Managed to upgrade to latest version of WordPress without Chris’ help!!! I’m so pleased with me…

Of course, a trained monkey who could follow a 5 step ‘howto’ guide could do it (I was on 2.0.1 before)… But don’t you be taking away from my small victories!

Damnit. Not sure what’s causing the problem. If anyone has any ideas as to why none of the WP2.0 compatible plugins I’ve installed have been able to install the tracking code – or if I’m configuring Google Analytics incorrectly, please let me know.

I don’t need that kind of analytics software. I’m just curious.

FInally returned to Winamp, having not used it since version 2.8x. iTunes has been my music player of choice since getting an iPod Nano, but suspect that the far, far less bloated Winamp will once again win my heart. Ironic, since it was the bloated v3 of Winamp that switched me off its service in the first place…

And I love having a media player that natively supports WMA and doesn’t have to offensively convert it to an “m4u” file first… Now I just need to get a fresh Last.fm plugin and some sort of iPod plugin (does one of those exist? It must do…).

Damn, I’m a geek.

Which File Extension are You?

Tag: Chris, Tom.

Via: Chris Green.

I’m pleased to announced that Division6 is IE7 compatible.

From having spent a few minutes with the browser, I have a few things to say.

(1) It looks good. Sleek lines, nice colours.
(2) Its v. much playing catch up with Firefox, which still seems much better. Few features seem demonstrably different.
(3) That said, there are some nice things. An interesting tab browser to smooth the tabbed browsing experience, RSS integration, etc.
(4) Even though IE7 loads up quicker than Firefox, it does seem slightly slow/clunky. Not sure if that’s just my machine…

All-in-all, though, except through getting people who don’t realise they have a choice of browser, I’m not sure there’s enough there to worry Firefox, in terms of the all-round goodness of its browsing experience.

Update: Ok, so it double posted on a single click. Well, its still in beta…

This little dude is almost annoying as some of the memes out there, but at least he brings a splash of colour. via Simon Bisson.

Update: This is crap, btw. It is a standard animated gif. No clever tracking going on. :(

Had an interesting set of conversations at work a couple of days ago. Some speculation as to how the tech market will consolidate as time progresses – the opinion that there will eventually only be four software vendors offering complete enterprise software solutions was raised, and seemed fairly popular (the four vendors in question being Microsoft, SAP, Oracle & IBM). This was raised alongside the suggestion that we’re in the midst of some kind of SOA revolution, and everyone will have SOA systems in place in a couple of years time (yeah, right).

Now, I’ll not pretend to be an expert on the situation, but I do have a few thoughts (I’m sure not completely original, but… nonetheless):

(1) If SOA / web services is the way forward (and I think it is…), then surely the need to buy your entire software infrastructure from one vendor evaporates? It becomes entirely possible to use the open standards to get best of breed products to interoperate – the single biggest argument for buying from one vendor, you would think. It was then further suggested – and I find this slightly mind-boggling – that anyone with decent technology would immediately be acquired by one of the giants.

Maybe, but I’m sceptical. I don’t think that Microsoft/etc., want to play in every field, necessarily. They are all fighting slightly different corners (with the exception of SAP/Siebel. Well, Oracle). Microsoft seems to be the only one concerned with owning the entire desktop – and even they are slowly opening up the Windows platform to others.

The reality is that (some) consumers — and many enterprises — will always choose best of breed solutions, because sometimes you just need the additional functionality without customising Siebel/Netweaver to pieces.

I think its interesting to look at Google here, as they seem to be slighlty more insidious in the way they’re trying to take over your internet experience – but as with enterprise software, natural market forces will prevail and keep the Web multi-vendor. Ultimately, Google aren’t the best at everything they do. Picasa gets its ass whumped by Flickr, for example.

(2) My second point is kind of following on with my gripe about consolidation. Apart from the fact that there are several other major software vendors who I think will escape being subsumed into the big four (Symantec/Veritas, RedHat, Apple, maybe Sun to name a few), I think the SOA trend will only continue. Decentralised software models that rely on the internet will mean, more than ever before, that small vendors can make tiny, hyperfunctional applications/services which are standards based and be happy with an independent, niche existence – but making the money in volume… Can’t think of any examples of this at the moment, unfortunately Yahoo’s acquisitions of Flickr and Delicious shows what happens when you get too big, but I still think there’s a threshold…

Anyway, that’s some pretty heavy thinking for a Friday night. Viva Web 2.0. ‘Nuff Said.