Wela's Blog

As most of ya'll already know there is a new traffic plan being executed in Colombo these days ... or may be still being tested.

Yesterday it became really annoying because got badly stuck in the traffic. But today morning i just came to Colpitty without any issue. I mean not even a single traffic light after the townhall round-a-bout. That was really cool. But just found that there are some major blocks in some other areas. In a way police experimenting on new routs to minimize traffic jams in Colombo is really nice. But making us ginipigs to test it out is not cool. How about using a computer simulation to try this :) ... Anyways as an outcome of this effort if police can minimize the traffic jams in at least all the major routs ... it'll be awsome.

Let's wait and see ... when the 'one-way' plan was implemented several months back that also created lot of haa hoo. But now it seems to be working out really nice. It's good that somebody in the traffic control department thinking in the right direction.

Not exactly sure why ... during the last wee I got 4 calls with the same question ... "when are you having the next Tech.Ed?". The answer is ... exact date time is not yet decided ... but hopefully soon. Personally I think its time to have a Tech.Ed. But there are hundred different things that should fall into place. Above all the security situation in the country.

So what's next? ... Imagine Cup 2008 World Festival in Paris, France.

Another one on social networking :) Everyweek I turn down at least 10 invitations from friends and also from unknown friends to join their network on something online. Among those Flickr, Friendster, LinkedIn, Hi5, LiveJournal, Multiply, MySpace are there. In the best interest of time i'm accepting only Windows Live Spaces and Facebook invitations. Well! not that those to also eats up some time, but we need some sorta online presence to keep the beat going.

Most of these invitations I just ignore ... sorry fellas. Btw: those unknown friends I have menioned above are not actually unknown. Most of them I have met at some point during a presentation or something. But still I have to ignore the invitations to join the websites because there is only a limited time to do everything. If I accepted all those invitations, by now I should be a member in like 50 of those networking sites and should have about 1000 friends.

If any of them sends me an email i'll be replying for sure. So for any urgent and important matters ... lets stick with the good old emails :)

By Heather Havenstein
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9082558&intsrc=hm_list

Web 2.0 software developers ranked Microsoft's MSN/Live Windows developer program higher than competing programs offered by Internet leaders Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Facebook and PayPal, according to results of an Evans Data Corp. report released today.

The "Users' Choice: Web 2.0 Developer Programs" report is based on the results of a survey of more than 400 developers, who rated developer programs from the seven companies in 13 categories, including API functionality, blogs, marketing assistance tools/SDKs, Web services, documentation, support and forums. The Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. programs were ranked right after Microsoft Corp.'s. While the recent opening of Facebook's development platform has garnered lots of attention for the social network, it ranked next to last among the seven Web 2.0 development programs included in the survey. Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. also ranked higher than Facebook, with all of them ahead of last place PayPal Inc.

Microsoft scored high in user satisfaction for its Web services, software development kits, documentation and forums. In the Web services category, Microsoft came in on top this year after ranking last in the year-earlier survey.

"As Microsoft moved from the relatively closed-in MSN portal to the more Web 2.0 savvy Windows Live collection of services, users have begun to recognize it as a provider of top-notch Web services," according to the survey.

Google ranked second among the surveyed developers by scoring high on API functionality, available marketing assistance for Web 2.0, a solutions directory and options for ongoing communications like RSS. Yahoo ranked third in overall developer programs, dropping from its second-place finish in last year's Evans survey. The researcher said that Yahoo benefited from what users called strong technical resources. EBay dropped from third to fourth place in this year's ranking, with lower grades for its Web services program. The online auctioneer did get strong marks for the functionality of its APIs, marketing assistance, forums and SDKs. Facebook ranked sixth out of the seven developer programs in its first year in the survey. The most highly ranked feature of the Facebook program is the functionality of its APIs.

"While the company's API functionality is rated very high by developers (placing third among the field of seven), Facebook lacks the support resources to help developers," the study said. "Facebook fares poorly among users of its APIs for the available documentation, marketing assistance and ongoing communications. While there is tremendous interest in the Facebook social networking platform, Facebook still has not capitalized on the buzz by providing the supporting information to continue driving developer interest."

The report went on to note that Microsoft and Google allow users to profit the most from the applications they develop, through their integration capabilities and lack of downtime. According to Evans, 26% of developers using Microsoft's MSN/Live programs said they have generated "significant" profits from it, while 23% said the same for PayPal, 15% for Amazon, 13% for Google and 10% for Facebook. Meanwhile, 38% of developers said they had not benefited financially from using eBay's developer program, while 36% said the same for Yahoo, 33% for Amazon, 27% for Google , 20% for PayPal and 9% for Microsoft.

Developers say they have had the most difficulty integrating their applications using the Facebook technologies -- 77% said they had experienced at least some degree of difficulty integrating Facebook technologies with their apps. Facebook was followed by eBay and Yahoo as the hardest to integrate. Only 40% of developers said that Amazon technologies are difficult to integrate, while 45% said the same of Google. The companies that developers said offer the strongest integration capabilities are Microsoft, Amazon and Google.

For sure most you reader are Facebook acount holders and some might be very active members. As you all know facebook has taken the social networking to a whole new level. All this time I had an account but never got a chance to play an active role. Many of my friends were telling me ... I tagged you in facebook, I sent some flowers to you in facebook, I poked you in facebook bla bla bla. For some of these I replied pretty late ... sometimes months later ... sorry fellas ... on a busy busy schedule.

No wonder many companies around the world have already banned access to facebook within the corporate network, because unknowlgly facebook eats up .. or can i say wastes an awful lot of time. I have nothing against facebook though. I think it is a fantastic tool. I have seen some folks running complete events using facebook as a tool. Features like compare friends, superwall, image tagging are really interesting stuff.

So guys ... if you are a facebook member be mindful about the time you are spending on it, make sure it won't mess up your other work.

First of a series of Heroes Community Launch Events is scheduled to happen with the May 2008 User Group Meeting. Please drop an email to admin@dotnetforum.lk with the subject 'i'm attending - <Username>' to reserve a seat. Only 70 User Group Members will get the opportunity to attend this event.

Session: New features for ADO.NET in .NET 3.5
ADO.NET has certainly evolved very fast in the last few years. This session talks about some of the new technologies such as Linq to SQL and the ADO.NET Entity Framework and helps developers understand the technologies under the ADO.NET stack.

Date: 7th May 2008 (Wednesday)
Time: 6.00 PM Onwards
Venue: Microsoft Sri Lanka Training Room (42, 11th Floor, DHPL Building, Nawam Mawatha)
Entrance: FREE (please reserve your seat)