Highlights from the SEW Blog: August 13, 2007
10267
Featured posts to the Search Engine Watch blog in the past week, along with recent search-related headlines from around the Web.
481653
I'm back, with a very interesting topic too!  Joel Spolsky, ex-Microsoft Manager and software engineering guru has a new essay, How Microsoft Lost the API War that is creating quite a big storm in the blogging communitiy.  Joel posits that the priests in the holy Temple of Microsoft have lost their way, because it has split into two factions, and the wrong faction is winning. One faction worships on the alter of backward compatibility, while the other is led by fervent priests who are proselytizing to raise up the new gods of .NET and Longhorn. Joel suggests that the new gods will cause the destruction of the holy Temple because Microsoft's great victories were built on the altar of keeping customers happy with backward compatibility. Furthermore the old gods of the Windows API continue to grow more grotesque and cruel with the passing of time, driving former worshipers into the arms of the friendlier gods of World Wide Web.  This story sounds extremely plausible. I must admit that i fit the profile of the developer who used to develop on the Window's API, is familiar with COM and Win32 who now develops mostly using PHP and Python. However I continue to develop and maintain Windows apps that keep our customers happy, and we still plan to develop new Windows apps. Some points:  Temple of the Blind? Firstly, Microsoft is still a compelling place to work for to people who feel that they can make a difference. The Temple continues to attract talented people with a Unix background. For example we have the recent hiring of Ward Cunningham, author of the Wiki.  Microsoft is still able to keep talented people like Raymond Chen, and others like him who continue to look after the Windows API, and Longhorn apparently will still give high priority to backward compatibility. Open sourcerers like Miguel Icaza are sufficiently attracted to the .NET vision to stake their careers on Mono. Longhorn and .NET are compelling technologies, so even if Win32 is not so cute anymore, M'soft is providing something that remains very attractive.  What i do see M'soft doing wrong is that they aren't disseminating the .NET runtime fast enough. It remains an optional install in XP Service Pack 2 for example. Also their IE dev team appears to be hog-tied due to political reasons; nevertheless IE remains good enough, particularly when I can embed IE as an activeX control, something I cannot do with Mozilla (AFAIK) - Update: I'm wrong.  Temple of the Spider?  Secondly, people don't merely use a web browser. They run the web browser in the OS.  So let me ask you, if you are using DreamWeaver or HomeSite or Photoshop or vi or emacs or Gimp, how many of you are willing to give it up for a java applet (or whatever your favorite technology is) running in your web-browser? Precisely.  Temple of the Abandoned?  Third, Joel makes the claim that developers are not developing to the Windows API. Well he could be right. But I bet a lot of them are still calling Win32.  If you are using a framework or IDE like Delphi or wxWindows (or .NET or VB) then you certainly are insulated from the Windows API, but that doesn't mean that you're not calling the Windows API all the time. I don't see Borland dropping their Windows version of Delphi at any point in time.   In fact, the fact that many developers are using some form of framework is a compelling argument for Microsoft to enhance the .NET framework to attract developers who are using other frameworks.  Today, not that many students learn x86 assembler, but that doesn't mean that Intel lost the CPU wars. Just because fewer people are learning Win32 doesn't mean Microsoft has lost the API wars, if the frameworks run predominantly on Win32.  Temple of the Lost  Joel even warns you in the beginning that "because I'm talking about big trends, I need to exaggerate and generalize". But you still get sucked in because Joel Spolsky is a first-class writer, in the same order as Philip Greenspun or Eric Raymond. That makes him so persuasive and plausible. But this is not Indiana Jones and doomed temples, but Steve Jobs and reality distortion fields.  Other opinions:  Harry Fuecks (PHP is ASP's upgrade path),  Dennis Hamilton (M'soft is just covering all bases), Robert McLaws (Joel is wrong in 7 points), Oliver Travers (the web is not good enough), One Run-time to Rule them all....
325308
This week's edition of PHP Magazine's PHPBarnstormer has been released - Issue #22.
708492
Links to this week's topics from search engine forums across the web: Having Trouble Believing In Crosslinking Penalties - Directory Wars - Local Search is just Hype - 20 Guidelines To Create Successful Landing Pages - Google as Web King, For Now... - Robots.txt Issue With Duplicate Content
668207
Links to this week's topics from search engine forums across the web: SEO Thoughts on Google - Yahoo! Local Listings - New Program - User Reviews and Local Search Optimization - Data Providers: The Engine That Drives Local Search - Google Affiliates Update - Confessions of a White Hat Content Spammer: What I've Learned by Ignoring Google
323977
Jobs recaps the news. There's MacBook Air, iPhone tweaks and iTunes movie rentals. Is there one more thing? Nope.
768589
Links to this week's topics from search engine forums across the web: The Little Engine That Could - What Is Your Greatest AdSense Advice? - Search Engines and FrontPage Shared Borders - Can Look And Feel Be Copyrighted? - My Experience With Site Match and Trusted Feed - Spam Reporting: Obligations and Issues
566252
roundup Plus: Business Objects to bundle IBM tools...Linux clusters gear up for simulated combat...Sprint to bake in BlackBerry for businesses.
155453
Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:PHPBuilder.com: AJAX and PHP Part 1Developer.com: Threads Versus The Singleton PatternNick Halstead's Blog: Google Gears Caching of WordPress in PHPDevShed: PHP, MySQL and the PEAR DatabaseDave Dash's Blog: Installing a PHP that can do symfony+doctrine on DreamhostChristopher Jones' Blog: Upgrade PHP with Oracle Application Server on LinuxPHP.net: PHP 5.2.3 ReleasedPro::PHP Podcast: Newscast for May 31st, 2007Secunia.com: PHP Integer Overflow Vulnerability and Security BypassPHPBuilder.com: PHP and Regular Expressions 101
474904
Links to this week's topics from search engine forums across the web: Live From SES Sweden - AdSense verses Affiliate Programs - Google Is Now Indexing Pop-ups - Redirects, Frames And Cloaking - Do You Avoid Content Targeted Listings? - Image Ads On Google Adwords - The Right way to Count Links?
758519
roundup Plus: WS-I tackles Web services attachments...Newspaper sites take up paid search ads...Microsoft IPTV to woo Swiss test group.
63097
Also: Windows worm travels with Tetris [News.com Extra]
104466
Matthew Turland has mentioned his article in the latest issue of php|architect magazine (the December 2007 issue) covering web scraping.   Just a quick post to announce (albeit a little late) that the December 2007 issue of php|architect, which includes my article on web scraping. Please buy a copy, give it a read, and feel free to post comments on the forum thread for the article. I'd love to hear some reader feedback!   Other articles in the issue include "Writing an Object/Relational Mapper in PHP", "Understanding CLI" and the cover story "Going native with mysqlnd".
736397
Tycho:  After seeing Chore Wars mentioned yesterday, the opportunities for manipulating people seemed...  rich.  The possibilities for mashups based on this data are also rich - I wonder if it could be exposed, somehow.  When my charge is old enough to manipulate in this way, my crib is going to fucking sparkle.
636915
Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:RefreshinglyBlue Blog: PHP vs Ruby - Practical Language DifferencesAndreas Gohr's Blog: Determine StumbleUpon RankingsPHP.net: PHP 5.2.4 ReleasedThe Bakery: Five New Posts - Custom Views, CSS, ViewInFile, ActsAs and Email ValidationPHPBuilder.com: File uploads made easyStefan Mischook's Blog: Turning on display_errors in WAMP - Video Tutorialphp|architect: Pro::PHP Podcast - Newscast for August 2007MT-Soft Blog: Creating a secure PHP production environment from Source CodeCommunity News: Andi Gutmans to Present at AjaxWorld 2007HowTo Forge: How To Set Up A Facebook RSS Feed Reader
193310
Here's what was popular in the PHP community one year ago today:onPHP5.com: Clickable, Obfuscated Email AddressesJacob Santos' Blog: PHP BlackjackThe Bakery: RESTful Web Services With CakePHPDeveloper.com: Developing a Ajax-driven Shopping Cart with PHP and PrototypeGreg Beaver's Blog: Mac OS X ships with security hole-laden PEAR - how to upgrade immediatelyNexen.net: English Articles and a Single Distribution ResourceJob Posting: Red Ventures Seeks Several LAMP Developers (Charlotte, NC)The Bakery: Checking for duplicate records (unique record)DevShed: The Basics of Abstract Factory Classes in PHP 5NewsForge.com: A DIY calendar control in PHPDevGuide.net: Dynamic Bitmap Graphics with PHP and GDRichard Heyes' Blog: Browser DetectionInternational PHP Magazine: Poll Question: Which is the Most Important Feature of PHP 5?Builder.au: Dynamic XML document construction with the PHP DOMCommunity News: PEAR Version 1.5.0 Released
353737
News, Infocus, Columns, Vulnerabilities, Bugtraq ...