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April 19, 2007
MinneBar this Saturday
Now that they've posted the schedule, I'm really starting to look forward to MinneBar this weekend. OK, that and the free t-shirt, whose design is totally awesome this year.
I was scanning through all the session topics earlier and got distracted reading Planet JSAN, the blog for a project called JSAN that my friend Dave is leading a session about. JSAN is a sort of CPAN for javascript.
If I want to catch his session, I've got to get there by 11am. I'm also looking forward to the Nintendo DS meetup at 2pm, and the UofMN Robot Demo at 4pm.
Maybe I'll see you there!
Posted by Martin at 12:30 AM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2007
The LAMP stack
You are probably starting to hear people talk about "LAMP" or the "LAMP stack". This is an acronym that means Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. The P can also stand for Python and/or Perl. LAMP is a very popular and powerful open source web application development and deployment system. Linux is the operating system, Apache is the web server, MySQL is the database server and PHP (and/or the other 'P' languages), with associated HTML and CSS, provide the interface and interactivity.
This is amazing. With all of the resources that the big companies use for product development -- literally billions of dollars and some of the brightest people on Earth -- they haven't created a solution as cool as LAMP. Open source, 1, commercial software, 0.
With the adaptation of LAMP, the economy has "lost the sale" in one very narrow sense, because companies aren't laying out thousands of dollars to pay for commercial web deployment software. To build out a cluster of Microsoft servers is incredibly expensive. To roll out a LAMP cluster, by comparison, is cheap. The company spends less and gets more and part of the budget is deployed elsewhere, a serious competitive advantage.
Now throw in the fact that companies like Apple and IBM are bundling LAMP in their operating systems. Every Mac comes with apache and mysql installed. These companies are leveraging open source, too.
So LAMP and other cool open source projects create tremendous value in the economy. Open source is fueling thousands of companies that are creating incredible value in the marketplace.
Posted by Michael at 11:15 PM | Comments (0)
April 03, 2007
Twitter: Fad or Rad?
I heard about Twitter on Future Tense last week, but it kind of went in one ear and out the other. Surprising, since I'm a known social-networking whore. If you build it, I will sign up. Then my husband, Mr. Anti-Social Networking himself signed up for Twitter yesterday. So I had no choice.
Then the husband got me going on this rad Google mashup that scrolls around the world displaying the latest tweets. Mesmerizing. Just sit and watch the world tweet!
I tweet from an easy little (Mac) desktop app.
But, the question remains: What's the point? The NY Times is using this to "tweet" the latest headlines. But, is it just yet another distraction on top of my ever-refreshing inbox and IM? Dunno yet. Jury's still out.
Posted by Meghan at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)
April 01, 2007
Apple goes for it
The rest of the world hasn't completely realized yet that Apple has become a medium. They have the world's ears with their iPods, its minds with their OS/applications and now its eyes with their Apple TV. The forever up-and-coming alternative to the Pee Cee is turning into a medium. That is a huge strategical move on Apple's part, to compete with cable companies, video outlets, music stores and TV networks all at once.
I'm a well-known Apple zealot, but in my experience nothing makes buying music, TV and movies easier than iTunes. Apple figured out how to do it. They've even made it fun. They've also made it easy. I download a TV show and can watch it on my Mac, on my iPod or my TV without thinking about it.
I am predicting a big deal where someone like Google or Time/Warner buys Apple for billions of dollars. Or maybe Apple buys them. I don't know. But I've been listening to people count Apple out for 20 years and they are still wrong.
Apple, not just a computer anymore.
Posted by Michael at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)