It’s been well over a week since I’ve written anything so first off, let me apologize to the eight people who bother to read my ramblings.  That said, it’s been a full first half of August.  Between new tasks at my job, some thoughts on social impact on technology, a lot of reading, some new toys on the horizon, and school looming, I’ve got a lot to get off my chest.

First, I’ve been neck deep into two threads of development.  On the one side, my department is (finally) being split (appropriately) into two working groups - R&D and Implementation.  The R&D team will (hopefully) continue it’s digging into the depths of Silverlight, coming up with better and better ways to reap the benefits of the environment and delivery mechanisms.  The Implementation team will be finishing up installation of the Digital Asset Management system amongst other tasks.  On the other side, because of our core focus on Silverlight, I’ve had to undertake a crash course in Flash CS3 using AS3 for a number of projects and have to say, I like it.  Above everything else, not attaching scripts directly to objects and the flow of the class structure is much better (I know, I know, it was pretty much all there in AS2 but this just all seems more congruent).

NBC’s 2008 Olympics web site and notably the video delivery was, in my opinion, very well done considering the enormous task at hand.  For Schematic (the web and application designers) I actually have very few complaints - the UI was well thought out and to all the naysayers out there, try architecting a site of that magnitude - it’s so easy to put something down until you’ve been on the other side of the coin.  IMHO - the Silverlight experience was about as good as it gets at the moment and for those who keep complaining that Flash is better than Silverlight, maybe it is, but given a 10 year head start, I personally think Flash should be farther ahead than it is.  My only complaint is that the site was doggedly slow.  However, special kudos to Limelight for the rather phenomenal feat in delivering the quantity of content without dying out (for an extremely good introspective, check out this Jason Perlow article "Limelight Networks: Why the Olympics didn’t ‘Melt’ the Internet").

So in the meantime, I’ve completely lost my bearings on any of the social networking mire and it tells me one thing … did I really need it to survive anyway?  I know there is a lot of substance behind the theories in social networking but for the most part, everything I am seeing now is just fluff and marketing - everyone jumping on the bandwagon and trying to leverage UGC to advertise and little else.  However, underneath it all, we are beginning to see the seedlings of the so called Web 3.0 - tagging is starting to become a driving force more than it has in the past, and starting to reach a point where critical mass might actually be possible.

Along those lines, I recommend reading David Weinberger’s "Everything is Miscellaneous" which deals with the topic of how tagging can remove the need for organization and yet still make things more efficient.  Visionary, though still a way off, I truly think we will see the emergence of smart agents that will handle tasks for us.

Also been finishing Zittrain’s "Future of the Internet" which somehow got terribly boring towards the end, Sipser’s "Theory of Computation" (for school) and "Art of Agile Development" (O’Reilly).  Maybe I need to lay off the books a bit.

School (as in me finally going back to school to finish my graduate work) starts next week and I am extremely excited and anxious.  I believe there are only 8 in the program and after my experiences at Cornell (you know, the Psych class with 2,000 students, etc) it should be refreshing and interesting.  Not sure how I’m going to juggle iStream, teaching, MadeByGirl and school but I’ll take it one day at a time.  Speaking of MadeByGirl - we just made a big big sale to Selfridge’s in London, so if you happen to be shopping there anytime, we’d love to see a photo of them in the store.

Hopefully, finances willing, I am going to plunk some coin and pick up the item on my most wanted (and needed) list - the Dell E4200.  Purportedly being released within the next couple of weeks, it’s a 2.2 pound, 12" subnote with a solid state drive, magnesium case, and a 19 hour battery life.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my trusted Latitude D600 (and even Jennifer’s MacBook Pro) but I think I need some new juice under my fingertips (and not to the extent of my workstation at iStreamPlanet).  On the extended wish list is the HTC Touch Pro though at the moment the details and pricing still seem a bit sketchy despite the unconfirmed Sept 2 release date.