Social Software Explored

I was once the manager of the Boston ColdFusion User Group. It has since been taken over by Brian Rinaldi (three cheers for Brian!). Anyways, when I ran the group, our domain name was "www.bostoncfug.com". Brian has registered "www.bostoncfug.org" and is using that to host content regarding the group. I completed my tenure as manager of the group about a year and a half ago and unfortunately had to let the domain name "www.bostoncfug.com" lapse. In fact, I even took the server down that was originally hosting the site.

This week, I attended the new group meeting (great session about Flex2 if you have not had the opportunity to review you should certainly give it a glance - really cool development environment) and was hounded by this one member regarding the fact that the old site was still up. I assured him that I had let the domain name lapse and that I had even taken the server down. He insisted that the site was available and that it confused some individuals because it contained information from meetings that appeared to be valid. I dismissed the conversation quickly because it was difficult to argue with someone that was adamant.

When I went home that night I tried to bring up the site. After typing in the address "www.bostoncfug.com" I was surprised to see the browser start to connect to the URL. I was waiting for that typical domain squatter page that states "this domain is for sale". You know the generic pages that show up when you type in Goooglee.com or something similar. To my surprise though, the page started to appear. The old page of the site, just as I had left it. How could this be?

Webarchive - The Wayback Machine
As I started to stare at the pages loading I could not help but notice my status bar started to display "web.archive.org" … THE WAYBACK MACHINE!!! I first ran across this site about 4 years ago and was amazed it's archive (Go here to see my first Web site - http://web.archive.org/web/19970724122243/www.uri.edu/artsci/ecn/ ) depth. If you haven't had an opportunity to poke around this site, have fun.

Then I looked up the dns record to see who it was registered to. Apparently "Dotster", the company I registered the domain with, has registered the site themselves and I am not sure if they have some deal with TWBM but it seems a bit odd that not only would Dotster keep my domain name but that would point it at the web.archive.org page of my old site.

What is even weirder about this is that they don't really "forward" people to the site, the browser URL is still www.bostoncfug.com, it just displays data from web.archive.org. Almost as if they have some program written that takes the content from the Archive and displays.

So I guess I owe the gentleman at the meeting an apology, he was correct, for all intent and purposes, the site is still up. Unfortunately, I have no way of taking it down.

I would love to know if anyone has any more information on this.

Too much free time, funny, personal

I have been using the Internet for a long time. In fact, it has been almost 15 years (14.7 to be exact). I am sure that there have been others out there that remember the earlier Internet. After all according to this article, the 2400 baud modem become affordable as early as 1987.

Back then though the Internet was not really for public use and the World Web hadn't even been created. I do remember people talking about Bullitein boards and AOL but before 1992 (when I got my start) the web had just gotten started. First it was Mozaic and then came Netscape and finally IE. I have seen all of the browsers and I have ask myself "Why Firefox and Why Now"?

I will take this in two sections:

Why Firefox
What makes Firefox so popular? What is making it so successful? For starters Firefox has been around for a bit longer than most people might think. It was originally launched as beta software project named "Phoenix" in September 2002. They launched the beta for 0.8 in February 2004 with the name Firefox. So lets talk about what makes Firefox so appealing. I can think of a few good reasons:

1. Cross Platform
This browser runs and acts the same on all platforms mainly because of its use of XUL for the Interface. I am not sure how they got their rendering engine to be so cross-platform but with Firefox you did not see all of the crazy HTML/CSS incompatiability problems that you may have experienced with IE. So from the development perspective you didn't have to write your app 3 or 4 ways to work on different platforms.

2. Extensions
Did I say extensions? I really mean "Mini-software apps". I am actually using one now called "Performancing". A great tool for those of you who blog. The number of extensions (and their relatively easy development process) is astounding. Since Firefox used XML and scripting standards for their Intereface API it appeals to broad audiences. Since we use our web browsers so much, it makes sense to add in connections to our email, bookmarks, RSS readers, Blog tools etc… Why leave the browser? I know the Web as the OS is the new mantra, but to me the Browser as the OS means soooo much more.

3. Cleanliness
The application is so light weight (not that it can't chew up memory). It sits in a tiny space on your hard drive and is not integrated with the world. I can not remember the last time I was browsing for files on my local machine and felt the urge to visit a web site so bad that I replaced "c:\temp\foo\" with "http://www.techcrunch.com". Integrated browsers with my "everything" is not as useful as one might think.

4. Security
When Firefox first came out, it was a lot more secure than IE. There were not as many security holes because it did not have a lot of airtime for hackers. Plus, it was the hackers that got sick of IE and started using Firefox. They were almost championing Firefox because it was more appealing. Zillion dollar software bohemoth vs. Non-Profit foundation for the better of all Internet users. There was no reason to poke holes in the app, it was accepted. Not to say that there aren't any security risks - because there are some doozies. But it is more secure than IE.

5. Updates
Ok, so IE does have updates, but since these updates are so bundled in with the OS, you have to download a million other patches to fix holes in the browser. Firefox has more regular updates and they install automatically (should you choose to).

So why now?
I can not truly say why now. Maybe it had to do with the tremendous security holes opened up via the IE browser in the early 00's. It certainly is a lot more fun to use. But what really makes an application like this work so well.

1. Appealing to the right people
This application was targeted for people who embrace change. This was evident in the Marketing campaign. There were no flashy commercials. There were no full page ads taken out in Technical Publications. It was a quiet movement dessiminated via Blogs and forums posts. "Hey, did you check out Phoenix"? or "I downloaded Firefox last night and it is really cool … there are all of these extensions…". The development community ate it up because it was fun and different.

2. Reliable
It is rare that Firefox crashes. It is very light weight. It is good at doing what it is supposed to do - serve up web pages. If Firefox does crash it is more likely due to the fact that you have installed some beta extension that did not take into consideration how users would react to the tools provided.

Reality
Don't get me wrong, Firefox has it annoyances, but I would take them over IE any day. I can not say that I will never open up an IE browser again, but I can say that my browser of choice is certainly Firefox.

powered by performancing firefox

Internet boom 2.0, Software Development, Web 2.0

Apple should change the name of OS X to osX - allOneWord. Seriously though, anyone seen what is going on over there? I mean really this is pure madness. Have you heard of bootcamp? I know that I am always the last man to hear the god damn thing (reference to PulpFiction). Anyhoo I was conducting some training last week with the good folks at Florida Area Real Estate - shout out to the crew! - and Rob Shrewsbury told me about bootcamp.

If you haven't heard, there is this new beta program that Apple is offering to allow you to run Windows and osX at the same time. That is something of a "virtualization" software program from what I gather. Rob had purchased a Mac a year or so ago (its -pre intel) and heard about it. Being that his work pretty much required him to work on a Mac he thought it was a good idea. I am not sure if he decided to try it or not but. To read more about it go over to their web site ( www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/ ).

I was reminded of this software tonight when I visited a customer of ours. Actually brought in by a Partner NI Solutions in Toronto. The company name is "Virtual Iron". They make a product that is also in beta which seems to run on the Linux platform. Specifically RHEL3 and 4. They are going to have a Windows version of the product available in September 2000.

It appears to "run between the Operating System and the Hardware".

Alex Vasilevsky Founder and CTO Virtual Iron Software. I think that this is an interesting technology, especially if you read their "In the news" section. Ton of talk about this type of technology.

Apple, CommonSpot, Internet boom 2.0, Software Development, What I am reading