No Huddle Offense

So what is it with twitter?

By following the right people you might get information faster and only the information you want. So better then the old print media?Is this the new information exchange media – or just a waste of time (search for the video of Kevin Spacey explaining twitter to David Lettermann…)

Are individuals the better reporters? Is their a need for reporters anymore? Or will they all start to tweet and you can follow those who are good?

And this all might be true if you are interested in the fact that the dog from the Taco Bell ads died…:-)

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The Web on OSGi

The Web on OSGi is an interesting slide set from JavaONE. Presented by Don Brown from Atlassian I agree with several issues he address. For example the ‘know your wires’ on slide 42 (See also: http://blogs.sun.com/intheclouds/entry/inspecting_the_integrity_of_your and http://blogs.sun.com/intheclouds/entry/osgi_dependencies1).

Peter Kiens somehow replied to this slide set in this blog entry: http://www.osgi.org/blog/2009/06/osgi-case-studies-pain.html

Don Brown replied with: http://www.jroller.com/mrdon/entry/clarifications_re_javaone_web_on. In that post he says:

OSGi has let us write big features in a portable, modular way across products, and has dramatically sped up the development process via its hot deployment capability.

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Modularity in Software and Space

I am a big fan of modular software. It allows the reuse of software parts and clear designs. Especially the later one. Think of a Object Orientated Software project where 100 of classes can just call each other – We invented OO programming for more cleaner designs and now the dependency graphs look horrible (have a look here), because every class depends on other classes and no clear boundaries are available.  With the help of modular design it is possible to clean it up. But it needs to be enforced (see also here). If you say a programmer you should do it, he won’t. Therefore I suggest using OSGi! (But OSGi can become a mess to: 1 2)

Now I discovered a project for modularity in space and satellite design. With CubeSat (10cm x 10cm x 10xm) cubes are used as modules for satellites. It is therefor possible to create 1U, 2U (two cubes) and XU (X cubes) big satellites. Great idea! And it seems to work. Only the reuseability does not seem to work 🙂

Also great it the reduction of cost by using this satellite model. This is also true when using modular designs in software. You can run successful projects within time and resource usage with the right planning, tools and a modular design.

Other sites about the CubeSat:

http://cubesat.atl.calpoly.edu

http://www.cubesatkit.com/  – yes you can even build your one 🙂

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When was the last time you actually got a CD from your Software vendor?

When was the last time you bought software and got a real CD? Downloads are all around but even more impressing is that Software as a Service (SaaS) is coming. In that case you are not even downloading Software! Amazing isn’t it? But there is a downside of it – this article states that costs for SaaS can add up fast. But traditional software seems to get cheaper.

And now take into account that there are also Open Source solutions around…

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The Open Cloud is coming

Randy Bias from GoGrid posted this blog entry earlier today:

http://neotactics.com/blog/technology/the-open-cloud-is-coming

Interesting is what he says:

Already there are the inklings of people working on concrete standards including ones for cloud computing infrastructure (Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI) a working group of the Open Grid Foundation (OGF)) and the portability of virtual machines (Open Virtualization Format (OVF)). Once these standards are finished and embraced by even a few clouds many customers will opt to choose cloud providers that use them, avoiding vendor lock-in and give choice to customers.

I agree with this statement and hope people will really adopt those standards. Sun is sadly enough not mentioned in the blog-entry. Although not all Cloud Vendors get nice grades .-)

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