The latest Bungee Line podcast is up - this time an interview with Jeremy Zawodny, an 8-year-veteran of Yahoo! and currently a member of the Yahoo Developer Network team.
Lots covered, so much so that we had to break up the interview into two parts, Part 1 and er, Part two.
In Part 1 we discussed:
Part 2, we talk about about some of the recent topics Jeremy's been covering on his blog...will let you you know when it's up - in a week or so.
A couple of personal bits of news, both good :-)
In the House
First, we moved into our new home in Sandy, Utah. Everything is working out great - just having fun trying to remember where the light switches are in the dark. Big thanks to Kevin Strong and Robert Piester for helping us in making it all happen.
Kevin was our "realtor" (estate agent in UK-speak) for the deal. He relocated to Utah from southern California in 1983 and has been a real estate associate since 1985 - 22 years in the local property game. Kevin knows the local Salt Lake City extremely well. We found him via the web (his website told us enough to know we should at least contact him) and was very helpful and professional, providing us with great advice and his patience throughout the search, as well his superb negotiation skills during the offer and closing process. If you're looking to sell / buy in the SLC area, we can recommend him without any hesitation. Thanks Kevin!!
Also, a big thanks to Rob Piester of Planet Financial, a neighbor from our time in Redmond, WA who did a great job in providing us advice and good rate for the mortgage. Thanks Rob!
Welcome to the United States
Second, our Green Cards arrived in the post this week!! Whoohoo!
That's pretty big news for us and we're relieved it all came through ok. What does it mean? It means we can live here with all rights except for voting. To gain voting rights I would need to apply for citizenship and can't do that for another five years, so no need to choose now, but I'll certainly consider it assuming I'm still here in that time (I imagine I will be). I can't say I feel any more "American" yet, but a Green Card is certainly a step in that direction. Physcologically, I feel I may have more of a stakeholding in the concept of a great US of A. To date, I've generally stayed away from the topic of politics and other "unmentionables" at the dinner table and elsewhere, but with the status change I may be a little more vocal in this respect in the future :-) ...Also, I want to thank both Microsoft and Bungee Labs for their support during my application for Perminent Residence status.
This coming Monday I'll be presenting at AJAXWorld in Santa Clara, 10:10 - 10:55am
One of the demos I'll be showing off and demonstrating how to build is and deploy this Flickr / Google Maps using Bungee Connect to program against their REST(ish) service APIs. I'll also demo a Microsoft Exchange plus Salesforce mashup (it's a pretty slick example of what you can do with AJAX + SOAP web services integration)...and one other very cool demo app that I can't discuss here, just yet - you will just have to be at my presentation see it (and hear it). :-)
If you're going, let's catch up!
I ended the day re-visiting my LibraryThing. Glad I did...I had forgotten how damn good it is.
Time to update my catalog with about a year's lot of books. Worth doing since I can get my data out and re-use elsewhere. Otherwise, why would I bother?
A couple of weeks back John Musser of ProgrammableWeb.com joined me and Ted for a chat to discuss the state of web APIs and the API trends as he sees them.
We've now recorded the conversation and published as the first of a newly launched Bungee Line podcast series.
Topic covered include Facebook APIs, Amazon's recently launched Flexible Payment Service (FPS) , Google Base, Microsoft's Astoria and relational-data-in-the-cloud programming models and services, SaaS models and API SLAs, REST vs SOAP, "Closed is Still the Old Closed" and plenty more.
Thanks to John for his time.
In San Francisco this morning for Salesforce.com conference, Dreamforce 07.
Am here (along with Ted, Brad and Lyle from Bungee Labs)...we're frankly wowwing a few Saleforce.com customers and developers with a couple of cool videos, demos and real-world apps created on Bungee Connect.
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Check this video - Salesforce.com extended with an Bungee app integrated into the Salesforce UI
We're getting some Bungee Connect Early Access Beta sign-ups based on what devs are seeing (sign up here)
If you want to meet up, let me know.
Dan Farber is covering the Dreamforce event here.
There is a fine line between extracting the potential goodness of social networking and drowning in its banality. This video by J.W Sass portrays the misery of the latter.
via Brian Johnson.
What happens to education, learning processes and knowledge sharing when you combine learning objects, MUDs, RSS, podcasting, tagging, social networking, social media, network effects, AJAX, REST, web APIs, interoperable ID systems and open courseware? Answer: a lot...In this video recording of a presentation given by Stephen Downes at the International Conference on Open Courseware and eLearning in Taipei, Taiwan, June 13, 2007, Downes shares his vision of the resulting phenomenon - E-Learning 2.0. Slides are here.
New concepts explicitly introduced to me in this video include: learning networks and learning mashups. If you're familar with "Web 2.0" concepts you can skip to half way through the video to get into relevance of these to E-Learning.
(thanks to Thomas Vaner Wal for the link to Downes' homepage)
Some old Data Programmability teammates of mine, Britt Johnston, Pablo Castro and Mike Pizzo (well, Mike's not that old), are interviewed by Charles Torre in this Channel 9 video to discuss their progress, challenges and customer feedback in the last year since announcing the first ADO.NET Entity Framework CTP, including some details on project Astoria and LINQ to Entities support, details on the Beta 2 and Tools CTP released earlier this week (the entity model designer is v.cool), plus the future of the Entity Framework.
P.S. Michael - in case you're reading: reconsider the shorts for the next interview :-P
Todd Bishop at Seattle Post-Intelligencer has picked up on the fact that Korby Parnell, ex-product manager for some of Microsoft's most successful developer community-related projects (e.g. Codeplex, Gotdotnet and Claimspace - but that's another story) has been nabbed by Yahoo's Seattle office (Chad Dickerson's team, who runs the Yahoo Developer Network).
Korby, a good friend and neighbour while I was living in Redmond, WA, didn't make a public song and dance of the move, but when he told me he was on his way I realized Microsoft had lost out on an amazing talent.
Microsoft has recently lost two other good community-oriented people: Josh Ledgard left Visual Studio's product team to join software dev company Telligent - developers of Community Server - in July 2007. Josh was closely involved in the development of the innovative MSDN Product Feedback Center, now Connect. Then Joe Morel left the same VS team to join the same software company two weeks later.
Microsoft has done a great job in recent years to foster a more open and transparent culture with respect to customer engagement and Korby and Josh were there at the beginning of the Microsoft blogging revolution and other community-related initiatives, really challenging the notions of old-style centralized command-and-control corporate communication. It's a shame to see this quality of talent walk out of the Redmond campus, true customer advocates - people with a real passion for customers and their needs.
I wish Korby, Josh and Joe the best of luck in their new adventures!
Update 9/2/07:
An anonymous reader has tipped me off on yet another leaver. Sandy Khaund, another big force in Microsoft's community development, has announced he's off to join a start up. Good luck Sandy!
Brian Johnson just landed a cool job as an "Enthusiast Evangelist" (EE) on Microsoft's DPE (Developer and Platform Evangelism) team. I worked with Brian in my MSDN / TechNet days where he then moved to the Mac Business Unit. He recently moved his family over to Florida - but instead of Microsoft letting go of his talents, they offered him this "EE" position.
So what is an Enthusiast Evangelist? Stephanie Quilao, another "EE", decribed the role when he announced his new position at Microsoft:
"The Enthusiast Evangelist role is a newly created position at Microsoft, and there are going to be more folks like me in other regions around the U.S. Our jobs are basically to go out and mingle, bond, and touch influential end users and show them all the cool things that Microsoft has to offer.
...Now, traditionally, Evangelists at Microsoft and most tech companies focus primarily on techie audiences like developers, IT Managers, and uber geeks. The Enthusiast Evangelist is a new role that is designed more to (excuse my boss speak) bridge the gap between consumer and tech company. It is no secret that there is a big divide between how tech companies promote and what consumers understand. Most people just scratch their heads. Microsoft wanted to hire me because my primary talent is the ability to translate Geek speak into Oprah speak to show people how technology can help them live their best lives."
Sounds like the perfect role for Brian who co-authored Xbox 360 for Dummies and Zune for Dummies with Duncan Mackenzie. Congrats Brian!
A new world record has been set for a 5GHz WiFi transmission - a connection maintaining a transfer rate of 5Mbps at a distance of 188.89 miles.
"The alignment was made by providing a beacon through a semi-directional antenna (short-backfire 17dBi) on the Sardinia Island and one of the two 35dBi antennas on Monte Amiata, which is about 5,220 feet (1,740m) above sea level. It allows operators on Sardinia Island to stay in touch with their community on the Italian Peninsula, and is sure to have a range of applications in the future of Wi-Fi technologies, by incorporating super-high frequencies at far greater distances than ever before."
Via Gizmodo.
I think I've hit a personal first: a depressing mashup. Oakland Crimestopping is a Flash-based vizualization tool overlaying reported crime data in Oakland, CA, by type (from aggrevated assault to murder to burglary) and time on a Virtual Earth map.
Fortunately, I live nowhere near Oakland, but if I did I think I'd try to live on a pontoon on Lake Merritt. This is what July 27 to August 24 2007 looks like:
To fuel an ongoing level of anxiety, you can subscribe to email alerts or to customized RSS feeds based on specific queries. Example - track all the fun and games going on within 1/2 mile of High St.
This post by the one of the site's developers, Michal Migurski, mentions future areas to cover might include San Francisco and Berkeley. Check out the juicy implementation details.
Two more crime maps tools you can get depressed about are Portland's CrimeMapper (e.g. a generated report on crimes on Richmond, Portland in the last 12 months) and LA Times' Homicide map (536 murders in 2007 and counting).
(via information aesthetics)
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