Microsoft Slashes Jobs

The first thing I read this morning was an e-mail by Steve Ballmer in my inbox, stating that Microsoft had announced a $16.6 billion quarterly revenue, $900 million short of what was expected. Luckily the actions are not quite as drastic as the loss of 15.000 jobs that had been rumored on the internet, yet this is the painful reminder that the economy is really in bad shape. I feel like I cannot complain too much about spending 4 hours in the car each day to get to my project at Dow Jones right now.

As part of the process of adjustments, we will eliminate up to 5,000 positions in R&D, marketing, sales, finance, LCA, HR, and IT over the next 18 months, of which 1,400 will occur today. We’ll also open new positions to support key investment areas during this same period of time. Our net headcount in these functions will decline by 2,000 to 3,000 over the next 18 months. In addition, our workforce in support, consulting, operations, billing, manufacturing, and data center operations will continue to change in direct response to customer needs.

On a positive note, with the Microsoft shares seeing lows they haven’t since the early 90s, I think the time to go on a stock buying spree is getting closer. Microsoft isn’t going anywhere, their products are running on almost every computer out there.

Happy New Year!

After taking a nice long break, it looks like it’s time to start working again. For me, the holidays weren’t really a break, but a non-stop list of issues with the new house which we still haven’t moved in to.  Home ownership is fun.

Anyhow, I wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Joost Gives Up P2P

Techcrunch reports that Joost is finally giving up their peer-to-peer model. Joost switched to a flash site a few months ago, yet this is a pretty big blow to their business model. I am sad to see the P2P idea go down the drain, and I seriously wonder how long Joost will be around considering the competition from Hulu and similar sites.

Trillr Microblogging Platform

The guys over at CoreMedia released their own micro-blogging platform under a BSD-license (open-source). Trillr is aimed at corporate (“Enterprise 2.0″) micro-blogging. I’ve used the original Trillr site for a while now and I think this is a great contribution to the community. Trillr is written using the Django Framework (Python) and the API is compatible with Twitter, making it easy to integrate with existing solutions.

The developers did release a word warning around the setup process simply because they developed the software as an in-house application and had to rip out some proprietary code before releasing it to the public. I think we should expect subsequent releases to clean that up!

On another positive note, these guys are working on a version 2.0 release already which they’ll also open source. Let’s hope they keep up the momentum.

Go download it and play with it!

4-Cylinder Lego Engine

How awesome is this: A company named LPE power is making a 4-cylinder pneumatic Lego engine. A little pricey though, I think I could build one myself.

MS Project Colorization Macro

What a sad day. I broke down and wrote a VB macro. And I really loathe VB. The macro formats all milestones and dependencies in an MS Project using a simple naming convention — the tasks must have the word “Dependency” or “Milestone” in them to be colorized. Beats doing this manually :)

Sub Format_Milestones()

Dim t As Task

Application.OpenUndoTransaction ("Colorize Milestones")

For Each t In ActiveProject.Tasks

If Not t Is Nothing Then

        If InStr(t.Name, "Milestone") <> 0 Then
            SelectRow Row:=t.ID, RowRelative:=False
            Font Color:=pjGreen, Bold:=True
        End If

        If InStr(t.Name, "Dependency") <> 0 Then
            SelectRow Row:=t.ID, RowRelative:=False
            Font Color:=pjOlive, Bold:=True
        End If

    End If

Next t

Application.CloseUndoTransaction

End Sub

JSR 170 Primer

In about July of ‘08 I decided it would be awesome to write a book about object-oriented content architectures. Aside an impressive outline, I wrote a lot of the basic introductory chapters. Then life caught up with me. So while I might finish the rest of my book some day, I decided that I should take the JCR part as a primer on the Java JSR 170 and JSR 283 specifications. There are just no in-depth manuals out there that I have seen. So here is my contribution to the geek world.

Read More >

New Software Section

I added a new software section to the site which I started uploading all kinds of working and half-finished software projects I’ve been working on over the years to keep myself occupied.

I hope someone finds some of the things useful!

Directions

This has to be one of the best set of directions I’ve ever seen (these are real, got them from a client):

We request that you enter the Technical Training facility through the Building #4 Main Entrance rather than walk through Buildings #2 and #3, as the lighting and air quality in the corridors of the vacated areas is not optimal.  There is ample parking in the Building #4 lot – feel free to use this lot when attending classes.

If you must walk to the training area from Building 1 or 5, follow the directions below.  Again, the indoor walk is not recommended.

Begin in Building # 5 in front of Security/Human Resources/Credit Union area, enter and cross through the elevated glass walkway that connects to Building #2.

Go through the doors at the end of the walkway entering Building #2.  Make a left turn, follow around to the right and continue along that corridor, making a quick right turn as the corridor ends into a single doorway.

Go through the single door at the end of the corridor.  DO NOT FOLLOW the signs to Building 2/3/4.  Instead there is an elevator immediately to your left.  Take this elevator to the bottom floor B.

Make a right turn as you get off the elevator.  You are now in the basement of Building #2.  Just past the Men’s Room door, make a left into the main corridor.  Stay on this main corridor.  You will go through a set of double doors.  Just past the old cafeteria there is a second set of double doors that requires your ID key for admittance.

You are now in Building #3.  Continue to stay on the main corridor; there will be vacant office areas to either side as you go along.  You’ll quickly come to a Y in the path, follow around in either direction staying to the main corridor – this is just a diamond shaped area that contains the restrooms.

To the other side of the Y intersection you will see the main corridor continues into Building #4.  Go through the glass corridor, through another set of double doors and into Building #4.

Continue into Building #4 through the double doors at the end.  You will see the Training Services Banner displayed over the doorway.

Groovy and Grails join the Spring Family

This is almost old news, but I just noticed that SpringSource, the company behind the Spring Framework, bought G2One, the company behind the Grails framework (see my earlier article).

This seems like a great move to me, completely aligned with Spring’s vision to make Java development easier. It’s great to see that Grails now has Spring’s full backing and a promising outlook in terms of integration with Spring applications.

Maybe one step closer to Grails in the enterprise.