New to me local tech blogs

Appian Insight, all about BPM

Webs.com blog, with a good post about SOPA.

Identika, video production, social media, and web development

The AKG Blog, all about SharePoint

Essential Share Point from Susan Hanley

From the Library of Congress: Inside Adams, science, technology, and business.

Jim Bland, about all things tech, business, and economic.

New to me local tech blogs

Learning .NET, from Christopher Steen

Privasoft FOIA Blog, Through software and services, Privasoft transformed the way information disclosure teams, like FOIA & ATIP offices, comply with legislative, regulatory and internal requirements.

The MurkyGrey blog, Survive and thrive in software startups

Project Performance Corporation, part of the AEA Group

Well done Microsoft

Deirdre Blake reports that Microsoft's IE9 will offer a Do Not Track feature. (More from IE blog). There is some talk that this is a response to the FTC's recent report on consumer privacy.

There is an interesting discussion at Slashdot, with a sly comment as to why we may not see a similar move by Firefox.

It is great to see a company innovating in response to customer need rather than game the system to see if they can simply find another way to add on a fee for the same product.

Well done Microsoft. I have always said there was a fortune to be made by the compnay who enables us to use the Internet in a way that preserves our privacy.

Technology is not a religious subject

Jason Perlow

I suspect that this is the case for the majority of enterprises and end-users, in the world where folks just want stuff to work.

Once a developer becomes psychologically invested in a technology logic goes out the window and it becomes a religious discussion. Which technology is easier from the perspective of end users becomes irrelevant.

Anyone who does not believe this is invited to read Slashdot or any other forum where developers gather to discuss technology and review the ensuing flame wars.

Scott Lock talks about .Net, the Red Cross, Excella, Caparea.net and user groups

Scott Lock is a Managing Consultant with Excella Consulting and President of the Caparea.net users group. He was kind enough to give this blog an interview.

How did you get interested in software development?

This will sound so typical, but I actually became interested in Software Development very young. I copied a program by hand into my older brothers Texas Instruments TI-99A computer. It took a few times to get right either because I would copy something wrong or the power cable came out killing my project. I always like working with computers whether it was games or just writing papers. I always wanted to learn as much as I could about how it all worked.


How did you get interested in .Net?

I started professionally programming in Visual Basic and C out of college. I worked through VS 3.0 through VB 6, attending conferences and learning as much as I could about how to develop software using Microsoft's tools. In 1998 I met Hal Hayes at a VBITS conference (Visual Basic Insiders Technical Summit) and joined him in establishing a VB users group in Northern Virginia. It was through this community that I began to really learn about the future of development tools. Through great speakers and solid topics I learned about Visual Studio and .Net. I became an instant fan.


Tell us about your work for the Red Cross, what are the particular challenges facing software developers working for a high profile non-profit involved in disaster response?

I loved working for the American Red Cross. I had 5 1/2 incredible years there with some truly amazing people. During my time there I was responsible for a few different projects and people, however my greatest responsibility was as the Technical Lead for the Online Donation Site hosted on www.redcross.org. It was originally built by IBM professional service consultants back in 1998 in traditional ASP. I made some core changes to the application on that platform including incorporating a new payment gateway. After .Net was released, we began the push to re-architect the system in .Net and other service oriented platform technologies. September 11th tested our systems and pushed things to the limit. We overcame and thought that it was unlikely that we would see anything near the challenges during that time. We had consultants like Cisco driving all night pulling hardware out of enterprise clients and bringing it to the Red Cross data center. We rebuilt the entire infrastructure over night. It was in 2004 when 4 hurricanes hit Florida, that the real challenges began. That kicked off 2 years of what seemed to be non-stop disasters. The tsunami and Katrina really pushed the envelope in both scalability and disaster recovery. We had to make sure that sites like the online donation system was available full time. We were processing 1500 transactions per minute at one point so any time down meant the potential for lost donations. It was really, really difficult during those time - but we made it through. It was upsetting to read articles and blogs slamming Red Cross IT after Katrina. Unless you went through it, you have no idea how dedicated the men and woman of the American Red Cross and its partners in IT were during those difficult times. They were always there for one thing - the mission - to simply be first to go in and the last leave.


Tell us about your work for Excella.

I joined Excella in 2006, after things slowed down at the Red Cross. It was a difficult choice, but it was time for me to move on. I know lead the Microsoft Center of Excellence for Excella. Through the MS CoE we support accounts and clients, our people, and the community - specializing in Microsoft technologies. I really enjoy my job. I get a chance to work with many different clients, discussing the ways that Microsoft technology can help improve their business. I also get to work with our consultants on becoming the best Microsoft technology firm in the D.C. area. A lofty goal, but I believe we are on our way.

Excella is a diverse, IT services firm. We have a strong portfolio of commercial and government clients. We are a full service IT Services firm. We are also a Microsoft Gold Partner.


What is a MVP? a MCPD?

MVP stands for Microsoft Most Valuable Professional. It's an award given to people that Microsoft believes is a leader and influencer in the community, focused usually in a specific product area. I am a C# MVP, awarded based on my contributions to the C# community through Capare.net and other vehicles.

MCPD stands for Microsoft Certified Professional Developer. I passed the certification tests last year to become a MCPD - Web Developer. I would like to complete the track and end up with an MCPD - Enterprise certification.


How did you get involved in Capital Area .Net Users Group?

I met Hal Hayes in 1999 at a VBITS conference in Florida. I joined him in running the Capital Area .net Visual Basic Users Group. Since then we have grown along with Microsoft's development tools and platforms. We became the Capital Area .Net Users Group in 2001, after the release of .Net. We will be celebrating our 10 year anniversary this year in July. We estimate that this is our 125 meeting. We will be having a big blast during our July meeting!


What makes a good user group?

A good user group is one that truly serves its members. I believe that if you can bring strong speakers and great topics to your members month to month, you are making a difference in the community. Our members give up 2 hours of their family life every month to come out and here someone talk about .Net development. We owe it to our members and our sponsors to make that meeting worth their valuable time.


How would you characterized Caparea.net audiences?

Our members are smart, diversified, and engaged people. They typically get involved in the presentations, making them often conversations rather than sit and listen events. I love our members. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't appreciate the effort and time they put into improving their skills and knowledge.


How are speakers selected?

Speakers are typically first come first scheduled.  We are lucky to live in an area rich with Microsoft development talent.  We have been able to schedule top speakers not only in the D.C. area, but often well known worldwide.  A big reason for this success has been a larger support group for user groups called Ineta (Ineta.org).  INETA empowers user groups by making it possible for non-local speakers to speak at local meetings.  They cover the cost of flying these well-known speakers into these meetings.  INETA has been very important to Caparea.net getting great speakers over the years.

Our second secret weapon is our Speaker Coordinator and sitting board member Brian Noyes.  Brian is a Microsoft Regional Director, MVP, and INETA speaker.  I am proud to say he is my friend and fellow user group leader.  Brian is a big reason we get such strong speakers.

What makes a good presentation?

Good presentations are ones that are a nice mix of theory and code. I personally like to have the ground work explained before diving into code, but often developers like to just see the code. Speakers who are engaging and relaxed tend to really hit the mark with our members. Of course, we do not have any speakers that are not rock stars!


Are there presenters who particularly stand out?

All of our speakers are strong. Choosing a few that stand out is not an easy task. If I had to pick a few, I would name Brian Noyes, Vishwas Lele, and Sahil Malik as some of our stand out speakers. Brian and Vishwas are veteran conference speakers who set the bar for speakers at our meetings. Sahil is special to Caparea.net because he gave his first presentation at one of our meetings. He has since risen in the community to a very well known and respected speaker.


Where do you see the .Net going? What do you see as the important
trends?

I think that few will argue that .Net is moving become THE way to
develop service oriented applications. The tools and ease of development for building rich, highly available service based applications is really second to none. The user experience is also seeing a transformation in the .Net space. Silverlight, WPF, and other new user interface technologies are redefining the way in which we build front end applications. I can only ask Microsoft to slow down so our members get a chance to absorb and learn all of the new things in .Net. If you want to learn more about the future of .Net, just come out to our anniversary meeting in July where we will have a panel of experts talk about where .Net is going.

New to me Microsoft blog

Microsoft On the Issues: news, perspectives, and analysis on legal and policy issues. (Via PR Week)

More marketing with video on the web

Lewis Shepherd has a intriguing post on Microsoft's new Touchless software, which has a nifty video explaining the concept.

Clearly all new product launches are going to require a video. One more skill to be learned.

Blogging on the cheap

BL Ochman has an excellent post on the limits of blogging, shorter version, it is not for every company. She goes on to say that companies must be prepared to spend significant money on blogging. Here I must dissent.

It is my view, which I argued with some force at the Technology Council of Maryland, individual employees should be encouraged to blog, or Tweet, or whatever they prefer. The collective impact of numerous individual employee blogs is far greater than any corporate blog that could be devised. The role of the professional communicator in all this is to advise on blogging platform, develop appropriate guidelines and then let employees run with it.

The Microsoft blogs are a perfect example of this. There are hundreds of Microsoft blogs, my favorites include .Net DevHammer, Brian Noyes Blog, Jonathan Cogley’s Blog, and Justin Burtch’s blog. While not all of them are kept up to date, collectively they give a reader a feel for Microsoft culture.

Open source content management

Alfresco as a SharePoint alternative

It's an interesting option. As readers of our ECM Suites Report 2008 know, Alfresco is one of the more interesting ECM vendors around. The question you might ask yourself however is, why would anyone want to do use Alfresco instead of SharePoint? Clearly open source enthusiasts will herald this as a major breakthrough - and those enterprises that espouse open source may well become customers. But then again, if you are going to dump Microsoft for the back end, why use Office at all, given there are open source alternatives?

But this release has appeal beyond the open source community, for the simple fact that by using the Alfresco alternative you are not locked into the Microsoft stack. This isn't so much an issue now, but will be when Office and SharePoint effectively merge at the next major release. Unhooking the two from each other (or at least having the option to do so) is good risk mitigation, and a powerful thing to have in your armory when negotiating with Microsoft.

Just as clearly Microsoft would like to lock you in with their solution.

The Sullivan principles come to the Internet

Spurred By Olympics Web-Coverage Debate, Internet Companies Agree on Code of Conduct for Operating in Repressive Countries

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft said this week that they were close to finishing a voluntary code of conduct for doing business in China and other countries that censor the Internet — a project they started in January 2007. In letters released by Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, the companies said they have agreed on principles "protecting and advancing the enjoyment of freedom of expression and privacy globally," the LA Times reports.

It looks like they are searching for a cyber version of the Sullivan principles. I wish them well, but doing business in a police state will always be a faustian bargain.

Calling all Windows IT Pros: what would you do about the White House email?

Windows IT Pro has an excellent overview of the controversy surrounding the White House email system, filled with links for those who have only just joined the story. They conclude the article with an appeal to their readers:

At Windows IT Pro, we publish articles and information about products regularly for systems administrators concerned about staying compliant with a myriad of laws concerning email retention. Exchange administrators: What are your thoughts on the White House's archiving process? Do you have any advice for how they could do better? We want to hear from you!

I will be interested to see what they get. I am not persuaded that we are dealing with a technical problem, but I look forward to reading about the technical solutions.

Edit -
CatabBlog has some thoughts about the case.

Local .Net and SQL user groups

.net DEvHammer

Are you looking for a .NET or SQL Server User Group? I'm hoping to make your task a little easier by adding a handy user group map to my blog. If you go to the homepage of my blog, and look in the section entitled "My Stuff," you'll find a new widget containing a Virtual Earth map of the active .NET and SQL Server user groups in the Mid-Atlantic area (if I missed yours, don't fret, just drop me a note, and I'll add you). If you click on the Expand link, it'll enlarge the map for better readability. You can also see the map in a larger size here.

Open Office XML, a Potemkin standard?

At last night’s meeting of the DC XML Users group I asked what they thought of the controversy surrounding the International Standards Organization adoption of OOXML. There was general agreement that the ISO had not covered itself in glory and that its reputation has taken a major hit. Someone mentioned this post by Tim Bray -

The important thing is this: The ISO Delta is completely irrelevant to the marketplace. It is not implemented in the shipping Microsoft products. Microsoft may choose to implement some portion of it in some future release of some product, or they may not. Given Office’s release and adoption cycle, it’s very unlikely that any pieces of the delta they decide to implement will be widely deployed in anything less than five years.

Thus, if you write OOXML software and you generate ISO-Delta markup, it won’t be usable by the deployed base of software. In fact, we have no information as to how gracefully Office will react; will it bypass such markup or explode messily? I’m not optimistic. So, implementors should not generate ISO-Delta markup.

If Bray is correct, the whole purpose of a standards organization has been defeated. It is a shame, a real shame.

Why standards are newsworthy

There is a demonstration in Oslo against Microsoft's Open Office XML format. A demonstration for crying out loud!

Standards matter. Standard selection is vendor selection; which is why Microsoft has put so much money in persuading the International Standards Organization to accept OOXML.

The Potomac technology community is one of the most influential in standards issues. Even more than money, standards determine the direction of future technology. It is a pity local editors do not understand this.

ISO and OOXML

Microsoft: IBM masterminded OOXML failure

Microsoft executives have accused IBM of single-handedly leading an effort to block the software giant from having its Office Open XML standard approved by the International Organization for Standardization.

After initially being rejected by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in September 2007, Microsoft has a second chance for its next-generation document format to become an international standard in February at a ballot resolution meeting in Geneva.

While criticism of Microsoft's efforts to promote the standard have come from a variety of quarters, Microsoft senior director of XML technology, Jean Paoli, accused IBM of masterminding the attack.

"Let's be very clear," Paoli said. "It has been fostered by a single company — IBM. If it was not for IBM, it would have been business as usual for this standard."

Would business as usual be a good or bad thing?

Standards, open source vs. proprietary

Leadership by Numbers has two very illuminating posts:

Hope for Microsoft's OOXML Continues to Erode
Maybe ODF and OOXML is Not Black and White

It is important to concentrate on the merits of the case and not let it become a religious discussion.

Why standards matter

Rob Wier

It should have been obvious at the time that vesting exclusive control of an interoperability interface in a single company was a bad idea. But I guess the world didn't realize what dealing with Microsoft meant. But we know better now. So why are we making the same mistakes in 2007?

Those who control the exchange format, can control interoperability and turn it on or off like a water faucet to meet their business objectives.

Compliance opera

Microsoft Sued Over (Lack of) Standards Compliance

Opera is asking the European Commission for two remedial actions. First, it asks the EC to require Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows, and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop. Secondly, it asks the Commission to make Microsoft agree to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities.

Regrettably, Opera isn't specifying which "open Web standards" are not being followed, but one can reasonably suppose that a major point of contention is XHTML 1.1, which IE7 still doesn't support properly.

Opera tells EU that Microsoft's IE hurts the Web

In a complaint, Opera claimed Microsoft continues to abuse its dominant position on the desktop by tying its Internet Explorer (IE) browser to Windows, and hinders interoperability by not following accepted Web standards. It asked the EU's Competition Commission to force Microsoft into separating IE from Windows, and to demand that IE support several standards.

In a statement, the commission said Opera should "obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers preinstalled on the desktop.

"Second, it asks the European Commission to require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities," Opera said. "Microsoft's unilateral control over standards in some markets creates a de facto standard that is more costly to support, harder to maintain and technologically inferior, and that can even expose users to security risks."

Standards selection can equal vendor selection, that is what this fight is about and why the public should be given sufficient facts to understand the debate.

Today! Live debate over Open Office XML

Office Open XML
Not to be confused with OpenOffice.org (an unrelated office suite) or "Open Office XML" (a colloquial synonym for OpenOffice.org XML).

Office Open XML (commonly referred to as OOXML or OpenXML) is an XML-based file format specification for electronic documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents.

Weigh In On the OOXML Issue During Live Debate

Linux.com's Robin 'Roblimo' Miller will moderate a live debate today, Wednesday, December 5 at 1pm US EST (GMT -5), between the GNOME Foundation's press officer Jeff Waugh and fair competition advocate Roy Schestowitz.

Putting libraries online

Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web

Libraries that agree to work with Google must agree to a set of terms, which include making the material unavailable to other commercial search services. Microsoft places a similar restriction on the books it converts to electronic form. The Open Content Alliance, by contrast, is making the material available to any search service.

I wonder what taxpayers would think if they understood that collections that were assembled at their expense will be available online only through certain search engines.