Retro technology at its finest!

Blue Marble Announces Support for over 800 Ancient Units of Measure

Gardiner, Maine – April 1, 2009 – Blue Marble Geographics announces support for over 800 units of measure from antiquity in the latest version of Blue Marble software. Blue Marble’s geospatial data manipulation and conversion solutions are used worldwide by thousands of GIS analysts at software companies, universities, oil and gas companies, civil engineering, surveying, technology, enterprise GIS groups, government and military organizations.

Modern surveyors often reminisce about the ancient days where measurement was more of an art than a science. To help return some traditional methods to the modern world, Blue Marble now supports over 800 ancient units of measure! Whether you are surveying an Ancient Egyptian burial site, or building a modern sewage treatment plant, knowing that one šsp = .8 drt can mean the difference between doing a good job, and doing a great job. New support for cubits, for example, is quite extensive and is customizable to virtually anyone’s “arm’s length”. No more confusion between surveyors of different shapes and sizes.

Constance Noring, Vice President of Measurement at Blue Marble Geographics, could not be more excited about these new additions. “I’ve had surveyors call and thank me about this feature, and we haven’t even released it yet. Now they can convert all of their CAD data from feet to cubits with the simple click of a button! Talk about job security, with a tool like this no one will want your job once you get done with the data!”

About Blue Marble Geographics: Blue Marble Geographics of Gardiner, Maine is a leading developer and provider of geographic software products that provide sensible solutions for users and developers of geographic data. Blue Marble has been writing GIS software tools and solutions for over 15 years and currently serves hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. Learn more at www.bluemarblegeo.com.

Developers are staying away from technology conferences. Maybe they’re going to fewer events, or sending smaller teams to must-attend conferences. Maybe they’re only going to conferences that are within driving distance, or are attending “free” vendor-sponsored marketing events instead of educational forums. No matter what, the decline of our leading events is a loss for everyone.

I love going to technology conferences. While online communications and phone chat are great for learning about new technologies and trends, there’s nothing like the mass face-to-face experience of a conference to keep me in looped into the software development industry.

Still, there’s no denying that conferences are expensive, in terms of tuition, travel, room, food, and time out of the office. If you have control over your own travel schedule and budget, like I do, the economy means making hard choices. If your manager has control of your travel, you’ll have to work hard to make your case. If you work for a big company, there’s a good chance that a full or partial ban on technology conferences is in effect.

Consider Microsoft’s TechEd, one of the must-attend events. Last year, TechEd had split into two separate weeks, one for developers, another for IT professionals like systems administrators. This year, TechEd is back to a single week – May 11-15 in Los Angeles. Today, we learned that Microsoft is expecting TechEd to be even smaller than we thought, as described in this exhibitor communiqué:

Tech·Ed is not immune to the impacts of limited budgets available for business travel and professional development activities (such as events) resulting from the financial pressures of today’s economic environment. On average, industry event attendance is currently trending 30%-40% lower than anticipated. Tech·Ed North America currently expects an audience of approximately 6,000, including attendees, Press staff, Microsoft staff, speakers, and booth staff, so please plan accordingly for booth staff and any marketing collateral or giveaways.

The drop-off is bigger than the Microsoft market, of course. Last week, I attended EclipseCon, the annual gathering from the Eclipse Foundation. Its attendance dropped from about 1,300 last year to about 800 this year. A few weeks earlier, SD West did so poorly that TechWeb shut down the entire family of events, including SD West, SD Best Practices and Architecture & Design World.

I dread to see what this year’s JavaOne, June 2-5 in San Francisco, will look like.

Tell me about your conference plans. Are you going to fewer events this year — or none? Do you have corporate restrictions on attending conferences? How is this affecting your professional skills development and sense of involvement in the software development industry?

The 86 Rules of Boozing are pretty darned funny. The rule listed as the blog title is #69.

#67 is, “Never ask a bartender ‘what’s good tonight?’ They do not fly in the scotch fresh from the coast every morning.”

Yes, this is old, but who cares? Read and enjoy!!

You’ve got to trust your community to do the right thing – but also make it easy to clean up after people if they misbehave.

That’s a major point that I took away from Tuesday’s opening keynote from EclipseCon. The speakers were Jeff Atwood, famous for his Coding Horror blog, and Clay Shirky, author of the insightful book, Here Comes Everybody, about the power of social groups in public life.

The topic was “The Social Mind: Designing like groups matter,” and Jeff and Clay found patterns in the success from their creation of StackOverflow, a user community for developers, and as well as successful communities like SlashDot and Wikipedia.

You should read Clay’s book, subscribe to Jeff’s blog, and visit StackOverflow. But before you do that, here are four best practices that Jeff and Clay offered regarding creating a successful community site – the headings are theirs, but the descriptions are mine.

1. Radically lower the bar for participation. Don’t make prospective community members jump through hoops to participate, or demonstrate specific expertise. Look at what makes Wikipedia successful – that it has contributions from the small number of experts who really care about a specific subject, and also smaller contributions from the huge number of people who have a smaller commitment. Anyone can start a Wikipedia page; anyone can change a page; anyone can add to a topic or correct a mistake. Make everyone welcome and let everyone participate, as much as you can.

2. Trusting (some of) your users. While you want a lot of participation, not all participants are equal. Some folks contribute more, some are more dedicated, some add a huge amount of value. Other folks contribute less. How do you know who is more valuable, more trustworthy? Find ways to let the community decide, whether it’s through rankings, karma points, or whatever. And then, provide the means for those with more trust to lead the community.

3. Life is the world’s biggest MMORPG. Successful massively multiplayer online role-playing games mimic real life. People work hard if they can see that they’re making progress… and if they have goals to achieve. Those goals might be to slay dragons, win karma points, or to accumulate gold pieces, or whatever. Build those mechanisms into your system, to encourage and reward behavior that you’d like to see in your community.

4. Bad stuff happens. Some people paint beautiful murals, and others spray obnoxious graffiti. That happens in the real world, and happens online too, as you can see by the abusive comments left on many online communities. The more general the community, the more people just like to go by and spray graffiti. Accept that this will happen, but also make sure you have ways to delete community-destroying nuisances quickly. Look at how easily Wikipedia contributors can ‘revert’ malicious content. In the virtual world, you can make it easier to delete graffiti than to create it.

Jeff and Clay suggest starting small, and getting really good at what you do – and then letting the community grow in a scalable, sustainable way. Think about how Google, or eBay, or Facebook started. That’s the recipe for success in a community, both in the real world and online.

The strangest thing… a big truck pulled up outside the office, and tried to deliver a 500-pound palette with an industrial-grade bandsaw on it.

The trucking company’s bill of lading showed that this was an order from Amazon.com to be delivered to me. But I didn’t order a bandsaw, and it’s hard to imagine that someone would send me one. (It’s not Father’s Day, is it?)

We (me and the truck driver) discovered that Amazon’s shipping label on the palette itself has a different name and delivery address — in a different state. Same bill of lading number, however.

We were shaking our heads on this one. Why is my name/address on the bill of lading?

I refused delivery, of course. But now I’m having (sort of) buyer’s remorse. It might be fun to have a free industrial-strength bandsaw.

Is there a full moon or something?

In today’s off-topic press release department, two noteworthy entries came in. You can read them both on my new “Stop-the-PResses” blog.

The first is from Unilever, and involves a computer game designed to promote a new product:

The “Bake It To Believe It!” Cooking & Baking game marks the launch of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!® Cooking & Baking sticks, which taste and bake like butter with 50% less saturated fat. The game gives cooking enthusiasts an opportunity to hone their skills in the kitchen. Visitors can experiment virtually with delicious recipes from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!®, while putting their cooking and baking skills to the ultimate test.

The second is from Digital Playground, and is about a new Blu-ray movie for an over-21 audience:

Everybody knows that bad girls have more fun, and the Digital Playground girls are the baddest on the block. “Digital Playground’s Bad Girls” is the latest kinky gonzo from acclaimed director Robby D. Contract stars Stoya, Gabriella Fox, and Shay Jordan are naughty and begging to be punished. In her first released B/G/G, Stoya learns that two is always better than one when it comes to guys. Kelly Summer and Serena del Rio join in the hot, deviant fun in this must-have new offering.

The prurient question, of course, is what would happen if these two companies joined forces?

Ted “call him Dante” Bahr is back, and describes the advertising sales cycle in terms that every salesperson can relate to. Here’s the first of “the seven layers of approval hell”:

First Level: Customer agrees with your proposal, is excited, but needs the price lowered. With that negotiation settled, both parties are ready to go.

As you expect, things “descend” from there.

Read the rest here!

This came in today’s mail. I wonder if their ISO9001 certificate includes documented processes for email marketing?

From: Floyd Tan
Subject: Business cooperation in faucets

Dear Sir,
How do you do ?

We are the manufacture of faucets.
I have learnt from internet that you are interested in purchasing faucets.

I would like to introduce me and my company.

This is Floyd Tan from Export department.Our company Huayi established in
1991.It is the faucet manufacturer located in Kaiping city,Guangdong China.
Our products including washbasin mixer,bidet mixer,bath mixer,shower mixer and
sink mixer.More than 90 percent are for export.

Our products are in good quality.
1> Our products made by gravity casting(High pressure casting)and low pressure casting.
2> Each product testing by air and by water before delivery.
3> We carry out European production style.
4> We got ISO9001 certificate.We use ISO for management in our production.
5> Our production flow is design-tooling-fabrication-grinding-polishing-
-plating-installation.Each step is strictly tested.

I suggest you a trial order to check quality for your local market.Tks.

Await your early reply.

Best regards,
Floyd Tan/Huayi

SD West and SD Best Practices are dead.

If you attended last week’s SD West, you know that the event has become a shadow of its former self. As TechWeb (formerly CMP) continues shifting its focus away from the software development market, the demise of SD West is easy to understand. (TechWeb shuttered Dr. Dobb’s Journal earlier this year.)

Pity. SD West was always an important conference — just as DDJ was an important publication. But TechWeb has more important things to focus on, like InformationWeek. The Software Development Conference (as it used to be called) will be missed!

Here’s what the folks at TechWeb are telling SD West exhibitors:

Dear [exhibitor]:

Due to the current economic situation, TechWeb has made the difficult decision to discontinue the Software Development events, including SD West, SD Best Practices and Architecture & Design World. We are grateful for your support during SD’s twenty-four year history and are disappointed to see the events end.

Developers remain important to TechWeb, and we encourage you to participate in other TechWeb brands, online and face-to-face, which include vibrant developer communities:

Cloud Connect, which will take over SD West’s dates in March 2010 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

Web 2.0 Expo

Dr. Dobb’s

Black Hat

Again, please accept our sincerest gratitude for your time, effort and contributions over the years. It is much appreciated.

This spam scam is possibly funnier than the sender intended. Needless to say, this is indeed a scam.

From: “Judy Lau” @worldwidenetwork.asia>
Date: March 17, 2009 10:43:15 PM PDT
Subject: checking the [domain] company’s domain registration

Dear Manager,

We are a professional Internet consultant organization in Asia, which mainly deal with the global companies’ domain name registration and internet intellectual property right protection. Currently, we have a pretty important issue needing to confirm with your company.

On 2009-03-18, we received an application formally, one person named “Jacques Tits” wanted to applied for the Internet brand “[domain]” and some domain names through our body.

During our preliminary investigation,we found that these domain names’ keyword and internet brand is identical with your trademark. I wonder whether you consigned “Jacques Tits” to register these domain names through us or not? Or is “Jacques Tits” your business partner or distributor in Asia? Currently, we have postponed this application of this company temporarily already. In order to deal with this issue better, please let the principal make a confirmation with me by telephone or email ASAP.

In addition, I must state that we have time limited for one person or one company’s registration. It is just 15 days. If your company files doesn’t resent within the time limited. We will unconditionally authorized the application of ” Jacques Tits”.

Thank you for your cooperate.

Best Regards,

Judy Lau
Registration Commissioner

Many dozens of press releases arrive in my email inbox every day. A small percentage of those are relevant, and spark a follow-up call by me or one of SD Times’ reporters.

Most of the remaining releases are deleted after a quick glance.

However, a few are funny. The release might be hilariously off-topic to what I write about. It might be incredibly badly written. It might be so jargon-laden that it’s incomprehensible. It might be all of the above at the same time.

What do reporters, editors and jouranlists do when we get funny press releases? We share them, of course! In my case, that means forwarding it to a few friends with the subject line, “Stop the Presses!” (If the release is exceptionally amusing, it merits the upgraded subject line, “Stop the Presses — cover story!”)

It occurred to me earlier this month, though, that it’s a shame not to share some of those award-winning press releases with a wider audience. And thus, I’ve launched the “Stop the PResses!” blog.

The press releases posted there are real and unedited. No names have been changed, no PR agencies have been disguised. They were received in my inbox: I didn’t pull them off the wire. The only change is that I’ve stripped out any rich HTML formatting and corrected line breaks. That’s it.

Note: I don’t mean any disrespect to those marketing and public-relations professionals who sent me those off-topic, badly written, jargon-laden and funny releases. I’m sure you meant well, and your release is important to you (and your clients). As the saying goes, “Good luck with that.”

SPTechCon is June 22-24 in Boston.

Click the image for a bigger version!

Microsoft might be violation of the GNU General Public License. What does that mean for its recent patent-infringement lawsuit against GPS maker TomTom?

SD Times reporter David Worthington is on top of the story, which you can read at “Experts: Microsoft’s FAT licensing terms might violate GPL.” Then read his blog post, “TomTom can license FAT without violating GPL.”

One aspect which I find interesting is that only three years ago, there were rumors that Microsoft might be planning to buy TomTom. Both companies are, essentially, in the mobile information business.

Please come to Boston
For the SharePoint.

I’m at the Hyatt with some friends
And they’ve got lots of room.

You can optimize your searches on the server
With some documents we’ll be sharin’ soon.

Please come to Boston…
She said yes, boy, please do SharePoint with me.

Okay, okay, I’m not Dave Loggins, but that doesn’t matter. The important news is that SPTechCon: The SharePoint Technology Conference, is coming to Beantown from June 22-24, 2009.

Even as we speak, we’re hard at work planning the conference. Dave Rubinstein, the intrepid editor-in-chief of SD Times, is also the conference chair for SPTechCon. He put together an outstanding program for our debut event last month in California, and it’s going to be even better in June.

What’s unique about SPTechCon is that it’s designed specifically for you – it’s the only practical conference about using SharePoint today that’s totally focused on improving productivity within your organization. With workshops and tech classes that cover deployment, administration, business applications, development and customization, if it’s about SharePoint Server 2007, it’s at SPTechCon Boston 2009.

See you there!

Apple has created a new software marketplace with its iTunes App Store. Thousands of developers, some corporate, some independent, have found a huge opportunity writing software for the iPhone and the iPod touch. There are more than 20,000 applications in the store. About 20% of the applications are free, and nearly all of the rest are priced really low, often at around US$1.99.

Impressed by the success of the iTunes App Store, other players like Palm, Microsoft, Nokia, RIM (which makes the BlackBerry), and Symbian are setting up similar captive marketplaces for mobile applications. Even Google is there, with a store that supports only free applications (for now) for Android-based devices.

Is this success story as incredible as it may seem? From Apple’s perspective, yes, because it captures one-time revenue each time an application is sold. However, usage patterns suggest that this may not be so much of a win from the customer’s point of view, and therein lies a cautionary tale.

According to a statistical study of more than 30 million iTunes App Store downloads, analytics firm Pinch Media reported that customers stop using newly acquired iPhone or iPod touch applications fairly quickly.

For example, fewer than 20% of people who download a free application continue using it the next day. The usage time of a downloaded application drops, on average, by about 1/3 in the first month after use. After a month or so, the typical application, if retained, is used for about five minutes per day – whether it’s free or paid makes little difference.

However, it’s worth thinking about how sustainable this marketplace will be over the long run, as there are more and more applications to choose from, and customers get over their initial “I want to download everything!” euphoria.