My Columns
Social Networks - January, 2007
I am working on a story for the January 2007 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal on social networks. This is a space for feedback, followthrough, corrections, and supplementary material on the topic.
Update
10/9
Gootube? Google announces that, yes, it is buying YouTube. For a billion six fitty. The acquisition raises the temperature in the Yahoo/Facebook meme pool, and along with News Corp's purchase of MySpace last year, you gotta figure Steve Ballmer is abusing the enamel on his molars something awful. 
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Virtualization - December, 2006
I wrote a story for the December 2006 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal on virtualization. This is a space for feedback, followthrough, corrections, and supplementary material on the topic.
Update
9/1
Mac does (without) Windows
Now there's another way to run Windows apps, and unlike Apple's BootCamp and other recently-announced tools, this one doesn't require you to buy a copy of Microsoft Windows. It's called CrossOver Mac and it's based on WINE.
InfoWorld
Speculation continues that Apple will implement Fast OS Switching in the style of its Fast User Switching. The idea is that a keystroke would cause that sexy cube-rotating effect to occur, but instead of suddenly being in another user space, you'll suddenly be running a Windows PC. Architosh is either confused or sloppy in suggesting that 'the same Expose technology' could be used; what goes on under the hood would surely be quite different. But it could look the same, and I love the idea that the cube rotates horizontally to change user spaces and vertically to change OS spaces.
Links
Virtualization Timeline
An Introduction to Virtualization
Wikipedia: Virtualization
CodeWeavers CrossOver Mac beta site
ReactOS site
Transitive site
Parallels site
Microsoft Virtual PC site
Apple's BootCamp public beta page
VMware site
WINE Project
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Intel Mac - November, 2006
I wrote a story for the November 2006 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal on Apple's transition to Intel chips. This is a space for feedback, followthrough, corrections, and supplementary material on the topic.
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A Sample Participatory Philippic - November 2006
One kind of creative writing that, for some reason, is popular among technically-minded people is song parodies. So I thought I'd initiate a song parody project here. The theme is genericide.
Inspired by Apple's agressive attempt to protect the term pod and O'Reilly's notion that only they could have a Web 2.0 conference, I started drafting the following bit of parody verse on the genericization of trademarks. I immediately thought of what seemed to me the ideal song to use as the ground for this bit of playfulness: Paul Simon's A Simple Desultory Philippic. It's already a celebration of genericization, since it genericizes, or eponymizes, a lot of people's names. You remember:
I've been Norman Mailered, Maxwell Taylored....
As you can see, my version is not quite finished. That's where you come in.
You can find Paul Simon's lyrics online easily and if you wikipedia genericide you'll find lots of trademarks that are now or could soon become genericized. Help me finish the song?
(You'll need Contributor status to contribute.)
Note: I quickly abandoned any attempt to maintain Simon's rhymin', but I would like to follow his meter precisely if possible. I have bent it repeatedly in this draft, though, since Simon's names are often pairs of trochees, an accented syllable followed by an unaccented one (like Norman Mailer) and I found a lot of candidate words that were one unaccented syllable short of that pattern (like plexiglassed or slashdotted) and only a few that fit the double-trochee model (like powerpointed).
That's one problem.
Here's the current state of the project. Hack away.
A Sample Participatory Philippic
I been slashdotted, I been ipodded.
I been ethernetted, I been powerpointed.
I been photoshopped and tivo'd till I'm blind.
I been sheetrocked and nearly glocked
Yadda yadda cause I'm something.
That's the something something never mind.
(I said it was rough.)
I been cellophaned and scotchgarded.
I been hi-lited and wite-outed.
Well I faxed all my rolodex could hold.
So I got tricky and built a wiki,
But all my hmm-hmm won't buy me whatsit,
So I drink the kool-aid every day.
I knew a man, bla bla bla,
And this verse is
Almost totally unwritten.
But its alright, ma,
Everybody must get...
Steved.
I been lorem ispum, dolor sit amet,
Consectetur won't you please come home?
I been xeroxed, touchtoned, spammed, and googled,
Been muzakked and hackysacked,
And I just discovered somebody's copped my ringtone Hewlett-Packard's tapped my phone....
Chris Crawford - October 2006
I wrote a story for the October 2006 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal on Chris Crawford's dream of making interactive stories mainstream. This is a space for feedback, followthrough, corrections, and supplementary material on the topic.
Update
10/15
The game is afoot: My interview with Chris Crawford has been Slashdotted and BoingBoinged.
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Developing for the Browser - September, 2006
I wrote a story for the September 2006 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal on surviving as a software developer in a world that contains a Microsoft, a Google, and a Yahoo. This is a space for feedback, followthrough, corrections, and supplementary material on the topic.
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Java - August, 2006
I wrote a story for the August 2006 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal on Java. This is a space for feedback, followthrough, corrections, and supplementary material on the topic.
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Compliance - July, 2006
I wrote a story for the July 2006 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal on software compliance. This is a space for feedback, followthrough, corrections, and supplementary material on the topic.
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Ruby on Rails - June, 2006
I wrote a story for the June 2006 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal about Ruby on Rails. This is a space for feedback, followthrough, corrections, and supplementary material on the topic.
Update
9/16
Eweek's Deborah Rothberg was so bold as to make a list of the top ten languages every programmer should know. She provides job availability numbers for each language, but with Ruby/Rails ranking above Java, she definitely didn't base her ranking on the number of jobs waiting for you if you know a language.
Last week Sun hired two key JRuby developers. There seems to have been some controversy about what they are going to be doing at Sun. Maybe it's settled now.
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