Category: Archive

Last Wednesday I started teaching a class for yet another Wall Street client. Nicely equipped high-tech training room, excellent view, but for some reason they did not put a chair for the instructor. No biggie. In the evening my left big toe started to hurt after standing for 8 hours. I did not pay attention , but on the second day I grabbed a chair for myself and had a chance to sit once in a while, but it was a little too late.

My left toe started to hurt really bad and became swollen. I could not sleep at night, and could not wear shoes in the morning. The third day I showed up in the classroom in sleepers. After lunch (Friday), I realized that if I won ‘t see a podiatrist, I ‘ll have to spend a large portion of Saturday in emergency room in the hospital, which sucks in general plus it ‘ll make me several hundred bucks poorer particular (yes, I have medical insurance).

This was a hands-on training, and when students started to work on assignment, I went outside and called to about 15 podiatrist offices asking for an appointment. “Sorry, we do not have anything available for today. I love Jewish doctors, but finding on Friday afternoon is not realistic. I started to look for Chinese name (Wall street is in just a couple of miles from China town). Yes, this was a right decision, and I got an appointment!

This class was over, and by that time literally was not able to walk. I needed a cab. All yellow cabs were passing by with passengers. A Lincoln Towncar pulled over, and a Chinese driver asked me where do I need to go. China Town, where else. Get inside.

I love riding in large American cars. They are quiet and comfy like large ships. Unfortunately, they are not reliable, so I drive either Japanese or German cars. Many years ago my wife was driving an old Caddy. I read that an average age of a Cadillac driver is 60. When I suggested to my wife to by a new one, she said that it ‘s only 60 because she (a young woman) was driving one, otherwise it would be 80. But this is a whole another story.

Chinese driver asked me an address of the place I need to go, I gave the address, and the driver entered it in the navigation system. Boy oh boy, if every taxi driver in New York would have a navigation system, I would not hear all these horror and funny stories about cabbies that not only do not speak English, the do not know the city either. But this is yet another story…No, let me tell you just one now.

My friend Gregory immigrated to New York from Russia thirty years ago. He did not speak English at all. His wife did. A little. Gregory decided to find a job driving a cab, and he had to pass verbal exam to get an appropriate license. His wife Natali helped him to memorize all questions and answers without understanding a single word. Before going to the exam, Natali said, “Grisha, if you do not understand the question, just say, lsquo;Next question, please ” rdquo;. Greg went into the room for an exam, and his wife was waiting in the corridor. In about 10 minutes, a red-faced inspector rushed out of the room right to Natali, “Are you Greg “s wife? I keep asking him, What “s your address, and he keeps saying, Next question, please! rdquo;

OK, when I said to me Chinese driver that I was going to see a Chinese doctor, he was surprised hellip;I “ve entered a building that looked anything but a place where a doctor “s office can be. A multi-story building with lots of tiny rooms with all kinds of businesses. Here “s the really small room 507. No visitors. Two Chinese women started to look at my insurance card. Soon I realized that one of them was a doctor, because she said in a very poor English, “Come with me, please rdquo;. She took me to another tiny room in the back, flushed the toilet for some reason and put me on the chair. When she saw my swollen foot, she said something similar to “Inflammation rdquo; and asked if I dropped anything on it. No, I did not. The she tried to explain why such inflammation could have happen. I did not understand, and asked her to repeat. She did. I gave up. My foot was swollen and hurt badly. She said,

“I “ll prescribe you the pills rdquo;.

“Can you please do something now, I can “t walk and need to go home ndash; I live in New Jersey rdquo;.

“I can give you a shot, but usually people are afraid of pain hellip; rdquo;

“I am in pain anyway, please do it rdquo;

“OK, I need to take an X-Ray first to make sure there is no fracture there rdquo;

The door to her closet was opened ndash; a bucket with a mop, Windex, and other junk was stored there. She went inside and rolled out a tall and old looking device. I guessed that this was an X-Ray machine. Its plate with a model number read 1987. The good news ndash; I did not have a fracture, she took a disposable needle, and hellip;I saw black sky with lots and lots of blue little stars.

This woman kept saying, “Quick relief, quick relief hellip; rdquo;

She let me go, and gave a prescription for the pills too. Another cab to the bus station, picked up the pills in the local pharmacy, and took one before going to bed.

It “s Saturday morning. My toe is still a little swollen, but it does not hurt and I can walk! Now I love Chinese doctors and feel obligated to write about it, hence this blog. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Update. Four days later. The inflammation is gone, but the foot still hurt. Need to go to a podiatrist…This time I ‘m not going to China Town.

I was not planning to write about it, but ran into a related blog this morning and decided to add my two cents.

Speaking and teaching engagements are often being evaluated by the audience, and the speaker/instructor eventually receives the results of this eval. Usually it ‘s a simple procedure – whoever wants fills an eval sheet and returns it. In some cases filling eval forms is really a big deal. For example, close to the end of my courses that I teach at NYU, someone from administration comes to the classroom with a sealed envelop. I ‘m expected to select a student that will handle the eval process, then I should leave the classroom for 10 min or so, the students write what they think of me, seal the envelop and the designated person drops it into a special box with a narrow slot at the top.

Over the years, after teaching hundreds of students, I got accustomed to the fact that no matter how good you are there will be always someone who will badmouth you. If the majority of evals are good, I just ignore these splashes of anger. Constructive suggestionsare always well taken.

But I never curse while speaking or teaching. IMO, this is just very unprofessional.

Here ‘s the blog of Doug McCune who honestly describes the results of his evals after presenting at a recent conference in Atlanta, GA. I have not been at this presentation, but I ‘m sure it was well done, but as Doug admits, he often uses the words fuck and shit in his casual conversations, and did the same during his presentation.

Some people in the audience got offended, and I agree with them. There is a big difference between giving a fuck in a private conversation with a peer who can return you the fuck back, and a situation when a person(s) can not respond the same way. In this case, Doug had an advantage because he was the guy at the podium, and the audience (respecting the presenter) never fucks back. The other case that I really do not like is when a corporate manager casually fucks during business meetings. His subordinates understand that if the boss fucks in public, it does not mean that they are allowed to do the same. Which is a similarly unfair situation.

The highest fucker in the IT industry is Bill Gates. Joel Spolsky in one of his blogs has written that they were judging Bill ‘s opinion about a project status by the number of times he said fuck. The less, the better.

It ‘s great that Doug has written openly about his experience, and next time I ‘ll be attending a conference where he speaks, I ‘ll sit in the audience counting fucks 🙂

But my message to you is this:

Cursing in public in not cool. Try to find other ways to impress people, especially those who paid money for the privilege of listening to you.

I am not a saint myself, and curse once in a while too. If I ran into a really bad situation while driving, I say fuck to myself and it seems to help. Here ‘s another example where saying Fuck is the only way to deal with the situation: you are carrying a grand piano to the seventh floor of a building without an elevator, and after passing the sixth floor you drop it right on your foot. I ‘m sure that there are a couple of other use cases when the word fuck helps…

I do not know how to properly end this blog, let ‘s just say

The End

If you are evaluating which technology to use for your next rich Internet financial application, do not miss a one day event Flex on Wall Street that will take place in New York City on April 18, 2008. This is your chance to meet with real-world practitioners who have been using Adobe Flex for developing financial systems and can address your concerns and help you in making a Deal/No Deal decision.

I ‘ll be presenting there too and will be glad to talk with you personally about your RIA plans.

I ‘m back in the barn after attending Adobe Education Designer and Developer Conference that Adobe put together for people who are teaching Adobe software at various universities around the country. Actually, there are a couple of people from England and Scotland too. I was invited because of the Flex classes that I teach at New York University.

These are the raw notes from this trip.

Sunday

I’ve arrived at San Francisco at noon and boarded a van that was going to drop me by the hotel. There were young girls giggling in the van, and here’s an excerpt from their conversation. “I went to a top less beach, and there was this hot looking boy with his mom top less. I do not want to see my mom’s boobs. The other girls responded, “Haven’t you seen them already? rdquo; This puts everyone in the van in a good mood.

I do not like shopping other than books and electronics. But when I “m in San Francisco, I always visit the Levis store. After checking into the hotel located at the Union Square, I decided to quickly check Google maps to see how do I get to the Levis store from my hotel – I remember that it was very close to Union Square. Google readily helped me with the map, and I realized that I should be able to see the store from my hotel’s window. Sure enough, it was there. I wonder how did we find places and each other in the pre-Google era?

I’m talking to a professor from Minnesota. He goes, “Are you from Russia?”

” Not exactly, but I lived there for a while. ”

” Is it right that Putin worth $24B? ”

I don’t know the answer to this question, sorry.

Another professor is teaching Flex and AIR to future journalists. I am surprised. “What the journalists need Flex for? ” ” We try to find ways to have more people read news. Flex and AIR allow to create applications that are very engaging and simple to use and having a better UI really matters. rdquo; Makes sense. I never thought of it this way …

Monday

Two buses are waiting by the hotel for the attendees – they “ll take us to Adobe where the conference will take place. The bus drivers are in their late fifties. They casually discuss what happened with their hard disks during the latest movie downloads, and that Microsoft Outlook is notorious for.

Peter Isaacson, VP, Worldwide Education

Bandwidth improvement. Better pipes allow to create more engaging user experience. People are using video, which was not possible in the past. New tools create new work flows, new teams of people communicating with each other. The new tools bring designers and developers together.

Graphic Designer – Web Designer – Web Developer

Mobile Designer – Mobile Developer

Adobe is ready to hear for the challenges that educators have so Adobe, educators and industry can talk and deal with these challenges. Adobe is willing to share its vision of how this should work.

Johnny Loiacono, SVP amp; GM, Creative Solutions.

Trends:

Gigabits meet gigahertz ndash; substantial increase of processing power and storage capacities

Explosion in the number of connected devices

Business Models are evolving – subscriptions, pay as you go, open source

Proliferation of rich content

Applications Media consumption is changing.

The best device is iPhone, but it also has a problem – it does not run Flash. Please write Steve Jobs and complain about it. Internet video is experiencing Explosive growth ndash; 134 million Internet user are watching Internet video. Flash Streaming videos is revolutionizing Internet. Experience matters.

When you look at BBC or CBS, the expectations goes higher. Spend some time at agencynet.com or gettheglass.com and look at the UI. People spend time if the site is engaging. And of course, the advertiser are interested in the Web site that keep user’s attention. Certain projects require both design and development capabilities. File compatibility – file formats have to be compatible so developers and designers who work on the same project can share the files. Adobe is heavily investing into Designer’s tools. They work on Creative Suite 4 and 5 and already started architecting 6.

Bandwidth is cheaper, and they will push more and more of their creative services as hosted services.

Photoshop Express – give to people who are constantly online some tools useful tools (this not an online version of the Photoshop). It’s a 100% hosted application where you can organize, store and edit your images. Free online services will make it available for students. The free version will get some storage limitations, but people will be able to use the high-end graphics tools. Skill demand of MXML and ActionScript is sky rocketing. Computer Science studies and Visual Media studies should collaborate.

Adobe is working on engaging faculties from Development and Designer interfaces.

David Wadhwani, GM, Platform Business Unit Flex and AIR

Experience will be cinematic David shows an apparel Web site. Clean design but not very interactive The new site is developed in Flex and deployed in AIR. Most of the screen “s real estate is taken by the content. Controls are at the bottom of the screen and can be hidden. The user can make notes to the items as he browse the site. David has uploaded the photo of his daughter and can match the clothing items available at the site to what she wears on the photo. Merging UI created by AIR (sales charts) with an expert system that finds an expert in a selected region with immediate dialing the expert. As they talk on the phone, the both parties share the screen. They do not leave the application’s screen.

Data will flow to the user. Standard eBay interface. eBay pushes data to you as things happen.

Parleys.com – if you are not online, you can still use video recordings of the JavaPolis conference. Applications become more network aware. Cost of deploying streaming media becomes more manageable. A bike tour. Each rider has a GPS unit on the back. You can watch online each rider online. The applications will break out from Web browsers. Play the music online finetune.com, and if you do not want to see the screen ndash; you minimize it. They’ve created a desktop application finetune. Applications will jump out of the desktop. There are tons of hand-held devices. Insurgence of widgets… sort of a snack size applications. A simulated yacht screen – a screen installed on the yacht – the real time status of the yacht, the weather etc.

Adobe Technology Platform:

Designer-Developer tools: CS3, Flex Builder

Servers/Services ndash; LiveCycle, ColdFusion, Flash Media Server, Flash Cast, Scene7

Frameworks: AJAX Flex Clients: AIR, Flash Player

Applications: Adobe Media Player, Adobe Buzzword, Adobe Acrobat Connect, PhotoSHop Express

Steven Heintz ndash; the product manager of Thermo

Steven demoes the product. Bridges Designer and Developer’s work flow. Designers think differently – they think conceptually in Photoshop. Developers just throw components on the screen. Bring the file from Photoshop into Thermo, and the photoshop file was converted into an XML. Then a designer start working with the artwork. Right-click, convert the artwork piece, say to a button, or a text box. It retains the picture perfect location, but generates the application that can be runnable in Flash Player. Adjust padding, add an action hellip;. On rollover go to a new state, create transitions. You have a base state and detail state ndash; similarly to Flex Builder, but without programming. Effects can be assigned graphically.

My first comments on Thermo

Thermo is definitely an interesting product during the prototyping phase. But I have an experience with the real world complex projects, and in one case the prototype was created given to me as MXML and in the other as Photoshop image. In the latter case Flex MXML had to be created from scratch, but in the former case I had to rip apart MXML that was given to me by the Web designer, case it had to be re-factored anyway. The other tough part I see is what to do if I refactor the code and the designer will need to make some changes afterward.

Is it backward compatible? I’ve asked this question and both Steven and David confirmed that they are aware of this and the roundtrip without breaking the compatibility will be addressed in the future versions of Thermo.

Important news for the Academia

Now Flex Builder is free is not only for students and faculty, but it also can be used for development of the administrative applications within the educational institutions.

Alan Lewis, eBay

Now I’m watching a demo of the new version of eBay that’s done in Adobe AIR. It’s noon here but already 3PM in New York. Is this why I’m thinking about food or I’m just not interested in eBay in general?

eBay’s attitude was that they’d never build a desktop application. It’s a Web application. The biggest problem of eBay was scaling business to serve more users.

An interesting comment by the presenter. In Web applications, there is a big concern to make the site visible to search engines. In some cases it become more important than user’s experience. In case of desktop applications, search engines are not important and designers can stay focused on the user’s experience.

A question from the audience. I see the value of AIR, but why it could not be deployed in Flash Player?

The answer. AIR can give you a better user experience, i.e. speed of navigation.

Lunch

During the lunch, I had a good conversation with Matt Chotin, the Flex product manager. I was interested in Flex support of HTML. Flash Player 10 will have a lot better support for XHTML, for example components like HTML table will be naturally displayed by Flash Player.

Industry representatives: AgencyNet, Odopod

Twelve agencies got together ( SODA) and created a collaborative organization to pro-actively establish standards and share the knowledge with other agencies in advertisement and media.

You are in the bar? Bacardi Mobile, Flashlite application will offer you a cocktail. It’s interesting that the phone can be used in daylight or in the dark, so the colors have to be carefully selected.

MOJO Widget is a desktop application, but you can put it in any Web site, including Facebook. The clients select the videos to play, it “s a rich application with lots of features.

Four speakers from two agencies were trying to deliver the message that they need people who have exposure to both side of the fence ndash; designers and developer. This session ignited the largest numbers of questions from the professors who were trying to figure out what do they do wrong and what changes in the curriculum are required. This was not clear.

I “ve asked this question, rdquo;My son has graduated from School of Visual Arts majoring in classic animation. I am experienced software developer. Professionally, we are people from different planets even though he is my son. May be you should not turn away lots and lots of job applicants that do not have universal skills and rather hire two different talents – a creative person and a Web developer who will work together on the same project? ”

The speakers kind of agreed, but I’m sure that professors from the audience will not start changing curriculums because of this presentation.

Anne Connell, Lee Byron, Carnegie Mellon University

They use Flex in their Interaction Design course. Demoed a simple messaging application created by the students that streams video with Flash Messaging Server.

The next as the demo of the prototype created in Flex in days instead of weeks.

Lee explain how they’ve created an application for people who flirt. They made an interesting research: how people flirt:

1. Direct physical approach

2. Cautious and shy approach

3. Online only

After doing some brainstorming, the students decided to deliver their messages using videos that would inspire people to explore things together. Flirtastic was born!

Nice and refreshing presentation ndash; young programmers rule!

The day concluded with a very productive panel discussion.

I had a chance to express my opinion (got plenty of those):

My Opinion

Adobe need to go after big guys. While someone in the audience named Nike a big company, I work for Wall Street firms that consider Nike a small enterprise. It’s great that Adobe invited us to promote their products in the educational institutions; they can also send representatives to all schools around the country asking them to start teaching their great software products hellip;

Adobe shows very impressive results in injecting Flex into IT departments of large enterprises, but I ‘d add even more sales pressure there rather than addressing the creative crowd. Here ‘s what I mean.

IT departments in large enterprises are traditionally either Java or .Net shops. When Adobe started offering Flex as a development tool. The first reaction was “Adobe who? “. Then it started evolving into various phases of grief: denial (I can do all this in Java), Anger (I do not need no Flex). I believe that now Java developers found themselves in the bargaining phase.

If Adobe will continue promoting Flex among application developers in large enterprises, the big guys will start contacting universities demanding people with Flex and ActionScript skills. The Academia will have no choice but make adjustments in the curriculum. This will be beneficial for everyone, including creative people.

Tuesday

Anuja Dharkar, Senior Manager, Curriculum Solutions

Here’s the Web page with some resources for higher education.

Need collaboration between computer science studies and visual media studies. Two different groups (developers and designers/artists) need to work together. Adobe starts working on creation of curriculums for Computer Engineering and Design and Visual Media courses.

In the works:

Self Studies: Flex Builder overview, Visual controls, Layouts, events, integration with other technologies.

Project examples: UI and Interaction design, Managing events and data

And this is an Education Developer Center. People in the audience complained that tutorials targeted toward students are not easily searcheable online.

Lots of resources are available at Adobe Developer Connection.

There’s a partnership with O’Reilly – Academic Solutions.

Instructors can get their free review copies of the books (two per semester).

Here “s one more resource: Adobe Design and Film School Connection portal.

My two cents: use well-written Adobe certified courseware as a foundation for creating curriculum for educators. Adobe should also send certified instructors to high schools and train the faculty.

Overall, Anuja seems to be the right person for the job who can make a difference.

Break-out sessions

Video, Simon Hayhurst and Steven

CS4:

Metadata rich. How my site will be found? Browse audio/video, find the phrase, track, etc. Metadata

extraction is important. Everyone is chasing the metadata portion in the content.

Efficient Workflow

Expressiveness

Creativity for the Networked world ndash; hosted and networked applications

Flash:

Designer/Developer work flow – Flex and Thermo

Flash Authoring. Flash 10 ( “Diesel”) will have 3D in it. Moving more and more into hardware acceleration. New text engine. XML-based file format.

Bordeaux – graphic designers can create interactivity and motion without coding. Lightweight video embedded in banners. Animation without the key frames/ timeline is just for sequencing. The demo of building a banner with a couple of videos with Bordeaux ndash; looks very simple. The public beta is coming soon.

Goldman is a tool for writers of all types, it’s a screenplay tool. Metadata, formatting ease…

Web, Lea Hickman, Doug Winnie

It’s not Designer/Developer work flow, it’s rather a multi-discipline skill set. A person has core skills plus aspirations. The rest of the sessions is on building teams for the projects. Same old, same old … Designers complain that developers are not available, it’s hard …Demo of the future DreamWeaver. I’m in the wrong room.

Platform, Mike Downey, Group Manager, Platform Evangelism

Flash started as an animation tool, but a prototype of a hotel reservation system TheBroadMoor pushed the envelop and lead to creation of Flex framework, which is now a core development platform for Adobe.

Breaking Acrobat Connect into components ndash; you’ll be able to use them as hosted services.

Why AIR is free?Adobe monetizes on their own technoligies by building applications.

Flash Player: 8.5M downloads a day! It “s installed on 98% of the computers in the world.

The new release of Flash Player is 9.3 ( “Moviestar”). High definition video H.264 and audio, multicore support, full screen hardware scaling, use GPU to improve scaling, 50% faster bitmap downscaling, Enchrypted video streaming.

Flex 3 new features: cached Flex framework, memory and performance profiler, AIR support, improved CSS support, Flash Cs3 integration.

AIR  – it’s a cross OS runtime. Developers leverage their skills to deploy the app on the desktop. No new skills are required, just learn new API.

AIR is not an application, but a desktop runtime (similar to .Net framework or JRE). You just install AIR and it supports your application (Flash Player, HTML Engine based on WebKit, XML, CSS, PDF). It bridges scripting engines together ndash; JavaScript can call all Flash Player APIs. AJAX developers became exited. File system API, synchronous and async file writing, network detection API so the app shifts from disconnected to connected modes, notification API, application update, drag and drop, local database.

Next year ndash; AIR Mobile, a subset of AIR. PDF Reader is not included, but AIR detects it and stores it inside the AIR.

Good session and Mike is a very good presenter.

A small large company called Adobe

From my point of view, Adobe/Macromedia merger was made in heaven (they remain in the list of best 50 employers according to Forbes). Even though Adobe was larger than Macromedia, the latter gave the former a key to the golden door of the enterprise application development. Yet when I’ve attended this conference I had a feeling that Adobe still wears an old suit that it outgrown a couple of years ago. Speakers mainly talk about the needs of designers and small media agencies. Guys, you are bigger than this! Get out of the closet. Hold you head up high as a leading company that provides superb tools for both ndash; application developers and creative people.

Innovate!

I’m really for competition. But after I saw the power of what Adobe is having on their plate, there is not too many firms that can compete with them ndash; Microsoft, Apple, Google. Anyone else? I don’t think so. I’m sure we’ll see a lot of small startups that create really cool applications, but I’m talking about the platforms here.

Such a serious job can be accomplished by big guys only. Keep creating your killer applications in the garages and basements, and if you are really good, big guys may notice your work. This will make you richer financially, and will make the overall users experience a little bit richer too. Innovate!

Purchase of MySQL by Sun Microsystems for $1B for a company that makes $80M a year? This raised lots of questions. Let ‘s use smaller numbers cause it ‘s not easy to think billions. Say you want to purchase a pizza store that makes $80K a year.

Would you pay 12.5 yearly incomes for this pizza store? I would not. But Sun did and explained this purchase . But are there other reasons?

MySQL Server is an excellent DBMS. MySQL is a lot better than SQLLite.

Maybe Sun purchased it to make sure that their competitors won ‘t be able to buy it? The fight for the rich desktop client is just heating up. Both Google Gears and Adobe AIR use SQLLite database on the client. What if they ‘d purchased MySQL before Sun did? It ‘d make competitors stronger. Now it won ‘t. Google ‘s Gear is not dangerous, but AIR is a direct competitor to Java on the client. If this is the actual reason behind this purchase, Sun Microsystems did a very smart move. Eventually, when JavaFX will start competing on the client, having such a great client DB as MySQL will become quite handy.

Does this thought sounds stupid to you? If yes, I got another one. Information Week sites Jonathan Schwartz saying “I think what you ‘ll see from Sun is that we ‘re just going to take the ‘J ‘ off the ‘JVM ‘ and just make it a ‘VM ‘ “. That ‘s perfectly fine – JVM shines and it makes sense to use it as a runtime for multiple languages, not just Java.

My other stupid question is “What ‘s going to be the next ticker of Sun Microsystems? ”

SUNW turned into JAVA last year. What ‘s the next one?

Watch this Youtube movie

One man says to another, “Look, there are two Jews. Let ‘s go and punch them into their faces. ”

The other man asks, “But what if they ‘ll punch us back? ”

The first one is surprised, “Us? For what reason? “

My car does not have a built-in navigator ndash; this time I did not want to add $2K to the price tag of the car. I bought this great little navigator from Garmin for under $400. It “s very simple to use, and the UI is very friendly.

After you enter an address of the destination, it “ll show you the route and will display the estimated arrival time. I “ve been watching how this time changes based on the traffic and came to a pretty interesting conclusion: speeding does not really help.

Say, I “ve entered an address that “s 30 miles away from my current location and the arrival time is 5:22PM. I assume that this little thingy knows the allowed speed limit for each road and “assumes rdquo; that this is going to be the speed of your vehicle. This is a fair assumption (drivers who are over 80 years old do not count).

It became sort of a game for me ndash; I started to turn on the thing even if I knew the directions. I was trying to see if the ETA is correct. Then I noticed , the when I run into a slow traffic situation, the estimated time of arrival is changing pretty damn fast: 5:23 hellip;5:24 hellip;5:25 hellip; Then, all of a sudden the congestion ends and everyone starts driving fast. I start speeding trying to bring the ETA back to 5:22PM but it “s sooooo difficult? I “m speeding – 15 miles over the limit, but this damn number does not get lower! A couple of miles of such speeding will shave off just one minute of your ETA.

It “s easily explainable from the math point of view, cause while driving in traffic you can go as slow as 50 miles below the speed limit so unless your speed is 50 miles higher than allowed, catching up will be always slower.

The bottom line: If you got stuck in traffic, do not try to catch up after the normal speed is resumed. If you are late for the important meeting, call them up and say that you “ll be late. Do not put yourself into a stressful and dangerous situation. There will be another day and another meeting.

The conclusion: After doing all these semi-scientific experiments, I won “t follow my own advice and will continue speeding. I just like driving fast.

P.S. I ‘ve also noticed that there is not speed limit of 60 mph. There is 55 and the next one is 65. Have you ever seen the speed limit of 60?

February is the time of big decisions. People start to look for better jobs. Why? Because they ‘ve gotten their annual reviews. “You meet our expectations and even exceed them. But sorry , man , you know how it works… No, this is not a price of a gallon of gas – this is your bonus…My hands are tied, so you are fucked up again this year. But if you work hard and improve items 2 and 4 on your Goals… ”

Got a call today from an excellent programmer. Know him for 15 years. He knows .Net inside out. And I mean infuckinside out.

Hey you, a mediocre manager! WTF are you doing? Do you think that geeks are people from Mars who will work for you just because they enjoy coding 16 hours a day and are happy dining at McDonald? Do you think that they do not have bills to pay? Do you think their wives, girlfriends or domestic partners are second class citizens that are happy to shop at WallMart while yours gets stuff at Nordstrom? Do you thinks that geeks are OK with driving Toyota Corollas? Guess what, they also know what ‘s good and what ‘s bad. They know how to google too.

When someone else is asking again why managers can ‘t recruit top talent , it makes me smile. Mediocre managers just want the numbers on reviews look smooth to their management. “Sorry man, we have a bonus pool and we can give Exceed only to 10 percent of people in our group. John and Mary stay with the firm for 15 years and I had to give it to them. I ‘m sure you understand… ” Fuck the geeks! A mediocre manager does not give a damn if you quit or stay. You ‘ve contributed a year of your life to his roadmap in becoming an executive. Another year, another geek.

Anyway, if you need a super .Net programmer that knows AJAX and all shebang, let me know. As a matter of fact, it does not matter what he knows today, cause tomorrow he ‘ll know anything and everything that the rest of the members of you team pretend to know. And he ‘ll knows it a lot better.

If you need a .Net guru, let me know. Sorry, he ‘s not interested in full time employment at this point of his career. But if you want to have a serious programmer, let me know. His hourly rate is high, but you won ‘t regret it.

If you are also a geek working for a similar moron-manager, get the fuck out of there. Every year they ‘ll find another excuse for giving you a funny bonus. Take your career in your hands! As Beethoven has written, “Man, help yourself! “. Beethoven was dead on!

Yes, it “s official now and there is no need to keep the mouth shut fearing violatiion the non-disclosure agreement: the production release of an open source product Flex 3 is available today. The same is true for AIR 1.0 and BlazeDS.

Eighteen months ago Flex 2 was released, which literally changed the way people think of rich Internet applications. Since then lots of things has happen in the Flex community. In 2007 Adobe announced that Flex will go open source, and now it happened. All ActionScript 3 and Java code including Flex compilers and debugger (FDB) go open source. Let “s not forget about the number of other open source products released by Adobe during the same period of time:

Tamarin (ActionScript Virtual Machine)

Spry Framework

Flex Ajax Video

Flex Ajax Bridge (now part of SDK)

BlazeDS

If before, their server side component LiveCycle Data Services was available only for those who could afford it, now anyone can enjoy fast communication via AMF3 protocol between Flex and Java for free using BlazeDS.

Adobe AIR is an important step in bringing together Web and desktop applications. Surprisingly, the Beta versions of Flex 3 and AIR were used by many IT organizations for development of the real-world application. People could not wait to get a hold of these very productive and fun-to-work-with tools.

Adobe had and is still facing a challenging task ndash; to spread wider in the predominantly Java/.NET enterprise world. But they already made some serious achievement in this direction. People have stopped asking “Flex who? rdquo; Java developers have successfully gone through the phases of Denial ( “I-can-do-all-this-in-Java “) and Anger ( “I-don “t-need-no-proprietary-technologies “) and found themselves in the Bargaining phase now , “Where can we fit Flex in our architecture and how to gradually upgrade some of our Web 1.0 applications to Flex? rdquo;

Adobe continues its efforts to help enterprise developers to accept Flex. They work on various levels: with corporate executives, make departmental sales, and clearly demonstrate technical merits of Flex to software developers. My kudos to Adobe Flex evangelists Christophe Coenraets and James Ward who work mainly with Java developers. These guys live on planes, buses, trains, and automobiles delivering the message about Flex and AIR to people working in different industries. For example, in April they are coming to New York City addressing the financial community at the seminar Flex on Wall Street .

Adobe works very closely with academia on bringing students on board. Flex Builder is available for free for students and faculty. The rest of the Flex framework is free for everyone. Adobe Education Designer and Developer conference will take place next week in San Francisco. Adobe is bringing together the most creative and influential minds in the education community. Adobe is very serious about making their developers tools a household name in universities.

Just scroll through a variety of rich Internet applications listed at the Flex Showcase Web site. People ‘s creativity has no limits, really.

While Flex almost became a household name in the IT shops, AIR is still a new kid on the block. But some organizations not only are pretty comfortable with it, but managed to prepare production releases of their applications with AIR. These are some of such applications:

AOL Top 100 Music Videos

The AOL Top 100 Music Videos application built on Adobe AIR gives users the ability to browse and play the top 100 music videos from AOL Music, search for more artists and view related artist content. The application also takes advantage of local system resources enabling features such as integrated bookmarking, personalization and sharing.

eBay

eBay Desktop is an impressive application built on Adobe AIR that creates a persistent connection with eBay customers. eBay Desktop delivers product availability notifications and auction updates straight to the buyer, in real-time, so users don “t have to open a browser and go to the eBay site for the latest information. Users can import auction data into local files, or export data to local files for use with other desktop applications. eBay Desktop has all the features of eBay in the browser and can operate directly from the desktop.

The Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc.

NASDAQ Market Replay leverages Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR to deliver a RIA on the desktop that enables financial professionals to replay market activity in detail at any point in time, helping investors understand why a stock price moved in a certain direction. The complexities of equity trading are enormous mdash; with millions of orders continuously traveling different paths to central markets. NASDAQ Market Replay lets brokers show their customers exactly what was going on in the market at the time a trade happened, and Adobe AIR allows for instant response to an extremely large data set, something not possible in a browser.

The New York Times Company

The New York Times Company is launching ShifD, a new RIA that allows users to shift content between computers and mobile devices. ShifD works on – and between – the Web, mobile devices and through a downloadable AIR application, giving people an easier way to consume media on the go. Developers used Ajax technologies to build both the browser-based version of ShifD and the desktop version deployed on Adobe AIR. The New York Times Company is also developing a sophisticated blog reader on Adobe AIR.

Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group ‘s Neopets

Neopets is a fun virtual pet site. You can create your own pets, feed them, groom them, look after them, and watch them grow. Using Adobe Flex and AIR, Neopets is creating a desktop habitat for “petpetpets rdquo;, little insects that live on the pets. The application will even use artificial intelligence to guide their behaviors.

Nickelodeon “s MTVN Kids and Family Group ‘s

The company “s first Adobe AIR application, developed in Adobe Flex, is a clever jigsaw puzzle game that encourages Nickelodeon fans to explore http://www.nick.com, locate pieces of a video, and then drag the pieces to the AIR application on their home computers. Each week a new part of the video puzzle will be released, requiring visitors to scour the web site for the latest pieces. Once assembled, the video puzzle can be played within Adobe AIR and provides a link back to the company “s web site, where viewers can watch the full-length video.

You can find official Adobe press releases at http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200802/022508AdobeAIR.html

Today is a big day for Flex community, and I send my congratulation to all members of Flex team who made this happen!

James McGovern published a blog on How IT managers prevent hiring top talent He names fear of losing power as one of the main reasons and suggests having less consultants and more people from the military.

I do not agree with these statements. Here ‘s my quick random thoughts on the subject (my haircut appointment is in 15 min):

1. Managers do not hire top talents because they can ‘t afford to hire them.

2. Managers are not afraid that they ‘ll lose the power, because top talent is not seeking the power but rather is looking for an interesting environment and appreciation of his/her work.

3. If managers already work with a top talent (can be either an employee or a consultant), they often resists to innovative ideas that come from these smart people. Why? Because the main goal of almost every manager is to move up the career ladder and not make a revolution in the software development. The innovative ideas of smart technical people put their career at risk. Yeah, the existing technology may not be a bleeding edge, but everyone know its features, and slowly but surely we ‘ll get the project finished close to the set deadlines. This new technology sounds very interesting, but why taking a risk and being among the early adopters? Thanks, but no thanks.

4. For some reason, James does not like contractors that much. He does not want to admit that typically contractors are more innovative than employees. They need to keep their skills up to date and learn on the go, while some employees get too comfy in their cubicles over the years. I vote for inviting more contractors on the short-time basis. I often work as a contractor myself. Currently I work on three projects at the same time: two days a week on one, two on the other and Fridays on the third one. The managers who hired people from our company for short mentoring gigs made the right decision. My role is to mentor other people and make sure that the project goes in the right direction. Keeping me onsite for five days a week would be more expensive and unnecessary. I also prefer short assignments to long running projects.

5. Hiring people from military may or may not work. Pros: military people are often goal oriented, and if they decide to become good software developers/architect, they ‘ll do it. Be what you can be. Recently I met a former marine in one the IT floors. The is a very respectful person, who does not have formal education in software but is one of the leading developers on a complex project. Cons: military people may not have any talent in computers, and hiring them just because they are from military is wrong, in my opinion. Hire good software developers regardless of their past.

In April, I ‘ll publish a small e-book “Enterprise Software Development without BS “, where I ‘ll explain my views of IT, if you care.