5 breakthrough technologies that will go mainstream in 5 years

This is my list of 5 technologies that you probably don’t know about yet, and that will go mainstream in less then 5 years. I’d like to check back here in 5 years to see just how right (or wrong) I am.

1. Online rendered games

OTOY delivers server based live rendering. That is a cool thing that can enable live playing of console games that you don’t own. Of course it can also be used more professionally by e.g. architects and film makers.

video

2. Peer to peer hosting

Opera recently announced Opera Unite, their server-less website technology. Although it may not be Opera itself that brings this mainstream, it will certainly change the world. Currently websites are all hosted and delivered by servers not owned by ourselves. The middleman known as ISP will always be in between, charging for services, blocking stuff at will, and basically controlling our behavior on the internet. We (that is everyone) don’t like this, and it needs to change. P2P (peer-to-peer) technology like BitTorrent is key to this, but only supports file sharing. What is needed is web-sharing. Opera Unite is still very beta and techie, but once a “publish button” is available, that could well change. You don’t need Flickr to share pictures with friends, really. But we do need powerful technology like PHP, Java, .NET to be integrated. Javascript alone doesn’t make for the most interesting sites.

3. Augmented reality

It will take a bit longer than just software, but the world is advancing fast to a point where we can start using this. Simply glasses with small screens on the inside will work. GPS in your phone and netbook help to render relevant scenes laid over the exact location you are at. “Assisted reality” may be the first step: point your phone to a product and see it’s specifications, price comparison etc directly on your phone’s screen.

Wikipedia article

4. Flexible displays

This is another one that I envision to arrive on the market soon (a couple of years). You just roll up your e-reader, or roll it out of your netbook. It’s already for sale.

5. Online software development

Sites like topcoder, guru, but especially oDesk will become the trend. But the people you hire will not be unknown to you. Through social networking, virtual presence and web cams they will be much more part of the company then just outsiders. This will require a change in culture though. Currently people are quite ’scared’ of showing their face to someone on the other side of the Ocean. But just like social networking it will grow quickly.

Things that will go unnoticed

• social networks – ok, they’ve already made it, but they will not change drastically, and you notice a fatigue starting in everyone who has had the facebook rush for a while. The close circle of friends will continue, but 900 friends? C’mon. Facebook/twitter will end up in Google’s or Microsofts hands anyway.
• Google wave – It’s the marriage of IM, picture album, bulletin board and email. I believe it actually will take over as the next version of GMail, but it will not be much more than that.
• Wolfram Alpha – one of the latest hypes. Ultimately just one of the places people may go to to find answers. Will probably be bought by Google anyway.

I had no place for it on the list, and it may take more then 5 years, but solar power will also make it, eventually (within 10 years).

TypePad AntiSpam

• TypePad AntiSpam
  better then akismet? If it’s free then yes
  (tags: akismet spam)

Stack Overflow

• Stack Overflow
  if you cannot find it here, you cannot find it anywhere. StackOverflow is a site by programmers for programmers. Try to answer one of those questions, they’re hard.
  (tags: software answer question forum)

Automating science itself

Finding laws of nature is not really a creative process.. It’s merely extracting the rules that are embedded in nature. It’s no surprise that now somebody came up with a way to automate finding the laws of nature…

check it out:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/video/2009/apr/02/eureka-machine-artificial-intelligence

10 worst Microsoft Excel practices

I have met a lot of people who know they ‘know’ Excel, even sometimes stating they are experts of some sort. Well, they were not, and I could usually spot it because they make one of the following ‘mistakes’. Of course they get the job done, but in the long run they usually got themselves into trouble with it. I used to be such a person myself, until I became a full time Excel and VBA trainer.

So here it goes, starting with the worst:

1. Using tables

Tables (like years on the left column months on the top row) are nice for a visual report, but the data cannot be used in any other way. If you’ve read my recent article about the TableToListConverter, you know why. Excel is an excellent analyzer of data, as long as this data is organized in rows (lists), much like a database.

2. Using cell references

Don’t you hate those formulas like =C1*B6-H3+F5?. They’re horrible to work with. Wouldn’t it be easier to see =Rate*Hours-Discount+ExtraCost?
Well, that’s possible. Just click on the C1 in the top left corner and type the name ‘Rate’, then press Enter. From then on, C1 has an alias of ‘Rate’, and you can use it in formulas.

3. Using too many worksheets

Again too many people use too many worksheet. As above in #1, they create Worksheets named ‘jan’, ‘feb’, ‘mar’, ‘apr’ and so on. Later on it will become very difficult to get totals or filter this data. Forget about multiple worksheets and put everything in one sheet, as long as the data belongs together of course.

4. Using color to indicate meta data

Using a color to indicate something is great if you are the only person using the Excel file. That is hardly ever the case. You would have to explain: ‘well, red means this row is to be deleted, yellow means it’s not checked, and green means it is checked’. That’s nice, thank you, but the sheet looks butt ugly, and if I print this on black and white all that information is suddenly lost.

The correct way to indicate this information is to add another column or more columns next to your data. Give them descriptive heading values, like ‘deleted, checked’. Notice yellow and green can simply be combined by putting yes or no in the ‘checked’ column.

And did you know about the conditional formatting feature? Based on a value or even a formula you can color or format a cell. But, make sure to only do that for formatting that doesn’t relate to valuable information you should have visible in your sheet. It’s a good feature though for e.g. zebra-stripes (odd rows colored different from even rows).

5. Copy & Paste

Using copy and paste is fine, as long as you don’t copy when you don’t need to. A simple cell reference will point to value without needing a copy. So if you have a price in a C1 in one worksheet, and need it somewhere else, use =C1, or of course =Rate (see #2 in this list). Another way, which even works for many cells, is go to ‘Edit > Paste Special > Paste Link’.

6. Bad formatting

Excel is good at formatting data automatically, if you insert it in the ‘right’ way. E.g. try typing ‘1-1′ and instead of ‘0′ you will get ‘1-jan’ depending on your date format. So the value is automatically converted to a date value. If you would type ‘January 1, 2009′, most likely Excel won’t recognize this and leave it as a text value. You cannot calculate with text values, but you can with Date values. So if A1 has ‘1-jan’, and B1 has =A1+1 then B1 will become ‘2-jan’.

7. Too complex formulas

Of course, some formulas actually are quite complex, there’s no doubt about it. But there’s no need to make them look complex. Split your formulas in multiple parts, and use named ranges. So instead of =Rate * Hours - Disount + ExtraCost you can use =Rate * Hours in the Amount field and =Amount - Discount + ExtraCost in the Total field.

8. Empty rows and columns

Empty rows are inserted to ‘make a sheet look nice’. However, by splitting e.g. January data and February data this way, Excel will assume you are dealing with two lists, not with one. The totals underneath using autosum will therefor work only on one of these sets. If you wish to have a bit more space, just drag the row height handle, or use Format > Row > Height to set a specific height.

9. Formatting for print

If you enlarge a font to make it look bigger on paper, you are making a mistake. Do it using File > Page Setup > Adjust to…

You can adjust to any size without changing the font. The same goes for displaying on the screen in fact. Use View > Zoom, or use the percentage dropdown box in the formatting toolbar.

10.  Not using Pivot Tables.

I intentionally name it this way, since there are so many bad ways of analyzing data, getting totals, count, average and more on a set of data. But there’s only one way to do it extremely efficient, powerful and it brings lots more uses with it. Also, it keeps your data separate from your analysis. It’s called a pivot table. Make sure to have a list of data rows with headings, and then choose Data > Pivot Table. Now just click Finish right away instead of following the wizard. You can now drag in column heading names and be presented with a table with totals.

There’s so much you can do with a pivot table I am going to leave it to Microsoft to explain.

A very practical use of Pivot Tables is e.g. to get only unique values for a certain row. Since these are automatically grouped in a pivot table, you can simply copy and paste the list of unique values from there.

Yahoo, winner or loser?

If it’s up to Michael Arrington, Yahoo loses, but it’s not clear why. Yes, stock is going down, but that doesn’t define them. Just like your wallet is not your personality. Yes, Jerry Yang looks like a nerd, but so does Bill Gates.

If they go under they fail, of course, but how could they, having been nr 1 on the net for so long… There will always be advertisement money then, it’s simply a matter of downsizing and waiting for better times.

I am almost always impressed by the services of Yahoo, as delicious and even Yahoo Photos (deceased). It’s too bad that they don’t get what they deserve. Google is becoming like MS, they do great things, but always a little too late. Yahoo had autocomplete on their search a looooong time before Google. But when google delivers Google Suggest it’s suddenly something ‘new’. All eyes are on Google, but Yahoo technology stands already. Google doesn’t have BOSS, or YDN, or YUI. Google code is usually a bunch of spaghettiballs, so smart it doesn’t understand itself anymore. Yahoo code is clean, organized.

But inertia happens. It’s hard for such a big company to get rolling in a different direction. At least I hope they stop pursuing the social network dream. Let it go to Facebook and try to improve search this time, for real. Why don’t Yahoo index the dark matter in the web? There are still many new ideas to be tried which can result in a big success. Google is betting everything on keyword search, Microsoft is already in the natural language game (with Powerset), but real indexing done right hasn’t been done yet.

How about the interface? I need to do ‘hum hum hum’ and get the song title on my screen. Like that. I need to be able to sketch a flower and get the word ‘flower’ on my screen. And instead of ‘did you mean’ I need navigtion through association. By the way, I believe it was Excite that had that functionality a decade ago. You would type ‘Gibson’ and it would come up with ‘Mel Gibson (person)’ – ‘Gibson – guitar’, etc. It can’t be that hard if it was already possible ten years a go.

Yahoo, you have my vote.

Open source project management – learn for free

I had heard about open source software, but it didn’t occur to me other stuff could be open source as well. A friend of mine published what was my first acquaintance with an open source book. At http://www.projectmanagement-training.net/ you can learn a lot about project management, and if you’re a project manager yourself you may want to add to it. You can also opt for a training, as the domain name most blatantly suggests.

I must shamelessly admit I have merely scanned over it, and haven’t added anything, although I’ve been a trainer (e.g. MS Project), a project manager, and a writer for quite a while.

download the book

I hate software provider lock-in

Where is the key?

I am always frustrated by being locked in a walled garden. And in the case of software it’s not even a garden, it’s a mud pool they’ve got you in. Here’s a list of lock-ins that I suffer from personally. What’s yours?

• Flickr. This is the most annoying one. Sign up for a free account and nowhere does it say in a large font ‘you can only see your last 200 pictures at a time. The rest is burried’. Then there is no global export, yes you can download your pictures one by one, but then you lose all tags and description (and any other metadata changes you made). Oh there’s an API? Yes, but it only works on those 200 pictures…. So you need to upgrade to a pro account in order to get it all in order to close your account. Zero points, Nul punten, Nul Punkte.
• Google. OK, Google anal-ytics supposedly will be coming up with some major changes soon, but all I hear is features, features, features. Not: download all your data, or get it sent on a DVD, whatever… And a while ago someone found out (I lost the link) that the ‘export’ only showed the data on the page, not the full list, a feature that was quietly dropped… It has now been re-introduced by the way, someone important must have complained. One point, een punt, Ein Punkt.
• Windows Media Player. When I ripped my music collection (and I don’t mean that literally) using WMP it saved it all in WMA format. I didn’t mind, I listened to it on my PC. Then I wanted to listen to it in the car, requiring MP3. WMP can actually convert a song to MP3, but only when you save it to an MP3 player… Odd… So I first have to save it to my phone, to be able to copy it back and burn it on CD.

There’s probably more, but that’s it for now. These are all great programs with lots of features I like, nothing bad there. It’s time for a revolution in export, backup and API functions. We own our data, it’s ours, or not?

Where to get older versions of Adobe software

Did you ever search the web for older software only to find that on the official site there was only the latest and ‘greatest’ version available? I tried that today with Adobe. And I came up empty handed… I saw the downloads on some other websites, but I didn’t know if I could trust them since they weren’t affiliated with Adobe.

 

But then I found out they have an open ftp server. In the old days ftp was used much more than today, but the real die hards keep up the practice of serving big downloads through the FTP server instead of some web page.

So to get any older version of Adobe software, such as Photoshop 7, Illustrator 10, Creative Suite CS2, etc, just point your browser or FTP program to ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/ and start your download engines.

Someone should put up a list of these servers, since they can be mighty helpful. Oh, just did a search and came up with oldversion.com. That’s quite limited though, just a handful of software versions. Perhaps we can get a microformat for it.

Oh and if you’re looking for legally obtained free software check out this video.

MarkMail – a great way of keeping track of mailing lists without subscribing

• Home – MarkMail
  This is a cool site where you can view several mailing lists at once! No need anymore to signup for mailinglists and get your box flooded.
  (tags: xquery xml web visualization tools searchengine search research programming opensource)