The MIX conference is a 72-hour conversation between web developers, designers and business leaders. When you attend MIX you’ll learn the latest about IE7, Windows Media, Windows Live!, as well as “Atlas”, Microsoft’s new AJAX framework. Register today and take advantage of the low price of $995, as well as the discounted conference hotel rate.
But then I saw the registration fee:
Full Conference Registration $995 U.S.
Isn’t it about time somebody educates these conference organizers that very, very few conferences are worth $1,000 USD? Perhaps Mix06 will be one of these, but I already have my doubts. And it’s not even the $1,000 when you start thinking about airfare, which round trip to Vegas from Seattle currently costs between $250-500+ per person and then the “discounted” hotel charges (although admittedly we usually get our hotel rooms comped in Vegas). Even if one doesn’t gamble, this event could easily end up costing more than two grand.
I’m probably sounding like a real cheapskate here but somebody needs to point out that developers are already paying fees to Microsoft for things like MSDN subscriptions, Visual Studio licensing fees not to mention machine OS fees (and more coming later this year with Vista). For an office with multiple machines, these expenses start adding up quickly.
Yes, Microsoft has a lot of free events and we try and take advantage of these from time to time and they are definitely entitled to have paid events, but wouldn’t it be better to have more inexpensive registration fee events (focusing on smaller developers) than fewer high-priced $1,000+ events (focusing on larger teams of developers)? And who will this event really be targeting? Is it the smaller developers, designers and webmasters that Microsoft really wants and needs for their Live apps?
I was able to create a Google module recently without any need to visit some $1,000 event and learn about a new framework. A couple times I’ve looked over the Live stuff and left thinking: man, I need more time to look this over. I’m probably needing to drop the 1000 bones and get to this Mix06 event, but the price annoys me. Why should we pay to learn to write apps that promote the Live platform when we can stay back and our office and build them without attending the event?
At these rates, let’s be honest: it’s not for small developers. The expenses to stay in the game are partly what drive smaller developers away from Microsoft products. Scoble likely doesn’t have to worry about paying to attend these events but small developers like me do.
EXAMPLE. I know of one developer who was gratified to be made a Microsoft MVP so he could obtain a pro version of Visual Studio 2005 and get away from ClickOnce as the only deployment method. He’s working on a much needed Windows speciality application. There is no way developers like this would be able to pay to attend events like Mix06 and these are your target audience developers for widespread growth, Microosft.
It’s cool that Express versions of Visual Studio were provided for free (for the first year), but those aren’t for serious professional apps, sorry. Thus far my experience with ClickOnce has been completely underwhelming. Finally, there is a major difference between hobbyist and student programmers and professional small developers. One could probably do just fine with the Express version, but the others will want to do their own deployment and skip over ClickOnce.
Back to conference pricing.
(And BTW, I’m not grousing in this post trying to get a comp or even reduced special buddy, buddy, pal, pal secret rate to the Mix06 event from anybody so thank you in advance but please do not send or offer me one. Consider this post feedback for future event/conference planning specifically targeted to smaller developers/webmasters)
I’m really starting to wonder if setting a maximum conference fee of say $300 USD would be a good idea for the rest of us that aren’t in the profiting from conference business. If the registration fee costs more than that, I have serious doubts that the value will be there as an attendee. In fact, when the conference registration fees exceed $300 USD I start thinking it’s no longer about holding a good, useful event, it’s about lining the event coordinators’ pockets.
Let’s do the math here: $300 x 1000 attendees = $300,000. At $995 per head, we’re talking a million bucks before sponsorship dollars. A lot of coca cola’s and water bottles can be bought for that.
Those of you putting on conferences over this amount of money better really work your buns off to provide true conference value. And no, us attendees do not think a seemingly endless supply of sponsor pitches to be valuable. Been there, done that, hate that.
Before the professional conference whores and conference profiteers start squawking about how clueless I am about the value of social networking ask yourselves what value this even will be bring to your business. As Yogi Berra would say, this is deja vus all over again.
I’ve learned from experience that paying more doesn’t guarantee that the internet connectivity won’t suck (if you want reliable internet, BYOI- Bring Your Own Internet advised), so what will this high priced registration fee really cover? Great food? Real china instead of paper plates? (un)Comfortable seating?
Scoble says: “More stuff to come!” I sure hope it’s more than the use of yet another variation on the orange RSS button.
What will be at Mix06, really?
Some cool swag? Free demo discs and a plethora of sponsor “special offers”? A chance to see famous tech luminaries strutting in the distance? Schmooze, booze and grooves with fellow developers?
Developers can do the last one at meetups without paying a dime in registration fees.
Forgive me for looking the Microsoft gift horse in the mouth but our business doesn’t have billions in the bank. We’re a small developer operation who would rather use registration and travel expenses for advertising and promotion. For a fraction of the price of attending Mix06, we can attend several smaller developer-oriented events in 2006. No, we might not see Tim O’reilly and Bill Gates showing some phony affection toward each other.
Seriously, how much more value will I get out of Mix06 being there instead of here?
I do fully realize attending events like this is advertising and promotion, but does the dollars and time spent offset or exceed what could be done with a marketing campaign? Seriously, with the knowledge available so far, would our business be better served putting the two grand in a beta adCenter campaign?
Scoble or somebody in the Mix06 know, please convince us where the thinking should be here. Show us da value. What are we going to get at this conference — what will be missed staying at work — that we won’t be able to get from the office?
Looking at the proposed agenda, more info definitely needed and would be appreciated.
You’re blocking Yahoo! Search crawlers from your site and have been for several days now. We’ve tried contacting you to verify your intent.
Sorry to state the obvious but if Yahoo removes all of Sourceforge from their index this could make it that much harder for folks to find these projects (perhaps your projects hosted there) — at least for those who prefer Yahoo search. I can’t imagine Sourceforge intends for this to happen.
Jeremy indicated that they’ve tried contacting them and received no response. Maybe a deluge of emails from devs who use Sourceforge will help garner a response.
Yahoo is citing paying subscribers as a key revenue increase source and that’s no surprise considering how Y! Music came onto the scene and cut out the knees of their competition with their introductory price plan.
Truthful to the word ‘introductory’ though, they did eventually raise the price, strangely to about the time — five months — Steve Jobs predicted they would. We went back to Napster and started a subscription to LAUNCHcast instead. I wonder how many others no longer found Y! Music such a great deal once the price nearly doubled? Also, I hope they made the cancellation process more friendly.
Fees revenue was up 35 percent for the quarter as the number of fee relationships paying relationships rose to 12.6 million, up 1.2 million or 11 percent over the previous quarter, and 4.2 million or 50 percent over 4Q04. (Yahoo Music debuted in 2Q05 but it’s hard to draw conclusions about the actual number of music subs.)
Perhaps the oddest quote coming out of the various news accounts of Yahoo stock (YHOO pictured above) was on Yahoo News, part of an AP story quoting Terry Semel, Yahoo chairman:
Although Yahoo’s profits have been steadily rising in recent years, the company still hasn’t been able to come up with a formula that’s as effective at serving up moneymaking ads as Google, its biggest rival. “Frankly, Google has done a better job than us,” Yahoo Chairman Terry Semel acknowledged during a Tuesday interview.
The article notes that YHOO share prices gained 21 cents and then dropped $5.40 (13.5%) in extended trading. As of this writing, things haven’t yet bounced back.
What did I do with my portfolio of Yahoo stock? Bought more.
Generally speaking I like what Yahoo has done over the last year, adding additional specialized search engines, reaching out to developers with some really good APIs, and buying vibrant properties like Flickr. I also bought more Google and Apple stock. I don’t believe the tipping point has been reached for any of these stocks, including Yahoo.
If you doubted how serious Microsoft was about making its live.com a viable set of services with the microsoftgadgets and Office Live, then maybe Visual Studio Live will convert you. It’s a long way from here, but it’s up for more than discussion.
I’m making a transition into the product team to work as a program manager to help define what a “Live” version of Visual Studio might look like. If you think about Office Live and Windows Live, you can see that “Live” is coming together to mean “software that is smarter when it’s online and back-ended by a set of services.” I think most developers get this concept intuitively — that software can (and should) be better when it’s online.
John is looking for feedback about what others would like to see in a “live” version of Visual Studio. Here’s my short wishlist, and I’ll probably add more tomorrow morning after sleeping on it:
- make it fast. Developing in quicksand blows and I can just see a first version of VS Live being speedy only to get slower and slower over time because too many features are added. Keep it lean, mean and clean.
- plugins. Make it so developers can add what they want or make other plugins for other VS Live developers
Somebody call Linda Tripp for the story, this rumor is just too funny not to post about. Andy Abramson is claiming to have heard rumors that chair throwing (allegedly) Steve Ballmer might step aside for former President Bill Clinton for the head spot at Microsoft.
ROFLMAO!
As ridiculous and Farkesq as this might sound, I bet Clinton would do a good job creating a kinder, softer Microsoft, at least from a charisma perspective than the gruff Ballmer, but really, what does Clinton know about technology? He’s not exactly a geek. He’s more like the guy who summoned people to beat up on geeks. Smart guy, though, maybe a closet geek?
Oh man, I’m still laughing about this one. The blue dress stained Windows screen of death, anyone? Go ahead and insert your own Clinton-Microsoftesq jokes in the comments area. This should be fun!
I remember checking out There and it seems Second Life (referral) arrived to the graphical 3D social chat and interaction virtual world scene about the same time as There. Unfortunately, There didn’t have much staying power with me even though I beta tested and purchased a lifetime account.
Some of my disappointment in There was fueled that I didn’t have enough “event host skill” to host any events. I still think that’s lame that if you pay for something that you should need to spend a bunch of time building up skill just to be able to host an event and invite others onto the service. This is part of the problem with any Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). I haven’t loggeed into There in months (over a year?). In fact, it’s not even installed any more on any of our machines.
I was curious how Second Life dealt with some of these issues anf intriguted that Second Life had adult areas that There seemed to lack (casinos, for example). Is event skill, or some time or level based variation, required to host events at Second Life? This was one of many questions I was curious to learn about.
Second Life Registration
When first registering for Second Life, you’ll need a mobile phone number or credit card. This helps keep bogus accounts from being generated. There are four subscription options as of this writing:
Basic Access - the first Basic Account is free. Additional basic accounts require a one time fee of $9.95. Basic accounts get 50 Linden Dollars each week the user logs in. Premium Monthly - $9.95 per month. This gives the user 500 Linden Dollars each week, no login required. Also this allows the user to become a resident and own a small area of land. A larger amount of land requires fees starting at $5/month going up to $195/month for an entire server.
There are also additional premium options which give the same features as Premium Monthly, but give a better price break. Premium Quarterly is $7.50 / month, billed quarterly ($22.50). Premium Annual is $6.00 a month, billed annually ($72.00). That’s annual option is a nice savings (40%) over the monthly option for those who really want to dig in and carve out a space in Second Life.
After choosing the registration option and registering it is time to download the software. One of the first things I like about Second Life was it had a Mac version. I don’t have many Mac games (and though SL is much more than a game, it makes sense to talk about it in those terms), so I downloaded and tried out the Mac version first.
The screenshots above are all from the Mac version of Second Life, below are ones from my Tablet PC. The minimum requirements say 512 MB RAM and my trusty little eMac would still run Second Life, albeit a bit pokey. On the Tablet I have 1GB of RAM
What can be done inside Second Life (incomplete)
- Chat. Find other people, make friends and talk either out in the open or privately via in-game Instant Messages.
- Locate, rent or buy land and start building your SL home. It’s divided by prims and each object is made up of an amount of prims. 234 prims = 1024 meters. 117 prims = 512 meters.
- Buy and sell items in L$
- Create your own items for buying and selling in SL. Items can use scripting so they can interact with the Linden Residents.
- Play games. In the main area (age 18+) you can play at casinos (woo-hoo!). Some of the casinos run free slot games where Linden dollars ($L) can be won.
- Camping Chairs. Instead of logging out when taking breaks or leaving, find a camping chair and kick back. Some of these chairs pay you $L for sitting in them. Be sure to keep your computer alive every 30 minutes or SL will kick you out for idling.
Developer scripting notes
- no arrays, uses lists instead.
- lists can only contain 72 items in code, but programatically can include more
What can be done outside of Second Life (incomplete)
Creating your own blog or fan site. SL provides a Fansite Toolkit (zip) contains banners and templates.
Overall impression
I’ve only spent a few days looking around and interacting and even whipped up my first script and still feel like I have seen maybe 10% of what Second Life offers. This is an expansive world with lots to see and do. It has that familiar Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) attraction and yet isn’t only constrained to going out and fighting bad guys and leveling. There is also a danger aspect to Second Life which I haven’t even explored yet (and don’t have much interest in doing).
I’d rather explore new areas, buy, sell and create items and start building and developing my own land. As I write this I’m still researching what First Land to buy, which is when you buy your first land in Second Life at below market value ($1L per meter, as opposed to $3-5L+ per meter) . Perhaps I’ll even start my own business in there someday and then I can write a follow-up on that experience. I already have a few game ideas that I’d like to play around with someday.
With the mature areas and the economic structure there is a place online which allows adults to be adults in a virtual 3D space. This means that SL is appropriate for virtual parties and events of all kinds. I don’t have my original question answered completely about whether specific skill or leveling like There is required for hosting an event yet although it seems like that doesn’t apply here (good), so I’ll have to update this piece later or write a new one on that experience later. There is a page on the SL website which explains renting land for events with a three day minimum period for around $12,000L.
Nimrod Yaffle, a resident of the virtual world Second Life, has revealed details of a bizarre and dark prison Second Life’s maker Linden Lab is now using to lock up criminal avatars. Dubbed the “The Corn Field,” the moonlit environment contains only rows of corn, two television sets, an aging tractor and a one-way teleport terminal allowing no escape. It exists as an alternative to standard disciplinary measures, which traditionally prevent access to Second Life completely.
There is a separate area in SL that is teen-safe which according to the Wikipedia is running at a loss. Jowl, our teenage son, is checking out the teen area, so I’ll see if he is willing to write a separate review for that area.
Second Life impressed me enough to invite and refer a few friends and whenever anything does that, it has promise. This review experience reminds me of how I felt about the Opera browser and a familiar cliche: better late than … yes, I was impressed. Nice work Linden Labs! Grade: A
As someone who frequently fields technical questions, I’m sometimes surprised by the lack of detail that is provided when bugs/problems are reported. I would like to fix any problem as quickly as possible but it only slows down the process when not enough information is provided.
One of my favorites includes: “it doesn’t work, help!” Not even telling me what program is being talked about or providing a URL to the error, what domain it is on, and/or using a nondescript email address like gmail (instead of user at domain.com which would at least possibly identify the domain that has the issue) or even if it is a desktop program or server side program.
I’m not sure about other techs, but my Spidey senses are ineffective for cases as described above, so I thought I’d create a HOW-TO for asking technical questions via email or on a messageboard or in IRC that I could point folks to in my email signature file. If the company has a support ticket system that allows you to choose checkboxes and identify yourself the number one rule of thumb: use their system. There are usually good reasons these companies setup systems. Efficiency and organization is at the top of the list because customers tend to greatly outnumber tech support.
I’ve added checkboxes so it is easier to make sure you’ve answered all these questions. Just bookmark this thread and return any time you prepare an email to report an issue with a desktop program or web (server-side) program.
Desktop program problem (Windows, Mac)
1. Provide your contact details.
If there is an account number or customer ID, then provide that.
2. Provide an alternate email or contact phone, ICQ, etc.
This way if the tech tries to respond to the email and your email bounces they can try an alternate method of contact to reach you.
3. Unregistered or registered user?
If you’ve registered the software provide the name and email address you used to register the software.
4. Describe your system configuration with applicable version number(s).
For example, don’t just say: Windows XP, explain whether it is Windows XP Home or Windows XP Pro and then what service pack you are using. If it’s a Mac, are you using Tiger? What version? This information enables the tech
5. Describe in great detail the steps you take to produce the problem/bug/issue.
For example, instead of saying: “it doesn’t work” use: “I start the program and receive the following error: ____
6. If there is an error message copy the entire error message and provide that in your report.
Web-based server side program (php, perl, ASP, etc)
1. If this is a site you pay for, then provide your customer details
2. Provide an alternate email or contact phone, ICQ, etc.
This way if the tech tries to respond to the email and your email bounces they can try an alternate method of contact to reach you.
3. Are you a registered user or guest visitor? The problem may occur for one and not the other. Supply the USER ID
4. Describe your system configuration with applicable version number(s) and provide the browser information as well. Not just Internet Explorer 6, but the full version of Internet Explorer. If it’s Firefox, then provide the full version number there as well. The version number isn’t a trivial piece of information, it will tell the technician what is being used so they can test in the same environment and try to reproduce the issue.
5. Describe in great detail the steps you take to produce the problem/bug/issue.
This includes when/where the error happened. For example: during site registration, when trying to make a new messageboard post, when trying to use the private messaging feature, etc.
6. If there is an error message copy the entire error message and provide that in your report.
Remember, by providing the answers to all these questions in your next bug/error report you will help the technician more easily debug and quickly fix the issue. Without this information, a delay will occur while the technician writes back requesting more information. Hopefully your email doesn’t bounce or that will delay things even futher.
Saw this post from Niall Kennedy quite a bit earlier but kind of passed over it because it was of the ‘coming soon’ variety.
I’m trying to write less on ‘coming soon’ and write about more stuff here in the now (plenty of both to write about frankly), but then I read the comments of this post closer this afternoon and saw that this had been confirmed by Google engineer, Chris Wetherall and Jason Shellen, Google Reader Project Manager.
Mr. Wetherall writes:
So developers should note that some of the URLs might still change but that we’re getting close to stability and we’re happy for anyone to build atop the framework who is interested (and doesn’t find managing auth issues daunting) as that’s been our goal and intent with the API for Reader.
If you add these comments to what Niall wrote in the post it definitely makes this situation more interesting for developers rolling their own aggregators:
Google and its team of engineers and server clusters can handle the hard work of understanding feeds in various formats and states of validation, allowing developers to focus on the interaction experience and other differentiating features. You can also retrieve and synchronize feed subscription lists with an established user base that could be in the millions, providing a better experience for users on multiple devices and platforms.
Intriguing. It’s been awhile since I originally checked out Google Reader (October 7, 2005) so I browsed over there this evening to see how things are coming along.
I took a somewhat recent OPML reading list — nearly 400 feeds — and imported using Internet Explorer. It took about 10 seconds to suck in the list and change from please wait to “the page will refresh shortly.” This page changed in another minute and then there was a wait while the browser attempted to load all the feeds.
Waiting.
Admittedly, most folks using Google Reader don’t have 400 feeds so this is might be an unfair test, but that is what I have as of this writing so if Google Reader were to be useful to me then it would need to service at least these number of feeds.
Ten minutes. Still loading. Decided to see if Reader worked in Opera yet because it had some problems the first time around (see October post linked above). I noticed they had the title issue resolved and all titles seemed to be showing. I wasn’t seeing any images however.
Within a few minutes I saw a story I might like to write about in greater detail and chose “Gmail this” from the dropdown menu. That popped a window where I could easily send the story. I chose to send to my own gmail account with a tagged +blogthis so that I could setup a new label for stories I might want to blog later.
There’s also a “blog this” choice which will popup a window to blog inside your blogger account. Now if only they had a generic metaweblog API so it could hook into other blogging scripts like Movable Type and Wordpress this could be more useful.
Then I was reminded of the API mentioned above that is coming soon and saw a future with this functionality being added by a third party developer. This is one of the cool parts of APIs in that you won’t get locked into choices by one vendor. MSN Spaces recently supporting the MetaWeblog API means that it isn’t necessary to use only the MSN Spaces interface to post to that blog. I really like this aspect of APIs from both the user and developer perspective.
As for Internet Explorer? Still was loading after some 30 minutes (why didn’t the browser ever timeout?). I decided to stop the process and reload the page. It seemed to work but when I clicked on the “Your Subscriptions” link the only feed that showed up was Hmm which was already there before the import. However, individual blog entries from many sources were showing below.
Google Reader is still not ready for users with hundreds of subscriptions, but it is definitely improving. By rolling out a Google Reader API in the future officially they just might make it possible for a third party to make a better aggregator than them.
Since Google seems to be taking their sweet time getting their official directory up (it’s been nearly a week and not a single update), Phillip Lenssen and Alex Ksikes are jumping on the opportunity to offer an unoffical place for developers to get their modules posted: GoogleModules.com
I’m not sure what Phillip and Alex are doing to make sure insecure modules are filtered out and the plans for versioning of already submitted modules (???) and I think it’s a really bad idea to put the email addresses there linked up (please make images out of those guys so harvesters don’t kill us), but maybe all these plans come later. Things can move fast on the web.
I went ahead and submitted my first Google Homepage module, the most current version of TD Keno v0.2 v0.3 which now has support for picking up to 8 10 numbers. You can vote or leave comments for it over there, good or bad. Or comment here, whichever you prefer.
Both our businesses involve sales so I don’t have anything inherently against intelligent, exciting marketing, but some people have taken the ridiculous notion that the web is enjoying some sort of version upgrade that simply does. Not. Exist. Sadly, some really smart people seem to be championing this lame salespitch. And since the fad is burning faster than a meteor entering the atmosphere those who have tried to build businesses around this are going to be left wearing bell bottom pants to the 2006 prom.
The problem I have with this “Web 2.0″ slogan is that it is a contrivance, meant to imply a unified movement or wave toward a better Web. Just the very numbering of the thing brings out my moo-goo detector: 1.0 sounds like a beginning. 2.0 (as opposed to a tenth-decimal, such as 1.7 or a 2.4 implies - by its very roundness, a coordinated, standards-based, like-minded rebirth, reconstruction, renaissance, resurrection, whatever you want to call it. 2.0 is the ideal number for such an impression: it implies a concerted, noble effort at refreshing an inspired, but now aging, creation. even “3.0″ implies, well, we didn’t get it right the first time, 2.0 was transitory and is getting long in the tooth, so here we are transitioning to 3.0. But 2.0 sounds good.
The fact that there is a blog network with the name (Web 2.0 Workgroup) that people are part of like Dave Winer — who is about as far from slippery salesman as one can be — really shows the shark has been jumped. Add to that 100+ applications using technology that are several years old (RSS, JavaScript, XML, etc) and you have a marketer’s dream and customer’s nightmare.
The thing is, I agree with Russell. The term ‘Web 2.0′ is distracting from the real value going on in the Web right now.
Then there is this whole mashup thing. Why are financial people (VCs primarily) getting all jazzed up about technology that more often than not violates the TOS of other sites when used for commercial purposes? Are they hoping the big companies will buy these crappy programs without consulting their gargantuan legal teams? It seems like a very dicey argument when Adsense is placed next to some mashup programs out there saying they are not being commercially used. Some of these programs are skipping the APIs altogether and scraping pages. Hey, if you won’t give us the data, we’ll just take it. That’s hasn’t ever been considered a stable method of data collection and is downright dishonest.
The widget explosion hasn’t helped. Here you have people — many of which aren’t programmers — blindly mashing apps, TOS be damned. Hey, widgets are used for personal use, so who cares, right? Where did this line of thinking ever come from? Is this a side effect of Web Pooh-Point … Oh?
Finally, you have the use of so called AJAX which is yet another slippery marketing word slapped on old technology. I’m seeing the use of AJAX on programs that are refreshing entire pages using AJAX. Are you freaking kidding me? Why refresh an entire page using AJAX? Talk about waste. It’s like when Flash first came to be and the smart people used a little bit of it to spruce up their site and the other extreme was people thinking they could Flashify their entire website. A little AJAX in the right place could be very wise, but an overdose of anything is ill-advised.
Sour grapes? Nope, that’s not it. I enjoy finding new programs using new and/or innovative ideas. We buy software and subscriptions on the web. I also like to build new things. The best ideas are usually the simple ones that don’t need cling to buzzwords. Look ma, we are using AJAX, we’re cool. We’re sooo Web Pooh-Point … Oh!
[retch]
Let the products/services stand on their own and leave the oily, disingenuious terms out and describe the real underlying technology in the backroom via the developer area where fellow developers might be impressed or perhaps curious. The general public just wants it to work right and fit some type of need in their life, they don’t need, want or like to be sold. People love to buy though! So give them reasons to buy by giving them what they need.
But please don’t break site/API rules to build it. That will just piss people off. That will get people calling their lawyers or firing off emails. Or making angry blog posts.
The web doesn’t need yet another RSS aggregator or tagging application or mashup TOS violating piece of crap that cannot scale. If this keeps up, Web Pooh-Point … Oh could go down as dot.con 2.0.
Word to those making New Year’s Resolutions: axe the web versioning. The shoe doesn’t fit, you must acquit.
Yahoo is citing paying subscribers as a key revenue increase source and that’s no surprise considering how Y! Music came onto the scene and cut out the knees of their competition with 
