Technology
Larry Lessig’s Talk – Software Patents and Free Culture
The amazing Larry Lessig now on Slideshare (with audio). His presentation on patents and its impact free culture is an instant classic.
Three Years of Flickr: My Top Ten Pictures – Part 2
So here are my top five pictures on Flickr (ranked by number of views). It seems that Flickr users are primarily interested in girls (no surprise here) and computer memorabilia (probably also no surprise given the number of geeks who use Flickr).
#5 Girls in Tub @ Tao in Las Vegas (1380 views)
I took that picture less then a year ago when I was partying with some friends at the Tao night club in the Venetian. The club is great, but I still prefer the Sunday School parties at Body English (Hard Rock Hotel).
#4 Friendly Elevator Service (1388 views)
I was staying in the Hilton for the ASUG annual conference in Anaheim. The girls were there for another event (obviously) and had hijacked the elevator. Back then Craig Cmehil, who commented on the picture, was still a software developer at Hella. How times change. Now he is a Community Evangelist at SAP and probably is traveling more then me.
#3 Original Apple 1 (1542 views)
Another cellphone camera picture taken at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. If you are ever in the Bay Area make sure you visit this great exhibition. They also have a good speaker series.
#2 Adobe Illustrator 1.0 (1626 views)
More views then the Apple 1 picture… Makes me proud to work at Adobe. It is amazing what a loyal community of users Adobe has in the creative community. Who knows, maybe one day my first Apollo application picture will be featured in the Computer History Museum.
#1 Girls Gone Wild (19,028 views and counting)
Well, what can I say… I posted this picture on Flickr with the specific purpose to get many views. A little experiment to see how many people would find and view a photo with cute girls and tag baits. Eventually I put it also into four photo pools. While I expected about 1000 views the result was astonishing. Over 19,000 views (10 times more then any other of my Flickr pictures). Also even so the photo is over 2 years old the number of views continues to increase at a steady rate. I have to admit that I even didn’t take this picture. While I was working at a trade show in Vegas my brother Thomas and his friend had fun at the Palms Hotel pool and they took the picture with my camera.
I will check back again in three years and lets see if any other of my pictures will get more views eventually. I heard that cute baby pictures are also popular 😉
Three Years of Flickr: My Top Ten Pictures – Part 1
Today I wondered which of my Flickr photos have the most views. I hadn’t checked for a while so some in the top ten were surprises.
Lets start with #10 At the Pool of the Palms (963 views)
This is the only picture in the top ten which does not have a proper name on Flickr. It was taken at the pool of the Palms hotel in Las Vegas. My brother is ordering a drink from a hot waitress. Initially I was wondering why this is in the top ten but then I realized it is right next to the number 1 picture…
#9 Homebrew Computer Club Retrospective (1232 views)
Taken with a cell phone camera at the 30th anniversary of the Homebrew Computer Club at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. This is one of a number of pictures in the top 10 with a lot of geek appeal. Hey it even features Steve Wozniak.
#8 My little handheld computing history exhibition (1267 views)
Another computer history related picture. This collection actually sits in a corner of my office. My favorite is the Sony MagicLink in the back. Back in 1996 I worked on an interesting project between a German telecommunication company and General Magic.
#7 Prototype Ebay client based on Adobe Apollo (1273 views)
This is the newest top ten picture. It was taken at the 2006 Adobe Max conference. I think this was the first time the E-Bay Apollo Prototype was demonstrated in public. Time will tell if this becomes a historic photo (I certainly hope so).
#6 Crowded Booth at SAP TechEd 2005 in Vienna (1301 views)
I have no idea how this picture made it to number 5. I assume it was linked in a Blog or on the SAP Developer Network. I guess never underestimate the power of the SAP developer ecosystem.
The top 5 will come soon. So look out for my next post, including the number 1 picture with 18862 views (and counting).
Adobe Flex Goes Open Source
Big news from Adobe. This will make Flex the de-facto standard for Rich Internet Applications.
read more | digg story
O’Reilly uncovers the future of the Web…
Well it is not quite April fools day yet, but Nat Torkington from O’Reilly has posted this hillarious entry on his blog. We all know the semantic Web is around the corner… not (watched Borat yesterday).
Thirteen years ago I started to work in the area of electronic data interchange between companies. The biggest challenge was to get an agreement on the semantics of the message (just look at the numerous ways a Name and Address Field can be qualified) and have different applications interpret the data in the same way. The UN standard EDIFACT, as complex as it is, went a long way, but then came XML which was supposed to solve everything. What a lot of people did not understand then is that XML is just syntax and the semantic problem was still not solved. Until today the electronic exchange of business data in a many to many scenario remains challenging. But I am digressing. Here are some of my favorite parts of Nat’s post:
2010: Semantic Web developers release a new XML format. This will be hailed as the final step to the completion of Web 3.0.
They’ll skip version 7, and release “Firefox X”. X will support RSS for blogs, IM, twitter, and the new communication system that flashes updates from your friends every 2 seconds in yellow on black 64pt type as you work. “Crack”, as the system will be called, will be so addictive that it drives sales of Firefox X through the roof… As the corpses stack up in city streets, the professional time-wasting class known as Knowledge Workers will have been eliminated from the world.
First Apollo public alpha available on Adobe Labs
Ryan Stewart was the first to blog it. The Alpha version of the Adobe client runtime code named Apollo is available for public download on http://labs.adobe.com. Could Apollo ring in the beginning of a new class of desktop applications programmed with web technologies?
read more | digg story
Adobe Splashes into Web 2.0 with myFeedz Social Newspaper
Adobe just released on Adobe Labs a web application called myFeedz. Based on your personal profile, your tags and your reading behavior it will present you news stories based on RSS feeds and web sites which are relevant for you. It has a very slick AJAX UI. Looks like the Netflix movie suggestion feature for RSS feeds and web site. Its for free so try it now.
read more | digg story
My Top 3 Posts in 2006 + Bonus Video
As a a father of a 6 week old baby I am fairly busy with little time to blog. However today I took the time to review my Blog statistics for 2006 (well I started this Blog in July 2006). The result is a bit surprising to me. I expected that the core topic I am writing about, Rich Internet Applications and the adoption in the enterprise software space and particularly SAP would be of most interest to my Blog readers. Turns out that the most read post on this topic ranks only number 3. It is my report on the SDN Day in Las Vegas and also benefited from the Scoble effect, since I met him for the first time at the show and he did a brief interview with me. Reminds me that I never saw a published version of that interview… well he has a lot of content and this probably fell through the grid 
Validating the long tail theory, number 2 is my posting featuring Trial Bike videos on YouTube. Bike Trial is certainly a sport not widely know around the world. Yet my post about it got significant views from Readers who were searching for keywords “Trial Bike Videos” on Google. Highly specialized content continues to rule the Internet. There is a sequel to this story. I sent a link of the posting to my friend Volker, who introduced my to Bike Trial back in 1988 and he just emailed me that for Christmas he got a new trial bike from Koxx. So he is ready for more action. He also sent me a link to this extreme trial bike video which clearly tops all my previous videos.
Coming to Number 1… Recently Shel Israel gave a number of tips on how to improve Blogs to make them more interesting. He states “It is better to be useful then boring”. While it seems obvious, it is easier said then done. My post on “How to embed YouTube videos into a WordPress blog” clearly hit a nerve with many people out there and based on the comments proved to be very useful. So maybe it is not a surprise after all that it received the most visits in 2006.
I am curious how Blog traffic will change in 2007 and what topics will be on this list in a year from now. Happy New Year!
In Search for the Adobe Apollo “Killer App”
Today Michael Arrington covers Apollo, the Adobe runtime which supports web applications on the desktop, on both TechCrunch and in an interview with Kevin Lynch on TalkCrunch. The coverage spawned a number of reactions on the web and a top position on Techmeme. While Apollo is not released yet the interest is positive and people like Alex Barnett, Ryan Stewart and Amy Bellinger predict that 2007 will be the year of Rich Internet Applications.
While the initial focus of Apollo sample apps is very consumer oriented (e.g. E-Bay client or MP3 Player) I have been contemplating for the last year how Apollo could be used as a Rich Client for Enterprise Applications. I had a number of good discussions with various people from SAP as well as SAP customers. The key capabilities enterprise users are looking for are usability, performance, offline abilities and desktop application integration. I presented my thoughts for the first time in May at the Americas SAP User Group Conference in Orlando.
Back in May the interest was fairly limited but some early adopters realized the potential impact Apollo could have on the way we interact with enterprise applications. Since then the interest has significantly increased, especially since Shai Agassi discussed SAP’s project Muse at SAPPHIRE.
Here are some use cases for Apollo:
– CRM client for Account Managers with offline support
– Client for Employee and Manager Self Services
– Dedicated client for Support Staff and Field Services (see also the recording of the SAP Flex Demo)
– Enterprise Performance Analytics Widgets
I predict that significant adoption of Rich Clients in the enterprise will follow about two years after the adoption for consumer apps. IT departments tend to be conservative and there are still a number of difficult issues to solve, incl. the security of offline content and local system access. Also the synchronization between online and offline usage is a challenging topic and it will be critical to figure out which information is stored for offline usage for a particular user.
Mike Chambers has a link to a 10 minute video interview / discussion with Christian Cantrell of the Apollo team on his Blog.
For ongoing news about RIAs and Adobe Apollo see RIApedia, the new Blog from Mike potter (Developer Relations at Adobe) and check out this cool yourminis app.
My Two Upcoming Events (Somewhat Related)
There are currently only two entries in my Upcoming.org event list, but both are very special and I am looking forward to attend them. They are also quite different, but somehow related (I cover that later).
Next week Monday I will participate in the third Web Monday Silicon Valley in Palo Alto. This informal meeting which allows participants to cover all aspects around Web 2.0 originated in Germany and is now established in the Bay Area as well. If you are interested to learn more about the Web 2.0 scene in Germany and discuss or present your ideas make sure to sign up. I attended the first meeting and presented Flex development on top of SAP. If time permits and people are interested I might even talk a little bit about Apollo and show some demos.
If you are interested in chameleons or reptiles in general you might want to visit the San Jose Reptile Show on Saturday, November 11. If our baby boy is not born by then I will certainly be there and discuss chameleon breeding with the experts. Last time when I attended the show they had an amazing variety of reptiles on the showfloor.
So how are these two events related? Well Web Monday discusses technology innovations in Germany… SuSE Linux is from Germany and has a chameleon as a logo… Chameleons are being shown at the San Jose Reptile Show… and now I feel kind of stupid for writing that. Time to go to the gym.
