Google App. Engine goes Javascript and Java

Android's "kill" let's Google delete applications from your Android phone?

Google opening up user's profiles to search.

Hat-tip Scribe : The state of scripting language platforms.

Tim OReilly on Dell's move away from customization and flexible supply-chain.

There are two possibilities: first, that Dell is wrong, and their new supply chain approach will not save them, just make them more like everyone else. It could be that their "live suppy chain" approach just got too crufty, too complex - the article linked above suggests more than 5000 possible configurations. Maybe what they needed to do was to make the system smarter again by streamlining and simplifying.

But it's possible too that the competitive advantage to be wrung from a live enterprise only takes you so far, and that in certain circumstances other advantages are more important. It may well be that the PC market has reduced itself to such commodity status that standardization trumps customization. It may well be that the costs of physical goods mean that the laws of virtual networks are only partly true in that realm.

Worth thinking about, especially as I thought Dell should go in the opposite direction.

Update : Interesting that Dell's suggestion box Ideastorm is full of people demanding better Linux support and pricing. Guess this is a self-selecting audience, of course, but what does Dell do? Create a way of listening to customers and then not follow it for fear of M$, or follow it, and risk the wrath of M$?

PC manufacturers creating sites like this are bad news for M$ either way.

Update 2 : Why are Dell abandoning make-to-order? At one point I wondered if they're actually worrying about long distance just-in-time supply chains as the world energy prices keep going up. But it doesn't look as if that's what's going on. Or is it just a bet on cheap and standard over expensive and flexible (particularly as we go into a recession.)?

Windows Server on Amazon EC2

Good move for both of them.

Marc Andreesen joins EBay.

Hmmm. Is it just coincidence that Donahoe is talking about powerful communities when Andreessen’s current baby–Ning–is a social networking platform. Can you say exit strategy?

Admittedly, that eBay buying Ning idea is a leap, but crazier things–like eBay’s acquisition of Skype–have happened.

I must admit that I've warmed to the new Ning. It turns out to be pretty useful for putting a quick YASNS together. Buying it (and Andreesen) would definitely be a good move for EBay (if they can avoid wasting the opportunities the way they have Skype and Paypal)

Here's an interesting interview with Jeff Hawkins about the netbook category. Implies that early rejection was due to Grognard Capture.

Here it comes. Gears on Android.

And here's some appreciation of it.

Interesting question : could the StackOverflow method / software (clean, reduced advertising, voting driven) be applied to medical diagnostic sites and patient discussion forums?

New Android demo video

Mary Jo Foley on Midori, a family of stripped down, "managed code" infrastructure projects within Microsoft. Possibly the aim is to move towards the whole M$ operating system product running inside a light, portable virtual machine.

LinkedIn starts an advertising network

StackOverflow is genius. Two respected and popular software development bloggers putting their audiences to work to make a better mutual-aid site for programmers.

Incredibly this seems something that no-one else has done. Most places for programmers to help each other are based on pretty lousy generic discussion forum software and plastered with adverts.

Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood have rethought the whole thing and made a far far better service.

It reminds me of a post I wrote about Behance, Design Outpost, Tribe and other more specialized YASNS and markets. There's a huge largely untapped opportunity ... to take YASNS away from generic people-collecting sites and make them useful vehicles for communities to work together. In my fantasy I talked about putting diverse but complementary communities together. But StackOverflow reminds us that there's also plenty of room just to take a rather tired and ineffective genre of community site and make it a hell of a lot better.

Meanwhile, back in the cloud :

The long and the short of it is that we have entered into a new era, in which data centers will no longer simply be collections of servers, but will actually be computing units in and of themselves--often made up of similar computing units (e.g. containers) in a sort of fractal arrangement. Virtualization is key to make this happen (though server virtualization itself is not technically absolutely necessary). So are powerful management tools, policy and workflow automation, data and compute load portability, and utility-type monitoring and metering systems.

Run and read Dare (and indirectly Nick Carr)

Nick :

Google’s protean appearance is not a reflection of its core business. Rather, it stems from the vast number of complements to its core business

Dare :

So why is [Chrome] significant? It isn't because "Google Chrome is going to replace Windows" or some other such silliness. As it stands now, Google Chrome is a Windows based application whose most interesting features exist in other browsers. A Web browser cannot replace an operating system any more than an automobile can replace an Interstate highway. The significant end user innovation in Google Chrome is that it is bundled with Google Gears. This means that Google Chrome has a mechanism for delivering richer experiences to end users out of the box. Google can now use this as a carrot and a stick approach to convincing browser vendors to do what it wants. Google can make its sites work better together with Chrome + Gears (e.g. YouTube Uploader using Gears) which could lead to lost browser market share for competing browser vendors if this becomes a widespread practice among Google's offerings. Even if Google never does this, the implied threat is now out there.

Chrome will likely force Google's competitors to up their game with regards to adopting newer Web standards and features just to stay competitive. This is similar to what Google did with online mapping and Web mail, and what the Opera browser has been doing by pioneering features like "pr0n mode" and tabbed browsing. So even if Google loses because Chrome doesn't get massively popular, Google still wins because the user experience for browsing the Web has been improved. And at the end of the day, if more people are using the Web because the user experience is better across the board that's just fine for Google. The same way the fact that all online mapping experiences and Web mail experiences have improved across the board is also good for Google.

I wouldn't be as sanguine about the "replace Windows" bit as Dare is. Particularly not if I was Microsoft. Looking at Asus netbooks over the weekend I'm seeing lots of positive reviews and happiness with the Linux + browser + very cheap hardware package.

It looks to me as though we could easily be approaching, not exactly a "tipping point" (with all the notions of positive feedback that this implies), but at least a period of rapid transition, beyond which the standard or most common computing tool in our lives isn't a Windows PC running MS Office but a $200 - $300 netbook running free software. See all the PC makers playing catch up.

The standard price for this tool is way too low to charge an extra $50 - $100 for OS and Office Suite. And the browser-based email and office apps. will be fine for most users. The entire market for the traditional Microsoft software product, the generic "PC", is evaporating as we watch.

ZDNet is calling this Browser Wars 2.0 ...

I've been saying that browsers are not (and shouldn't be thought of) as a site for strategic competition. But it looks as though I may be wrong on this one.

The reason I thought that there was no room for competition there, is that I saw (and still see) standards (HTML, Javascript, CSS) rather than differentiation as dominating. There's no mileage in a slightly different HTML or scripting language.

All web-applications want to be runable on all browsers ... anything else is just suicide. And all browsers want to be able to run all applications ... and so ...

But I underestimated the part about a better experience for the users which isn't related to the browser content. Browser features such as speed, privacy, off-line caching, new UIs such as Enso-like "ubiquity". All the browser makers have demonstrated that they can create some excitement in these areas.

Also, what's becoming clearer is that "privacy modes" can disrupt the kind of cookie tracking which allows, say Google, to serve relevant adverts, which makes browser innovation in this area a direct attack on Google's revenue. (And so also makes us realize how much of an interest Google have here.)

So, I think I was still right about standards in web content (at least for the moment). But as the browser really starts to replace the desktop operating system it takes over a whole lot of other responsibilities as well. And there's clearly some room for differentiation there.

David Berlind points out the should-be-obvious (but-not-very-remarked) : Google's Chrome + Gears also wraps mobile (device swarm) operating systems.

Point 1 : the browser is the only reliable application container which runs reliably across different operating systems on phones

Point 2 : the downside of the browser is that it depends on network connection which is unreliable on mobile phones

Point 3 : Gears (which is sneaked into Chrome) solves that.

It works ... Doesn't the Apple "cool vs. nerd" already start to look rather tired and cliched after you watch the M$ ads?

Wow! New Gates and Seinfeld episode.

This is all about scrambling any perception or stereotype you might have had about M$.

Update : It is, also, of course a kind of satire on / deconstruction of the Apple ads. With Seinfeld in the place of the "cool" (Mac) guy, and Gates as the boring, nerdy (PC) guy. Except in this case, the distinction is being shown as breaking down, both are equally weird, uncool, "bad" (flawed, selfish, stupid in the way all Seinfeld characters are).

The Apple / PC dichotomy that the Mac ads push? There is no such structure in the world. There's just the nihilistic despair of the human condition. A primal chaos from which a new M$ brand can emerge.

BBC Radio becoming a YASN?

Obasanjo's three reasons developers adopt new platforms : 1) to help them differentiate themselves, 2) to make things significantly simpler, or 3) to reach new markets. Plus he seems to add a fourth : better distribution.

For example, the platforms I've been excited about in the last couple of years : the Facebook / YASN-as-platform and Google Application Engine. The first is basically 3 (or maybe 4) while the attraction of GAE is mainly 2.

I'm still pondering whether Google's 20% time constitutes a new kind of effective R&D for them. Here's a story that Microsoft are also thinking about how to revamp (and accelerate / diversify / distribute?) their R&D.

Well, I have to come out here and say I like the Microsoft / Seinfeld ad. I think it's funny ... and non-obvious. I'm not sure where they're going, but at least in this sphere they don't seem to be trying to catch up with Apple.

Weird though that now they try to make Bill Gates a brand-mascot, now he's left.

Update : Second thought ... the total lack of any kind of real "message" (apart from "Gates wants to be seen as a fun guy and hang out with Seinfeld", obviously) may be making a virtue of necessity in that M$ don't actually have a message at the moment.

That's perhaps not a bad position to be in ... maybe the first task has to be to destroy our previous perception of M$. And that means reinventing Gates as no longer the mega-rich, evil, world-dominating manipulator behind the scenes but a lovable, fun, nerd who still buys discount shoes and jokes around in an archly subtle way. (From his performance here, Gates could actually be made into a pretty funny comic actor. Couldn't you see him cameoing in a Woody Allen movie?)

M$, if anything, are the practical, pragmatic choice of conservative IT departments. What if you could pull off the antithesis, upping the nihilism in the Microsoft ads, to make Apple (in its race to the enterprise) look the stodgy "sensible" choice, while M$ discover an entirely clean space to reinvent themselves as whatever they want to be seen as next?

John Hagel :

The next generation of the WWW may be driven by environments and tools that enhance serendipity. Companies that find ways to amplify serendipity may reap the greatest economic rewards as we all struggle to improve our return on attention.

Cringley thinks Chrome is all about the danger of Microsoft making Ad-blocking in IE sufficiently good to hurt Google.

Haque meanwhile is wearing his rose-coloured Google glasses.

So Google want to own the browser too.

It's interesting to speculate why. Of course, one possibility is that someone in the hydra-headed Googleplex just started this as their 20% project and it got released.

Or maybe it's just a defensive move to protect web-standards (a Google "complement") against the possible encroachment by proprietory RIA front-ends like Flash and Silverlight? But why not just invest in Firefox or Webkit? Is this just Google's way of doing that? Are they trying to disuade too much fragmentation between these other open-source contenders?

I still believe Internet Explorer is a total waste of time, money, energy and focus for Microsoft. Why wouldn't an "own brand" browser be similarly one for Google?

Not sure ... let's see if they do anything clever with it.

Update : Dare Obasanjo nails an important point :

Will ship with Google Gears built-in

This pushes the Gears offline caching standard (against Mozilla's own rival) and is therefore an indirect attack on the desktop as offline application platform.

Dare's bonus question :

Am I the only one that thinks that Google is beginning to fight too many wars on too many fronts.

I half agree. To me, the most interesting question about Google today is whether, through their 20% time, and their ready engagement of open internet culture, and having pots of money to spare, they've created a genuinely new, decentralized type of company structure, one which is capable of innovating more products and fighting on more fronts at the same time, than a traditional, more top-down, organization.

I'm not wholly convinced they have. But then I'm not wholly convinced they haven't, either. I'm keeping an open mind. But if we see a few more of these bets become successful and profitable, that may signal a Google which is almost unbeatable by more conventional software companies.

Remember this discussion here?

Trouble with third-party widgets at Ning.

Missed this interesting nugget about the shift in Facebook-land.

Umair :

Today, I think there's perhaps a simpler and more powerful way to think strategically about platforms.

Let me advance a simplifying proposition: platforms are markets. The most useful way to think about platforms today is simply as markets.

Of course, I don't entirely agree with him, but a good position to start from.

John Robb on "Containerization", the creation of a new shipping platform.

The Bearhug

Update : now a camp.

Competing for an open (generative) web :

Think about it another way. The main metric that I would use to describe the health of a truly open web is this: That as the ecosystem expands, the raw number of people, companies or groups who hold power inside the ecosystem, and can affect its direction, grows as the ecosystem grows. Put another way, the power center is decentralized over time. Change inside of that ecosystem require more voices to agree that change is good. That’s healthy. And that’s an open web.

Open-source financial trading platform

GigaOm interviews Adobe.

An online carbon platform.

Meanwhile ... Microsoft's cloud-hosted platform : Zurich.

Compare and contrast : the end of broadcast with the triumph of Linux on the "remote" desktop.

Lack of Android exitement, apparently.

Microsoft shake-up : Windows + WindowsLive vs. Online Services

Dare Obasanjo's analysis of the Facebook redesign is well worth a read.

Bill de hÓra on Apple's AppStore.

The appstore is easily the most interesting part of the iPhone, much more than 3G. The appstore imvho means three things. First the carrier deck constraint is shifted away from the operator or default homepages to getting placed on the appstore's core views (like hot, top 25 and new). Second, and this what is drives the first, "embed date stress" is relaxed somewhat. In the mobile handset biz, phone embed dates are king - missing the date is bad because nobody, statistically speaking, downloads applications - whereas the appstore is easy to use. The appstore allows you to have a hit well after the handset launch. Third, "OTA" (over the air) updates will become the normal way of doing things instead of a feature - bad bug? - requirements 180? - protocol upgrade? Push out a new revision the way we do today with desktop applications and browser plugins. As much as Tim Bray doesn't like sharecropping and objective-c, this is a good for SMEs and innovators. I can imagine handset and opcos cloning the appstore model, right down as far as supporting technology, eg Android supporting an OSGi-a-like, and enhanced developer programs to drive applications. (None of this is good for IMS btw).

I think my respect for Michael Arrington just increased somewhat. He's decided to declare war on Microsoft.

It's the zeitgeist, of course.

Gaping Void is talking to Dell about revamping their brand.

My comments :

Seems to me that it's the usual branding vs. commoditization problem. As long as Dell make commodities (PCs) they have no social object to hang a story around. We know what a PC is and what we want from it. Either Dell can give it to us as cheaply as possible or they can't.

If Dell want a social object / brand makeover they have to make products that are differentiated in a way worth talking about. With English Cut and Stormhoek you had a novel story : "a tailor / wine that blogs". With Dell, "a computer company that blogs" isn't going to fly.

Who's making a differentiated PC today? (Apart from Apple who are at a whole other level.) Basically Asus. They have great stories : a whole new form-factor, a whole new price, new technologies (solid state disks), Linux really making things cheaper, etc.

Dell used to have two good stories : "cheaper because we sell direct without dealers" and "you can customize on our web-site and our super-lean process will build to your design in a day". The first story is probably no-longer available. Doesn't *everybody* sell direct? The second seems to have gone AWOL.

"Customizability" could be an idea that Dell still owns. The right web-site, a cute user-interface, could turn computer shopping into an intensely personal Build-a-Bear kind of emotional experience. Dell could offer wider variety of peripherals, accessories etc. They could invest in and promote their supply-chain, gain green credentials through offering you the chance to build "low carbon footprint" PCs from local or lower-polluting sources. They could create an Etsy-like market for casemodders etc.

But they need to have *something* to tell a story about.

Update : what inspiration should Dell take from Nabaztag or Chumby or LiveScribe? The PC is becoming the Device Swarm. How does a traditional, "staid", clone-manufacturer engage with that? Buy the innovative start-ups? Try to make me-too copies? Partner with the originators to sell them with the site? Help foster an eco-system that includes them?

Now Facebook really does open-source it's "Cassandra" Big-Table equivalent.

Yahoo's Open strategy

About time! (If not too late.)

Now, let's see what it gets them. (I have no predictions at this stage.)

Update : Sweet. The mashup-framework is in python (since GAE, becoming the new duct-tape of the web.)

Update 2 : Of course it's not "open-source". I wonder why people thought it was?

What the W3C can do.

Twitter as PayPal killer?

Update : tipit.to

Microsoft utterly defensive on Vista.

More on identi.ca as the open Twitter.

Twitter to buy Summize

Interesting comment on Microsft's Equipt.

Bundling Office suite + tethered security-as-a-service == new business model? And if so, is it one which allows Free Software substitutes to take advantage of? (With proprietary anti-virus vendors as the reseller channel.)

Russell Beattie on Nokia'a Simbian acquisition.

In my mind, there are different types of OS platforms, created for one of several reasons, broadly separated into monetization, control or shared workload. Monetization - as shown by Microsoft - is that if you control a platform that becomes popular, you can charge money for it indefinitely as it's the basis for many other people's work. Control is what Apple and Blackberry do, where they don't license the platform, but use it to ensure they control everything about what happens on their platform and devices. Shared workload is what the Linux folk are about, where even though they lose control and get no fees, they still derive benefits from not having to do everything themselves, and the platform improves and is used more broadly as well with less investment on their part.

Symbian it seems has attempted to do all of this ...

Dave was clearly somewhat wrong about a couple of things here. :-)

I wonder what IBM / Rational's Jazz "collaborative development platform" is, really.

Gnip, a new Ping-Server

Smart-phones squeezed (well, yeah, there's a major world "downturn" ... if not credit-crunch, recession, macro-apocalypse)

But suggests that becoming a "platform" is the way for phone-companies to go. Interesting.

Horses for Courses, I guess.

Seems that what potential employees value from Google and Microsoft are different.

Update : read this.

Here's my take :

We're back to John Hagel's unbundling of corporations into infrastructure providers, customer relations and product innovation. Google still doesn't quite know what it wants to be. Its success is based on big infrastructure, but its culture is one of product innovation.

An open internal market encourages that ... but there are some people who want to work in infrastructure or customer services, they might be happier going back to Microsoft. OTOH, as they go to M$ they'll help make it less innovative.

Google could find itself wrenched between two imperatives ... if it goes infrastructure, it will see the innovators slowly evaporate. If it holds on to the innovators it will see service reliability decrease ... allowing attack from elsewhere.

One solution might be to partition itself into different kinds of companies with different cultures. Another is to split entirely. Google outsourcing infrastructure to Microsoft would be ... well, a turnaround. (Not that I'm predicting it.)

M$, also need to decide, of course.

Is the post-Gates ascendency of Microsoft's "Technical Fellows", described here, a move towards federation I wondered here?

Or is it just the kind of committe that brings paralysis?

Microsoft still dead.

Open-source Simbian is good for Adobe Flash (amongst others)

Dave Winer reiterates that the Twitter platform needs to be open. Good summary.

And here's Google's view of YASN trends.

Good piece from a couple of weeks ago about YASN business models.

Hat-tip Folknology : Googolopoly

Brilliant

Cringely on MobileMe as Microsoft killer.

Tim O'Reilly gives good advice to Microsoft

Microsoft Go Home

Paul Graham called it : Microsoft is Dead - last year.

Maybe that was an exaggeration, but there's a grain of truth. 2008 is the year M$ is obviously in one long, wrenching car-crash.

They are innovating nothing, *leading* in nothing ... Apple owns the major device-swarm platforms (iPod, iPhone). Sure M$ have their own ... but these are simply "me too" efforts ... always following the trends that Apple sets. They might as well be Toshiba or HTC for all the memetic advance they're making.

Apple own the local user experience; and now Apple are hoovering up developers, and with the launch of Adobe's Flex, the Mac may become the standard environment for the cross-platform desktop application developer. (Don't forget you get Ruby on Rails bundled too.) And all the Unix goodness. The Mac is increasingly a luxury brand for important people and those who think they need to keep up with them.

Google have made massive incursions into everything this year, from Application Engine to OpenSocial to their FriendConnect to Android to GData to iGoogle to the revamped Orkut ... they have all bases covered.

Microsoft have been trying to play catch-up here too ... but trying to buy Yahoo revealed colossal FAIL. (A strategy about nothing more than aggregating eyeballs.) Their shift to advertising, aping Google without understanding it, in disarray. Now this : they've been beaten in the only advertising market that really matters.

Suddenly (and really, it's come up quite fast and unexpectedly), it really is too late.

They're no longer a playa who seem to be slipping up a bit. They're *gone*. A has-been. We expect nothing from them. No innovation. Smart people don't want to go work there to help them. Gaping Void's sly, edgy icon is empty. M$ can't change the world any more ... it's already changing too quickly under the seismic influence of Google and Apple and Nintendo. All they can do is try to tag along or watch helplessly from the side-lines ... until it is time to go home.

Apple get the "developers developers developers" religion of platform warring.

Simon Wardley on the open-source Amazon EC2 clone : Eucalyptus.

This is total panic, isn't it?

Or maybe the last desperate attempt at a stand by the Windows / Desktop faction inside M$ ... "we will get it right, next time, honest"?

But they won't. And it doesn't matter. The world has moved on and desktop operating systems are nothing but a strategic red-herring.

The only question, how can M$ elegantly get out of the desktop game? They can't simply abandon it. Open sourcing it is the right thing, long term, but probably too great a cognitive dissonance for now.

So how to keep conveying commitment to windows. How to "do the right thing" support-wise for users. And yet, start to withdraw, gracefully?

Can M$ do it?

ZDNet bloggers on Excel's dominance.

Social networks devalue ads.

Obviously.

Facebook Open Sources large chunk of its platform.

Update : Here it is.

Microsoft Office in Silverlight?

Why Open Source Java will Win SaaS Platform Wars

Slightly odd report of a McKinsey article. It says J2EE and .NET are unsuited to providing Platform-as-a-service which are a growth area. And suggests that open-source is likely to win out.

Where the java comes from, I'm not entirely sure.

Article on the new Adobe CEO and Adobe's future plans

Over on Composing, a PlatformWarsey type post about Google's pursuit of hipness.

Talk about taking over the world!

Google's plan to host all the Ajax libraries you'll ever need is breathtaking.

So, we developers will all routinely hook in to Google's servers whenever we want to use a particular JS library, and, surprisingly, Google will have a couple more ways to add value : statistics and Analytics will be a tick-box away, sharing Google's id system will be an easy upsell to us. It will pull people towards GAE because if you already trust Google to host your js libraries, why not the rest of your application?

Google can embrace and extend the libraries, offering their own extensions, whether the original devlopers want them or not.

And finally, it will become too much trouble to use this stuff any other way.

Wow! Like I say, breathtaking.

(Hat tip Folknology)

Alexander van Elsas seems an intriguingly good blogger.

Read these three stories :

On Skype, iPhone, FriendFeed and suitability of technology to application

A new generation wants to return to privacy, and applications that require privacy? (Another example I'd identify with the coming netocracy).

Marc Canter doesn't compromise.

I wonder how much it would cost to buy Tribe.net ?

If I was a magic money fairy - as opposed to an impoverished programmer - I'd try to find a way to merge Tribe with Behance and DesignOutpost

Behance has a great look and a nice angle of being not only a LinkedIn style directory, but also a kind Getting Things Done consultant, for the "Creative Class".

But it gives little sense of a community or real artistic "scene".

OTOH, Tribe has that in spades. Tribe used to be a fantastic place to have good discussions ... as it has lost attention to the other YASNS, the debates have died out a bit, sadly. But there's no doubt that members feel they're part of something ... a bohemian, creative, tolerant, underground, burner, new age, spiritual, sexually experimental movement.

DesignOutpost is a market for hiring creative people (graphic and sound-designers, web developers etc.) to work in a radically open way. Yet, its profiles are far behind those of Behance or Tribe.

In the talk of consolidation of the YASNS (particularly the dance of M$ and Yahoo, Facebook and MySpace) the motive is simply the lumpen aggregation of eyeballs for advertisers.

But the real as-yet-unlocked value of YASNS is to enable groups to *do* things together. Markets from DesignOutpost to Etsy to Rentacoder are providing one way for people to work together. The interesting thing about my fantasy merger is not the aggregation of eyeballs but the real (am I really, gonna use this word? OMFG! guess I am, take cover) synergy of the activities or communities.

A real social network and creative community which was also a good portfolio manager AND market could create value in a way unimagined by the advertising model of YASNS.

Update 2011 : Some more thoughts on YASN monetization.

How to make Facebook useful again.

Umair :

According to an interesting rumour making the rounds: Microsoft is to acquire Yahoo's search business as well as Facebook, and lock both down, to better take on Google. Microsoft is trying to shift from open to closed.

Good Steve Yegge post about the Emacs wars of the past and to come.

TechCrunch : The Social Network wars begin in earnest

Comcast buys Plaxo... bringing YASNS to television?

The whole tone of this smells very bad.

More about Sun selling JavaFX to broadcasters than to end-users.

Still a couple of things sound good.

JavaFX script? WTF?

Unlike many other Java scripting languages, JavaFX Script is statically typed and will have most of the same code structuring, reuse, and encapsulation features that make it possible to create and maintain very large programs in Java

A scripting language designed for client-side RIAs which has the static typing that you need for "large programs". If ever there was self-serving, self-deluding talk it's Third, enterprises want to reuse their existing Java skills and assets in moving to RIA.. Are enterprises going to write RIA client widgets?

Widgets will get written by small, clever independents. Or more likely, graphic designers who started with Photoshop and Dreamweaver and painfully taught themselves Flex the way they taught themselves PHP. They won't get written by the mass-armies of mediocre java-school programmers who live inside the enterprise.


Meanwhile Project Caroline is allegedly their answer to Google Application Engine.

Interesting Microsoft Visual Basic / Facebook development kit

Scepticism about MySpace data-portability.

Interesting discussion about the nature of Twitter and why it's not distributable, at least not as a bunch of RSS-type feeds.

Now everyone is at the Yasn-as-platform game.

MySpace

Facebook

Google (Friend Connect comming soon)

Microsoft have to buy / partner with MySpace or Facebook now or lose their place in the Yasn-as-platform game.

A smart, medium sized company who'd also like to get into this would be looking at Ning.

Hat-tip Exmosis : another example of the error of assuming that YASN members and their attention == old-media eyeballs.

Update - Dave Winer : is MySpace opening up?

Facebook's evil DNA is turning self-destructivef?

Yahoo should be broken up. End of story.

There are great products inside Yahoo, eg. Flickr. Some big services which are world-beaters.

The problem is, anyone big enough to buy Yahoo outright (like Google or M$) already has their own version of a lot of these ... and would have to start killing off either their own or Yahoo's.

If Yahoo isn't big or coherent enough to survive on its own, then the next best thing is to blow itself up into a number of higher value independent units. Let each go out and thrive, die or get bought on its own merits.

...

Unless ... of course ...

what was Cringely saying again, about Apple wanting to be in the media distribution game?

No Microhoo

Could Cringely have been right, all along?

O'Reilly analyzing Facebook Apps.

Cringely thinks Apple are ready to buy Adobe. Mainly to get Flash

Adobe OpenScreen

FriendFeed, the hot new aggregator is more than 50% Twitter.

The Twitter eco-system seems unstoppable.

Update : more on Twitter as social router.