Thursday, May 26, 2005

TIBCO General Interface

Check out the following Jon Udell screen cast of the General Interface product from TIBCO. This is really impressive stuff. The general direction I’ve been taking with software products is a smart client + .NET direction. Browser + javascript implementations such as this and yesterdays post on Virtual Earth does make me wonder about concentrating more effort on the latest web/browser technologies. My opinion is still that in the long run a smart client based on a virtual machine is a better approach to implementing most applications. The browser/javascript development environments always seemed so disorganized and inconsistent to me – fully of arbitrary rules and restrictions. Time will tell whether the smart client approach will actually get anywhere though. It may just be another footnote in the history of computing buzzwords.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Virtual Earth

I suppose this will join the list of “every man and his dog” blogging about MSN Virtual Earth, but this Channel 9 video really impressed me. How the @#&%! did they get that smooth and responsive zooming and panning working in a pure browser model. Talked about mixed signals on the smart client versus browser implementation model. Its a tough decision for lots of potential applications. Can’t wait to try virtual earth out myself on a typical broadband web connection (as opposed to the demo video presumably using the high speed Microsoft network).