Month: March 2006

I just heard about this conference in an interview with Bruce Eckel on The JavaPosse Podcast. If you have some free time and are able to attend this conference, this sounds like an awesome opportunity to network with others in the industry and find out what other people are currently working on and where they think the Web-app software development industry is heading.

This is the first time I have heard of the concept of an ‘OpenSpace’ Conference. This is an intriguing concept – basically there is no schedule or agenda for the conference – well there is in terms of predefined time slots for sessions, but the material to be presented and discussed in these sessions is up to the attendees to both decide and present/discuss. Wow, what an interesting concept. I would love to attend this to see how it goes, but I imagine the content will be very dynamic, and since the material is driven around what the attendees what to talk about, I imagine the content will be as current as you can get, and only center around topics that are of interest for the current point in time. Sounds like an awesome conference! I hope Bruce can get some transcripts of some of the sessions online for the rest of us unable to attend.

Google has annouced it has bought a company called Writely that has a web-based Word Processor product.

After speculation that Google was going to integrate Open Office into it’s product offerings by web-enabling the office productivity suite, it now has it’s own web-based Word Processor. At this point it is unclear what Google’s plans are, although it is obvious it is looking to compete with Microsoft in an area that has for a long time been dominated by Microsoft Office.

Microsoft have annouced their latest Windows flavor, for the ‘Ultra Mobile PC’, which up until now which has been referred to a Project ‘Origami’.

Ultra Mobile PC is a version of Windows Tablet PC Edition together with smaller form factor hardware. From looking at the pictures on the Microsoft site though, the devices really aren’t that small, and certainly not small enough to fit in your shirt pocket – you’ll still need a laptop bag of some description to carry it around. Plus what I defintely don’t like – no keyboard. If you really need a touchscreen capable laptop, then I would go with one of the existing Tablet PCs that come with the foldable/rotatable screens that fold down over the keyboard – these I think are the best of both worlds.

I deliberately abandoned my Palm Pilot because I got frustrated for not having a keyboard (ok, so I got an add-on keyboard, but thats not the same). I had an original US Robotics Palm Pilot from 1998 up until just a couple of years ago. What I got instead was a Windows CE device, the HP Jornada, because it comes with a keyboard. If I need to type notes or work on a document, I am not going to sit and scribble with the stylus on a touch screen – it’s just too much effort. Even the Windows CE Palmtop version I think was discontinued in favor of the Pocket PC Palm Pilot form factor, so I had to pick up a Jornada on eBay (which actually worked out as a good deal).

Other options I would consider if you are looking for a small laptop:

• Toshiba Libretto
• One of the smaller Sony Vaios