This will offer many advantages to end-users and software publishers alike.

End-users can access their applications anywhere, connect with internet-enabled devices from anywhere, and don’t have to worry about software licensing between various devices as their single log-in to the vendors site will contain their license.

Software publishers will be able to instantly update their applications without the need for patches and be able to better control privacy by not distributing hard copies of their work and by tying a license to a log-in and not to an id on a physical product.

I love the iphone, I just don’t like the fact that only one service provider is going to carry it and I do not want to switch service providers anytime soon so I guess I will not be looking into it.

Steve Giunto - Bark at the Moon - The name change is a pretty simple thing. With the launch of iTV and the iPhone, and the continued success of the iPod, Apple is diving into other markets besides computers, so it’s only natural they remove it from their name. I would expect to see many other Apple products within the next couple years, which ALL sync with the Mac perfectly.

The iPhone is beautiful, too expensive for me. Truly if you hold an iPhone in your hand, you are hip. I would have concerns of battery life since this would replace my iPod, Phone and become a my web browser throughout the day. If the battery can hang in there, I think it’ll be a great product.

Eric Smith - Mind Architecture - I think the change is semantic and don’t think this portends a move away from the Mac or other computer-focused projects for Apple. But, it I also think they’ve realized that their bread and butter are their iPod and related brands and this change may be designed to better illustrate that focus - to the investment community perhaps?

As for the iPhone, I prefer having my phone and mp3 player as separate entities so it doesn’t interest me at all. Apparently manufacturers think there’s demand for these cross-over devices but, with the tendency people have to want to upgrade often when it comes to small personal electronics, combining several devices in one at a premium price doesn’t seem to fit.

I like the code completion features of Zend Studio - saves trips to php.net to look up the parameter order for PHP functions. PHPMyAdmin makes it much easier to create and update database schema. The Firefox add-ons help troubleshoot css, cookie, and similar errors on web pages and provide good error diagnostics for Javascript code. FileZilla is quick and easy FTP and
Notepad++ is useful for quick html changes that don’t involve any scripting.

Basically, I like applications that do one thing and do it well.

David Johnson - Davidj.org - For some time now, I have settled into a few programs that totally fit my needs. The first is Putty. I use it to ssh to the web server. Once there, I use vi to update text or mysql.

For graphics, I have used Irfanview for years. However, for additional graphic manipulations, I have been running The Gimp on Windows.

For FTP, I use Filezilla. It supports sftp and keeps solid connections.

For debugging, Firefox is the ultimate. The extensions I can’t live without are FireBug, Web Developer (Edit CSS) and Page Info (though not an extension).

Of course, my current position puts me to work in Visual Studio 2005, but it would have taken way too long to come up with something I like about it.

John Dowling - iSite Design - I primarily use Dreamweaver 8 & MX and Flash 8 for development and Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS and Fireworks 8 for design, layout and image optimization. Also misc. applications I use is Microsoft Word for page content and copy, Fetch for ftp client, WebDumber for stripping websites of a server, of course I am on a Mac so these are all for the OSX platform. As for what I like about them, I think they are easy to use and have the reputation and functionality needed to produce final pieces or projects.

Steve Giunto - Bark at the Moon - Almost teetering on a lengthy scruples discussion. First, I believe you are intending to use the term “downloading” as “illegally downloading”. Big difference. The fact an item was originally purchased legally, giving full royalties to the author at that sale, should leave all parties with a clean conscious and this topic, almost closed. The key words here are “originally purchased legally”.

I have no problem buying a used record/cd from that person, I’m sure it’s legal, and even more, it’s what keeps garage sales and ebay in existence, and the original author still got their royalties on the original sale. Sure conceivably, a person could buy a CD, listen to it for awhile, ebay it, and the cycle could continue for one million people, and the author lost out on 999,999 sales. Or more realistically, 500,000 people can buy the CD, each of them ebay it, and the author still lost out on 500,000 sales. I’m sure there’s some macro/micro economics term for this but hence…..I’m a designer, and in my professional world…that’s just “the way it is”, the author knows it, and it’s legal so there’s not much to discuss.

If a record/cd or MP3 is stolen and then resold, well then it’s pretty clear, that’s wrong. Furthermore, transfer of ownership or licenses should be adhered to, if in place. Especially in the case of software, most titles are probably legally protected from being resold by intellectual property rights, or license agreements. As in each case, scruples quite often comes in. Hope this helps your next scruples game.

Eric Smith - Mind ArchitectureI think the issue with buying used digital products is that it’s difficult to ensure that the item isn’t simply being copied and then sold vs. being sold, intact, by the original buyer.

If the product is being sold by the original (or subsequent) buyer and that person includes all relevant files, licensing keys, etc. and retains no ability to use the product after the sale, I see no problem. I think it’s unreasonable for producers of digital products to expect every purchase to be first-party from them.

But, given that it’s so easy to copy and re-sell digital products, it’s also unreasonable to think that the after market for used digital goods is like the after market for used cars where one licensed product is being sold to a single buyer.

So, we’re left with a market in which people who want to legitimately sell their used software are the extreme minority compared to those pirating the same software. Until there’s a way to tell the difference, I don’t think selling used digital products can be considered legitimate.

I personally don’t see much difference between myspace and xanga. However, the user base of myspace is miles beyond xanga. The flood of users to myspace caused a bigger flood whereby people, bands, and other entities referenced people to their myspace page instead of their web site. I don’t think the technology of myspace was much different than xanga, except maybe for the social networking/user pictures portion.

A large user base means more to buyers than to users. Digg is a great service, but to me it is now a bit overwhelming. With more users came more submissions. It became harder for me to navigate to points of interest. Consider ‘With more information comes less content.’ But the larger user base is good for the creators of Digg.

The names Digg, Reddit, YouTube, Xanga, and MySpace don’t mean as much to me as the functionality that they provided. It is the userbase that makes/made the sale.

Steve Giunto - Bark at the Moon - Yes, $1.65 billion can be described as “a lot of money”. Just for fun comparison, if you set a dollar bill on its edge, then stack another next to it, and another, and another… starting at our studio in the Cuyahoga Falls, we’d get to the outskirts of Myrtle Beach, SC before we ran out of George’s. That’s not end to end, we’re talking the thickness of a single bill here. If you drive there, that’s passing by $44,900 in dollar bills every second. I’d be thrilled with a stack to the front door. Thank you google for the factors for that equation.

There’s no features or functionality worth that kind of money. The “YouTube” name is what was worth every buck, and taking out the main competition to their “google video” didn’t hurt either. Google can change every posted video, and totally revamped YouTube’s UI and nobody would blink. They may have some complaints about change, but that’s pretty much what all these forums are for, right?

Don’t get me wrong, I think YouTube back in the good old days, (a whole 23 months ago) had to put priority on an easy to use UI, and basic functionality. And in the case of web design, a bad UI can frustrate your visitor and lose a sale quicker than anything.

So I think the question has 2 answers. If a company is starting up, features and functionality can attract and keep new clients, but if your established enough, it doesn’t matter what you do, you can sell anything with the right name on it. What can Donald Trump Cologne really smell like?

Eric Smith - Mind Architecture - I think the popularity of YouTube, Digg, My Space, Wordpress, etc. is due more to popularizing a methodology and brand than any technological innovation.

The technologies that implement these services are not especially complex or new. The designers of YouTube et al simply wrapped them in an easy to use interface and branded them.

So, my opinion is that branding and buzz-building is much more important than features and functionality for these sorts of mass-market applications.

Your average web surfer doesn’t frequent social network type sites because of feature x or y or even because of how a site looks, they visit because their friends are there or their friends / the media is talking about it.

If that wasn’t the case, a better designed and better looking competitor would have knocked out My Space by now…

Eric Smith - Mind Architecture - The most valuable thing Windows did for desktop computing was separating hardware from software, allowing hardware manufacturers and programmers to design to a common interface and guaranteeing users that any software they bought would work on Windows, no matter their hardware configuration.

I don’t think we would enjoy nearly as many of the technological advancements we do today if this hadn’t happened.

That said, I don’t think any one company should own the desktop market but I think we’re beyond being able to fight Microsoft’s domination. Linux and Apple simply don’t offer the average user a compelling reason not to use Windows.

With more applications becoming network/internet based, I think the importance of the operating system will be diminished in the near future.

In order to serve as many end users using as many devices as possible, distributed applications will have to be designed to an interface. As long as an operating system implements that interface, it won’t matter whether it’s Windows, Mac, Linux, a specialty browser, a cell phone, PDA, etc.

Maybe that will allow competing operating systems or hybrid operating systems to gain a foothold…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming)

Dave Johnson - Davidj.org - The browser has become an application platform. Instead of displaying brochure-based web sites, it is insisted we create programs to run ubiquitously.

To me, Web 2.0 is the hype of rounded corners and drop shadows while AJAX is the guts inside of usable web applications. It was 6 to 8 years ago when sprinkling JavaScript on a site gave it the Wow factor. DHTML was next in line for providing deeper usability. I am excited about the power that an XMLHTTPRequest can bring.

Unfortunately, a visit to ASP.net’s AJAX tutorials will show you how to do rounded corners and drop shadows through drag-and-drop controls. This leads to the confusion of what is AJAX and what is Web 2.0. Hopefully, the understanding of the simple JavaScript calls behind AJAX will allow us as developers to use it wisely and to steer clients in directions that herald usability over hype.

Eric Smith - Mind Architecture - Personally, I like the “software as a service” design model and web services in general. It’s much easier to deploy, update, and maintain control over code deployed via the internet and users are no longer tied to one software installation on a particular computer as they can log-in and use an application from wherever they have access to the internet.

The resurgence of the technology behind Ajax makes designing internet based applications to function as desktop application users have come to expect much easier and has meant a lot to the growth of Web 2.0.

But, in the short term I don’t think it will have much effect on web design and development. Clients will want sites to do increasingly more complex things, but I think the types of sites that will benefit most from Ajax and Web 2.0 design are going to be designed by startups rather than requested by your typical web design client.

Sure, it would be slick to have an Ajax-based shopping cart on a site but that will probably be implemented through some third-party application as an Ajax custom design will be pricier than your standard shopping cart.

If the technology isn’t usurped and remains popular, I think clients will start to see and request Ajax implemented features but that probably won’t come in the near future.

Stephen Schneider - Mind Architecture - Changing yes, but not in the ways you may thing. I see it changing things in that the average person is seeing what can be done and getting interested in it. People aren’t accepting plain static websites any more. This is a good thing. Sure, the technology has been around for awhile and it’s not anything earth shattering. But isn’t that how most technology changes are?

Yes, I would. There are many applications out there that are expanding
past the File Server/Printer Server/Repository architecture for Linux
devices.

One Very good example:
Convergence technologies-

On a Linux based platform, We have been able to design appliance based
PBX systems that are TDM and VOIP capable. In addition, using
Integrated messaging for Voice mail delivery into regular SMTP boxes
(Asterisk). We have also integrated dis-separate systems (NEC, Cisco
Call Manager, Nortel, Avaya) and used Linux boxes as a way of “extending
the network”
In addition, we have expanded more into Desktop applications
integrations (i.e Using Outlook, or contact based management and
creating TAPI interfaces for Dial from list features. Caller ID pop and
instant messaging).

Eric Smith - Mind Architecture - I have a Linux partition on my home system and barely use it. In my opinion, Linux is great for servers but has a long way to go to be a competitor to Windows.

The system-level knowledge that’s at times required to implement simple functionality like recognizing a USB flash drive or connecting to DSL makes it a tough sell for me…

Chuck Harris - Astrixs - For small businesses this is a huge financial question with immense benefits as well as potential pitfalls.

>From the financial stand point you are looking at basic operating
>system
costs of lets say a Microsoft workstation and a Novell workstation. OS price comparison alone:

MS Windows XP Professional: around $300 per machine Novell Desktop: around $50 per machine

Granted most computers come with an OEM software license which significantly reduces the cost of Windows to almost non-existent on some systems like e-Machines (cringes).

As for server for this office, obviously we want to be able to store files and share network services such as printers, scanners, faxes, etc. And to keep to the same apple to apple comparison we’ll stay with Novell vs.
Microsoft; again, just OS’s:

MS 2003 Server: around $1,800 per processor/processor core plus or minus a couple hundred pending seat requirements Novell 6 Server: around $1,035 plus or minus a couple hundred pending seat requirements

Again there can be some savings found in OEM purchases of these servers, but not much if any at all.

This now brings us to Office Suites. Here we are going to look at base cost for MS Office 2003 Suite verses Sun’s OpenOffice 2.x

MS 2003 Office: around $328 per user license Sun’s OpenOffice 2.x: FREE

Now this is where the big kicker comes in when speaking from a financial and risk assessment stand point. Owning a single Microsoft product opens you to a full and complete licensing liability audit from any or all of the software security firms like BSA. The financial risks are astounding!
Meaning a single violation could cost you more than $100,000 per instance, plus the cost of a new lisc, plus court costs and extra. However, running with the Novell and Sun products practically take those liabilities and risks and make them almost non-existent (being politically correct - a risk arises any time you install other applications, use fonts, images ect.).

Realistic? Usability? While there will be some complaints from people (as people as a whole do not like change) and a slight learning curve; your business would be able to function competitively and efficiently with the previously mentioned windows alternatives. The Novell Desktop looks, and feels much like Microsoft’s Windows. And the connectivity between the workstations and the Novell Server is easier to set up, configure and maintain than the traditional alternative. Not to mention that Novell’s long standing history and reputation for server reliability and security.

So all in all, to answer the question would switching to a linux environment would be feasible, or viable as an option; it most certainly is if starting from scratch. And then, it is even more so if you consider the financial risks that you or your business is taking every day; referring to software audits by the BSA or one of the other 90 firms that can kill any hopes of profitability as well as threaten jail time!

Steve Giunto - Bark at the Moon - Don’t think so. I know Linux has a penguin that strongly resembles “Wheezie” on Toy Story for it’s branding campaign, but that’s all that interests me.

Stephen Schneider - Mind Architecture - Probably not a total switch over for us. As web developers and internet database application developers, it probably wouldn’t matter. In fact I have used Linux to do some work. There are other items, though, that I use Windows for. Synching with my PDA. I have it get my outlook mail, contacts, to do list, and calendar. I’ve been using it for so long it’s just the easiest and does everything I want. The last time I tried to switch and synch using Linux, things got real screwed up and I wasted more time trying to fix it all. The other things about Linux is that I seem to spend a considerable amount of time getting things installed and then working. I wanted to get a screen grab and then resave as a smaller jpeg. After spending almost 4 hours and installing 3 different programs I still wasn’t getting a good enough image. I went back to Windows and had it done in 5 minutes as I wanted.

So for now, no I won’t be switching my desktop. BUT, we have Linux as our web server and use Linux in a few other capacities. Works wonderful for those items. I’m not against the idea and have been exploring using Linux in a VM, but I haven’t found anything I can do with Linux that I am not already doing with my Windows system.

Do you think that having the same scripting engine in Firefox and flash will be beneficial or another instance of getting tied to a particular vendor?

Eric Smith - Mind Architecture - I like the idea of integrating Javascript/ECMAScript more tightly with ActionScript from a programming point of view. The fewer “mostly the same but different in important ways” languages out there the better.

As for the potential of being tied to a specific vendor, I haven’t seen anything that would make me think Mozilla or Adobe want to make this proprietary to Firefox. But, with Adobe dominating the website editor market and Firefox adoption growing, whatever they hammer out could easily become the de-facto standard.

As long as what they produce is in line with existing open standards that other browser makers can and should abide by, there shouldn’t be a problem but they’re certainly in a position to much up the works should they want to…

Christopher Lee - Mentavius - Well, since Tamarin is open-sourced using the Mozilla tri-license, I don’t think it locks anything or anybody in. From some quick reads, what Adobe really brings to the table is its Just-In Time (JIT) compiler, which should increase the performance of JavaScript-intense apps. It looks like Tamarin has the ability to convert byte code to machine instructions, whereas the current version (SpiderMonkey) just converts to bytecode. Also, from what I’ve been reading, this will be integrated enough (inside SpiderMonkey) that XUL applications will also be compiled through the Tamarin engine, and speed up performance for those building XUL applications on top of FireFox.

I had to do some light reading, because I was out of the loop for the announcement. Of course, that’s no surprise (hehe):

Hecker

Adobe

Mozilla

I do think it is a benefit, if for nothing more than the speed that it will bring to the browser.