Gaining Steam

Like the Patriots, who rebelled against Britain's heavy taxes, NoSQLers came to share how they had overthrown the tyranny of slow, expensive relational databases in favor of more efficient and cheaper ways of managing data.

When you can read about it in ComputerWorld then you know they lifted their heads out of the water. Like often in the last 15 years a whole new religion is springing up.

After a thousand tries by overarchitectured and undertooled object stores, it looks like this time there might be something. Open source too.

How did I get there? Philipp pointed me to it.

PalmPre vs. the iPhone

More interesting stuff from Time Magazine.

It's a video this time and not an article. Smart phones are the competitive field in the wonderful world of elctricity right now. I'm not sure if I am happy with this. Nevertheless that's where the cool guys, cool products and cool software are right now. More later when I will have time to make my arguments clear and concise.

EDV-Systembetreuer/in

Am A.ö. Diakonissen-Krankenhaus Schladming (Rechtsträger: Evangelisches Diakoniewerk Gallneukirchen) wird ab sofort ein(e)

EDV-Systembetreuer/in

eingestellt.

ANFORDERUNGEN: abgeschlossene Ausbildung (Fachschule, HTL usw.) und fundierte Kenntnisse in: Netzwerkadministration, Windows 2003 Server, Linux, HP-UX, Oracle und Sysbase, Konfiguration der Firewall, Erfahrung in der Durchführung und Leitung von EDV-Projekten, technische Begabung, Teamfähigkeit

ARBEITSBEREICHE: eigenständiges Durchführen von EDV-Projekten, First-Level Support, Schulung von Mitarbeitern, diverse Hardwarereparaturarbeiten, Verwalten unserer Server, Softwareproblemlösungen

Aus Der Ennstaler

One Laptop per Child Again

Only now did I find time to visit the OLPC wiki. I think I have said already that I like this initiative. Still we should not expect to much of this. Troubles will be manyfold. But then again, that's always so and should never keep us from going on.

Here are the hardware specs. They seem to be ok. As far as I have seen the various designs of the models (green machine, blue machine, yellow machine), I think they are to paternalistic. These idealistic guys should go more for copying the look and feel principles of the best mobile phone designers. That is what kids will want. Only for the cases though. Not for the software of course.

Valentine's Day, More Than a Week Ago

You will already have seen this, probably. Read this coverage at Aviran's Place again nevertheless. Made it to Digg's front. No wonder. Don't be lazy, read the published patent.

This man, Neil Balthaser got a patent issued on Valentine’s Day that is said to cover all rich-media technology implementations, including Flash, Flex, Java, Ajax, and XAML, when and if the rich-media application is accessed on any device over the Internet, including desktops, mobile devices, set-top boxes, and video game consoles. Neil Balthaser, CEO of Balthaser Online, which he owns with his father Ken is not shy about his patent: “You can consider it a pioneering or umbrella patent. The broader claim is one that basically says that if you got a rich Internet application, it is covered by this patent.”

Methods, Systems, And Processes For The Design And Creation Of Rich-Media Applications Via The Internet

The patent, No. 7,000,180 or 180 for short, is entitled Methods, Systems, And Processes For The Design And Creation Of Rich-Media Applications Via The Internet. It contains 83 claims that encompass a wide range of rich-media Net application methods, systems, and processes.

Kill HTML before It Kills Us

Now that man's neither stupid nor an asshole. An article on the The Interactive Design Forum quoted from a Balthaser "New Media" article with the above title: We must summon the courage to throw away our crutches and rally behind the technologies that will liberate our creativity and open the doors of possibility. Currently, Flash is our best weapon. Drop HTML, pick up Flash, and really learn it — then push it.

Flashkit Australia 2001 participant Tammy Creaser had this to say about Neil: "The conference was great. Neil Balthazar was an excellent speaker - it was really good to hear from one of the high flyers and innovators in the industry. The full-on 3D demo at the end was also a highlight for me.... Can't think of any criticisms, sorry. I enjoyed the whole lot."

Aviran's Place's Fact- 'n Sayfinding

Because he began developing the methods and processes more than a half decade ago, he believes he can prove his invention is novel and nonobvious, two requirements to get a patent, and can fend off any patent challenges from potential licensees who might contend the invention is neither new nor obscure. “Are we ready to defend our patent?” Balthaser asks. “Absolutely. We’re ready to defend it vigorously if we have to. But [litigation is] not the approach we’re taking in terms of licensing.”

What tinytalk analysis says

Licensing fees are going to flow for a while yet (mostly from MSFT, GOOG and ADBE), the patent will be difficult to handle for the Mozilla foundation, but: In the end, the open source software + professional services concept is going to win out because it will be more productive, efficient and more fun. That holds not only for structured computer software, but also for any kind of content, so the Common Creatives will also win in the end. All fundamentals point to that. We also have reason to believe, that in spite of scary symptoms the revolution will be unbloody and televised too, probably.

Notes:
Mr. Balthaser has also been credited as a game developer on the following games: