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6/29/2006 MSFT does Wiki or does Wiki do MSFT?To me Wikis are an excellent means of eliciting distributed knowledge for the purpouse of creating a loosely coupled knowledge exchange. Think of collaborative team blogging and you are pretty much on the mark with what a Wiki does. Within organisations we would call that intellectual property (IP) or a knowledge management system, but to everyone else its basically a public knowledge base on a particular topic. Right now Google seems to be the indexing engine for everything including Wikis. But once people start to realise the power of contextual recursive queries (a mouthful I know - ie. recursive search refinements), you will end up with a very powerful "Oracle" of wisdom. Google presently with its page raking technology sort of does this, but a truely semantic web will seriously benefit from improved contextual search semantics. However, this means sharing all our search queries with search engines - and we don't want to do that just yet. Detailed user profiles can be quickly built that way – sadly that kind of gets in the way of privacy on the Internet. But not so within the corporate boundaries. Now picture this... Is it any surprise that the Microsoft SharePoint team has now added Blogging and Wikis into their latest version? Nope. Sharepoint is supposed to be the enterprise knowledge management system with document libraries on steroids - right? And they are continually improving their search technology - its not contextual yet but they will get there or perhaps an ISV will beat them to it with a plug-in. So while initially most people (corporate especially) are going to be very surprised at the inclusion of a Wiki and Blog support in Sharepoint, the end game strategy behind the product is pretty clever. Next I am just going to have to wait for the Sharepoint Community Edition product which only does blogs and wikis. Until then why don't you guys browse over to the new MSDN Wiki and contribute a few brain cycles and keystrokes to improvements in the MSDN documentation. Click over to it here http://msdnwiki.microsoft.com. 6/25/2006 Microsoft Groove TechnologyMicrosoft's Groove Virtual Office Beta2 absolutely rocks! This is the next killer network application for knowledge workers - if you think that File Server, IM and email are important - Groove is right up there!
The Architecture and Strategy team at KAZ that I am working with are all getting slowly addicted to it at the moment. It has a viral impact on those that use it, as its smoothly bypasses firewalls and improves team collaboration. With IM, peer-2-peer file replication, issue tracker, meeting items, shared calendar etc, it's a delight to use.
It's so good, that I've even started talking some of my Microsoft buddies into using it and almost everyone else that I know...
Being an "architect" geek that I am, I have had an urge to know how it works under the hood. So now I do.
Some time back, Damien Hogan managed to find and send me a PDF document that described the XML messaging protocol that Groove uses. In a nutshell, Groove uses a workgroup and server based replication models which simply copy blocks of data/messages between all member devices within a common workspace.
Local nodes hold an encrypted copy (database) of the workspace, so that you have N number of workspace copies scattered on every member user's device (on up to 3 devices per user). So should your HD fail you'll be able to recreate the workspace from all other active user replicas.
In a LAN environment nodes self discover and go into a peer-2-peer replication mode (no server required). While the public Internet Groove Server may also be accessed to include all other members of the workgroup scattered across the WAN. In the end all members receive peer updates of changes within their workgroup as long as at least 1 node is online.
This P2P WAN/LAN model is very cool as this is a great example of what Indigo (Windows Communication Foundations - WCF) features could provide you with - once you actually start coding against it. FYI, Groove does not actually use Indigo but uses its own implementation.
So what other products are out there that can compete with Groove? Hmmmm.. not much at the moment. So if you have a few thousand spare coding hours up your sleeve, why not build a competing product and capture the rest of the world market? Of course you'd want to write it in .Net!
 Before you attempt to do that, you'll have to read up on the IETF's BEEP protocol (RFC3080/3081) which describes an XML messaging protocol. This is a great start, but then you'll also need to spend the rest of the time studying up on lots of others. Btw, there appears to be a lack of managed BEEP libraries out there at the moment - shame! But some Java and ActiveX libs are floating around. Check out the official BEEP web site for more info.
And finally, the the only competing product that I could find was Novell open source sponsored iFolder.com project. Its written in .Net and runs on multiple platforms. Sadly, it only enables file replication and none of the other features of Groove. But should they decide to add Jabber support and a few more features it could be an interesting thing to follow.
Until then... Groove will rock the world! I kid you not, this is the birth time of a killer knowledge worker application!
5/26/2006 Chess of Business ModelsA new game seems to be afoot.
Do you remember playing chess as a child and learning that the first few moves decide the final outcome of the game? Well Microsoft has applied this strategy time and time again as part of an aggressive new product development mentality. This time I am referring to their announcement of the Pay-As-You-Go Personal Computing initiative, also called FlexGo. The idea is simple: sell PCs with Microsoft software pre-loaded on them for say 1/3 of the original price (more affordable), and then have a timer that counts down from 800hrs down. When the counter reaches zero, you're out of credits, and need to recharge your PC!
Does it sound like the pre-paid Mobile market model to you? Yup, but this time its for computers. The Microsoft angle here is that for those that can not afford to buy a PC outright, they can instead buy through incremental payments and ultimately pay it off. So all you do is use a pre-paid card, the phone or the internet to top it up "PC" account, and bingo the computer lets you continue to work on it when recharged. MSFT has been trialing this in "developing countries" and it sounds like a success so far. Remember MSFT will only go for vertical markets that are worth the effort, so I am sure this is no surprise to those of you familiar with the pyramid/triangular model of a market segment. Those few at the top are wealthy and can afford to pay (a premium) for a product, but as you go down to the lower levels of the market pyramid, there are more people that can afford to pay less for a product. So if you get your numbers to add up right and pitch at the right part of the market, and say charge 23 million people to pay you only a $1 per hour of use/per month, then you're going to make way more money than by only servicing those at the apex of the pyramid. Or by selling the product once. How much money do the Telecom operators make on SMS messages? You don't see the dollars add up that fast but over months and years you contribute large amounts to the telecom operators’ profit margins. This is the mass market and economy of scale world. What is even more interesting, is that this model aims at those who are not so well off. The developing countries that are cash strapped and hungry for new technology and information - those that we often call the "information poor". Some quick calculations reveal that 800hrs is about 20 business weeks (40hrs) of constant use ... and if we count this using Microsoft Minutes (like the one's that count up and down during file transfers and software install) you could possibly get a few more weeks usage before a recharge. And after that if you couldn't afford to pay anymore, would it be Linux install time? 8-) Now I feel that "G"oogle Desktop coming out next week.... and can almost see their desktop search technology throwing in sponsored text ads in between your search results - which actually pay for your subscription "free" desktop PC! I am not sure how much of a good thing the subscription MSFT PC will be... Only time will tell and the next few moves will be interesting to watch... so like many other great Microsoft ideas (aka HailStorm - software as a service) this is the first set of early moves in the game of corporate chess and profits. 5/25/2006 Melbourne MEDC 2006 and Unlocking your SmartPhoneDevelopers, Developers, Developers… love Mobile Devices! Hope you all have a great day tomorrow at MEDC 2006 in Melbourne. And I hope you all enjoy my session on Data in the Windows Mobile World, and equally enjoy the demos delivered in most of the MEDC mobile sessions by Nick Randolp (Device MVP). For those of you that manage to get your hands on the new HTC Windows Mobile 5 (SP5) devices and are keen to start developing on them, you must first unlock them for development. If you don’t your VS2005 development adventures will be rather short lived and frustrating. The 101 Guide to Unlocking your SP5 device: Download the following:
Next steps to follow are:
When it starts up, you will be able to deploy applications to the device and start building your apps with Visual Studio 2005 – Enjoy! 4/13/2005 MS Developer Show#2 - Out Now!I've had a pretty interesting day today. Heck, I could almost say I have one of those every day, so much usually happens in it. Let me start and work it backwords.
Enuff of my rummblings... Adios Amigos and hope you tune into (download!) my PodCast MS Developer Show... I need some sleep now! ZZZzzzzzzzz 4/3/2005 The Microsoft Developer Show - Out Now!Yes! I have finally done it! Cameron Reilly from The Podcast Network asked if I would be willing to do a developer centric show on their network. After some thinking about it, I did agree to devote whatever spare time I have in my day to delivering a radio-like show. Thus The Microsoft Developer Show was born! The first episode is now available from the podcast network at the following URL: http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com/msdev/ Go and check it out RIGHT NOW! Have a listen and let me know how I can make it better and more interesting. I want to make it unique and listener centric so I am TOTALLY open to suggestions and ideas! Go grab it and let me know your thoughts! 3/3/2005 The joys of WarDriving
I confess I have warchalked (minus the chalking) way before people even knew about it. As a matter of fact, a little bit of Australian pop trivia for you all. Question: Who set up Australia’s longers WiFi multi-hop link using 802.11? Well more recently, ahmmm… last night I decided to do a bit of drive around my local neighborhood. The results were a little predictable but also unexpected. I had my GPS with me so ended up recording the locations as well, which gives a whole new depth to the kinds of data that is available now on my trusty laptop. With my Microsoft MapPoint account and Australian maps I could plot these now. Hmmm..Would anyone want to see these? 8-) As it turned out, the business section and the mall had a lot of WiFi APs but most of them were WEP enabled. Which was great to see - well done folks! However, there were some completely open and almost all the ones in the private areas of my drive by area were completely insecure. I didn’t stop and try to access of these but these certainly looked very “available” for abuse! Very very scary stuff indeed! Esp since one handed me an IP a little too quickly. So here are the statistics. In the 20 minutes that I spent driving around (covering as many blocks side by side consistently) I found a total of 38 access points (APs). Of those 12 were completely insecure, which means that approximately 31.5% of all APs in my region are open to abuse. Sadly, most of these are domestic which means that I am sure there are people taking advantage of “Free downloads & bandwidth” and getting unusually high MB counts on their bills. Guys, so what sorts of stats are you seeing in your neighborhoods and regions? Does any one know or care? Also, would any of you be interested in WarDriving activities in and around Melbourne? I had some ideas for WarDriving games on weekends, if I can find enough of interested people to get the numbers up. I was thinking of FoxHunting like games with mobile APs! 8-) |
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