Web 2.0 Thoughts

technorati tags: ugly, israeli

I have recently upgraded my Fedora 4 installation to Fedora 5, while admiring Fedora's ability to produce a new version every 6 months, while Microsoft is struggling with its new operation system for what seems like a decade.

When my beloved Linux box restarted following the upgrade, and for the following two days - it became apparent what makes Vista so late, and what makes Fedora so quick to release new versions.

Backwards compatibility.

Following my fedora upgrade many components were broken on my system. My Ruby On Rails applications broke down - their dependency libraries, such as rmagick and bdb stopped working. some of my KDE components did not upgrade due to package conflicts - in short - I had to spend about a day to resolve all the issues, and I'm still getting some very weired behavior from my KDE desktop and a couple of system services.

When Microsoft releases a new operation system to the market, it must check it is compatible with hundreds of thousand software packages, thousands of hardware devices and infinite array of configurations, languages, time zones - you name it. Microsoft can't allow its upgrade to ever fail. It can't relay on its user to download and compile the new kernel.

The nature of desktop software is that once you have shipped it - fixing glitches and bugs is a costly and a highly complex feat. Web based services, on the other hand - are much simpler to manage.

Imagine a world where your operation system, windows, is managed on an Internet server. Imagine how easy it would be for Microsoft to upgrade their operation system for all its world-wide users. It, too, will transform is deployment model into "a continuous release of upgrades and features" replacing the "one version every 10 years" approach currently dictated by its distribution model. It could compete with Google and Yahoo's rate of software release cycles.

That's why I like projects like YouOS the idea behind it is exciting. But what kind of technologies such an idea needs in order to bemore reality? what kind of hardware should be standard practice for it to work?

On the software side, a dynamic, easily extensible language is needed. Javascript, which is YouOs choice, just won't cut it. It lacks the "power" of defining meta languages and high-level models of its world. This task is a perfect match for languages such as Lisp or the more popular, and almost as powerful Ruby. These dynamic languages, who has no distinction between "run-time" and "design-time" will allow software vendors to write OS extensions. Software components made by different vendors could communicate without needing the OS "manufacturer" to extend the "API". Such an operation system and its facilities could be "grown" and developed by the application writers and make it more powerful and feature-rich with every new application that is added. In a way, every applications' libraries and "procedures" will be available to all other applications with minimum effort. They must all conform to some basic "behavior" protocol which can be self-moderated by the community. Security will be a hell to deal with - but current state is not much better.

The network IS the operation system. and if it's not - there's a powerful, living software environment operation system that is easily extendible.

technorati tags: ruby, lisp, operation system, guy tavor, web, vista

Spotback is a news personalization reader. It is a superior product (altough it might need some of the buttons taken off the screen) due to two main reasons:

1. you can read the stories without leaving spotback - each story has a "more" link which opens up a layer with the complete story.

2. Its addictive thanks to its responsivness. as you rate a story that you've just read, spotback immediately displays new suggested stories based on your profile (no reload).

No doubt - the best newsreader / personalizer around. GYM must pick it up soon.

technorati tags: news, reader, personalization

Just wrote the Ruby On Rails article for the hebrew wikipedia. The article is partly translated from the english wikipedia, partly written by me.

technorati tags: ruby on rails, wikipedia, hebrew, guy tavor

I have recently experimented with writing an "web 2.0" desktop gadgets, both for Google and live.com (Microsoft).

I've been developing software since the age of 9. Long stretches of that time I worked exclusively with MS based technologies. Today - I use non of MS technologies for development / deployment. The reason is not a "releigous" one. I am not, by any means a "anti-Microsoft" kind of guy. Not at all. Its just that somewhere along the line, Miscrosoft technologies have grown too complex to master and use, to cumbersome, while refreshing new alternative came along.

Writing components / gadgets for a web-based homepage is no different. While writing a Newzingo google homepage module was a breeze, I am still struggling developing one for Live.com. Reasons?

1. MS code base is complex.

2. There is no support for XMLHTTPRequest proxying of data, thus a component can not use the XMLHTTPReqeust object to call on a different domain using the Microsoft "Framework" (Google supplies a neat JS call to do just that)

3. oh my oh my. In order to debug your component, you need to.... You guessed it! close your browser and restart it every time you change the JS code. Back to the "Restart windows" days.

What's really sad about his whole experience, from engineering point of view, that there is no real reason why the Live.com component development should be such hell. (XML hell replaces DLL hell?). The answer, I guess, is that Microsoft's engineers are just not professional / good / smart enough.

technorati tags: live.com, start.com, google homepage, comparison, api

Another great site from Mathew Spolin:

http://geekcrack.com