Paul Mooney

Best Blogs 2004

It’s the TOP TEN time of the year, so here I go with my picks for the best blogs of 2004;

A big shout-out to Portland Oregon, is it because that town is sandwiched between Silicon Valley and Redmond, or maybe it’s the water?

ComputerZen

Sellsbrothers

Neopoleon

Snowstormlife

Blogs for learning stuff;

Samgentile

Dino

DonXML

The Old New Thing

Big Shot blogs;

Scottwater

Scobleizer

Information tsunami

I awoke at 7am EST on Black Sunday and heard on NPR the news of an 8.9 earthquake in Indonesia. The words “forty foot wave” struck me much the way “767” had on 9/11. I had just returned from spending two weeks living on a Pacific beach in Oaxaca, Mexico and know people who often travel to Phuket Thailand.

In the early hours there was very little information in the “mainstream press” so I went to the blogs to try and learn the extent of the tsunamis effect. I first went to Feedster, they were down for maintenance, then I went to Technorati and a search for Phuket brought back a listing of hotels and travel sites. Next I tried tsunami and got back thousands of hits but most were from “mainstream media” RSS feeds with the very same information I had already received from NPR.

There were blogs, hundreds of blogs, but everyone I clicked on was nothing more then a “rip and burn” from the very same “mainstream media” reports with the addition of a personalized “my heart goes out”.

I didn’t expect someone would blog on the beach, but with all the cell-phones in circulation I thought that somebody would have called someone somewhere with news.

Pubsub was my next stop and a search for tsunami returned nothing and a search for earthquake likewise returned nothing but they indexed it for me for future searches.

ABC News has just named The Bloggers as the person/people of the year and they site Firsthand Reporting on Asian Tsunami Catastrophes, but these took days to reach our feedreaders and browsers. RSS failed miserably to separate the wheat from the shaft, human aggregators had to pan the digital stream for flakes of gold, but by then the “mainstream media” aired many firsthand accounts of all the tragedies as they unfolded.

Resolutions to Remember

Do more Mobile and Embedded programming

Go back to County Kerry, Eire

Take more photos

Keep running

Go back to New Orleans

Visit California at least twice

Return to Paris, France

Fall in love

Celebrate life everyday

Blog about it all

What can WE do?

Tsunami news Your Help is Needed #

Last night we were talking with Keith Pleas. Keith is a developer that we've known for more than a decade now. He worked on the help system in Windows 95. He also owned a furniture shop where he imported from around the world, particularly in the Asian Pacific. So, he's well connected in that part of the world.

Last night he told us that we haven't even heard how bad the tsunami was. He told of one island where 20,000 people used to live. He said he heard that only 600 lived.

Today the death toll was increased to 116,000 (thanks to Memeorandum for the link). That's a number that's beyond our comprehension.

One of Keith's friends, Susi, who lives in Bali and travels frequently to Indonesia, has started a blog: the Aceh Aid Bucket Brigade.

Blogs, like Susi's, are now helping build new kinds of relief networks and news networks.

By the way, Susi reports that Continental Airlines is opening its doors wide. Corporate giving is really important at times like these. It's where corporations can show they are important parts of our society. Congrats to eBay, Google, Amazon (you can donate there with one click), Apple for linking to relief efforts.

This is going to take years of giving to help fix. Microsoft has released an official statement:

"We are deeply saddened by this tragedy. We are committed to assisting the relief effort with cash, volunteer and technology resources and we are actively discussing ways that we can help with numerous international and local aid organizations. Over the past 48 hours our corporate headquarters and local Asia Pacific offices have identified in-country organizations who are providing critical support to the victims of this devastating event. We will continue to work with these local organizations to monitor the situation and determine needs for ongoing support. In addition to our corporate efforts many of our offices around the world have responded by setting up employee-giving programs."

We'd like to give a shout out to our coworkers in India who are giving one-day's salary to this effort. More of us will join that effort.

Our subsidiaries have reported what agencies they are donating funds and help to. Our branch in Indonesia is supporting the Palang Merah Indonesia (Red Cross of Indonesia) http://www.palangmerah.org. Our office in Sri Lanka is supporting Sarvodaya. http://www.sarvodaya.lk. Our subsidiary in Thailand is supporting the Office of Prime Minister Disaster Relief Fund. http://www.opm.go.th/opminter. In India we're supporting the MS Swaminathan Foundation, http://www.mssrf.org and the Prime Minister's Relief Fund http://www.pminidia.nic.in, among others.

But, back on topic. Others are writing about how to help as well. Om Malik, senior writer at Business 2.0 magazine, is keeping a Tsunami Help Campaign page.

TechWeb writes about another set of organizations that are helping out.

What else can we do? Let us know.

T'is the season for giving

Thanks Greg Hughes and Scott Hanselman for this idea. The power of blogging isn't citizen journalism, it's the power to start a movement.

Nick Bradbury is donating his profits to the Red Cross. Kudos Nick. Let's ALL take our passive Google Adsense Revenue for the year and donate it directly to earthquake relief. Mine so far is US $287.53 since I started ads in June. I'm sure hundreds of thousands, even millions could be raised quickly in this manner.

To that end, let's pressure Google into allowing us to automatically donate our revenue from their side! Spread the word and trackback this link.

To me, spreading an idea like this is the power of blogging, more than citizen journalism.

Dot Net Jobs

Welcome to Dott Net Jobs . It's our goal to bring Dot Net Developers and hiring companies together in order to help fill open job requirements. If you would like to blog on this site please email info@careermetasearch.com with your job desired, job location preference, current position description and email address. If you would like to enter a resume please visit Careermetasearch .

Lot's of companies here in NY/NJ are looking for DotNet Developers, we have a job board at nycdotnetdev.com and it has been very busy!

Feliz Navidad

Feliz Navidad a todos mis amigos buenos en Oaxaca, México.

Make a difference

That's why this holiday season we asked community leaders from the Pacific Northwest region of the United States for their thoughts on how each of us can make an impact on our communities. Here's what they had to say.
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Microsoft is doing well by doing good and so can we.

A European OS?

How about those slackers in Silicon Valley why haven’t they produced an OS that I might consider using? I asked Dan Appleman this question at DevConnections and he answered “why should we”? I told him my biggest fear is that a Sony or Samsung will produce an OS for a device selling for $299 that we will be locked-out of, no software developers needed. He replied “that’s a good idea, it’s called the PS2”, then he went on to talk of his admiration for the Governator and California’s involvement in stem-cell research.

I played football in High School and Collage, so I understand Microsoft’s RA RA mentality, the goal is to be number 1, to win it all! Nobody is suing the Yankees; the Red Sox's had a better idea.

All the money spent on Lawsuits to stop Microsoft from being number one should have been invested in a Software company with a better idea. Better ideas would have made Microsoft compete even harder and all computer users would have been the beneficiaries.

Windows Mobile

The Blogs are buzzing with iPod envy and all that latent anti-Microsoft hostility; Scoble: Dear Bill Gates: can we create an interesting music player? 

I read Robert's blog everyday, he is at the epicenter of our Software Developer Community, to be Scobleized is the ultimate accolade in our circle of blogs. When I read Robert's controversial post Sunday night all I could think about was that Microsoft has a music player, I own several: Windows Mobile 2003 on the Pocket PC.

I did some Marketing Research over the past few days, checked websites, called Santa’s workshop and there seams to be zero demand for Pocket PC’s this holiday season. WHY?

I was at the Launch of Windows CE 5.0 six months ago and as of yet not ONE line of CE 5.0 code has found it’s way on to the ROM of any of my Pocket PC’s. I have a View Sonic V37 thanks to the nice folks at MSDN who included it as an offer with my MSDN subscription last year. Unfortunately it came loaded with Windows Mobile 2002 and a coupon for the 2003 upgrade with a SanDisk SD Wi-Fi card from View Sonic. Everytime I tried to access the website for the upgrade the site was down and by time I contacted View Sonic the upgrade had sold-out.

On my own I found the upgrade file on the opposite side of the globe, downloaded it and flashed my Pocket PC Rom. The Wi-Fi card I acquired on ebay because the guy selling it couldn’t get it to work on 2002 software, but with Windows Mobile 2003 it works great.

Now Microsoft® Windows® Pocket PC 2003 Premium (Second Edition) has been released, do you think View Sonic will offer me an upgrade? Not a hope! Windows Media Player 10 Mobile was just released and guess what? Windows Media Player 10 Mobile is not available for download from Microsoft.

I have two 256mb SD cards from SanDisk, they have 1gig cards out now (two years ago I was told we would have 3gig cards by now), but that is enough storage for a days worth of Music using WMA. The Pocket PC is a great portable music player and I have yet to see anyone with a Palm handheld and headphones. My Pocket PC can check email, send email, surf the web, comment on blogs and channel9, see photos, read ebooks, play games, record messages and write a letter to Bill Gates: the Pocket PC will eat the iPods lunch!

 Technical Content Recommendation

Help us create the Windows Mobile^® technical content you need!

Contact Windows Mobile, take the survey and tell them how much you love listening to music on your Pocket PC.     

Microsoft Smarter Hospitality

Welcome to the Hotel Amazon.com 

Microsoft Aims to Transform Lodging, Dining Experiences with Smarter Hospitality
A new solutions framework from Microsoft is helping the hospitality industry check into a new generation of convenient, personalized services for its customers.
                                                                                                            Microsoft Smarter Hospitality is built on three pillars:

• Smarter Guest Experience, which uses technology to optimize the consumer experience in both the lodging and food service environments;
• Smarter Service, which provides hoteliers and foodservice operators access to real-time data and the tools they need to deliver virtually instantaneous, personalized guest services that foster customer loyalty;
• Smarter Operations, which includes solutions for creating a seamless technology infrastructure that integrates with existing legacy systems while providing the underlying platform for future growth and innovation.

 I keep thinking how Amazon.com keeps recommending that I should buy a Harry Potter book based on my pattern of purchasing Dot Net books.

The Bloggers

Time has chosen their “Man of the Year”, I thought it should have been “The bloggers” to paraphrase Babe Ruth “we had a better year”. The world is a better place because of all the bloggers observing and commenting on everything imaginable 24/7/365.

Is Time magazine threatened by bloggers? Who pays for a subscription to Time these days? Remember they don’t make money selling magazines, advertisers’ paying for eyeballs is the golden goose and more and more advertisers are going with the blogs as a way to get their message out.

Time Warner also sells records (large flat disks with squiggly groves), owns Looney Toons, AOL, a cable TV company and a big motion picture company.

Time Warner just announced a settlement with Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the naming of the Man of the Year wasn’t part of that settlement. To quote The Man of the Year “justice should be fair”, no injustice here.

Itanium 2

Without acknowledging that the 64bit Itanium chip has been a major flop, Intel and HP yesterday announced big plans for a new multi-core Itanium 2 chip. Two years ago I attempted to build an Itanium Server but was unable to acquire the Pluto chip-set which was developed and owned by HP. Now the Pluto team will be