A happy day! I voted for Obama! Right next to the slightly scary, life-size cardboard cut-out my daughter gave me! Happy, happy day!!
Happy, happy day!!
PS: I tagged the photos “ivotedforobama” at flickr. [Tags: obama ivotedforobama ]
Rumor has it that parent company Wikia is letting go 30% of its current 43-person workforce, a percentage that appears to be the rule of thumb for lay-offs these days. TechCrunch has been hearing rumors along these lines as well. The company, which also offers wiki software, has raised a total of $14 million to date from rockstar angel investors like Marc Andreessen, Joi Ito, and Ron Conway, as well as Bessemer Venture Partners, the Omidyar Network and Amazon.
On Monday October 20 in San Jose, California, the top Rich Internet Applications event of the Fall opens its doors: the 6th International AJAX World RIA Conference & Expo, with top industry keynotes from Microsoft’s Silverlight supremo Scott Guthrie and Adobe’s Chief Technology Officer, Kevin Lynch, headlining a lineup of speakers that includes some of the finest front end engineers, UI experts, user experience specialists, and software industry innovators anywhere in the world.
I laughed when I heard Sarah Palin say in last week’s debate: “…and I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also” (this is straight from the CNN transcript). I laughed because it’s such overt “spin” to say you’re not going to answer what the moderator wants to hear. And, incidentally, it’s exactly what the moderator wants to hear.
But that’s beside the point. The point is that new technology companies are often put in a similar position of defending their new technology as a challenger to existing, established technology. This is certainly true in the enterprise mashup space. Since mashup adopters have started to graduate from “what-is-it-for” to “ahhh, here-is-how-I-can-use-it”, we regularly have to compare and contrast mashups against existing technologies.
I think the defining “AHA!” moment is when people realize that mashups aren’t meant to integrate systems together like EAI/ESB software systems do. But rather that mashups are meant to integrate people to the data in their systems. And as an added benefit mashups are designed for collaboration and sharing among people.
So, now when we hear; “Oh, so mashups aren’t like my ESB or EAI systems that integrate systems; mashups get data from these systems to my people”, we give silent thanks to Sarah Palin, smile, wink, and simply respond with “You Betcha!”.
The layoffs keep rolling in. The latest startup to cut back is, the third largest social network. On Monday, the 110-person company laid off 10 to 15 percent of its employees in what it is calling a “restructuring” move. A tipster told us that the cuts came mostly in Design, HR, and QA. I called to ask for a comment and Hi5’s VP of marketing Mike Trigg confirms: We did a restructuring this week. We did let a few people go, but we are also hiring people. The world changed for everybody dramatically last week. We are focused on growing our business. We have great momentum.
As www.ProgrammableWeb.com points out, there are about two services or Web APIs added every week, and that rate continues to accelerate. There seems to be several types of providers. First are those that produce an API as an afterthought, such as a SaaS provider. Next there are the larger Web makers such as Google, Amazon, and Yahoo that are moving toward APIs as a strategic direction.
Presto 2.5 includes over 60 features and enhancements specifically for the mashup developers community. The Presto Connectors for VBA and C# allow any Microsoft .NET developer to integrate mashups into Microsoft Excel or Visual Basic applications. The Presto Connector for ActionScript provides similar mashup integration options for Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex and Adobe Air developers. Presto 2.5 also features integrated security options that support all enterprise identity and access management systems. These solutions compliment previously-announced Presto Connectors for Oracle, HP, and Sun, proving the broadest set of enterprise mashup development choices in the industry.