The Future of Software

If you are ready to Nerd out then this entry is for you. I would like to introduce the concept of Mashups today. What is a mash up you ask? Mashups are when you take two services/websites that have nothing to with each other, and you create a bridge between them to create something totally cool. It's the concept of 1+1=3.
Before you click off this page holding your head let me explain. Take for example Craigs list and Google Maps. Two totally separate non affiliated websites, but because they were built on "Standards" they can more or less speak the same language. The result is housingmaps.com. Now instead of manually looking at lists of apartments to rent, you can see where they are on a map. Amazon.com has a Mashup with FedEx. Now you can track where your order is in real time. Why is this interesting? It is interesting for several reasons.

REASON 1: This week I have been adding pictures to flickr and tagging them with "City, State, Country." The result is my very own picture map. click here to check it out. Now you can look at a map of the world and see where the pictures were taken. All this with no coding and minimal effort.

REASON 2: Mashups are changing software as we know it. Imagine if a company wanted to reproduce my stupid picture map and sell it to people. They would first have to re-invent 2 wheels, 1. Google Maps (good luck) and 2. a photo website. With Mashups you can save yourself a couple years of development time, $$, and create a little code to join the two; VIOLA 1+1=3.

REASON 3:Software being run as a service (think eBay, Amazon.com, Yahoo Mail, etc...) allows the masses to do really powerful things. It's changing the way we live. 5 years ago how would a 16 year old seller of a vase in Bakersfield, CA transact with a random 70 year old buyer in Bethesda NY? How would the money be exchanged, how would they trust each other, better yet how would they find each other? Now with eBay we don't think twice about it. Another example is ITunes from Apple. This weekend Jodi and I were painting and she says, "do you have the new O.A.R. album?" I tell her no, and see a trip to the music store in my future. Instead I log into Itunes, put in my credit card number, 2 minutes and $9.99 later we have it. It was the soundtrack of our Saturday. Now that's powerful!

Tune in next week when I'll explain why Google's Stock is $388 per share and worth every penny.

Mandy Cat

Mandy has many

Mandy Cat Has

Update

Not much new here. Had a long stressful week but I worked from home today and got some chores done. I'm finally somewhat happy with the look and feel of my blog. I also met with a company through work that enables anyone to put video on the web, no matter what format. In the video section on the right I have two examples. Look for more in the future.

Wedding Season Opens

This weekend was a busy one. Friday I drove up to South Lake Tahoe for Adams bachelor party. I got there about 7 and it felt great to be up in the mountains. Keith, Adams brother had rented this kick ass house right by Heavenly Ski resort. It was 3 stories, two decks, a hot tub on the top deck, pool table, and a unreal view of the lake. All the boys trickled in and we partied till about 11 pm, when we decided to hit the casinos. There was a huge celebrity golf event in South Lake so the place was packed. We ended up seeing Charles Barclay and Marcus Allen. The night consisted of gambling, gambling and more gambling with a side of white Russians for Adam. That kid can put em down. Adam had an awesome shirt on that I think really sums it up. I've never really gambled that much but Keith and Adam where playing black jack so I decided to play. They helped me out and I had a blast. I lost about $80 after an hour but made about $40 back playing poker. By 3:30 am Adam and the boys were deep into a game of craps. Having no clue about the rules I found myself in the 24 Diner helping myself to the $7.99 Prime rib sandwich and coffee, best 8 bucks I spent all weekend. By 4 am I hitched a cab back to the cabin and the party continued. Eventually the sky started to get light and I found myself trying to remember the last time I watched the sunrise without going to bed...I believe has been about 6 years.
Saturday morning we picked up the pieces and I hit the road by 10 am. Jodi and I had Julie Boner and Cameron Watts wedding to go to at the Hayes mansion in San Jose. I made it home by 2 and due to shopping reasons we barely made the wedding. The whole event was awesome. Jodi got to see a lot of her old sorority sisters, many whom are pregnant. It was almost like a Cal Poly college reunion. We stayed the night there and headed home this morning.
Today I got fitted for my tux for Kacies wedding and stopped by Mike's house to grab a tow strap and chain to pull out the juniper bushes in my front yard. The stumps came out pretty easy but if I didn't have 4 wheel drive it would have been a different story. Those roots are damn tough, obviously not Toyota tough. If your interested in more pictures from the weekend click here to go to flicker.

The woman seeks her revenge through the cats

So this weekend I was looking forward to sleeping in and getting some house projects done. Saturday morning started off at 7 am with the sound of a cat outside our bedroom window. I walk outside and turn the corner expecting to see a cat on the ground....wrong answer, she's in the tree. I have a 8 Ft step ladder and as Murphy would have it I'm 2" short. So I kick off my morning with a trip to "the Depot," Home Depot that is. I buy a 20 Ft extension ladder, load it in the truck just to find out that the leg is broken. Round 2, wait in the return line, get a good ladder and head for home. Throw the ladder up, climb, climb, climb, yank the cat out of the tree. After the cat fiasco we went for a bike ride along Crystal Springs reservoir, and then hit the Fillmore Jazz festival in the city.
Sunday I put in a French drain along the side of the house. Monday Jodi and I hit up the Monterey bay Aquarium for the day. Tuesday we continued the house work with more ditch digging, drain laying and landscaping. Don't worry, I'm going somewhere with this. So it gets to be about 4 pm, I've been using a pick to dig a trench all day and I'm just about spent. Jodi just finished washing her car and decides to poor all the soapy water over the front lawn. I ask her to stop and she says"it won't kill it" and continues to do it. Needless to say I was a little upset. The last thing I need to do right now is yank out the whole front lawn. We had our little shouting match and we went our separate ways. What I didn't know is that she uses the cats to seek revenge on me. Fast forward 4 hours, add loud fireworks, and we cant find Tosca the grey cat. I walk out in the back yard and there she is, 20ft up in the tallest tree we have. "Ahhhh-Ha!" I say to myself, I'll get her down with my new trusty ladder. As Murphy would have it again I'm 2" short, plus once I get up in the tree she climbs 5 Ft higher. Insert your favorite expletive here ______! I tell Jodi that she will climb down in the night. 7 am next day, she has not moved. I tell Jodi again, she'll come down when she's hungry. I go to work and read a bunch of how to's on the web. All tell you that eventually they come down and that you never see dead cats in trees. Then I read this line, "Do not leave the cat stuck in the tree overnight. She'll be terrified and might fall victim to a night predator such as a raccoon or an owl." Let's just say when Jodi called me today at 3:00 and said the cat was still in the tree I headed for home. I ran down to the rental yard and picked up a 32ft extending ladder. Some 3 toothed hillbilly tried to set the ladder on the cab of my truck without any padding. I felt like calling the tooth fairy and telling her that she forgot three.
I get the ladder home and get it in the tree (harder than you think, this thing weighs a ton). Then I do what any Coors drinking man would do, send the woman up the tree. Now before all you women march on Washington an picket my house just know that Jodi insisted on going because as she said "the cat trusts me more." What you can't see very well at the top of the picture is the big clump of leaves where Tosca camped out and the tip of the ladder. All I have to say is that I might get my fur lined Christmas slippers sooner than I think if this business keeps up. Lesson learned: Don't mess with the queen of the cats.