Looking back on the road ahead

By now, it's been (slightly over) 10 years ago that Bill Gates wrote "The Road Ahead", a book outlining his visions for the digital society of the future.

This article takes a closer look at it, and compares Bill's vision with how things actually are today (where today is February 2006, when the article was written).

On many points, mr. Gates did come quite close.

Links:
"The Road Ahead" 10 years on
Published writing: The Road Ahead

Loosely coupled

Book by Doug Kaye

Launch IE 7

Internet Explorer 7 <http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=5650926>It's here! Upgrade your browser with confidence. Install the new Internet Explorer 7, and get the benefits of tabbed browsing, better printing, easier searches, and improved security.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Microsoft Project Portfolio server 2007

Here a snapshot of an application record in Project Portfolio Server 2007

This Microsoft tool supports the concept of Application Portfolio Management.

Complete whitepaper can be downloaded here

Sharepoint and Active Directory management

There are a number of solutions and webparts available that enable management of users and passwords from within a Sharepoint environment.

One which looks promising is the Dot Net Factory, which offers not only integration with full-blown Active Directory, but also with ADAM (the "stand-alone" version of AD).

From a quick look, it might be a good (and integrated!) alternative for NetIQ DRA.

And it's Sharepoint 2007 ready!

Firefox security

Firefox has the reputation of being more secure than Microsoft Internet Explorer.

However, things have moved on since that was the only truth in town. Firefox is loaded with security flaws, according to a hacker duo that presented at this year's ToorCon.
Read Firefox JavaScript security "a complete mess"?

White and Nerdy

Weird Al Yankovic is back (could we now call him Weird Al 2.0 ?) with a new song called White and Nerdy.

Suitable material for this blog ? Perhaps ..

Overkill 2.0

Everyone (okay, almost everyone) on the internet has heard by now of Web 2.0. In fact, everyone has probably been trying to embrace some or all of the ideas of Web 2.0 (or at least, their interpretation of it), to improve usability and user interaction, to make their website or product more attractive to work with, or, well, just because it's cool.

And this meme has spread to other endeavours, like Enterprise 2.0, Grid 2.0, and a host of others, culminating in things like hindsight 2.0 and lunch 2.0.

All of this looks like a clear case of Marketing 2.0 (not to be confused with Marketing 2.0), with the danger of becoming the next bubble.

The question is what we are talking about. The initial "Web 2.0" idea has mushroomed into a whole cluster of related ideas, and the 2.0 meme has spread through to a number of (often quite loosely) connected areas of interest. And, of course, picked up by people with more sense of marketing than of technology (in and of itself not necessarily a bad thing.. if you're a marketeer).

In the end, this whole "versioning of concepts" thing is going fade away. It can be compared to how attaching ".com" to your company name made it magically worth more back in the 1990s, though the current trend is closer to a meme, and less of a hype than ".com" ever was.

Links:
Berners-Lee calls for Web 2.0 calm
Tim Berners-Lee on Web 2.0: "nobody even knows what it means"
Scrap Web 2.0, yes, but embrace Knowledge 2.0 surely
Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and Beyond: Villainous Version Numbers