BlackTech Blog

Although Second Life has some significant architectural and operational issues, it has an established virtual currency economy, strong backing, huge mindshare and can arguably claim to be The World’s Biggest Programming Environment. The latter point is significant - there are a LOT of people and corporations who are choosing to spend significant amounts of time and money in Second Life and who will only switch if there’s a compelling reason.

With all due respect to the authors, Julian Lombardi’s comments and the original Why Second Life Won’t Get A Third article both leave out important information which ironically makes the strongest case for Croquet. The Linden Lab folk know far too well the constraints of their architecture but they also believe they can scale because they are moving away from their highly centralized model towards something more distributed - a page out of the book of Croquet. The new second life grid architecture is evolving in a reasonably open manner(see alsoDavid Jones Notes from OOPSLA). While it won’t ever be as elegant as Croquet, it will address enough of the problems to keep growing the base particularly as the business model shifts to leverage the economic infrastructure. Unless Croquet greatly expands it’s niche, it won’t become a means of creating serious alternatives to Second Life. I believe however that it can and will. In 2008, I expect we’ll see some evidence of Worldbase + Interactivity Server architecture I’ve pointed out before.

Over at Utterz, the topic of conversation is “Service Interruptions: How Long is Too Long?”

It’s a good question. And it piggybacks (is that a word?) on a topic I wrote about a few days ago: the ins and outs of disaster recovery.

Our company provided direct relief efforts for businesses affected by 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, so I know of what I speak.

Of the cases that were assigned to us, we could only help 20 percent get their business’s technology back on track. That means 80 percent of businesses went under.

And, believe you me, it wasn’t for lack of skill, expertise or effort. We tried. They tried. We all tried. But, ultimately there is not much you can do for a company that:

• Doesn’t have an off-site back-up of its critical files;
• Has a backup device that has never been tested and, when push came to shove, the device malfunctioned or couldn’t restore for some other reason;
• Can’t supply a complete contact list of suppliers, clients and alliances for communication and notification;
• Doesn’t have enough money in the budget to replace destroyed equipment;
• Has not identified an off-site location to set up temporary residence; or
• Does not have access to project files, business planning documents or even legal and financial documentation.

Your clients may very well be raving fans. Your suppliers may routinely go the extra mile for you. Your alliances may deliver value-added service for your clients time and time again.

However, at some point, your clients/alliance partners/suppliers will have to get back to business, with or without your company on board.

Business is not personal; business is business. And your colleagues simply will not wait forever for you to get your act together.

In the flow of discussions on my Squeak blog and the Squeak-dev list dealing with issues relating to the tools for editing code I realized that the context was perhaps too constrained to really get to the heart of the matter. In the end, regardless of personal preference, screen real estate and the mechanics of human visualization/cognition are the real drivers of programmer tool effectivness. For the former, virtual desktops and multiple monitors can really help. For the latter I think tools that can mimic the visual models of what the software is attempting to simulate are very useful. For example, some people are using Google maps and 3D in the context of IBM’s collaborative development environment Jazz. More screen real estate helps visualization too. So with relatively inexpensive flat screens available and supported it’s getting easier to get this help. As someone on the Squeak list pointed out bookmarks in the IDE lose their value after a while because you have to manage them(this is true of keyboard short cuts as well) which means more tool code has to be written.

Multiple monitors and visualization are not a panacea but they do provide a lot of free, already written and debugged tools! These tools aren’t perfect but they generally don’t crash! Well, people do get sick and die, but in general, the software running our mind/body systems is very robust and stable. If I start looking/pointing to the wrong screen, I gracefully recover. For you Matrix fans, this is the “your other left” scenario. I sleep but I’ve never done a full system reboot! If I’m not sure what the best arrangement is I can put post-its on the monitors or notes on a whiteboard within view. This approach has been used for a very long time in complex systems where humans are in the loop. In the past half century aerospace and finance come to mind but the practice goes back much further to the art of memory and beyond to ancient Egypt. In the world of ubiquitous computing and locative art I call the meshverse, coding has to move beyond the text editor and even the traditional IDE - it will be come both visual and location oriented at the same time. Imagine a mash-up between the text adventure-like game playsh and Croquet annotations! I am at present working on the infrastructure for such an environment, bits and pieces of which you can see at my BOP Space and GVScript sites. Both of the previous two links are showing Squeak’s Wonderland but if you’ve been here before, you’ve seen earlier versions of the building blocks.

Here’s a clip from an email I just received:

“Properly applied, the strategies revealed during this event will allow you to have an autopilot, never-ending flow of new clients pounding down your door–PLUS–a simple technique to create info products for passive revenue. “

Or what about this one:

“Never work again. There’s a new book out that explains that you don’t have to work as long or as hard as you think you do…”

For some reason, people think that the internet is going to make them rich. It reminds me so much of the old “Fool’s Gold” days.

I do believe in working smart and being strategic. I really do, but no amount of strategy in the world is going to bring in $12,000 of online income a week in the first week of business–unless, of course, you have $10,000 per week to spend on marketing and promotion. It just doesn’t make sense.

Most of the “net marketers” are just rehashed versions of pyramid schemers. Any good marketing tip they have, believe you me, they’ve used until it doesn’t work any longer and then they package it and sell you their “foolproof system” for $2,000.

The internet makes businesses easier to start, and it does a good job of removing some of the traditional barriers to entry for business. But it, too, comes with its own set of challenges that need to be addressed.

So take it for what it is: grease on the wheel, not an overnight money-making machine. Stay focused and don’t take any wooden nickels.

I call it a hustle partly because web/social media metrics are very much like a dance...you know where you started on the dance floor, but where you'll end up when the song is over? Who knows? READ MORE

I just updated the entry marketing isn’t the problem to include a mention of PPD VisualWave and noted the licensing problem. At a time when developers were able to freely download the JDK & JVM, Smalltalk’s leading low-cost player had been, in effect frozen in place by the merger.

So was it Java’s fault what happened to Smalltalk? Nope. Sure Java had the market’s attention. But that internet bubble was really big, man. There was room for Smalltalk on there too and we had real-world-deployed experienced programmers to help. I think it wasn’t all about Java and the great timing, luck and marketing. It was also the anti-marketing it felt like the Smalltalk leaders did. That’s right. We did anti-marketing.

As I see it, the first major error happened before anyone ever really heard of Java. ParcPlace System merged with Digitalk. … In this man’s opinion, Java didn’t kill Smalltalk. If anyone did, we did it to ourselves. Java just applied the heat while we were churning.

We’re Niche Players

There are also relevant bits to mix in related to IBM’s role but irrespective of the corporate landscape, Smalltalk has and continues to be hampered by it’s Achilles heel - networking. Without rock solid, high performance sockets and broad support for popular protocols, you just can’t be an impact player in a universe held together by TCP/IP. Digitalk IIRC didn’t ship with any TCP/IP support and VisualWorks performance was not compelling.

Commercial web servers offer additioan features that would be3 very time-consuming to re-create under Smalltalk. … If the Smalltalk environment does not provide lightweight, preemptive threads to manage incoming connections, performance will be minimal.

Jonathan Pletzke - Advanced Smalltalk 1997

In 1992, before Java, David Simmons embarked on SmalltalkAgents and almost got it right but what happened there is WAY beyond the scope of this post. Squeak in 1996 took steps in the right direction, but was not focused on delivering the kind of commercial grade networking capabilities Java provided out of the box. Today’s VisualWorks, DabbleDB and Qwaq have proven that within a narrow niche and with enough resources, Smalltalk can deliver powerful networking solutions. However, for the typical developer, this is not the case. Too many easy things are hard and hard things are for all practical purposes impossible. Case in point - XMPP aka Jabber which has exploded into widespread use. Yes there are 2 Smalltalk Jabber clients available but they are sorely lacking. Secure authentication isn’t built-in and rolling your own with the Cryptography package is not trivial. In contrast, in the world of Ruby, the robust XMPP4R and the drop-dead easy Jabber::Simple built upon it have emerged as defacto standards from a pool of a half dozen or so implementations. However these problems are not due to some inherent flaw in Smalltalk but rather another facet of its Achilles Heel.

What continues to drive the expansion of the web is the convergence of TCP/IP and social networks. The human network of Smalltalkers is too small and lacks the diversity needed to exert a broad influence outside of itself. Don’t get me wrong, the Smalltalk community is full of wonderful people who are passionate about Smalltalk. However, it’s made up of isolated islands of folk with hardcore developers and researchers on one side, captive users on the other and a very transient collection of power users, scripters and intermediate programmers flowing in between. These groups don’t really party together, and the result is that innovation rarely gains traction. Just within the world of Squeak there are 7 incompatible major builds - Squeakland, Croquet, Plopp, Seaside, DabbleDB, Scratch and Squeak. Continuing with my XMPP example, if you google Squeak Jabber you have to hunt to find the actual code let alone find any examples of using it. Now some Squeakers might object - SqueakSource is the preferred place to look. This is true, but it doesn’t address the issues of completeness or examples. To be clear, this is NOT a criticism of the people freely sharing code, it’s saying there are not enough people in the community, particularly developers with paying users of any kind(end-user, developer). So continuing with the saga, if it’s 3:00 am and you’re having a problem, there’s nowhere to turn except the Squeak-dev list. If you ask a question there, maybe someone will respond quickly and if they do they’ll probably be friendly. There’s also a good chance they’ll be knowledgeable about Squeak in general. There’s less of a chance they are familar with the Jabber code or have used it very much. In the end that probably doesn’t matter because the problem will ultimately end up being socket and/or vm related - outside the bounds of most highly experienced Smalltalkers. One simply can’t tackle these problems effectively without significant experience in C. It’s not that the problems are intractable, it’s that the Squeak economy isn’t robust enough to support the level of expertise required to have rock-solid networking widely available.

Originally the purpose of Smalltalk was “to provide computer support for the creative spirit in everyone. “ Today, the Squeak site describes Squeak as

“In short, a personal computing environment that could be programmed by “the rest of us.”

For as long as I have been involved with it(27 years), there have always been elements of the Smalltalk human network who looking at things through a zero-sum lens, have preferred and lobbied to pursue “purity” at the expense of reaching out to and developing solutions for “everyone”. During Smalltalk’s short-lived Golden Age, Digitalk provided a win-win choice for “everyone” while people able and willing to pay the price of purity were well served by Parc Place. When the human network broke down it hurt Smalltalk’s entrance into and codebase for the web era. The good news is that today, there’s an opportunity to jump-start another Golden Age - stay tuned.

This past week, I went behind the scenes at Satmetrix's Net Promoter conference in Miami. I nabbed interviews with a few key people from the Net Promoter team: Fred Reichheld, Richard Owen, Deborah Eastman, Laura Brooks, Vince Nowinski and John Abraham. Feel free to listen in from your treadmill. READ MORE

Summaries and well-written headlines are already important when it comes to triggering user reactions or making content findable. But as U.S. web users adopt the mobile web, I think such headlines and summaries are critical.

Waiting for content to download in order to determine its relevance is a pain in the a**. It’s a lesson we’ve learned from the days of surfing on 14.4 kbps dial-up modems, and need to be reminded of in these days of carrying the internet in your pocket.

For some background on this post, please start by reading Aaron Gustafson’s Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8 on this week’s edition of A List Apart, or any of the links from my Internet Explorer 8 round-up post. This post is an extended version of my comment there.

About 6 years ago, I remember taking part in a conversation about preferred browsers on the Jane magazine message boards. IE 5.x was still king of the PC world. IE 6 was coming on strong. Netscape 4 was still widely used by universities. Netscape 6 was on its way.

Most of the respondents said they preferred Internet Explorer. Why? Because sites just “look right” and “work better” in Internet Explorer. My response at the time was simple: if a site doesn’t work in Netscape, it’s because the web developer didn’t know what (s)he was doing.

Of course, they didn’t care. They were far more into Sephora than HTML code quality. As far as they were concerned, Netscape was the problem. They didn’t blame crap code, or Microsoft for developing a browser that stomped harder than a Catalonian flamenco dancer all over the W3C specs and allowed ugly code to thrive. They blamed Netscape.

I was reminded of that conversation when I first read Microsoft’s recent announcement about Internet Explorer 8. After my initial D*MNF*CKINGBLOODYHELL!JUSTBREAKTHF*CKINGWEBALREADYMICROSOFT!WHATTHEF*CK? IAMTIREDOFYOURAGGEDYBASTARDSMAKINGMYDAYJOB1000TIMESHARDERTHANITNEEDSTOBEBECAUSEYOUCAN’T DEVELOPABROWSERTHATFOLLOWSAF*CKING10YEAROLDSPEC!!! reaction passed, I came to the following conclusion: this is the best approach to a bad situation.

Microsoft does not want to be where Netscape was. It’s a sad but true fact is that if a site breaks, the average web user — and, dare I say, average web developer — will blame the browser. Microsoft is too entrenched in corporate intranets and applications to let that happen. Doing so would cause a sh*tstorm of massive proportions for the company. From a business perspective, I understand.

And while I am also not happy about the default implementation (as Jeremy Keith explained Unless you explicitly declare that you want IE8 to behave as IE8, it will behave as IE7.), opting-in to web standards eliminates the need to revise existing code.

Yes, it’s potentially a nail in the coffin for progressive enhancement techniques. Yes, we’ll still have to do something special to cater to Microsoft browsers. Yes, this could freeze web development at the IE7 level for years to come. But I believe — and it pains me to say it given the hate-hate more relationship I have with Microsoft browsers — that Microsoft, given its position, had no other choice.

But putting pragmatic approaches and practical considerations aside, I think Ben Buchanan said it best:

If they’ve included a DOCTYPE, they’ve declared they want to render to standards. If they did that in ignorance, it’s time they started earning their money instead of letting Dreamweaver do their jobs.

Related: Internet Explorer 8 Round Up

On my podcast, I utilize many promotional tracks for my show from IODA. I’ve gotten great feedback from my listeners and I know why: Independent music is great. I love jazz music and I thought what better way to promote some jazz music than to create some iPhone ringtones! Here are two of my favorite songs in .m4r format to import into iTunes.

• Both Sides of the Fence by Thomas Marriott
• 57th Street Mambo by Bobby Sanabria

Naturally, I want you to support these artists and buy their music. Here is their information.

Thomas Marriott
“Both Sides Of The Fence” (mp3)
from “Both Sides Of The Fence”
(Origin Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at eMusic
Stream from Rhapsody
Buy at Napster
Buy at Rhapsody
Buy at Amazon
Buy at mTraks Download
More On This Album

• Elmore Music - New Product! Speed Learning System, Usd $94 Payout!
• Paul Tobeys How To Products.
• New Products Available! Affiliates Go To: www.SatelliteSoft.com.

Bobby Sanabria
“57th St. Mambo” (mp3)
from “Big Band Urban Folktales”
(Jazzheads Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from Rhapsody
Buy at Napster
Buy at Rhapsody
Buy at GroupieTunes
Buy at mTraks Download
More On This Album

Now, if you’re curious as to how I did this, check out my tutorial on how to create ringtones for free using iTunes. Yes it does work with the latest iTunes and latest iPhone firmware. Enjoy!

How to splice songs in iTunes:

• Blackberry Mp3 Ringtones.
• Load Free Ringtones Into Your Nextel.
• Affiliate Income Mastery 75% Income, New Products Daily.

How to use them as Ringtones:

Share This

My take: On IE8: Pragmatic and practical, but I still don’t like it

UPDATES:

Microsoft versioning: accessibility implications

What Internet Explorer’s change means for accessibility.

Best Standards Support

Sam Ruby offers a server-side suggestion for handling IE8 content requests.

Mike Davies argues that this should and perhaps could be the end of the line for Internet Explorer.

Microsoft᾿s “Super Standards” Mode: Important Facts

Jeff Schiller offers the clearest explanation I’ve seen about the changes coming with IE8.

Mistakes, Sadness, Regret

Ian Hickson on IE8, HTML5 and Microsoft.

Big Questions On IE8’s Big Progress

Alex Russell has some questions about how Microsoft will implement conflicts between meta tags.

Wisdom and folly: IE8’s super standards mode cuts both ways

Peter Bright over at Ars Technica gives a rundown of how this new ‘super-standards’ mode will work in IE8

Meta Madness

What seems to have slipped past the Microsoft Task Force of WaSP (or maybe it didn’t and they’re just playing coy) is that by implementing this specific feature in any other browser immediately either: A) Reduces its market size of viable web pages that will upgrade to new versions of the browser or B) Forces new versions of the browser to bloat, including backwards support for old-style rendering. - John Ressig

Bobbing Heads and the IE8 Meta Tag

Shelley Powers blasts this IE announcement.

In defense of version targeting

Jeffrey Zeldman says: When I look at the scenarios of who is likely to do what where web standards and version targeting are concerned, the IE7 default for those who don’t opt in appears to be the correct design decision.

Versioning, Compatibility and Standards

The WebKit team says it won’t be joining this <meta> tag march.

Opt-out version targeting is spam

If they’ve included a DOCTYPE, they’ve declared they want to render to standards. If they did that in ignorance, it’s time they started earning their money instead of letting Dreamweaver do their jobs. — Ben Buchanan

---

It started this morning with Aaron Gustafson’s article on A List Apart announcing a new method of versioning HTML documents in the forthcoming Internet Explorer 8. Reaction is coming in from around the web. A few notable posts are below. I’ll keep updating this post as I come across stuff.

Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8

Aaron Gustafson discusses Microsoft̵s latest effort to maintain web standards and also maintain backward compatibility.

Compatibility and IE8

Some background information relating to Microsoft’s decision.

Broken

Unless you explicitly declare that you want IE8 to behave as IE8, it will behave as IE7.Jeremy Keith

<META HTTP-EQUIV=”X-BALL-CHAIN”>

Mozilla hacker Robert O’Callahan weighs in on why this is (almost certainly) a bad idea.

IE8 to include version targeting

Jonathan Snook likes the approach.

From Switches to Targets: A Standardista’s Journey

Eric Meyer argues that maybe version isn̵t such a bad thing.

Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8

Aaron Gustafson discusses Microsoft̵s latest effort to maintain web standards and also maintain backward compatibility.

The Internet Explorer lock-in

Anne van Kesteren is not a fan of this Microsoft initiative.

CES and Mac World 2008 came and went with a bang. See some highlights on both. RyanvsDorkman.com Finally Ships DVD, Unreal Tournament 3 review for the Playstation 3

I started this thing months ago after buying the bead on a lark while strolling through downtown Decatur. I finally finished it tonight.

Coral and silver center bead. Strung with brown Druk glass, carnelian and silver spacers. Silver clasp. Strung on Beadalon. About 16″ (choker length). Coral bead from Mingei World Imports. Other beads from my secret stash (translation: I can’t remember where I bought them).

It would appear that niche communities are all the rage - at least for the moment they are.... It's funny how the world works when you have the money to spend. READ MORE

My business pal, Lea Woodward, founder of the Location Independent Professional (LIP) revolution, has done it again!

She’s started the “Leave it Better” initiative that challenges world travelers–including business travelers–to leave the places they travel in better condition than when they arrived.

I’m going to help her kickstart this fabulous project when I travel to Miami this week to lead a dual social media track (for entrepreneurs and corporate execs) at The Women’s Congress Conference. While there, all my “goodies” purchased outside of the conference will be from local businesses, not big-box retail chains.

What will you do this week? This month? This year?

We’ve all learned numerous lessons from 9/11, and for each business the lessons have been different. But two of the more valuable lessons were:

• Have an up-to-date, viable, disaster recovery plan in place, and

• Use off-site data backups.

Data backups are a necessary evil, in that the need for data space always eclipses capacity–or, more aptly put–a capacity that’s affordable. And data backups are tricky: How do you know what you need? Do you know what you would do if you lost your office tomorrow? What would you do if you lost access to all your data? Your answer should be: Go to an alternate location and pull out a loose-leaf binder that contains a step-by-step recovery plan. If that’s not possible, then start with the steps below:

1. Keep a list of the software and hardware you have in your office. Keep these lists updated and off-site. It won’t help if you have all this wonderful information saved to the hard drive that has just crashed.

2. Back up all critical data daily. Make a list of all the data that is mission critical to your operations. Make sure that data, in particular, is backed up every day off-site.

3. Choose a backup system that will be there when you need it. There are all sorts of solutions: CD-RW, DAT (tape), NAS, Ultrium, etc. But, when you’re dealing with magnetic media, you’re bound to have a snafu somewhere. For smaller businesses, we recommend using a secure internet-based solution for backing up files. For larger businesses, redundant, off-site, outsourced solutions are preferable.

4. Make sure the backup is easy to do. The more complicated a process is, the more likely it will be done either incorrectly or not at all.

5. Ensure that the backup process is being done. Periodically, check the backed-up data to make sure that recent data is present.

It may take some time to implement these procedures. After all, change can be difficult. However, being able to sleep soundly at night knowing that your critical business data is safe, secure, accessible and intact makes it all worth it. You can’t control events that happen during the course of day-to-day business, but you can control your level of preparedness and your reaction to those events.

Now that everyone’s had a chance to digest the new announcements from Apple at Macworld 2008, I’ll go ahead and express my thoughts on each announcement:

Time Capsule [link]

• From Apple’s perspective, this creates a great incentive for users to upgrade to Leopard. I believe users will see the benefit of Time Machine and also justify the purchase with a stable 802.11n router.
• At $399/$499, I believe they are fairly priced considering the two main components cost about the same separately.
• Will I get one? No. But I’ll definitely recommend it to new Leopard users who could use a 802.11n upgrade.
• Restore-Deleted-Files.com - Serious Data Recovery For Your Hard Drive! - We Offer 75% Of Every Sale To Our Affiliates! Our Software Recovers Lost, Deleted, Or Corrupt Files And Daat From Your Hard Drive Saving You Time And Money! $29.95 Retail, $23.50 Per Sale Goes To You!

iPhone/iPod Touch Update [link]

• Well, we can’t say it was a total surprise since Gear Live reported a leaked firmware a few weeks ago. This turned out to be the exact same release as the official one from Apple.
• Customized home screen is a plus considering the SDK release is right around the corner. We’re going to need this functionality for other things.
• The Google maps “locate me” feature is easily the star of the show. It was genius of Apple to take a step further and include wi-fi location features. This makes it useful for the iPod Touch and increases accuracy.
• $20 for iPod Touch applications is madness. There is no rhyme or reason to such a dumb act. It really makes no sense to me and I feel sorry for all existing iPod Touch owners. They’re the exact same applications that are on the iPhone. Apple really didn’t have to change a thing. This is some kind of dumb tax for something else that iPod Touch users should not have to pay. Ridiculous.
• Office Software Suite. - Office Suite That Is 100% Compatible With Ms Office And Many Other Office Applications!

iTunes Movie Rentals / Apple TV Take 2 [link]

• This wasn’t a surprise either as it was confirmed by a snafu on Apple’s support website. It’s good to see Apple is doing this.
• The real surprise was the support of every major movie studio. As far as I know, this is a first for digital downloads. Microsoft did well with their support but not nearly this much. Netflix as well. I think this will be a huge boost for digital downloads.
• AppleTV’s software update and price drop were a pleasant surprise. Both were welcomed by tech enthusiasts because with the addition of purchase power on the unit and HD rentals, the AppleTV is now a true standalone TV appliance. Removing the virtual tether to a computer was a great idea and really should have been done from the start.
• The price point which was chosen is kind of a bitter sweet deal. We all hate DRM and putting a 24 hour viewing restriction on a movie should reduce the prices in my mind, but compared to on demand and Xbox 360 prices, it’s a fair deal. We need another revolution to reduce these prices and restrictions and I’m hoping Apple can lead the way. (Like iTunes really did help remove DRM. I don’t care what anyone says)
• Simple Dvd Copy. - The Best Single Solution To Copying Your DVDs To A Cd Or Dvd Using Your Computer. Affiliates: Low Price, The Best Guide, And A Solid Site Will Bring Higher Conversions For You.

Macbook Air [link]

• Thin is in? I hope so for Apple’s sake. Apple made a bold move in attempting to redefine the ultraportable laptop market. Apple says ultraportables shouldn’t sacrifice keyboard size and screen size, but they should sacrifice an optical drive and hard drive speed. I’m not in this market, so I can’t really speak for which is better, but I do think Apple is taking a chance here.
• Again, the Macbook Air is not for everyone. With the limited battery replacement options, lack of optical drive, memory restrictions (2GB only), pricey SSD option (yes, I know it’s like that everywhere), this machine is clearly not marketed to your “typical” notebook user. The mistake a lot of bloggers and writers are making is that this machine was made for them, when it clearly wasn’t.
• I suggest the following questions before considering a Macbook Air: When was the last time you used an optical drive for other than installation? Do you care about carrying extra batteries? Do you need a fast hard drive for video encoding and the like? Are you planning to play video games on a Macbook Air? Do you require a lot of hard drive storage while on the road? Do you need a lot of USB expansion? Do you drop your equipment a lot? Ask yourself these questions before even considering the Macbook Air. In fact, ask yourself these questions before commenting negatively on the machine. Realize, everything Apple or anyone makes was not meant for your exact needs.
• Stiqmo Mobile Desktop. - High Security Portable Applications To Run From Any Usb Device: Browser, EMail, ToDo List, Etc.

I recorded my reaction to each announcement during the keynote on Chris Pirillo’s live channel. The community responded along with me and you’ll probably notice that some of my opinions changed after thinking about them.