Salesforce Winter 2010

I attended a good webinard/sales pitch from Salesforce yesterday. They did not get in much technical details but they did show us very impressive new features coming soon. The following list is in no way exhaustive (for this, go here) but are rather the elements that caught my attention:

• It will now be possible to use batch code for long processes. Obviously, the execution will be asynchronous and will also be possible to manage under a new feature: the scheduler;
• The have enhanced the custom settings;
• They have worked on the data import;
• I beleive using Google doc, they now have content management API;
• Support for OAuth v. 1.0.a;
• email is greatly improved;
• sandbox to production management will be easier;
• integration to Google Analytics in Visualforce;
• https will be available for site;
• a pilot for a new type of user called "High volume portal user" will take place;
• analytics presentation will greatly be improved with:
• chart mixers;
• color picker;
• hover;
• IPhone and Blackberry are now well supported;
• Community-answer pilot will take place, leveraging Twitter and other web 2.0 API;

Mobile in Africa

I'm currently involved in a grass root  project that aim at fostering education and sport in developing countries. Great project, well founded and very well led by people for which I have to utmost respect. Anyway, while beginning to work on the architecture of the project, I've found that my intuition regarding the internet, mobile and world development were shared by others.
From the very beginning of the WWW, the access to the information has been an ethical issue. I was involved in the techno-ethic center at the University and we were trying to reflect on those issues. There is so much information on the internet that having access to it has become an actual discriminating factor.
Obviously, if the authorities have only enough money to build a water well, they are not about to "waste" that on cables. Cell towers are much more cost effective and that is why mobile is such an important asset for those countries.
Google has already started fostering the internet access through mobile with its sms services. But what has cough my attention is MIT's effort with its Nextlab project. If you are at all interested with information ethics and concrete project to make the information available, please check them out. They are looking for partners.

AI and motivation

MIT's Technology Reviews have a nice article on the development of AI and the concept of motivation. The philosophical underlying is ignored but the math principle is, which makes it rather interesting to read.

Motorolla launch new cell with Android

At the Mobilize conference on Thursday in San Francisco, Motorola CEO Dr. Sanjay Jha unveiled an Android smartphone called CLIQ (all caps in the tradition of the RAZR and ROKR) that will be available soon from T-Mobile. The device features a new service called Blur that Motorola developed to bring deep social networking integration and Web synchronization support to Android handsets.


You can read the rest of the article at arstechnica


To me, the future for the emerging country's internet/communication infrastructure is with that type of mobiledon't think Mobillize 09 from GigaOM would not contredict me on this.

html5

Mark Pilgrim has publish one chapter of his upcoming "Dive into HTML5". You can find it here.

Managing geeks

This article from computerworld should be required reading from any executive. It is dead on.

Bit Torrent for legitimate use

I have been investigating the use of BitTorrent for video conference distribution for a NOG that cannot afford CDN's fees. Very interesting technology, full of possibilities. But then, Techdirt has a great post that sour my interest somewhat. you can find this post here.

RESTful vs SOAP:a business case

Weird that CTO's still think of WS as needing to be SOAP. I though I was missing something, that there might be some virtue to SOAP I was unaware of. Seems I did not miss anything and that soap is not perceived as a waste only by me. You can read an articulated reflexion on this subject here.

DimDim Video Conference

I was looking at open source solutions and found this product from DimDim. I really like to see the OS model successful.

Virtuous Circle

GigaOM is publishing two rather convincing cases on Apple's business strategy.

Apple is perpetuating a “virtuous cycle,” as Gene Munster put it in a recent research note, to keep users on the iPod Touch — an improved version of the lock-in provided by the old iTunes/iPod music ecosystem. Users buy the iPod Touch; download apps; developers promote their apps (and the iPod Touch platform), which leads to more consumers buying the iPod Touch. Even better (for Apple), customers can only purchase apps through the company, leading to even more device lock-in.

iPod sales might be dropping, but Apple says half of new purchases of the device are to customers who have never owned one before. I’m willing to bet that many of those customers are interested in Apple’s new Wi-Fi platform. And then, in an even more impressive version of the iPod halo, iPod Touch owners could look to Apple when it’s time to buy their next computer. A virtuous cycle indeed.

You can read the rest of this great post here and follow up with this