Alex Barnett blog

Stroke UX, Synthetic Life and BMW: Geometry and Functions In N Adaptions

Three videos that made me think: How it feels to have a stroke (TED Talks) Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as

Posted: Jun. 19, 2008 12:40 PM

Open Source in a SaaS World

About a year ago, I took part in a meeting where the question: "What does open source "mean" in a SaaS world?" came up in conversation. A year later, that same question is becoming increasingly pertinent as the IT industry's move to Software-as-a-Se

Posted: May. 15, 2008 11:01 PM

The Third Order of Order

I'm thoroughly enjoying David Weinberger's Everything Is Miscellaneous (The Power of the New Digital Disorder). Weinberger has a canny knack for taking a subject matter I feel I'm already familiar with and yet illuminating and expressing facets of it

Posted: May. 9, 2008 07:45 AM

Classic Raymond Chen

Here's some classic Raymond Chen: "Apparently I've been promoted by mistake all these years".

Posted: May. 7, 2008 11:44 AM

Chris Anderson: Charlie Rose interview discussing FREE

I spent some time this morning watching the Charlie Rose interview with Wired's editor, Chris Anderson, discussing FREE. The interview covers the economics and ideas driving the Internet's current (and future) state: the Gift Economy; the Attention E

Posted: May. 3, 2008 12:51 PM

Designing Web APIs - Twitter Learnings

Although I made it to Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week, I didn't make it to a session Matt McAlister blogged about by Twitters Alex Payne and Michael Migurski of Stamen Design who presented learnings from the perspective of an API provider. B

Posted: May. 1, 2008 07:08 AM

The Efficiency of (the) American English Language

As I've come to learn while living in the US, the American English language is more efficient than its British English cousin. The difference between the two languages is more than just fonetic phonetic simplification - the general rule seems to be a

Posted: Apr. 29, 2008 11:27 AM

So...what?

About four years ago I wrote a post (on my old blog) about some of the verbal tics and language use I encountered at Microsoft (memetic habits I inevitably picked up myself). My observations centered around the use of the word "so", example: "So, h

Posted: Apr. 27, 2008 11:47 AM

Bungee Connect news x3 to share with you this morning

Three big pieces of Bungee Connect news to share with you this morning: 1. Bungee Grid now running on Amazon EC2 and accessible to Bungee Developers Bungee-powered application hosting on Bungee Grid-EC2 using Amazons Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) i

Posted: Apr. 23, 2008 08:46 AM

So what is this Platform as a Service thing?

The "platform-as-a-service", or PaaS meme is getting more air play the last 24 hours as news of Google App Engine makes its way through the tech media and blogs. ReadWriteWeb has a good write up and Phil Wainewright's summation by declaring "Let the

Posted: Apr. 8, 2008 10:54 AM

YOUR FEEDBACK

	Citrix's Virtualization CTO Simon Crosby Tells The Full XenServer and Symantec Storage Story By Virtualization News Desk Tim Masters wrote: This is significant validation as the virtual server market gains traction. Tim Masters Storage Monkeys - Peer-to-Peer social networking for storage users http://www.StorageM onkeys.com
	AJAX and RIA Technology Will Be Free for All: Sun CEO By Java News Casper Bang wrote: For a company which claims to always have had a RIA platform, applet's were surprisingly sucky and JavaFX is remarkably vapourwareish. I find it ironic you can claim Java as a success in this, when it's Java's scripted sibling language JavaScript who now do...
	Web Hosting Company Uplinkearth Launches New Version Of Its Website By Web Hosting News Desk Thomas Jorgensen wrote: AN OPEN LETTER TO MICHAEL YABLONOWITZ: Dear Mr. Yablonowitz, As a customer at Uplinkearth for about five years I just wanted you to know, in the past six months my experience with using Uplinkearth as a hosting service has been nothing but frustration. G...
	Silverlight 2 - Adobe Flex Killer Is on Its Way! By Kevin Hoffman Karel wrote: You [REDACTED] stupid! Have you heard about moonlight?
	SOA and Virtualization: The Ultimate IT Power Couple By Virtualization News Desk Convergence wrote: Both SOA and virtualization deal with abstraction of resources from across the network, and offer technology neutral interfaces removed from the original system. Of course, virtualization these days is mainly about running different OSes within logical part...