innovate !!

Who innovate today in desktop experience?

This is a complex question…

Google is the first who come in my mind. A lot of engineer have left Microsoft to Google. Google have make a lot of new things as Google hearth, Google Desktop, Gmail, Google reader, Igoogle, Gcalendar , Google spreadsheet,… But Google video was a badtrip and they have to buy Youtube. Google have nothing really new since few month… Google have done a great job to make a web “Office” but it is just a migration to web not a real new idea.

EDIT: they have just released the google presentation.

MAC OS X have add a lot of new idea in desktop but nothing new since it.Apple have take a strong leadership in mp3 reader and Iphone will be a success. So, Apple is now clearly investing in Iphone, Ipod which bring more money to them.

The big one, Microsoft, fall down. The OpenXML have been refused by International Organization for Standardization.Windows Vista is compare to the Windows Me and Microsoft have provide a downgrade to Win XP.

And Aero is not as good as compiz. Microsoft is good to copy something and make it better for everyone (MACOS->Windows, Lotus 1-2-3-> MS Excel, Java->.NET,…). But Microsoft is in bad way. MS Office and MS Windows are the products which bring cash to Microsoft. MS office is challenged by openOffice, Google spreadsheet,… And MS Windows is left for Linux on server side. and now the last part (but bigger one) desktop environment is more and more challenged by Untubu & Suse who have simplified Linux to make it usable for everyone.

Innovation come from open source today. Power of community get bigger!

The console is left for beautiful GUI on linux. Microsoft have seen the trap and contract with Novell to save him for future but revolution come fast and who know what will be the future market-share of desktop?

Imo, It will take time.I am switching to Linux as many other people. I am an engineer and for moment most of people who switch to Linux are IT engineer but they are prescriptor. When someone want to buy a computer and know nothing about it, he ask for advice to prescriptor. The other sign is that administration switch to Linux. A lot of project improve compatibility (Mono, Moonlight, cygwin…) and other products are on both plate-form (OpenOffice, Firefox,…). So all this things make migration easier but a lot of issue is still there because of the lack of support for Linux.

Compiz Fusion video

Compositing have bring a lot of thing in desktop experience.

Beryl which is a fork of Compiz have now fusion with Compiz Extra for plugin package part and have bring some features in compize core. To sum up, compiz is core with just few stable plugin and Compiz Fusion is a package of plugin which can be unstable on some plugin but which bring a lot of features to desktop.

Some video to show you progress of Compiz fusion and Compiz:

open ID

I have ever talked about open ID.

To sum up, Open ID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity.

For non geek people, You have only one password to remember which will authenticate you everywhere on web.

Else you can see this beautiful video or the one of 2006

This is very powerful to solve the identity theft. The main issue is that it must be used everywhere to be sure that it will become a standard.

You can get an openId here.

Major actors of web do not use it because they wait the new framework OpenId 2.0. The specs of this new framework are near finished and will be released soon.

So, we will see after the specs released what will be done by all main web actors. But we ever seen some sign that show that will be a success.

AOL have ever go ahead and used it today for 63 million users.

I am really proud of Orange (France telecom) who have invest in this new technology. You will have 40 millions of orange consumers who will used it.

Microsoft Monopole

In US you have the antitrust law in France we have the anti packaging law.

This law just said that you can not sell 2 products together without selling each products.

In France, you can only found PC with Windows on it and a lot of constructor do not allow consumer to buy PC without it. So we have a petition to warn our country about this issue who do not let a change to other product of the market. The cost of software installed on your PC is about 20/25% of the total cost. This not only for MS windows, you will have a lot of installed software

So you can sign the petition to stop this bad practice which make price expensive and do not let the choice for your software.

When firefox bring the web2.0 revolution…

Firefox is really a great browser with tabs , plugins, Anti fishing, RSS, … and many more things.

But the last Alpha 8 of Firefox bring a really cool thing: the web based protocol handlers.

This system allow people to register web service to open mime type. So you can open a file without local rich client to open it. The power of web service will do it for you.

Imagine you want to open a document .doc, but you do not want to install MS word, you will use the Google document web service to open it!!

This system is great because no issue about multi-OS support. Most of plate-form have a browser and this is the only thing needed!

PDF file is a pain to open because Acrobat reader is really slow and have to many module to load whereas it is quite never used. I have never understand why acrobat open all module even if not needed and why it will not check file content to see what is needed… I use Foxit reader to open PDF but now I will use WebService to open it.

Your computer will no more need extra application than a browser and access to web;)

A lot of web service is outside to help you to open document. In my opinion, it is the future for a big part of application. But this system is not perfect to do complex things (coding, compile, .. for example) but it is cool to view any format. So, you will no more need viewer because all will be online.

Gnome 2.20 is out!

Gnome have just released the new version 2.20.

You can found here the full release note.

Else here is a quick summary:

Evolution (mail client)

• Auto detect missing attachments
• Mail received notification
• Backup & Restore system
• Magic space bar (by pressing space bar you can see all your mailbox)
• Calendar/Events improvements

Epiphany (browser)

• in-line completion improvements

Multimedia

• Eye of Gnome is faster and more stable
• Eye of Gnome have easier access to basic information and metadata
• Eye of Gnome transfer image to other image application
• Video & Audio codec installation work-flow

Back office

• Support for interactive PDF forms
• Note synchronization
• Syntax highlighting in text editor improve
• File management
• Improve user friendly/accessibility
• Switch between account in password management
• Better support for right to left language

Bizutage

Pour une fois mon post sera en francais sur un sujet qui me tiends à coeur: Le bizutage.

En effet, je vois très souvent à la télé des sujets sur les dérapages des bizutages montrant des images chocs et mélangeant beaucoup de bizutages de différentes ecoles et de différentes années ensemble. Cela fait vendre…

J’ai été aux Arts et Métiers, écoles connue pour son bizutage et franchement la majorité aime bien le bizutage. Cela permet de créer un lien entre la jeune promotion et les autres promotions ( sortie d’école ou non). En France, les réseaux sont très importants et nous sommes le plus grand réseau d’anciens élèves (28000 membres). Et cela est en grande partie dû à notre bizutage.

Les dérapages dans les bizutages il y en a eu et il y en a sans doute encore dans plein d’écoles. Cependant, tout est fait pour les éviter. Pour autant, doit on généraliser et penser que tout est fait de la même facon… bien sur que non.

Il y a de bon et de mauvais bizutages. Certe, notre bizutage est long (2 mois) et demande beaucoup aux élèves de première année ( apprendre des chants traditionnels, faire des projets ensembles, rencontré et discuter avec les 2 et 3eme années, animations,…). Mais, ils ont en permanence le choix de refuser et de dire non. Il y a des règles strictes ( les 2eme années n’ont meme pas le droit de touché les 1 ere année…) que s’impose les 2eme années et de nombreux groupes qui organisent, s’occupent du folclore, surveille et aident les premières années,… Chaque groupe controllant l’action de chacun afin d’éviter tout débordement.

Bref, cela est très structuré et on ne pratique absolument pas d’humiliation. C’est sûr, les bizus subissent des préssions. Mais nous en subissons tous pendant notre carrière professionnel. Et le but de ces pressions n’est absolument pas de les faire craquer. Nous sommes simplement la pour essayé de créer un lien entre les élèves en première année et les autres promotions.

Bref, les reportages sur le bizutage sont systématiquement a charge et cela m’enerve au plus haut point.

Porté une blouse grise, avoir des chants traditionnels et défilé en fil indienne c’est du folklore et cela n’est en aucun cas une humiliation. C’est plutot marant… Surtout qu’en général, c’est plutot festif comme ambiance.

Great tool

I will talk about a great tool which is not a lot used by developer. This tool is not recent but it is not a lot used. So I will try to make people used it!

A lot of developer use only Visual studio in DotNet project but you have a lot of other IDE(or build tool) to manage your project:

• sharpdevelop
• monodevelop
• nant
• make (autotool)
• …

You can even used some IDE with plugin (eclipse for example…).

And for VS you have VS 2002, VS2003, VS2005 and VS ORCAS in beta2.

So when you start an open source project, you have to said we will all worked on the same IDE. If you want to support more than one IDE, you will have to synchronized the solution file and it will take a lot of time for nothing.

An other case, you want to switch from VS2003 to VS2005. So you will have dev on the older one and some on new one. This is now not a big issue because you have VS Express but at start you have to buy your Visual studio. For a open source developer, it is so expensive.

DotNet PreBuild is the tool to save your time. It is a project file generator based on XML.

This tool is great because you have to maintain only one XML project file and you target Visual Studio .NET 2002, 2003, 2005, SharpDevelop, MonoDevelop, NAnt and Autotools.

My favorite feature is that you can said take all file with name as “*.cs” in this folder.

With that you have nothing to maintain only have to put file in good folder and when you want to not used a file rename it or delete it.

To make project file you have to call the Prebuild.exe with /target:MyTarget where MyTarget can be all target writen previously.

So quite easy to done batch file for each project and just have click it and a project file of your choice is generated.

The only missing features for me is the possibility to parse a project file to generate the prebuild project file.

In my opinion, this project is good for mono because it make project file not linked with an IDE (So, with an OS).

.NET framework 1.1 2.0 3.0 3.5 2.1…

A lot of people get crazy with all this version. So, I will try to sum up what is difference between all this releases!

.NET framework 1.1 :

It is the basic framework, so, I will not take the time to explain what is inside because I have ever talk enough about it…

.NET framework 2.0:

It is bring a lot of evolution in class of the framework and refactor some control.
The other big evolution here is on language with support of :

• generics
• anonymous methods
• partial class
• nullable type
• …

.NET framework 3.0:

This framework is the key for developing application under Vista.
It is just a set of assembly which use XML to map:

• Communication (WCF)
• View (WPF)
• Workflow (WWF)
• Digital identity (CardSpace)

The framework is still the .NET framework2.0 behind it.
For a lot of developer this is not a real framework.

.NET framework 3.5:

It implement Linq evolution in language. So we have the folowing evolution in class:

• Linq for SQL, XML, Dataset, Object
• Addin system
• p2p base class
• Active directory
• ASP.NET Ajax

.NET framework 2.1:

The last baby is the 2.1 because it is a subset of 2.0 framework with some little additionnal features.
This framework bring nothing and is just make to be smallest for Silverlight.

JavaScript compiler go ahead…

Today, I have fixed thanks to my new unit tests 3 major bugs in the compiler.

I guess now that my tokenizer (lexer) is bug free (else than regular expression which is not finished)

I have done a small sample test but I have still issue because RowanGenerator is far from finished.

I have discover that regexp is not finished too.

In fact to sum up we have :

• Engine and RowanGenerator class to finished
• Strings, parser for expression, Engine, RowanGenerator, IdentifierTable ot unit test
• And a console compiler to test all

With the recent anouncement of Miguel, I will maybe have MS unit test to test my code (so exiting!)

UPDATE:

here is a screenshot myconsole compiler. As you can se, I am not ready for released ;(

But it is funny to check it for first time. I am pretty sure that rowan generator is in big part responssible for that.

For life side, I leave officialy Pepsico France.

I will be free the 26th october. I will join SAGE which is a software editor. It is a real step in my life. I want to be in firm where software is the core of business, where I will have chance to improove myself and climb step by step the hierarchical structure .