Related link: http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/stats_toolbox/article

So I was looking for statistics about browsers. The standard usage statistics— things like “14% of users are browsing the web using Internet Explorer 4.5″

While I was looking, I ran across the above URL. Which has a great collection of random (and undifferentiated) statistics. From server shipments in the first quarter of this year to the average number of MP3 downloads (broken down by age) to “how broadband users use their computers,” it’s quite a collection.

Related link: http://toolbar.google.com/

I used to think of Google as a search engine. You know: you type in some keywords and get some search results back. An astonishingly good search engine, of course. But pretty much in the same category as the other engines like altavista or hotbot. But, I’m gradually discovering, Google is more useful, and more interesting, than any other search engine.

The secret to this new way of thinking about Google is the Google Toolbar (you can download and install the google toolbar from the url above). The toolbar is a quick download, and it’s very very convenient to use, even if you’re just doing ordinary searches (in particular, the yellow marker is a simple, and wonderful, thing).

The Google toolbar makes different types of searches easier.

Here’s an example. Go to a web-site for an interesting technology. For example, go to Kenemea’s web site. Kenamea is an interesting, cutting edge, technology company founded by Bob Pasker (of Weblogic fame).

Now click on the page info menu from the toolbar and then choose backward links. Presto– a nicely categorized list of places on the internet that link to Kenamea. You can find all sorts of interesting stuff this way. For example, I know now about OS Opinion, which I had never heard of before (but which looks suspiciously like CRM Daily). And Ipedo, a small company which apparently makes some sort of XML database.

Even more fun: follow a backward link, then follow another backward link. From Kenemea to Redherring to Ipedo to DeepX, which has some fairly nice XML cheatsheets available for download. And somehow I wound up looking at Robert Cringely’s weekly ‘I like It’ list, which is also pretty interesting (especially if you click then use the toolbar’s up folder button and see the directory with all the old lists).

I’m aware that search engines have had this capability for a while. The big difference is that now I know how to use it. Before the Google toolbar, I would have had to go and look up some obscure syntax on some reference web page every time I wanted to look for “links to the current page.”

Now, I just click on a pulldown menu.

And that, a simple UI change, is all the difference. By lowering the barrier to slightly different types of searches, google is changing the way I think about looking for information on the web.

Related link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000002UI8/ref=m_art_li_1/002-2049831-006…

Together at last, in one great package deal.
MC Hammer’s greatest hits AND Barry Mailow’s
ultimate album (check out the combination package under the text “Great Buy”).

Related link: http://scpd.stanford.edu/scpd/students/DAM_UI/pages/VideoList.asp?CourseInfo=MSa…

These are the on-line archives of a Stanford course on entrepreneurship. Streaming Video of all the lectures. Mostly VC types (Vinod Khosla, Steve Jurvetson) with a smattering of tech innovators (Larry Page). High quality content. Why would you ever read Wired when you could see an hour long presentation by one of these guys?

Related link: http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2002/05/22/borland.html

O’Reilly Network contributor Andy Patrizio reports on Borland’s developer conference (BorCon), held down in Anaheim, CA this week. According to Andy, “…Borland, which sees itself as the Switzerland of developer tools, plays in all markets, and plans to support Microsoft’s
.NET platform.”

So, in the spirit of this neutrality, Borland invited one of Java’s founding fathers, Sun Fellow James Gosling, and a C# pioneer, Microsoft Chief (.NET) Architect Anders Hejlsberg, to its conference. According to Andy, James talk was retro. Surprisingly, James did not talk about Web services for Java, the Java API for XML (JAX) Pack and more. Anders talked about Web services and the new CLR, which is out to break the limitations of the past by offering interoperability of objects. Read more for details in his report.

Overall, it sounds like Borland wants to be the programming interoperability solutions provider and bridge between Java and .NET and Web services, just as it has before with Java and CORBA and more. It also appears that Borland is positioned to support Windows developers with a combination of tools: Delphi (with .NET support), C++Builder and JBuilder. I wouldn’t be surprised if Borland even considers a C#Builder IDE, sometime in the future. Interesting, this is happening after Borland announced or hinted that they would no longer support Windows developers and/or environment going forward at a recent LinuxWorld. Or perhaps, they were just referring to the Win APIs, and not .NET. I guess they see the potential revenue that .NET can generate for them.

Anyway, it sounds like an interesting conference and a good time.

Solaris 9 is now a Web app server player. As announced by Sun’s Sun ONE group today, Solaris 9 OS now incorporates a J2EE Web application server, formerly the iPlanet Web application server. What a difference a year can make as I look at the J2EE Web application server market and its players?

A year ago, the J2EE Web application server market was led by BEA followed by Oracle and IBM. iPlanet, Bluestone, Borland, Sybase, IONA and more made up the final quarter or so in market share for this area.

Now, Sun has taken an apparently successful strategy shift by giving up on, at least, the iPlanet brand and division. Instead, it has put Sun ONE in the forefront as a group which manages a comprehensive software solution for its Solaris developers, which includes Solaris OS, J2EE Web application server, Forte for Java IDE (with Web services) and more.

This in combination with the lack of confidence in performance for Oracle’s 9i Web app and database suite as well as even the HP-Compaq merger has insured that Sun maintains at least a strong third place in market share position. In regards to HP-Compaq, the San Jose Mercury News reports speculation that this merged entity HP may drop its Bluestone business in favor of bundling the BEA WebLogic server suite with its HP-UX. Does this signal interest that HP may even consider acquiring BEA Systems? It would make sense and put HP on an even more equal hardware-software solution footing with IBM and Sun. Time will tell.

For now, the J2EE Web application server market is still led by BEA (~ 22%), followed by IBM (~ 20%) and now Sun (~ 17-19%). Now rounding out the list is Oracle, which has dropped down to a distant 4th spot, followed by the likes of Bluestone, Borland, Sybase and IONA (not in order).

What do you think of the shifting market?

Related link: http://conferences.oreillynet.com/etcon2002/

The O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference this year has been great. But don’t just take my word for it — take a look at what Cory, Wes, Rael, Meg, Dan, Jason, Dave, Matt, or any number of other bloggers have to say about it.

All of the hyperbole, trend-surfing, and blow-driers of the Internet-era conferences are thankfully (for the most part) absent from ETech. What’s left is a great collection of geeks who are excited about technology. Some of them are people I’ve been seeing at conferences for years — like Brad Templeton. In 1994, the first time I bought a Sun box and set up a commercial Web site, I called UUNet first and Brad’s company ClariNet (”the first .com”) second. He’s probably the best conference heckler I’ve seen. Others are people I met during the Internet era, who have found a post-bubble home and are still ethusiastic absent the overwhelming commercial incentive — people like Cory Doctorow. When Nelson and I met Cory in 2000, he left us Keanu-ized (”Whoa.”) and happy to have met him. I’m glad he’s still around, and I’m glad there’s a conference like this to bring this group together.

So often at conferences I’ll pass someone once or twice or maybe chat with them for a bit, and wonder what more they would say if I knew them better. With so many Webloggers in one place, I wind up having a chance to know. Some of them are people I’ve met, but many of them are people I haven’t talked to or wouldn’t even recognize if I saw them. Their blogs give me a glimpse into what they might be telling their friends about their experiences here — an omniscient narrative of a shared experience. Yesterday I saw Dave Winer, whom I’ve never met, look down a row of seats to see another conference attendee reading Dave’s blog, Scripting News, on a WiFi-enabled laptop. Dave leaned over and whispered something about it to the guy next to him, but I was too far away to hear it. Now I know.

Related link: http://www.reason.com/0205/fe.mg.hollywood.shtml

So here’s the thing that puzzles me: articles like the one above (or the similar, though far more biased, one available from
fortune magazine) always seem to assume that there are two communities (Hollywood and Silicon Valley) and our goal ought to be to find a compromise that keeps both industries happy and thriving.

Why is that?

Do we need Hollywood? Do we need the music industry? We’re talking about industries that grew up around one central idea: monopolizing the distribution channels. They’re not about art, they’re not about public service, they’re not about anything except locking up “content” and then selling fifty cents worth of plastic-and-packaging for $16.00.

Nice work if you can get it.

But we ought to be doing our best to get rid of these industries, rather than accomodating them.

As an aside: I’ve become something very close to a single-issue voter. Diane Feinstein, my local senator, is on Disney’s side. She is a co-sponsor of S. 2048 and that means I probably won’t be voting for her in the next election.

Related link: http://news.com.com/2100-1001-912906.html?tag=fd_top

“Microsoft executives apparently attempted to steer the direction of a Web services standards body away from rival Sun Microsystems, according to evidence and testimony introduced during the software giant’s ongoing antitrust trial.”. Cheeky politics as always ;)

Related link: http://www.theserverside.com/resources/article.jsp?l=ClassLoading

When you first work with application servers, and have classes thrown here there and everywhere, you see those nasty ClassCastException’s. It is important to put classes in the right places to get things working as you want them too, and this article tells you how some of the app servers work.

Related link: http://www.teare.com/

There’s been a lot of buzz on the web recently about the demise of Real Names. I’ve run across Real Names 5 or 6 times in the past few years, and each time, I wonder “Why are they doing this? Do they think it has a chance of working?”

The idea in a nutshell: extend AOL’s keyword system to the entire web. The thing you have to believe is that a scalable naming system can be created which gives semantically meaningful names to most of the content out there. There might be more to the idea, but that’s the core (but don’t trust me. Check out Real Name’s web site).

It’s basically taking the string you would otherwise type into a search engine and assigning it to a single web site.

Does this solve the problem of finding things on the web? No.

Does this make sense technologically? Not to me.

What’s more: it’s putting a single company in control of how we find things on the web. Which is (warning: gratuitous slam ahead) why Microsoft was interested.

The truth is: RealNames was killed by the success of Google (and other search engines). We can find stuff, we don’t need a single, brittle “solution.” And all the commentary on Real Names floating on the web is simply noise.

But very interesting noise, from a business and deal-making perspective. I’d recommend reading it before it disappears.

Related link: http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20020503S0012

Are wireless Web services a reality? Perhaps, not yet. Despite the buzz around Java 2ME and the .NET Compact Framework, wireless Web services development on these platforms for PDAs and cell phones continue to encounter technical limitations and issues, as contributed by Carl Zetie of Giga Information Group.

Related link: http://www.sys-con.com/webservices/article.cfm?id=249

JavaWorld — IBM standards guru Bob Sutor comments candidly on the present state of Java in Web Services Journal.

Related link: http://www.gnu.org.pe/resmseng.html

An amazing document, written by Dr. Edgar David Villanueva Nuñez, Congressman of the Republica of Perú, to the General Manager of Microsoft, Perú, about the “Free Software in Public Administration” bill, which would require all Perúvian government offices to use free software. (Link via MetaFilter.)

The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:

• Free access to public information by the citizen.
• Permanence of public data.
• Security of the State and citizens.

To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indespensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.

To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.

To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*.

In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.

The entire document is well worth a read. I’d be interested to see the letter from Microsoft that prompted this response.

Java Data Objects are here. Or are they?

JDO 1.0 Final

There was a big announcement of the long awaited 1.0 version of the JDO specification.
Not only do we have the spec, but also the Reference Implementation, and Technology Compatibility Kit.

You can read announcements on the new JDO site JDO Central (sponsored by vendors), and from Craig (spec lead).

With vendor support, the vote in, and now a 1.0 final spec, all is well in JDO land right? Maybe not.

Forte discontinues Transparent Persistence

Surely if ONE project would be behind JDO it would be Forte right? Didn’t Craig work on it?
However, check out this thread and you see that Forte has changed their tune and is recommending that people use Thought Inc’s CocoBase.

The CEO of Thought Inc (Ward Mullins) has been an opponent to the spec as it is today. He has spoken out on many forums, his main beefs revolve around the bytecode manipulation, and lack of O/R-ish items in the spec (like defining the mapping role).

Is JDO 1.0 good enough to get going? Can we get all parties together to make 2.0 good for all?
How much of this is politics versus technology?

Related link: http://advogato.org/article/464.html

Simon St.Laurent gives a good bundled overview on Advogato of some of the recent discussions/flamewars on SOAP vs. REST.

I think there are a few threads tangled together in the parts of this discussion I’ve followed (which is far from all of them):

• Technology: the design considerations around Web services (or whatever term you prefer)
• Standards: the processes and bodies deciding Web services standards
• Business: the considerations a business might make in adopting one of the technologies or standards under discussion

The technology discussions are interesting and worth following — see particularly many of the links in Sam Ruby’s Weblog from yesterday. The standards discussions, perhaps better called the political discussions, are very important, but I think are dramatically detracting from the value of the technology discussions. The business discussions (which Simon needles as the “everybody’s doing it” argument) are somewhat on the sideline, which I think is fine as long as we’re not talking about, say, a particular business’s decision.

It’s interesting for me to see discussion of the W3C’s role in leading or detracting from the standards process. All of the criticisms I’ve seen were originally raised in 1996 when the W3C decided to take over HTML standardization from the IETF (I believe I was one of the loudest, if not the most articulate, complainants at the time). As far as I can tell, nothing — from the complaints about the process, to the process itself, to the results — has significantly changed since then. Then again, nothing has taken its place, either. Maybe the political discussions could be factored out, and brought to a forum that addresses some of the complaints about the W3C — leaving the technological discussions more room to breathe.