Trying to get Dugg

I've recently been experimenting with commenting on Digg postings.

For the uninitiated, Digg is a system where you vote (or digg) Internet pages that you like. For example, if the author if this blog was so-inclined, you might see a "Digg This" button for this post juxtaposed with the number of diggs this post has already received. Each time you Digg a page, the number increases. Having many diggs means your site gets listed on Digg, which generates more traffic for your site and indicates a high level of positive interest.

Digg has a commenting system along the sames lines. You create comments for each Internet page's Digg count. Users then digg comments up or down. A positive rating on a comment means you have more digg-ups than digg-downs. The higher your score, the more people that "digg" your comment.

Digg seems to attract the Internet savvy, and many highly dugg stories relate to

• movies, especially those that might appeal the comic book loving type or have a cult following
• politics, with a strong pro-Obama, anti-Bush agenda
• technology, with constant strife between Apple fanboys, generic Microsoft bashers, and Linux geeks

My experience commenting hasn't been positive. My first comment was dugg down, and the response to comments range from vial to just plain offensive. Subsequent ones followed similar patterns of engendering loathing by Digg readers; it was not uncommon to the word "fuck" in those comments, directed squarely at me. Often, some kind-hearted soles would stick up for me, only to be subjected to further attacks. The Internet is a mean place.

Today, I'm happy to report that Bush (and Cheney) bashing seems to be a sure-fire way to get your comments dugg up. Finally, I have received a positive score on a comment, and even a tongue-in-cheek reply.

I'm really moving up in the world.

Dancing Around The World: Where the Hell Is Matt?

This guy went around the world to... dance. Very cool, interesting and inspiring video.

Blink and you'll miss the dancing in Melbourne at Federation Square.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

How many of these places have you been to?

[via Presentation Zen where you'll find more videos too]

How to Charge Your Chevy Volt

Run the electric car by charging it in the lighter of your Hummer

The End of ColdFusion

The marketing gurus at Adobe have just released an Evangelism Kit for ColdFusion [via Damon Cooper's Blog].

For as long as I've been using ColdFusion (over 3 years), I always heard detractors saying it was a dead or dying product. We never got much help from Adobe (or Macromedia) in justifying ColdFusion; we were forced to speculate on the future of the product, and the number of customers using it. I suspect that Adobe never had the need to justify CF; sales were fine, and so too, most likely, were revenues from the product.

So now I am going to become one of those detractors. Let's just say that this kit hasn't inspired me. On the contrary... I can't but feel that this Evangelism Kit spells the decline of ColdFusion. Here are few things to consider:

• Why now? 10+ years without such an offering. Why create this document now? I suspect that some of the major clients listed are actually migrating away from CF, so better to indicate that these companies are using CF while it is still technically true.
• Where are the exciting new features? I mean, look at the roadmap. Sully features "enhancements". I'm surprised "bug fixes" didn't make it onto that list.
• Open source competition: Blue Dragon, Railo and more
• Leveraging other products and scripting languages as middleware in the RIA stack: Groovy (the boys at Broadchoice, filled with names synonymous with ColdFusion, are using Groovy more and more these days: 9 posts tagged with "Groovy", zero posts tagged with "ColdFusion"), PHP, and Ruby.

I like ColdFusion, so I hope Adobe can keep it alive and keep its developers highly productive, but just when I think Adobe will push to make CF mainstream, I feel they took at least one step backwards, and may not have any more momentum to move forward.

Cloud Computing and Privacy

Will Cloud Computing Violate your Privacy and Security? at Ben Balbo

My friend Ben discusses the implications of cloud computing and privacy. What follows is my rambling on the subject.

"Cloud computing" really means software running on service hosted on a server (or cluster of servers) accessible via the Internet. At least, that is what lay people understand it to mean, and I've grown quite happy in accepting this definition (Ben's definition is more general and correct, though). It does introduce some peculiarities. For example, if I purchase Confluence, for example, as a hosted product, that's cloud computing according my definition. If I buy the server license and install it on my fire-walled server, that's not cloud computing, even if it is accessible via the Internet.

So, given this definition (whether you agree with it or not), their are multiple factors to consider:

• security: is the cloud provider better able to secure data than I would be running my own server and infrastructure?
• reliability: is the cloud service provider able to offer me more reliable uptime than I would otherwise get by managing my own hardware?
• trust: do I trust the cloud service provider more than I would my own staff in not accessing data that they shouldn't?
• functionality: is the hosted service something I just can't get anywhere else?
  

Then, of course, you'd need to weight the risks and relative benefits of all these points.

Just a small anecdote regarding security:

There are companies that refuse to use cloud services, especially those managed by Google. For example, Google Apps is  off-limits as it is considered too risky to host data and communications on a third-party server. Instead, companies keep sensitive information on their local servers. These servers are backed up by amateurs. The passwords are insecure. The users don't understand how to security documents as the systems are not easy to use.

I would argue -- strongly -- that Google's services, in this case, are much more secure.