneath, Brad Becker, Forest Key, recently Rob Relyea and some of the other folks, it amazed me (like Brendan said) how passionate and creative these people are. They aren’t out with the mindset of crushing their competitors, rather they want to make designers and developers lives easier by building quality software. Badmouthing stormtroopers is easy until you actually meet them and realize most of them are smart, dedicated and nice people. I wish Microsoft got that side out more because it would help make the overall conversation more constructive.

[tags]Microsoft, design[/tags]

Renaun blogged his updated Flex and ActionScript 3.0 Resource List. It’s really cool to see this many Flex resources out there, especially for those of us coming from 1.5 where all we had was Steven and Alistair’s (excellent) Flex book (seeing that book cover brings back some memories).

Rob Relyea also has a list of WPF Books over on his blog but I don’t think he lists any of the ones that are still in the works. An Amazon search lists a lot more.

[tags]Flex, ActionScript 3, WPF, books[/tags]

This is pretty awesome and I have no idea who put it together, but regardless, here it is. A lot of people hate the new icons, but I actually really like them. And in looking at these, they seem to be pretty high quality versions of the new color wheel. Now I can finally start swapping the old icons out for the new ones.

[tags]Adobe, icons, CS3[/tags]

I’ve been meaning to blog this for a while because it’s definitely worth a look. Pavan over at The FlexWinds Blog has been doing a multiple part comparison of Flex and WPF. Now those two technologies shouldn’t usually be compared because Flex is all about web applications and WPF is about building windows applications, but this is much less a “use case” overview and more a syntax overview. It also dives into some of the features between the two, which may not be apt, but by the time you’re finished reading, you’ll have a lot of info about both technologies.

Part one covers WPF and a bit of Flash/Flex, part 2a talks about how WPF separates content and style and part 2b covers it for Flex. Great work Pavan!

[tags]Flex, WPF, Rich Internet Applications[/tags]

I think almost every coder has heard of Eric Jordan and NeverRain, but I’d forgotten about it until Mike Kollen mentioned it the other day. I code to a lot of different things; everything from Country music to 15th century Renaissance music but Techno/Trance probably leaves me in the most productive mood. Eric Jordan’s February mix, Beyond, is really good. If you code to that kind of music, check it out.

I think Eric should get his own finetune station.

 [tags]Eric Jordan, Neverrain, music[/tags]

Karl Johnson has put up a series titled “RIA Usability is Key” and while I missed the first one, the second one was a good read. I love the less is more rationale because I think with RIAs it is so easy to overdue it and end up with something that is much less usable. That’s probably one of the things Flash has been skewered for the most. It’s easy to throw in gratuitous animations. It’s much harder to build transitions and effects that aid in usability.

Another post I liked this week was by Dan over at Polygeek. It’s a look at how Apollo fits into the web environment. It’s good to keep in mind that Apollo is a 1.0 product. As I often say, I don’t think Apollo is *the* answer, but it’s changing the way people can think about and deploy applications. Once the creative developers start pushing it, the platform grows and we’re all better off.

[tags]Cynergy, RIA, usability, Apollo[/tags]

I took quite a bit of flack in my last post about Firefox 3, and probably rightly so. I threw up the post right before I went to bed and ended with this line: “The browser is not the platform. The browser is the problem.” Not a very peaceful way to end a post. And justifiably people asked me to clarify what I meant. So here it is. I think having features in a browser to take applications offline is a step in the wrong direction.

People love the browser, and I can understand that. It’s a great tool, and it has served us very well. You could even go so far as to call it the universal platform. But I’ve always maintained that the browser is an old way of thinking. Information is on the web and the idea of a one-size-fits-all solution seems to me like an increasingly odd proposition. We continue to try and get traction out of the browser, and in doing so, I think we’re failing to progress in how we interact with the web.

Is the browser going to go away soon? No, and I don’t want it to. But delivering web applications in a tool that is really just meant for displaying text and images doesn’t seem right. Sure, storing applications on the server? Great. Being able to “browse to” those applications? Perfect. But why do we need a browser with limited functionality to do that? Why shouldn’t we be able to open up the run command, type in a URL, and have a full blown desktop applications at our fingers?

To me, Apollo brings us the closest to this, which is why I think (when used correctly) it makes an “offline mode” in browsers irrelevant. Why are we trying to turn the browser into a desktop when we already have perfectly good desktops? With the browser, we’re getting further away from the power of the desktop and I don’t see any real benefits to doing that. With Apollo, we’re bringing the web down to the desktop and as a result, creating a richer experience. The only reason I don’t love WPF is the cross platform issue. I think WPF makes for FAR richer interfaces than Apollo because I think the things we’re seeing with 3D are very cool and very beneficial. I think between these two technologies, we’re seeing how great the desktop can be. Apollo just comes closer to the “universality” of the web. So why do we need an offline browser when Apollo can do more for us? Flame on folks

I thought that Firefox logo was awesome, and it looks like its’ from Joe Anderson, so I want to make sure he gets credit.

[tags]Apollo, WPF, Firefox 3, browser[/tags]

The famous (infamous?) Scott Barnes has a good post up over on his MSDN blog about WebORB. Mark came to talk to us about it at the Seattle Flex User group, and I was pretty impressed by what they’ve been able to accomplish. Being in Seattle, I’m hyper-sensitive to how Flex can work with .NET and while you can use WebServices or HTTPService to talk to a .NET backend, remoting is much faster, and if you want to use Flex Data Services, you’re out of luck.

I realize that selling FDS is tough to do, and that right now, most people working with Flex don’t really need the functionality FDS provides. But WebORB is a very well rounded solution for those companies using .NET that want the added features. The fact that it has some Flash Media Server functionality baked in is just icing on the cake. Their dashboard is also a HUGE benefit to developers. They have code generation for regular AS3 classes, Cairngorm and others. They’ve also got a Service Capture like feature that lets you inspect what is being sent to and from WebORB. When you combine all this with the fact that you can use WebORB and MSMQ to sync up Flex with other .NET applications, it just looks even better.

If you’re using .NET and Flex, I suggest you take a look at WebORB. You may not need FDS right now, but if you ever do, this is a great way to do it. I can’t wait for FDS to take off because I think it enables a new model for the web and takes it to the next level. We’re not quite there yet, but I can see it coming.

[tags]WebOrb, Flex, .net[/tags]