Linking 101

For many software developers, this post will be linking-101. Yet, recently I was looking into an issue on Windows (yes, I know), where an application developed using Visual Studio 2005, was linking against a libary developer with Visual C 6. I needed to understand a little more on how linking works in Windows. Many of these bullet points are known secrets. But if you lived too long in the Unix world, the Windows secrets will be a mystery and vice versa. So here's a short summary:

Windows

• .dll is the extension for a Windows dynamic library. DLL Hell exists and even has a Wikipedia entry.
  
• .lib is the extension for both a DLL wrapper, as it is used for static libraries. A DLL wrapper or "import" LIB file, which is used to link against. For each function the DLL exports, the LIB file contains a stub which will load and call into the DLL. You only need these .lib files when linking, but not when deploying.
• If on Windows a DLL is missing, you will get hit during run time, as it can not find the DLL module to load. On Unix, the application will not start up. This has pro's an cons. Pro: if you do not want to use a particular feature of the application, which requires an expensive 3rd party library, you can still run the application. The con: if your application was doing a lot of work and then aborts, you will slap the machine a couple of times.
  
• Convention: Files ending with z.lib or zd.lib are the static libraries. (d for debug)
• C Run Time (CRT) libraries are development environment dependent. If your program links against both, you have to be very very careful. Since memory management are (slightly) different between CRTs, linking against malloc()/free() from different CRTs can corrupt your heap. The bug will unfortunately show up in weird and unrelated ways. The take away is avoid linking against two different CRTs. But if you have to, make sure you keep your program modules separate. For reference:
  
• msvcrt.dll is used by VC6.0
• msvcr70.dll for VS .NET
• msvcr71.dll for VS .NET 2003
• msvcr80.dll for VS 2005
• with "d" added to the name for debug CRTs

Unix

• Static libraries (archives) are created and updated by the ar (archive) utility. Convention dictates that static libraries have a ".a" extension on their filename.
  
• Dynamically linked libraries are created by the link editor, ld. The conventional file extension for a dynamic library is ".so" (shared object).
  
• You tell the compiler to link with, libpthread.so, by giving the option -lthread.
  
• The compiler finds libraries as specificied by LD_LIBRARY_PATH or using the compiler option -Lpathname.
• nm utility to the rescue when you run into Undefined Symbols
• The order of statically linked libraries on the compiler command line is significant: (i..e they should be listed after your own code). Although I believe gcc can be instructed to make a few passes through the static library arguments to make sure undefined symbols, defined in previously stated static libraries are picked up.
• Knowing which library files to link against is sometimes a mystery. Take a look at the #includes and guess the library name. Often the man pages might mention something as well.
  

An excellent book on gotchas, weird bugs and behaviors is Expert C programming - Deep C secrets, by Peter Van Der Linden. It is not a C programming text book. It is a collection of C programming experiences (aka the stuff for which experienced programmers get paid the big bucks). I happen to work on a few projects ((USB/CDRW) with Peter, when he was leading the I/O team in the Sun workstation group. He is a very interesting guy, who wrote many programming books from C to Java and Linux. Here's an interview with Peter from ITConversations.

Technorati: Linking C Compiler Peter Van Der Linden Windows Unix

E n g l i s h !

Living in the Bay Area, you hear a lot of different dialects, accents and levels of the English language. I am not a native English speaker myself, so I won't proclaim to be proficient in it. There are however two expressions which annoy me tremendously. More and more native English speakers are starting to use them. Argh!

1. Long time no see - when meeting somebody after a long while. Wikipedia expands: "Long time no see" is a common Chinglish term, meaning "I haven't seen you for a long time"
2. My bad - when making a mistake. Mea culpa.
   

It's about the data, stupid!

If you read my blog over the year (Software as a service, it's about the data platform) (Saas infrastructure, an update), you understand my view on who will hold the best cards on the internet in the future.

Today, I learned on TechCrunch about a interesting new company, who puts data central to their business: Swivel. "Swivel is a place where curious people explore data — all kinds of data.", according to their website. Ha! Right up my alley. It is like Chart of the Day, but then for all kinds of data. Here's an interesting one comparing Wine and Crime data sets (based upon 25 data points, imported from www.ers.usda.gov and bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov). How related are these items to one another? 77%, according to Swivel.

Swivel allows you to customize the graph and generates the html to embed into your blog. This might an interesting company to keep track of. .. mmh.. let's chart out Swivel page visits against the amount of newborns.

Technorati: Saas Swivel

Netbeans C/C++ official release

I've been working with Netbeans and CND, the C/C++ pack for several months (see also Netbeans CND: revamped import wizard). Today is the official release of both Visual Web Pack (aka Creator) and the C/C++ Pack. Hurray!

Technorati: Netbeans

The Biota bottle

Here's one of the coolest product I've seen in a while. My wife was sipping from a bottle of spring water: Biota, Colorado pure spring water. I had never heard of the brand. The name apparently stands for "Blame It On The Altitude(r)".

The water tasted great. It feels like a regular plastic bottle. And the logo is like any other logo for spring water: blue and with a snow covered mountain.


Until you read the label: the bottle is compostable!! COMPOSTABLE! How great is that?

BIOTA uses nature-based packaging from NatureWorks ™ PLA. NatureWorks ™ PLA is the first commercially viable packaging material derived entirely from an annually renewable resource - corn. BIOTA is the first beverage company in the world to exclusively use NatureWorks ™ PLA to bottle its products. BIOTA water bottles are completely compostable. They are approved and certified as commercially compostable by the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI). Initial testing has demonstrated that a BIOTA water bottle will degrade within 75 to 80 days in a commercial composting situation. A traditional plastic bottle will never biodegrade.

The information site has more details on the conditions under which composting works well:

How does the BIOTA bottle composting process work?
BIOTA bottles need high heat, micro-organisms and high moisture levels to break down. A BIOTA PLA bottle will not degrade as rapidly in a home compost pile. When exposed to the necessary conditions, BIOTA bottles will break down into water, carbon dioxide and organic material.

How long does it take for a BIOTA bottle to disappear?
Given the right composting conditions including high heat, humidity and micro-organisms, a BIOTA bottle will disappear in 75 to 80 days...basically 12 weeks.

Technorati: Biota Environment Green

Boom!

I am a big fan of Presentation Zen. The blog has a tremendous amount of info and tips on becoming a better public speaker. Steve Jobs is often used as an example. Here he is in real good form:

Pushing buttons

The Wall Street Journal featured an article "Must Consumer Electronics Be So Complicated?". The question can be posed for any human - machine interface. Most often is the interface overly complicated. I am sure you have your own list of favorite device interfaces or horror stories of complicated user interface. The iPod interface for sure rocks. Hooking up a home entertainment system is like throwing darts at a dart board. Or does any one know what all the buttons on your four or five remote controls are used for?

RTFM should never apply to the basic operation of a machine, computer program, or blender. I never got around to learn Emacs editor (even though it gave one geek street cred), as basic operation required you to read the manual. Allow me to explore the program intuitively, and consult the manual for power user features.

The best illustration of a simple and intuitive user interface is the following picture. I've been looking for this picture for a while. It was part of a Steve Jobs' presentation announcing Apple Front Row. In the middle is the Apple remote control: six buttons. To the sides are your standard home entertainment remote controls, include the one used by the Windows Media Center. (Sure a Windows Media Center has TV tuner card recording capability, but do you need all the extra buttons to make use of that feature.)


If there is one thing any engineer should aspire to is to design an incredibly intuitive user interface. Even if it comes at the cost of less feature support, so be it.

Pinger and Free international calls

I've been experimenting with Pinger the last month. It is a service which allows you to record a message from your phone, to be sent as an mp3.


This is great when you know somebody is in a meeting. Or when you have only a couple of minutes to spare and you don't want to be locked in a long conversation. Think of it like recording memo's.

I discovered the service via TechnCrunch. There is also a short description in a recent technology article from David Pogue in the Wall Street Journal:

FREE ‘PINGS’ Pinger is a new way to reach someone: a method that combines the immediacy of a text message with the personality of voice mail. (You can sign up at Pinger.com.) You call one of Pinger’s access numbers, say the name of the person you’re calling, and then speak a message.

Suppose you’ve just pinged your sister. She receives a text message to let her know. With one keystroke, she can hear your message — and with another, send a voice reply. There’s no waiting to roll over to voice mail, no listening to instructions, no outbound greetings.

But there is something even more interesting in his article: FREE INTERNATIONAL CALLS. That's right! (I haven't tried this yet, until tomorrow that is.)

You can now call any of 50 countries from the United States, free. Talk as long as you like. You pay only for a call to the access number in Iowa, which is 712-858-8883; if you use your cellphone on nights or weekends, even that’s a free call.

There’s no contract, no ads, nothing to sign up for. At the prompt, press 1 for English. Then punch in 011, the country code and the phone number. The call rings through immediately.

Fine print: In some countries, you can reach only landlines, not cellphones. And in part because FuturePhone’s lines have been flooded, its success at placing calls is not, ahem, 100 percent.

But it’s hard to argue with “free,” which, according to the company, it will be until at least 2010.

Wii, Oui Oui Oui

Je deteste le "Black Friday". But here we were, on the famous Friday morning when supposedly many stores become profitable for the year, trolling the local shopping fall for sweatshirts and shoes for the kids at reduced prices. Some of the deals are incredible: 30% / 40% / 50%. It's worth queueing in the parking lot or the standing in line at the stores' check-out (never more than 10 minutes). I was also worth checking out some new consumer products.

In the mall, a team from Nintendo was showcasing the Wii. While Sony and Microsoft are adding more and more triangulation power to the Playstation and Xbox, Nintendo stepped out of the arms race. Instead it took a new and innovative approach with the Wii.


The Wii consists of a base station and a wireless game controller. The Wii is motion sensitive. This is where the genius lies. Pretend the Wii is the handle of a tennisracket and you can partake in an interactive tennis game. Or clasp the Wii controller in your fists and throw some punches in the ring. This a great improvement from the multi-button joystick game controllers giving you a cramp in your thumb.

The Wii might not be very sexy to the hardcore gamer, because of the lack in built-in super computer cpu cycles in the base station. Nevertheless, I predict it will be a great hit among the plebs, because people want more interaction with 'The Machine'. Think of the tetris-like dance step games you find in the arcades. And at half the price of a playstation, it is a much easier gift to buy.

My rating on the Wii: 3 x Oui's !

UPDATE 12/07/2006: The improved user interaction now comes with a "Don't poke fork in eye"-sticker.

"Do not let go of the remote during gameplay. For example, in games like Wii Sports Bowling, the ball is thrown by simply releasing the B Button on the remote, not by letting go of the remote. Hold the remote securely and avoid excessive motion during game play. If your hands become moist, stop and dry your hands." -- Nintendo responds to reports of Wii mishaps with a bit of cautionary advice. (from Good Morning Silicon Valley)

Technorati: Nintendo Wii Microsoft Xbox Sony playstation

Christmas madness - part one: November

I am not a big fan of the holiday season in the US. It is all about buying buying buying. Shopping malls become madhouses. I know because I used to live across one for two years. Out of the blue, a friend you might meet once a year, will show up with a Christmas gift because you are such great friends. (A better gift would have been to meet for a beer outside of the holiday season.)

It isn't even Thanksgiving yet and the Christmas decorations are out. No, not just in the stores, but in the street. People's houses glow in the light of the Christmas lights. A neighbour across the street already put up her Christmas tree.

Today, while grocery shopping, we came across reversible Christmas wrapping paper. My wife joked: "Have they run out of Christmas ideas?" I just thought there might be light at the end of the Christmas madness tunnel.

Pizookies

Our tools group hit a major milestone this week. Take a look at the suite of developer tools for applications using the Data Distribution Service on our website. To celebrate, we met in our breakroom for BJ Pizookies (also known as pazookie). Huh? My first reaction was this was some sort of game. Nope.

1. BJ = BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse in Cupertino. (Silicon Valley oldtimers know it as the old Peppermill in front of the Apple Headquarters on De Anza Boulevard)
   
2. Pizookies are giant, barely cooked cookies, baked in a pizza dish and served in a pizza box. Pizza+cookie=pizookie, get it? You can choose from: peanut butter, oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip, and white chocolate macadamia nut. They are best served with a scoop of ice cream and taste pretty great.
   

So there you go, a new word in my slang dictionary: pizookies.

Netbeans CND: revamped import wizard

The Netbeans CND project adds C and C++ development support to Netbeans. It is currently still in early access. However, it is made great strides forward in recent months and has proven to be a great tool in my day to day work. One of the latest updates, which I tried out in early access, is a revamped import wizard when creating a new project from existing source code.

RTI Data Distribution Service, our flagship real-time publish-subscribe middleware product, includes a utility called rtiddsgen. This tool will create source code from IDL data types. The generated code can be used to allocate, send, receive, and print user-defined data types. It is a great utility when developing applications using RTI DDS. So, for most Netbeans project I start, I already have some code generated, as well as the makefile.

The original C/C++ import wizard in Netbeans didn't work very well. For one, it couldn't create a Netbeans project within an existing non-emptry directory. I ended up with source code and NB meta directory in different locations. Secondly, the makefile was not automatically added to the important files, but rather included in the NB template makefile. If you needed to edit or tweak the makefile, you first had to add it to the project.

Luckily I was not the only one with these issues. The CND team created a new wizard, which makes creating a project from existing C/C++ source code a breeze. It is about to be released in early access, but is available from nightly builds. Here are a couple of screenshots (click to enlarge).

When specifying the make file, the working directory and build commands are automatically completed.

Also the source file directory is already specified.



Technorati: Netbeans

A heat storm credit? Count your chickens!

Fall has been very mild in Northern California. Yesterday the temperature was still 76F/25C. We barely had to turn on the heater in the morning. Our electricity and gas bills have been low. The Oct 15-Nov 15 bill was a grand total of $39. Something struck me as odd on the statement: the bill included a Heat Storm Bill credit of $4.35. PG&E 's website has more details:

PG&E is giving customers a credit. As we all know, California experienced unusually high temperatures in late July 2006. Higher temperatures led to higher energy usage and that, unfortunately, led to higher energy bills. Because of this unprecedented situation and because of our broader commitment to serving our customers, we’re taking unprecedented action. We are retroactively lowering your July bill. In October all residential customers will see a 15 percent credit based on their electric energy usage in July.

Let me repeat the PR-machine-at-work "Because of this unprecedented situation and because of our broader commitment to serving our customers, we’re taking unprecedented action."

When a big corporation is handing out cash, count your chickens!

Technorati: PG&E Electricity Environment Personal Finance

No on Prop 87 (Yes on new gas usage tax)

I can not vote, as I am not a US citizen. Yet, as many of us "US persons", the term used for foreigners legally in the US not on a visiting visa or waiver program, I do follow the debate on the different propositions, up for voting in the coming elections in November.

More money has been spend on a single proposition in California, than on any other proposition. Even almost as much as what it takes to run for president in the US. That proposition is 87, a ballot initiative that would impose a higher extraction fee on oil pumped in California. Even former president Clinton is currently running adds for Yes on Proposition 87.

In our household, we are environmently friendly. For example, we drive a small car and commute to work. Every morning, our car is full as a sardine can.

However, I feel there is something fishy about proposition 87. Just because oil companies are making big bucks, doesn't mean they should be penalized by a new tax. Instead go back to the source: why these companies are making so much money ... yes .. you, with the big SUV ... and you, single driver to work ... and that V6 you really needed to sit still in traffic. Yes, you are the culprit. Proposition 87 is not tackling the so

I've read the arguments from Koshla and co. Investing in alternative energy is a good thing. Yet, I tend to agree more with a recent article in Venture beat by Robert Rapier. Unless California changes its habits, the results will be as Robert Rapier predicts:

1. Proposition 87 will pass.
2. The gasoline price gap between California and the rest of the country will increase by at least $0.05/gallon next year as a result.
3. California oil production, already in decline, will see a much sharper decline next year as higher costs cause marginal production to shut down. Longer term, the $4 billion dollars extracted by this proposition (at the expense of oil company shareholders and consumers) will result in underinvestment in California oil production, leading to more serious supply problems in the future. Ironically, these supply problems will drive up the price of gasoline, which will cause people to conserve. As a result, conservation, which could have been achieved by just increasing the gas tax by a nickel, will be the key measurable from the passage of Prop 87.

Instead of Prop 87, I am in favor of adding a new usage tax, so that big oil consumers pay proportionally. Conversation will be immediate. And people will be encouraged to look at the products using alternative energy right away.

Some people are already experimenting. I had a great education this afternoon from a good friend of mine on the topic of building an electric powered motorcycle. He plans to start first experimenting on a bicycle and then tackle the bigger problems of a motorcycle. We went over a long series of alternatives, the pros and cons: different battery types, using different types of solar panels, using different types of engines (electric with and without brushed, compressed air, hydrogen, methane, etc.) The Bay Area is full of great ideas and lots of experimentation.

All Prop 87 argument spinning aside, the priority of prop 87 should have been on conversation measures and tax the big consumers of gas.

Update (11/1/2006): The Khosla - Rapier bout entered the second round. Take a look at both arguments.

• Don't let the Big Oil money confuse you on Prop 87 part II - Vinod
  

• People in Glass houses - Robert Rapier
  

Technorati: Clinton Prop 87 Environment Electric Cars

It's about Lists!

If you pay attention to the interesting bits I read (on the right of this blog), it will be no surprise that I am a big cheerleader for the web applications from Google. Google Calendar, Gmail and Google Reader are my favorite. They are simple, easy to use, and by definition available from anywhere. I have been experimenting with Google Notebook, Google docs and spreadsheets. One key feature missing from the Google products is working with lists [1].

At work (even at home), I have a little notebook. Most of the entries are in the form of a list: to-do items, shopping lists, meeting notes in the form of bullet items. OmniOutliner is closests to the ideal outliner. Unfortunately, it is only available for MacOS.

Techcrunch pointed me to a new startup iScrybe. From the introductary video, they differentiate themselves from other online doc webapps in two important ways:

• Lists: importing lists from a document, converting lists, adding to-do items to the calendar, take clippings from a website to add to your list.
  
• Papersync: the ability to print out your ideas, calendar and lists in a simple way
  to take with you.
  

Also the ability to work offline is very important.

Technorati: iScrybe Google Software as a service

It takes three languages to kill a forest

Local elections in Belgium were October 8. Two weeks later, I received the first paperwork for the national elections in the mail from the consulate in Los Angeles.

• One big envelope
• One page with three columns, discussing the elections. In three languages.: Dutch, French and German, the three national languages of Belgium.
  
• One forms to indicate how to vote (by mail, in person, in Belgium, etc.). Times three languages.
  
• One set of information about voting abroad, 2 pages, front and back. Times three languages.
• One form to indicate who can vote in your name. Times three languages.
• One booklet with all the towns and the language:
• N = Nederlandstalig (Dutch speaking)
• F = Franstalig (French speaking)
• D = Duitstalig (German speaking)
• N/F = tweetalig Nederland-Frans (Bi-lingual Dutch and French)
• Nf = Nederlandstalig + faciliteiten voor Franstaligen (Dutch speaking, with facilities for French speaking)
• Fn = Franstalig + faciliteiten voor Nederlandstaligen (French speaking, with facilities for Dutch speaking)
• Fd = Franstalig + faciliteiten voor Duitstaligen (French speaking, with facilities for German speaking)
• Df = Duitstalig + faciliteiten voor Franstaligen (German speaking, with facilities for French speaking)

My mother tongue is Dutch. So,
Geachte eerste minister,
Cher premier ministre,
Premierminister,
Dear prime minister,
Save your duplicate words,
Save your duplicate forms,
Save the trees.
Allow us to indicate a language of preference.

PS: While California prints the driver's license test in many many languages, they will only send you one booklet.

Ideal Cellphone specs

For the last few years, both my wife and I have been using a Sony Ericsson T637 cellphone. I originally selected it for its buil-tin Bluetooth, synchronization with MacOS X addressbook and iCal .
We got both phones as discounted rate with AT&T wireless when signing up for a 1 year contract. I am fine with the 1 year cellphone plan handcufs. That was until Cingular bought AT&T wireless. Automatically, our plans were transfered, as if nothing happened. Only the logo on the bill had changed. (I heard rumors that all AT&T contracts were void, and you could walk away without the cancelation penalty. I don't know if this was true or not.)

After the 1 year contract expired, I was on the look out for new contract. Cingular had been offering roll-over family plans, where unused minutes will automatically "roll-over" (accumulate). The catch: my cellphone was a locked phone. Locked for AT&T Wireless. Not Cingular. Thus, if I wanted Cingular to put me on another 1-year handcuf, I also needed to change my two perfectly functional phones. Cingular apparently doesn't care too much about the old AT&T Wireless customers, or they must feel their offering is superior enough that they can be a bit arrogant. So, I was putting out my wrists to slap me on another set of contract handcufs, and basically, they told me, "Don't forget to check out the handcufs (new cellphones) from the competitors first". That's exactly what I am doing.

Here is a list of my phone and plan requirements:

1. Good antena reception
   
2. Good sound quality
3. Easy to use: one, two clicks to read SMS messages; or to add a contact
4. Small enough to fit in my pocket (until now, I have preferred the bar-style cellphone over the flip phones)
5. Cheap add-on handsfree headset (wired is ok)
   
6. Optional: Easy synchronization with MacOS X (addressbook)
   
7. Free incoming SMS

I'm basically looking for a mobile PHONE (and not a gadget).

Non-requirements

1. The phone doesn't need to work all over the world
2. I do not care for AOL instant messenger or MySpace support
   
3. I do not care for a built-in digital camera or camcorder
4. Cellphones with screensavers should be forbidden by law, for environmental reasons
   

Any good suggestions or recommendations? Virgin mobile looks like a cost effective alternative.

---
Update (10/12/2006): I found a couple of interesting related articles from Om Malik

1. LinuxPhone - Mobile DIY
   
2. 10 Things that are wrong with telecoms

Visiting San Francisco

During the first summers in the Bay Area, there was a steady stream of visitors from Europe stopping by, traveling through the golden state. The couch. The floor. The empty second bedroom. One weekend, we must have had four couples sleeping over. Mandatory of course was a visit and tour of San Francisco. I got pretty good at knowing the city and build out a little tour. (Time permitting, I will plot this on a Google Map. In the meantime, I'll start adding directions and tidbits in this post.


View Larger Map

My little tour of San Francisco - driving directions
(still work in progress - visit back)

1. We enter San Francisco using highway 280. Keep going straight onto Junpero Serra Blvd (as opposed to crossing over the city to the bay side of San Francisco).
   
2. Follow Brotherhood Way towards the coast. (You'll make a hairpin turn at the point Hwy 280 ends)
3. Make left on Lake Merced Blvd and a right on John Muir Drv. You'll drive around Lake Merced, driving along the Olympic Club golf course.
4. Join Skyline Blvd shortly to make a left onto the Great Hwy (aka Ocean Beach).
   
1. You'll pass the San Francisco zoo on your right.
   
2. You'll pass 'doggy' as you look into Sloat.
   
3. Stop at the Beach Chalet for a sampler of their beer and read the story of Golden Gate Park downstairs in the Beach Chalet.
4. You'll see naked surfer butts getting into their wet suits on Ocean Beach. (Watch out for the Ocean Beach rip curl.)
5. Dutch heritage with the windmills at the entrance of Golden Gate Park
6. Stop at the Cliff house. You can overlook the first Spanish defenses of San Francisco
5. Coming through the turn onto Point Lobos Avenue, make a left onto El Camino Del Mar to get a great view of the Golden Gate bridge. (Better ones still coming up)
6. Turn back onto Point Lobos Avenue (= Geary)
7. Turn Left onto 34th Avenue to enter the Ledion of Honor Dr. You're among the San Francisco public golf course.
   
1. On top of the hill is the Palace of the Legion of Honor.
   
2. As you pass it Palace, you'll come across one of the better place to take a picture of the Golden Gate bridge. Watch out for angry golfers, if you decide to capture both the greens and the bridge. Since recent, there is at the end of the golf course and little vista point for tourists.
   
8. Continuing, you enter Sea Cliff, a very affluent neighborhood. Robin Williams calls/called this home.
   
9. Get onto Lincoln. Visit Baker Beach by making a left on Bowley st. Note that the far end of Baker Beach is a nude beach.
   
10. Continue on Lincoln, pass under highway 101 and make a left either to the Golden Gate Vista Point and/or onto Marine Drive to Fort Point. On the return from Fort Point, stop for a picnic at Crissy Fields, formerly the San Francisco airport and now restored to marsh land and a nice beach. This is also a great place to windsurf (for seriously experienced windsurfers as the water is quiet choppy near the bridge. Worse is the current in case you rip your sail.)
11. Continue back on Mason St. Near the merge with the Marina Blvd, you can visit the Palace of Fine Arts, as well as the Exploratorium The Lagoon near the Palace of Fine Arts is a great place for pictures. Also the San Francisco yacht club is nice to walk around. This area of town is called, the Marina.
    
12. At the end of Marina Blvd, when it turns into Laguna street, vist Fort Mason. You can climb the hill and end up on Van Ness Ave, or just drive around Fort Mason, via Bay Street, to end up Van Ness.
    
1. Visit the Acquatic Park
2. Visit the Cannery on Beach St
3. Observe the Hyde Street cable car turn around in old manual style.
   
13. [To be continued]
    

Technorati: San Francisco, California

New window of opportunity

Since a few weeks, I moved to a new office: one with a new window of opportunity. A pretty nice place, on the west side of the building. In front of my office are a few couches to hang out. Here are a few pictures:


Right in front of my office, at about 300-400 meter is another big office tower (McAfee). To the left, is a distant view of the San Jose skyline. The San Jose international airport is in between, so I see airplanes take off and land throughout the day.

On the right side (behind my monitor) is a view of Highway 101 and the Great America Parkway/Bowers off ramp. I typically close my blinds a bit. First of all, to dim the sunlight behind my monitor. Secondly, the traffic can be distracting. At the other hand, watching the slow traffic during the afternoon commute is entertaining. In the distant are the mountains of Cupertino.


The view during the night is impressive. I wonder how the view must be at level 9, where a new startup, Code Green Networks, recently moved in.

Sign of the times: meet me in Second Life

ABC News Nightline ends its broadcast with a little piece called Sign of the Times. A little interesting tidbit how things are changes. I got a Sign of the Times when reading the latest post on the Amazon Webservices Blog.

"PS - ..., yes I am still posting, evangelizing, and so forth. In fact I will be doing a presentation in Second Life on Tuesday night at a place called Info Island. If you are in Second Life and want to see me speak, please come by the open air auditorium at 5 PM. More info here."

Evangelism on steriods!

NetBeans

Over the last weeks, I have used Eclipse, Netbeans and Microsoft Visual Studio for my simple C, C++, Java and XML schema projects. May I stress simple.

Though Netbeans is the de facto IDE at Sun, many in Solaris land appear to be primarily vi and emacs users. Even though the Sun Studio compilers had a visual front end, few used it. On June 28th, Netbeans released a C/C++ development pack for Netbeans (aka CND) for download in Beta. Since then a second Beta added gdb debugging support.

I've come to like Netbeans a lot. It is now my primary IDE, although on occasion because of customer issues, I use Visual C++.

In Netbeans, things overall just work! Ok, in fairness, I did have to file a few minor bugs. However, I 've been impressed by the Netbeans community. Specifically by the response to those bugs or RFEs. Give CND it a try!

PS - You might also want to check out some interesting posts about Netbeans (versus Eclipse and others) from earlier this year: The Register ; Evans

Technorati: Netbeans

The new Google Reader

Last week, Google launched a new version of the Google Reader. For a long time, NetNewsWire was my RSS reader of choice. Unfortunately, my computer environment goes beyond MacOS X, so I wanted something online. I decided to give Google Reader a try for a few weeks and really liked it. Some of the flaws have been fixed in the update of last week. Here's a short list what sold me on Google Reader:

1. It's a web application, accesible from different hardware and operating systems.
   
2. Add clips to your website. The little left side pane 'Interesting Bits I read' is automatically generated from articles I read in Google Reader. All I have to do is label a particular article with a tag and it automatically shows up on the left side of my blog. Very nice.
   
3. Automatic feed discovery: just type in the URl and Google Reader will explore the site for available feeds
4. Tags: allow you organize feeds, as well as individual articles
5. Easy reading: (ajax-style) scrolling through your articles; keyboard shortcuts; read per tag; read starred articles
   

Other features (such as list view, a la Gmail; or the email button) are nice additional features. I haven't used them very much.

Saas Infrastructure, an update

A few months ago, I wrote about how building a platform for Software as a Service is all about the data platform. Since then, a lot has changed. I thought it might be worthwhile to summarize some of the interesting evolutions:

Sun: as I left Sun on June 9th, Sun had recently launched officially the Sun Grid Compute Utility in the U.S. at $1/CPU hour. In essence, compute power on a network cable, available in the 'cloud'. The offering was targetted at a specific set of compute intensive, and more importantly, data limited, applications. Since input and output data needed to be uploaded in a zip file, the Sun Grid Compute Utility has a narrow target audience. To familiarize yourself with the Sun Grid Compute Utility, try to run the sample application, if you can get it to run. On opening day, it was in trouble and unaccesible. Today, the Podcast your page with the Sun Grid isn't cooperating either: Due to overwhelming response to the free Podcast applications the service is currently busy. Please try your request later or Register for an account to login in to the Sun Grid to access the Cepstral text to speech sample job. Hardly an On-Demand application. Still, the biggest limitation of the Sun Grid is the non-existence of a storage and data platform. (And the lack of a developer environment, like the Google Code Hosting, see further.)

Salesforce.com (and the AppExchange) are on cloud 9. The company is doing financially (stock: CRM) great with 500K paying customers and a recent jump in stock price of 19% in a day. Also the AppExchange appears to attrack more and more developers. Interesting to note are:

• The AppExchange OEM edition (press release): an AppExchange beyond CRM. In geek terms, the center of the AppExchange is no longer the CRM database schema. BYOS, bring your own schema. Salesforce.com is opening their infrastructure (aka data platform) to other applications (even if it were a competing CRM app?). The AppExchange OEM edition is a logical step and highly strategic. Wow!
  
• The AppExchange went international and offers a second site, the Japan AppExchange, in the local language.
• Salesforce Online User community
  

Amazon has surprised me the most. While they already had launched the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), in recent months other key infrastructure building blocks have complemented the offering:

• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) : Sun Grid, are you ready for a real competitor, who undestands on-demand platforms quiet well? and offers it at $0.10/instance hour?
  
• Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) : messaging on demand.
  

It is however not clear who is using this building blocks or what markets Amazon is targetting.

Google has been releasing several applications on-demand, including a spreadsheet and a word processor and appears to be busy integrating several services. On the on-demand infrastructure front, worthwhile to mention:

• Google Code, Project hosting: a place for developers to host their code and develop, a la Sourceforge. (Or what a Sun Grid Developer Utility could be.)
  
• Google Checkout could eventually offer a billing system, like Paypal has become for many other sites (i.e. the Sun Grid)

I haven't kept much track of what Ebay is doing.

All and all, it remains a recurring theme: it is not he who has the biggest computer who will win in the Saas world, but he who holds the data. Software-as-a-service, it is about the Data Platform!

Technorati: Saas Google Amazon Salesforce.com Sun Microsystems

Meet the dentist

A dentist office in Belgium is little Taj Mahal (were Shah Jahan a dentist). The office is squeeky clean, marble floors, spectacular cabinets and the latest chair and drills. Cleaning your teeth is a pleasant experience where a special tool does all the work.

My experiences with dentists in California has been quiet different. The offices have nowhere the same look and feel: often with carpet, the dentist chair could be easily from the 70's. I've rinsed afterwards at a kitchen sink. My first dentist was a husband and wife office. Everyone was very friendly. But when it was time to clean my teeth, the metal scraper from the middle ages came out. Since both were from Teheran, I thought, their training must have prepared them to practice dentistry in every situation, even when no drills or electricity was around. Teeth cleaning was overall unpleasant.

So I switched and I called 1-800-dentist (from the commercial on television). This is a free dentist referral service. My new dentist was more of a car salesman than a dentist. After evaluating my teeth, he concluded quickly I needed a new crown. He went into his side office, and started tapping on his calculator. A bit later he came out and told me: "The procedure normally costs $xyz, but after taking the insurance into account it would be $xy. However, if I were willing to agree to the new crown procedure today, and only for today, it would be $y." Hold on a second. Next up would be a pitch about upgrades, I guess. So, I thanked him and left his office. Oh yeh, again teeth cleaning was done via the metal scraper. By now, I was convinced this was the common practice. I went back to my first dentist. But I had seen nothing yet.

A few days ago, I took my son to a pediatric dentist. The waiting room is wonderfully decorated in a Hawaian theme. There are three reception islands. They were well prepared: they greeted my son my name and asked him who he had brought along with him. This is all about him. After we watched a bit of Dora the Explorer on television, we were invited by the Patient Counseler. Her job was to make the kids feel at ease and answer if we had any questions. She explained him what to expect next. She also took a picture to hang at the wall of smilling kids, and if there were no cavities, he would join the no-cavity club and could win prizes. Then, she invited us to meet the dentist. The room had six modern chairs in two rows. There were four more in offices along the side, for more involved procedures. Everything continued in the Hawaian theme. There were about six dentists, overseen by two head dentists. Each kid gets a wireless headset to listen to the cartoons, playing on six televisions in the ceiling! It was amazing. Prior to the visit, we completed a form with personal info: his favorite colors, movies, etc. When he got stickers, they were the ones of the cartoon he likes. The balloon was in green with a black ribbon, to match his new tootbrush, and in his favorite color. You can not make this stuff up. But I got to tell you: it was the best customer service of any dentist I've visited. And they make the kids love the dentist. My son asked the next day, if we could go and visit again.

Early detection, early response

Several months ago, Larry Brilliant was named Executive Director of the Google Foundation. I had never heard of Larry Brilliant. Google watchers headlined: “Grateful Dead doctor to head the Google Foundation”. So, they hired a hippie. It wasn’t until I watched the presentation of Larry Brilliant at TED, that I understood why he was an excellent choice to preside over some of the Google monies.

Download this talk: Audio (MP3) | Video (MP4)

More TEDTalks: TEDTalks website | iTunes (audio) | iTunes (video)

TEDPrize winner Larry Brilliant is an epidemiologist who presided over the last case of Smallpox on the planet. He also founded the Seva Foundation, which works to reverse cases of blindness, and co-founded several technology start-ups, including the legendary online community, The Well. He was recently named Executive Director of the Google Foundation. In this talk, he explains in fascinating detail the key behind the successful WHO campaign to eradicate Smallpox, and then unveils his TEDPrize wish: to build a global system that detects each new disease or disaster as it emerges or occurs. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 26:34)

Another great series of well-doing is the three part interview of Charlie Rose with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, following Buffet's $31Billion gift to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
Charlie Rose - Warren Buffett: The Man - Part One in a Three Part Series (Part 2 and 3 can also be found at video.google.com).

Technorati: Google TED Larry Brilliant Warren Buffett

breydel.blogspot.com as a graph

Today, I came across an interesting way to look at websites: websites as a graph. Here's a way the HTML of http://breydel.blogspot.com looks like. (Other graphs can be find at flickr tag websitesasgraph.)

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

Attitude Control

I've been several weeks in my new job, when an email about attitude control arrives in my inbox. Great, after merely a few weeks and unbeknown to me, I apparently have rubbed somebody the wrong way. Week 2 coincided with the annual company offsite and retreat (this year to the Chaminade in Santa Cruz) with all the families. So, I got to know and interact with everybody in the company. However, my day to day interactions are with a small team of about ten people. Who was it?

Upon reading the email, my fears subdued and I was convinced it was a typo and should have been altitude control. Wrong again. When I consulted the reference book for the project I am currently working on, attitude control system or attitude determination and control system (ADCS) stabilizes a spacecraft and orients it in desired directions during the mission.

Pew, no attitude control required. I am still the quiet lamb I used to be. Baaaah Baah

Arrogance through ignorance

I've bitten my lip several times in the last weeks when it comes down to the American commentary on the World Cup. Leading the pack of the ignorant are Pete Wilson and Rich Walcoff (on KGO AM810 radio).

I've been creating my short list on why Americans do not like the game. Here's what I came up with.

• In soccer, size or quantity does not matter

"The low-scoring thing, I get that now, how cool one goal can be when you have to work 90 minutes for it. Hey, when a guy goes to a singles bar, is it a disappointing or boring night if he doesn't walk out with 83 women?" - Scott Ostler in the San Francisco Chronicle

• In soccer, there is no script.
  "Make some noise" does not need to be announced on a big billboard. You do not get regular beer breaks or commercials. Only half time. Anything can happen any time. Supporters will respond to the game, not to a dancing monkey or chicken. Cheerleaders would however be welcome ;)
• In soccer, stats do not count
  Nobody soccer fan I know keeps track of how many tackles a defender makes. Or how many times a team in the last 10 minutes came back from a 2-0 deficit. Or the total weight of the defenders on a squad. Goals, yes, they are tracked per player, or how often a player is selected.
  
• In soccer, loyalty is part of your blood. Teams do not move
  Teams are rooted in the town. Can you imagine Manchester United to move out of Manchester? Lately, I've seen some soccer teams merging: i.e. two neighbouring towns join the teams into one stadium close to both town centers. But you will not encounter a move like the Raiders moving from Oakland to Los Angeles for a couple of years, and back to Oakland.
  

Day 1

06:00AM - Korea vs Togo (2 - 1)
08:00AM - Say bye to my wife and kids + Coffee
09:30AM - Stroll over to RTI on the 6th floor of the Mission Towers at Freedom Circle

10:00AM - First day at RTI

My new little office, all ready to go.

Second Harvest

Over twelve thousand pounds of food! That's how much food we sorted and repackaged last night at the Second Harvest Food bank in San Jose. With a group of ten Belgians and one Italian, we joined a team of volunteers to sort through pallets of donated food. And although the work isn't very difficult or strenuous, everybody was working at an incredible pace, as if Hurricane Katrina was looming around the corner. There wasn't much chit-chat going on. Instead all you heard were the grunts of everybody hard at work: from creating and preparing boxes, to sorting the food, cleaning up the trashed items, to handling pallets and empty boxes.

The Second Harvest Food bank is an amazing organization, unlike anything you find in Belgium. Check it out (More statistics on their website):

• Each month we serve an average of 163,500 people; enough people to fill Candlestick Park more than twice. Of those that we serve:
• 60% are low-income families
• 37% are children
• 20% are seniors
• The average income of the households we serve through our direct service programs are: $1,270 for a family of four; $900 for a two-person senior household; $700 for a two person volunteer household.

• We are the primary source for donated, surplus and purchased foods for non-profit agencies and our direct service programs. In fact, we distributed 27 million pounds of food to our local communities last year.

Power

Yesterday, we hosted a get-together for the group of Argentines at my wife's company : un asado argentino. Mind you, this is a Saturday. A Sunny afternoon. The sangria is ready. A big bucket is full of chilled beer. And the barbecue is already cooking the sliced zuchinnis.
An hour late (which is expected - la hora argentina always runs about an hour late), people start trickling in ... with their laptops. And not immediatly thirsty for a beer. No no, thirsty for power, to recharge the batteries. Only in Silicon Valley. And yes, we did dive into the sangria and had plenty of grilled meat and beer afterwards.

In a month, we'll celebrate yankee doodle day - Belgian style. There won't be a problem of electric power: Belgian still run on primarily on ethanol.

While on Saturday, we cooked on a traditional American Webber barbecue, I couldn't help it to add a picture from our recent visit to Argentina: an asado en El Trapiche, San Luis, Argentina:

The number: 2687

On January 29, 1999, I joined officially Sun Microsystems. I had interviewed months before that, accepted the employment offer as soon as the traditional first quarter hiring freeze had passed, and had been awaiting the transfer of my H1B visa. I have worked in Market Development Engineering the entire time. I have had three different positions in the organization: first in the I/O Technologies group, then in the eBusiness team and finally in Horizontal Technologies.


A few days ago, I tendered my resignation from Sun Microsystems and have decided to take on an exciting new job at Real Time Innovations in Santa Clara.
Ironically, RTI headquarters are located in the big Mission Towers building next to highway 101, with a big "Sun Microsystems" logo on top of it - although there aren't any Sun offices anymore in the building. (In Silicon Valley, big building facade has important advertising value). It's a little freaky: the offices, the furniture, the layouts, even the carpet I believe: it looks all too familiar.

June 9th will be my last day at Sun. All together, I will have been 2687 days at Sun Microsystems.

Technorati: Sun Microsystems Real Time Innovations

Flex

Since recent, I have given my 'official' office (see How I work), and have gone Flex. This means that I have no regular office, but can reserve an office anywhere. I work two days in Menlo Park (Tuesday is our staff meeting), and three days in Santa Clara. Each office is fully equiped: phone, SunRay, paper, pens. The things you give up is a place for your books and your pictures. My files and books are in a locker in Menlo Park. But that isn't a big deal, since I hardly used them. Googling for information is much faster than trying to find something in a book. Here are a couple of more pictures from the Sun Microsystems Santa Clara campus.

My old office - for nearly 8 years, this obscure building (MPK24), about 3/4 mile from the main Sun Menlo Park Campus has housed my windowless office. Sure this warehouse style building provided big lab space, but it was remote from the action at the main campus.

Here are a couple of picture from my current flex office at the Santa Clara campus.
A view from my current flex office:

The restored historic clock tower building (originally part of the Agnews Insane Asylum - how ironic) . The office shot (above) was taken from the left windown at the second floor.

Technorati:Sun Microsystems

Our next vacation destination: Lake Wobegon

A recent post on the Google research blog discussed the hiring strategy of Google:

We rely on the Lake Wobegon Strategy, which says only hire candidates who are above the mean of your current employees.

I didn't stand still at the name of the strategy, until a colleague pointed out it is a reference to a fictional place in Minessota part of radio show on National Public Radio (NPR). Lake Wobegon, where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all children are above average". Wikipedia (always to the rescue), points out the term has been used to describe a real and pervasive human tendency to overestimate one’s achievements and capabilities in relation to others. The Lake Wobegon effect, where everybody claims – impossibly – to be above average, has been observed among drivers, CEOs, stock market analysts, college students, and state education officials, among others. Know anybody else suffering Lake-Wobegonitis? Well, now at least, the name of the Google hiring strategy and curve in the blogpost make a lot more sense to me.

Technorati:Lake Wobegon Google

Emulating Gene Bob and Geoff Arnold: Go to Wikipedia and look up your birth day (excluding the year). List three neat facts/events, two births and one death in your journal, including the year.

Events:

• 1895 - Tchaikovsky's ballet "Swan Lake" premieres, St. Petersburg
• 1970 - Muammar al-Qaddafi is proclaimed premier of Libya.
• 2001 - Wikipedia, a Wiki free content encyclopedia, goes online.

Births:

• 1908 - Edward Teller, Hungarian-born physicist (d. 2003)
• 1929 - Martin Luther King Jr, American civil rights leader, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1968)

Death:

• 41 - Caligula, Roman Emperor (b. 12)

Update (04/10/2006): I learned today that the above little fun tidbit is what is referred to in blog terminology as a 'meme'. My first meme.

Definition: In the world of blogs and bloggers, a meme is an idea, question, statement or project that is posted in one blog and answered to in many other blogs. Memes are used to propagate ideas in the blogosphere. Some blogs or web sites post memes on a daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis. (Referece: about.com)

Technorati:blog meme

How I work

Fortune magazine has great series, called How I work, on how several succesful business people work: the tools, the schedules, the habits. Interesting how Hank Paulson, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, has never even used email. Or how Bill Gates uses Outlook across two monitors (and still believes Outlook is great - what's up with that?). Google-geek Marissa Mayer, like some of my colleagues, wouldn't trade Pine (text based, courier font) for any other email tool. I bet ya, she authors her documents in vi.

My work environment
My preferred system is my personal Apple Powerbook laptop. However, since my work (files) live on 'the network', I use a variety of systems to do my work. All I need is power and a network. Both my work email and calendar are on Edge servers. This means they can be accessed over a secure (SSL) link, from anywhere and any machine. Normally one is required to log in (over VPN) into the private corporate network. With our Edge mail and calendar servers, I no longer need to log in. This allows for a great level of flexibility. My office is in Menlo Park. My office desktop is a Sun Ultra 20 Opteron based desktop running Solaris 10. At least 3 days a week, I work from other locations within the company using a SunRay. SunRay's a nitfy thin client. Using a JavaBadge, my work environment (my files, my graphical user interface, my open documents, etc.) follow me around throughout the Bay Area: all I have to do is pop in my JavaBadge into a SunRay, and voila, there is my screen. At home, I use my Apple Powerbook, or a company Toshiba M2 laptop, running Fedora 3.

The Tools
I read email using Mail.app (MacOS X) or Thunderbird (Solaris 10, Linux). Both are configured with many filters, which put my emails in the right buckets, priorities and label them accordingly. On average I get about 150 emails per day.

My personal email is shielded into a Gmail account. I access my gmail via both the brower interface (because it has chat easily integrated), as well as POP to Mail.app.

I use both Safari and Firefox, and opt for ad-blocking proxies.

I keep up to date on technology news, news in the world, friend's blogs via RSS. I use Ranchero's NetNewsWire (MacOS X), Sage and Google Reader as my RSS readers. Recently, I started to use Google Reader a lot more, due to the fact that labeled feeds can be spliced and automatically included in my blog (the right side bar - Interesting bits I read).

Chat: AIM/iChat (waffletchnlgy), Google Talk
SMS: my calendar at work reminds me via SMS about upcoming appointments. I used to synchronize my cell phone with iCal (MacOS X), but due to an incompatibility, it was inefficient to synchronize both personal, work and mobile calendars.

I live on the network, love small and efficient tools. I use quiet a lot of Twiki throughout the day for status updates, product tracking, documentation etc. Oh, and I do carry around a notebook. All work gets divided weekly among five categories: Urgent, Important, Other, Personal and One-on-One. It helps prioritizing all the things to be done.

Where I work?
My 'official' office is in Menlo Park. I work in the Sunnyvale campus (once a week), the Santa Clara campus (two or three times a week) and from home. I get around via both my car, the company shuttle, sometimes the train, and in summer on the bicycle. Here are a few pictures from the Santa Clara campus I work out of regularly.

Technorati:Fortune work tools Bill Gates Marissa Mayer

Hasta la Vista!

I consider myself a computer tools junkie. I detest inefficient tools, broken processes or complicated steps with just too many clicks. I am always on the look out to try a new and more efficient method or tool and consider myself very much up to speed on the multiple useful (and no so useful) tools from Apple, Yahoo, Google, 37 signals and similar companies. An exception to this must be the $200+ mobile devices, which I consider too expensive for their functionality. I have no idea about Treo, Palm nor BlackBerry.

Since efficient and interoperable tools and Microsoft do not go together very well in one sentence, I hadn't paid much attentention to Microsoft Vista and Office 2007. Yes, I knew they were delayed, but that is hardly news from Redmond. In Barron's this week, I read an article about the financial impact of both products on Microsoft, as well as a summary of the new features. Let's run down the new features of Microsoft Vista 2007: (ha!)

1. Security: Windows moves from 'the user is the administrator' to 'you need a password to be administrator'. This is touted as an example of Microsoft being serious about security. Unix - 1969. More modern and more secure operating systems have already moved away from the all-none user security status. For example, Solaris 10 introduced two years ago Process Rights Management (aka Privileges), a feature it imported from Trusted Solaris, a military grade version of the operating system. There is no 'god' in the system. And users and programs need the correct privilege to execute an operation.
   
2. Vista embeds search. MacOS X Spotlight 2005. Google Desktop Search.
3. Vista introduces a sidebar with widgets. MacOS X Dashboard 2005. Konfabulator, now part of Yahoo Widgets.
4. Microsoft Vista introduces parental controls, a feature AOL and MacOS X provide for several years.
5. Microsoft media will be able to handle high-definition video. Apple Quicktime 7 2005.
   
6. Internet explorer introduces tabbed browsing. No kidding.
7. Outlook will include an RSS reader. Thunderbird, MacOS X Safari 2005.

Balmer summed it up best:

"But what have we had in terms of innovation over the last few years? Frankly, as an industry, not all that much."

Wow, I rest my case.

Technorati:Microsoft Vista Office 2007 Apple MacOS X

Software as a service: it's about the data platform!

Current Software as a Service (Saas) enablers are successful because they provide the developer interfaces around the data they make available. These interfaces provide developers (1) ways to access, modify and add to the data in a secure way, but also (2) ways to present their application in a common user interface. It is the Ebay/Google/Salesforce.com killer application which brings in the data and which enables those vendors an additional revenue stream by allowing other services to build upon its data.

When examining the three big Saas players, Ebay, Google and Salesforce.com, integral to their platform is the data platform and to some extend the unified user interface. Although offering their own application as software as a service was by original design, neither company started out as 'Let's be the Saas platform for other applications'. All three started out building an infrastructure around a single application and a key type of data: Ebay, the garage-sale data; Google with a catalog of the internet and Salesforce.com around CRM data.

Salesforce.com and AppExchange (http://www.salesforce.com - http://www.appexchange.com)
Customers use Salesforce.com for its CRM application. The data is securely stored in Salesforce.com datacenter. The database schemas and type of data are available to developers. This allows them to create helper applications to enhance the CRM application of Salesforce.com. To date, through AppExchange (the developer platform, formerly called Sforce), over 70 applications have been created and are listed on the AppExchange application directory. What makes this platform attractive to other developers is that the applications act upon the same data present in the (CRM) database. In addition, when a customer purchases a third party application, it is automatically integrated into the customer's salesforce.com portal. This provides for a great user experience. It also allows for even the smallest ISV to showcase their product as part of the big CRM application.

In December 2005, Salesforce.com launched their developer test ground, the Saleforce.com sandbox. Step one when using the sandbox, replicate some of your CRM data to work upon. The sandbox gives you an exact copy of your Salesforce deployment – including all your customizations and data – with a single click.

Google (http://www.google.com)
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. With Google Base, Google goes one step further: Google will host your data. Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content which Google will host and make searchable online. You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they search Google Base. In fact, based on the relevance of the items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle and Google Local. Other ways to submit information to Google include Google Video, Google Print, Google Sitemaps, but also Gmail and Blogger. Google is hosting your data using the data platform which has been serving their crawlers and search engine for several years. Google is slicing and cataloging your data using those same crawlers. With Google Analytics, Google is offering website statistics to the end user and eventually the Saas developer. And then there is the rumored Google GDrive (referred to in slides at the Google Analyst Day) promise infinite storage.

With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc). We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive, GDS, Lighthouse, but all of them face bandwidth and storage constraints today. For example: Firefox team is working on server side stored state but they want to store only URLs rather than complete web pages for storage reasons. This theme will help us make the client less important (thin client, thick server model) which suits our strength vis-a-vis Microsoft and is also of great value to the user. As we move toward the "Store 100%" reality, the online copy of your data will become your Golden Copy and your local-machine copy serves more like a cache. An important implication of this theme is that we can make your online copy more secure than it would be on your own machine. Another important implication of this theme is that storing 100% of a user's data makes each piece of data more valuable because it can be access across applications. For example: a user's Orkut profile has more value when it's accessible from Gmail (as addressbook), Lighthouse ...

That's exactly it: each piece of data is more valuable as it can be used across various Google applications, as well as third party applications. The access to catalogued data is a very important factor developers will choose the Google APIs and for Google to partner with for Saas.

Similar arguments can be made for Ebay with over 100 applications it is Ebay solution directory already, using the same Ebay storefront user interface and accessing the same Ebay data.

Or Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3): tempting you to host your data with Amazon.

Or Windows Live (project Fremont).

The keys to the Saas kingdom will be in the hands of those who host the most data and have the scalable and secure data platform to support it.

Technorati:Saas google salesforce.com ebay