Meanwhile, back at the farm

Kynetx, a company that I do part-time work for, has released a white paper discussing the Structured Web (you can, and should, read the white paper here).  I cannot do the whitepaper justice here, but in short, the paper outlines how tying identity and context to the browsing experience is the future of the web.  Phil Windley and Steve Fulling have really worked hard to develop this vision and have done and excellent job.  It’s a pleasure to work with these guys and the team that they’ve put together.

I’m currently working on a post that explores some of the possibilities that this new concept presents especially as it pertains to learning tools.  Kynetx is mostly focused on e-commerce, but the principles that they outline can be applied broadly across the web experience. I look forward to seeing the magic that is produced by this team.

Disclaimer: Although I do part-time work for Kynetx, I am not an authorized representative for the company and my post here should not in any way be represented as any official position or opinion of the company.  I just think these guys are great and want to tell the world about it.

This is a monumental undertaking to redefine learning technology. I applaud your study and articulation of the problem and the direction you set forth for creating the next generation. This is the right way to go and doing so will be inevitable. I’m very interested in seeing some prototypes and working examples of how this can be accomplished. Five years ago I would have thought Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) would have brought the desired modularity. Having read much about the failure of many SOA initiatives, I now question whether that is the right approach.

I believe that future initiatives to implement modularity (malleability as you call it) into the learning experience will involve integration of web based applications delivered through a common interface. In other words, utilizing existing integration standards such as REST compatible API’s from highly specialized online services into a single framework that can provide a consistent user experience. An example would be to provide a single access-point for Google Docs and Facebook groups where documents could be shared to members of the groups in a very low friction interaction.

Do you know of any current initiatives to articulate a possible software architecture and identify existing technologies that could be implemented and tested under the guidelines you’ve specified?

Originally posted as a comment by mikefarmer on The End in Mind using Disqus.

Apple Insider posted a short writeup about the latest benchmarks on Internet Explorer 8 pre-release build. These two graphs show the benchmarks and you can read the ZDNet report that generated the benchmarks here.

I believe that not making javascript rendering one of the primary focuses of IE 8 is a huge oversight by Microsoft.  It also seems out of whack with there interest in jQuery and its integration with Visual Studio.  As web sites move more and more to a JavaScript heavy implementation the ability for the browser to quickly parse and execute JavaScript will become a key reason for picking it as your primary browser.

I’ve already seen issues with this in BlackBoard, the Learning Management System (LMS) at BYU-Idaho.  Blackboard’s most recent release of their GradeCenter underwent a major overhaul to add AJAX in a more rich implementation.  It wasn’t long before the faculty started to complain about how slow it was.  I did some initial tests and didn’t notice any slowness that was significant.  After doing some research I realized that I was using Firefox 3 and the faculty were using IE (6 and 7).  After doing some very unscientific benchmarking on my own I found that the GradeCenter would load in under 3 seconds on average in Firefox 3.  On Internet Explorer it was taking up to 20 seconds!  This research led us to start recommending Firefox 3 to faculty, a decision that was not easily swallowed by the IT department.

I was really hoping that IE 8 would improve their JavaScript rendering to help us support this issue, but alas, it is not to be.  In the meantime, I will continue to encourage individuals to move from IE to Firefox or Chrome if they want a better / faster browsing experience.

This one could get me in trouble:

This was a joke played on me from some of my co-workers. I must admit that after some other people named Michael Farmer hit the news, I’m a little sensitive to my name being used online and in the news so I fell for this one hook line and sinker.

I’ve moved my blog over to my new site http://michaelfarmer.info

Have a look around. It’s nothing too special so far.  I’ll be keeping my old blog at http://backatthefarm.blogspot.com until I’m sure I’m going to stick with WordPress on GoDaddy.  So far I love WordPress, hate GoDaddy.  We’ll see how it goes.

This post is a call to all my followers out there to help a good friend of mine. Bob Laidig has been working with me at Sento for 5+ years and has been a good friend and trusted co-worker. Bob is now moving on to another opportunity and in conjunction with his departure I would like to ask all my friends and followers to donate to a good cause that Bob is undertaking

On June 28 – 29, 2008, Bob would like to take part in the 2008 Harmons Best Dam Bike Ride which is a ride to raise funds for finding a cure for Multiple Sclerosis. He is currently about $275 from reaching the minimum $500 entry. Please take some time to visit the donation website, read about the cause, and make a donation.

Thank you!

Click here to visit the site or copy and paste the following link:

http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR/Bike/UTUBikeEvents?px=4749786&pg=personal&fr_id=7250&s_tafId=93198

The following was taken from The Music and the Spoken Word

Nancy was eight years old when a teacher looked at her drawing and spoke six words Nancy would never forget: “You’re not very talented, are you?”

The words not only embarrassed her, they burrowed inside her, creating a firm resolve never to make a fool of herself by attempting to draw or paint again.

It took more than five decades for Nancy to outgrow this image of herself as a clumsy, artless, and uncreative person. Today Nancy knows something she wishes she could have understood when she was eight: the reason we create is not for the praise of others but because we love something so much we want to see it exist.

That’s what creative people do. They bring to life things that didn’t exist before.

Creativity is one of the great, mysterious hungers we all have as mortal souls, and there are as many ways to express this divine drive as there are people who feel it. Some of the most creative people in the world never pick up a paintbrush, sit down at a piano, or fill a page with words. Yet because of them, the world is filled with scented gardens, warm quilts, and loving relationships. Sometimes the most important thing we create is as simple as a smile.

Many of us have something we’ve always wanted to try to do but never quite got around to it—perhaps because we lacked the confidence, or maybe because we were afraid we would fail. The good news is this: when we set aside our fears and begin to create, we make not only our lives but our world more meaningful and more wonderful.
One wise man put it this way: “God left [the] world unfinished. . . . He left the problems unsolved and the pictures unpainted and the music unsung that man might know the joys and glories of creation.”1

1 Attributed to Alan Stockdale by Sterling W. Sill in Conference Report, Apr. 1960, 70.

You probably heard the in the news yesterday that Mitt Romney announced that he is suspending his campaign for the Presidency of the United States. You probably heard a clip from his speech at CPAC where he outlined that because of the treat to our country from Jihad and the inevitable retreat by the Democrats, he could not continue to split the Republican vote. Doing so would only weaken the opportunity to send John McCain, who has been a strong supporter in our battle against Jihad, to the White House.

What you didn’t hear in the news was the rest of the speech. You can read it here.

Here are a few excerpts that I thought were most notable:

The threat to our culture comes from within. The 1960’s welfare programs created a culture of poverty. Some think we won that battle when we reformed welfare, but the liberals haven’t given up. At every turn, they try to substitute government largesse for individual responsibility. They fight to strip work requirements from welfare, to put more people on Medicaid, and to remove more and more people from having to pay any income tax whatsoever. Dependency is death to initiative, risk-taking and opportunity. Dependency is a culture-killing drug. We have got to fight it like the poison it is.

The development of a child is enhanced by having a mother and father. Such a family is the ideal for the future of the child and for the strength of a nation. I wonder how it is that unelected judges, like some in my state of Massachusetts, are so unaware of this reality, so oblivious to the millennia of recorded history. It is time for the people of America to fortify marriage through Constitutional amendment, so that liberal judges cannot continue to attack it.

Most politicians don’t seem to understand the connection between our ability to compete and our national wealth, and the wealth of our families. They act as if money just happens – that it’s just there. But every dollar represents a good or service produced in the private sector. Depress the private sector and you depress the well-being of Americans.

That’s exactly what happens with high taxes, over-regulation, tort windfalls, mandates, and overfed, over-spending government. Did you see that today, government workers make more money than people who work in the private sector? Can you imagine what happens to an economy where the best opportunities are for bureaucrats?

It’s high time to lower taxes, including corporate taxes, to take a weed-whacker to government regulations, to reform entitlements, and to stand up to the increasingly voracious appetite of the unions in our government.

Mark Madsen is blogging about Operational BI. Operational BI just means that BI is more accessible to end users.

Vendors in the business intelligence and enterprise applications market have been talking a lot about operational BI, making BI pervasive and active/dynamic data warehousing. They’re responding to the need businesses have for up-to-date information at the point of use so decisions can be made more quickly or tasks can be done more effectively.

Making operational BI a reality will require two things: front-end tools that address the specific interface needs at the point of usage, and a metadata-driven query layer that isn’t tied to a specific UI.

Mark goes on to note that we wont likely see any of the predominant BI vendors adopt either of these two things. Why? Inertia. The article is a good read, and I recommend it because it explains the problem very well.

I believe there is a a market for a metadata-driven query layer. Something like this would be complex, but as I’ve said before, I believe the talent and tools exist, they just aren’t focused.

Scoble is out of his element writing about Enterprise Software, but he hits this nail right on the head.

Why enterprise software isn’t sexy � Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger

I have invested by interests and schooling in Enterprise Software. I love Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing. To me, the concepts are really exciting. The software itself — not so much. The trouble is that most enterprise software is massive. It is extremely complex in its implementation and its goals. Because of this, more time is spent on functionality than usability. When was the last time you saw a UI to enterprise software that you liked?

Here’s the trouble. We really don’t care enough about it to spend the extra cash to make it thus. Enterprise Software doesn’t need to be sexy to get used. Consumer software does. CIO’s are going to buy software for the company that will bring value and that value isn’t going to be measured by how many warm-fuzzies my employees get while using it. It’s based on cost savings and maximizing revenue, more of the former for CIOs.

So as much as I’d love to see enterprise software vendors build sexy applications, I don’t see them wasting time on eye-candy any time soon. There is, however, a great deal to be excited about in enterprise software. As with any software, it doesn’t matter how well it looks in comparison to how well it runs. The back-end may not have the polish we would like, but the stuff that goes on there to simplify complexity and provide value is simply amazing. It’s worth looking at and studying.

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I really should put this in a separate post, but I must point out one other thing here. If you want to point a finger at one other contributing factor to the lack of sexy enterprise applications, I think you have to point to Java. Most enterprise applications are built on Java. Java has the ugliest UI libraries out there. One way to quickly start building sexier applications is to either dump Java or encourage Java developers to work on libraries that actually look nice and encompass modern UI techniques. I don’t mean to pick on Java here (if you know me, you know I’m not a fan), but to me it is an obvious conclusion.