Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Sometimes you still need locally installed apps

The internet was down yesterday. At least our local version of it. I have installed some cool AIR applications recently, one of them Kuler from Adobe, and I was working in Photoshop when the internet exhaled. Did not disturb my work, but I did want to get some colors and opened the Kuler AIR app… No luck with that. It just goes to show that there is still a need for off-line scenarios. Despite this being written in a ‘Discount Tires’ waiting room. I appreciate them having internet.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Getting back into the Web

Years ago when I started getting into computers more seriously I picked up PHP as my first programming language. I chose PHP because it allowed me to make more interesting UI. Obviously I used HTML on the front end.

Then I began working for Microsoft making software for Windows and I needed a new tool to prototype and play with and dived in to C# and WinForms. With Visual Studio intellisense C# was almost as easy as PHP and while I still think PHP has about the best online documentation and built-in functionality, learning C# was quite easy. Later came WPF which still uses C# for the functionality but XAML for the front end. That is what I have had fun with for the past couple of years. 

But I can feel it is time to back into the web again. Either through web development or just using some of the great services that has popped up over the past couple of years. Now, I am a bit rusty on what is going on in the web world so these lists from ReadWriteWeb.com are really great introductions. I am in no position to say argue whether the right products are on the list or not, but the lists have provided me with a lot of starting pointers.

-Christian