web2expo

Vox has a new look since I last logged in -- I like it!

I got back from the web 2.0 expo, had improv class, and uploaded some pics to flickr.

'fetti

I had twitter enabled on my Samsung cell -- I wonder how much text messages cost again -- and found it a bit more interesting when the people on my list are tweeting from nearby, and directly to my cell.

I've been borrowing a Nokia N800 from a prof, but frankly, it's not that great of a device thus far. I need to stack something on top of the charger to get it to actually charge, it seems to lose its battery pretty quickly when not in use (like two days?), it's easy to lose the stylus, and it's pretty slow to just start up. It's not a device that's easy to whip out, turn on, and get to work. You need to wait a while for it to boot up, or switch to the web browser.

I first heard Kevin Lynch talk about Apollo -- I think there's a future here -- and earlier in the day read that MSFT announced WPF/E as, what was it, Brighthouse? Oh, Silverlight.

I twittered that "Spock demo - women as objects. Great." So, you spock for tech bloggers and get white males, and you spock for fashion models, filter for redheads, and show them on a grid? Gee.

My impression, thumbs down. Google should just throw an intern at it if anybody actually cares.

Chatted with a guy from Dekoh, asked him why folks would use Dekoh instead of Apollo, OpenLazlo, etc. He answered Java. Sorry, not interested. Build webapps with a language that's even less agile, with crappy support for interaction design and prototyping? Let's not.

Asked the Zimki folks if they see it a problem that they're building webapps, server-side, with JavaScript on top of SpiderMonkey which, last I checked, nobody else seems to do. JotSpot used Rhino, got gobbled up, and who knows what kind of battles they wage within the Googoo walls. As others point out, it's not really the language that's the thing, but the libraries, and as far as I can tell, JavaScript has made great strides, client-side, in its libraries (JQuery and YUI stand out to me), but server-side JavaScript? It's doable, but it seems you'd have to fight to get uphill.

The QEDWiki fellows weren't around, but I chatted with a guy who brought Dojo/AJAX support to WebSphere at Big Blue, and grilled the OpenKapow 100MB+ download dudes about their definition of mashups. Surprisingly, they agreed that there is a difference between data mashups and webapp mashups, but by my definition, they don't let you build webapp mashups, but by their definition (mashups as recombinated services) they do.

There were a number of these enterprise-y SOA slash data mashup folks, and mostly it seemed the companies that came were the bigger corporate guys. Chatted with the Sunlight Foundation guys -- wished them luck -- but didn't run into Chris Wilson or Avi Bryant just yet.

There wasn't anything there, that made me go wow, but I ran into a few folks that I had met before -- the Valley/SF ain't that big a place -- and I tried to tune my dev-dar along the way. Web2Open doesn't start til tomorrow (Tues), and I'm hoping that'll be more interesting a space.

(Saw the Vox logo on a Nokia booth, but didn't snap a shot.)