The power of Visual Basic 6 - $200 at 10 years after EOL

Posted in Wed, 14 Jan 2009 06:57:00 GMT

I've mostly stayed away from Microsoft's development environment but I recently wanted to use some COM objects. Given that many Microsoft code examples for COM were in VB, there was an incentive to check it out. Unfortunately, Microsoft's Visual Studio 2008 no longer supports VB6 which was EOLed 10 years ago. I had known Microsoft had fractured the VB community fractured with the introduction with VB.NET which introduced many changes that were not backward compatible. What I did not realize was that 10 years later, used copies of VB6 would continue to be in demand and sell for $200 on eBay. Not only are people still using VB6, they are still using Visual Studio 6. The situation is certainly not ideal for those wanting to use the VB6 paradigm and prompted me to consider if one of the benefits of open source is that you can be sure your development environment won't just stop dead in its tracks.

COM is easy to access from many languages so, not wishing to use 10 year old technology, I choose C# for my small project. For those making large investments in closed source development platforms, it's certainly something to think about.

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SafePage: Another one for the deadpool

Posted in Wed, 14 Jan 2009 06:42:00 GMT

Don Park and I used to work together so I was disappointed to learn that his startup, SafePage, has been deadpooled. Don and I worked together during the early days of the anti-phishing efforts. At the time we were putting together an anti-phishing toolbar and he was incorporating leading edge ideas like changing the address bar color when you were at an authenticated site and integrating identicons. Although our toolbar didn't make it in the end, I appreciated his efforts to build those ideas into a working prototype and it's good to see those same ideas implemented in tools people use everyday including Firefox and WordPress.com. Best of luck to those from SafePage and don't forget to check out Don's page if you know of good opportunities.

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What? You're telling me the iPhone and iTouch aren't Netbooks?

Posted in Wed, 14 Jan 2009 05:31:00 GMT

Ajay and I have recently been discussing the coming of netbooks. While we generally agreed on the impending success of coming intermediate sized form-factor devices, there was initially some debate about what qualifies as a netbook. I was happy to agree that netbooks were the future, especially since I wanted to classify the iPhone, iTouch, and other smart phones as netbooks. Ajay was more interested in MIDs and recently pointed me to this article iPhone, iPod Touch Aren't Netbooks. I think there are generally three types of devices that get included in netbook discussions:

  • mini-laptops: these are what I traditionally associated with the term netbook
  • MIDs: larger than phone-sized tablets for watching movies and surfing the web
  • smartphones: iPhone, gPhone, Palm Pre, etc.

I'm not convinced MIDs will take off the way some people seem to think they will. The larger form factor of MIDs means that they will be inconvenient to carry around which is the primary downside in my opinion. Anything which cannot be carried in a pocket will require a murse, or man purse, for men and that is a huge impediment to adoption. There are just so many people willing to carry a murse. Additionally, many women don't carry large purses.

Ajay and I agreed the PSP may be an ideal compromise in size. I like the large screen and the ability to fit in jacket pockets. I've watched some movies on the PSP and the screen is a joy. The primary downside of the PSP is the unusual encoding and MemoryStick form factor IMO. The iPhone/iTouch has the same issue with MP4 videos. After all, who really wants to re-encode all their video? The Palm Pre seems to support AVIs so I'm eager to learn more about it. Ideally you could have a device that would have the following:

  1. pocket size
  2. great screen
  3. great wifi
  4. great phone
  5. great DACs
  6. MP3 support
  7. MP4 / iTunes support
  8. AVI support
  9. FLAC support
  10. 32+ GB SD card support

This way I wouldn't have to have an iPhone, a mobile phone, a Cowon, etc. It remains to be seen who will offer such a device but I'm hopeful one or more are coming.

But as to the question of whether an iPhone is a netbook or not? My take is that if a MID is a netbook then an iPhone is clearly a netbook as they both provide the same functionality in terms of small screen, video, surfing, and lack of a real keyboard to allow fast data entry and real work. Bring on the netbooks I say.

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