Thoughts on the future and what's coming up

Education seems to be the key in a struggling world economy. We live in times when an intangible piece of software is worth more than rice, apples or water. Simply looking at the amount of patents registered in 2011 we can see that South Korea is surging in that area, and Brasil, the Latin American economic leader is far behind S. Korea, the apparent technological leader in Asia, specially after Japan's devastating earthquake, and China's communist and artificial policies.


Regardless of these issues, we can say that we are living in a better world. if you think we are not, then ask yourself this question: Would you rather live in this time and age or would you have preferred being born 100 or 200 years ago. I personally love living in this time and age. We have made great technological advancements in the medical field, we can travel to different countries and to other planets!, we have the internet, etc., etc.


And so... what now? as a young adult, the current economic view seems a bit scary here in the U.S. Our leadership doesn't seem to know what to do, we are wasting a lot of money of things we shouldn't be, education is pretty bad, and we seem to be lagging behind Asia in education, technology, and behind Brasil in terms of alternative energy. 


The U.S. perhaps, still has the opportunity of seizing the current opportunities in the Latin America area, but instead, I see a scary inertia... and the presidential candidates seem to be both very weak to lead the strongest nation of the world to success... I'd even dare to lean in favor of Mitt Romney, even though i'm not a fan, but I think Mr. Obama is the worst of the two...


And BRICKS? yes, Brazil was one of the last major economies to succumb to the global recession, and one of the first to emerge. The Brazilian economy dipped into a short recession in late 2008 to early 2009, since then growth has stabilized. Why? The country’s finance minister credits Brazil’s fiscal and monetary policies, as well as macroeconomic fundamentals, something the U.S. should learn about...
Wait, wasn't it BRIC? well, Korea and Singapore are surging in Asia helped by a great education, efficient policies and governments and because of the leaders ideology, like Lee Myung Bak said "Never waste a good crisis" and they haven't, they are showing they can lead the Asian front and Singapore's 'Majulah Singapora' is indeed being followed, they have been declared as the most business friendly country, and though their economy contracted in 2011, they seem to be stabilizing very quickly and they will most likely keep moving forward as their motto indicates.


The worst enemy of progress is inertia. What is a young adult to do in the U.S. ? a country where employment is hard to achieve, and once achieved, is anything but rewarding economically. Start-ups are surging in cities like Los Angeles, and investors are creating incubating circles that invest in promising new companies, but is this the way to go? Perhaps... only time will tell. But whatever we decide to do, we need to learn another language, and stay in motion... whatever we decide, we must keep moving, just like Bruce Lee said: 'There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.'

The Evolution of Web Design (source: kissmetrics)

SQL 2008 SSIS - Data Profiler Tool

This link has a pretty good video tutorial on how the tool works!
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/ff686909.aspx

Windows 8, Metro and RIP .NET

I attended a Microsoft event today in downtown LA about Windows 8 and the future according to Microsoft.

In a nutshell, Microsoft is turning the Windows desktop into a web browser and is going the way of Palm Web OS. HTML5 + Javascript/unmanaged C++ for Windows Apps and they are pretty much signaling the end of the CLR (Common Language Runtime) -- (the .NET framework and all that it entails seems to not fit anywhere in the Microsoft roadmap anymore and unmanaged C is coming back...). The move also points to the time of the big mainframes (now called the cloud) and pretty much Microsoft is noting that the Cloud becomes the computer and the OS you run on your device has pretty much no relevance... (The new Metro look)

When users boot up their new laptops or desktops using Windows 8 will always see the Metro look, and if they want to use the good ol' Windows Desktop, they would have to find the tile to launch it.

Of course there is a Registry Hack that would allow you to change this behavior so that you can end up in the good ol' desktop all the time... but no comment on Microsoft shutting that down yet... hopefully not.

I really don't want to talk about the Metro look, and its App Store, but is being advertised heavily by Microsoft, Basically the ugly 3 year old design of the squares will be running on the Microsoft WinRT which basically replaces Win32\Internet Explorer\.NET CLR. Metro and Windows 8 Desktop will both coexist on your laptop/computer like enemies.  You cannot access a File that resides on your Desktop from Metro and viceversa. You could in theory write a web service and host it on your Desktop machine and have your Metro application consume it to access data from your desktop, but that goes against the MS licensing agreement...

Metro applications can only be distributed thru the App Store, and MS would have to approve your application prior to releasing it to the App Store (they are imitating Apple, just not in a very smart way)

Metro applications will be developed in C/unmanaged C++or Javascript, but Javascript would pretty much be able to access / interact with WinRT the way C does... weird huh?

Even though Metro looks and feels like Windows mobile, it doesn't support Silverlight marking the end of that technology.

WinRT basically represents the taking back of the .NET Framework into the core Windows team and offers first-class support for C and C++ (as you would expect) and Javascript... 

HTML 5 is pretty much taking over Silverlight... why? most likely because they are trying to attract today's application developers. Most of client-side developers are building HTML apps, another big number are writing iOS and Android apps. Learning XAML/Silverlight technologies is very difficult and Microsoft has done a poor job at teaching\promoting WPF. Since they are losing the battle against iOS/Android, going HTML5 might be their only option to regain some of the market, but I think they are going about it the wrong way...

The blogs are flodded with more questions and doubts than excitement... here is a link to Channel 9 where you can read more about it...

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/A-quick-look-at-Windows-8

We can just wait and see what happens, but this may very well be what Apple needed to expand even more into the enterprise.  the cards seem to have been spread.  Will Windows market share decrease even more? I doubt they can afford another Vista like deployment (seriously, a lot of folks still use WinXP) Will Apple up their game? We can only wait and see.

Comikaze @ LA Convention Center

Drove to Downtown this morning to attend the Comikaze convention. It was pretty packed and people with costumes did show up! so I have some pics! I didn't bring my Nikon camera... just my little point and shoot Lumix, but I got some ok captures ;-)
I was kind of disappointed that Stan Lee wasn't there today... If you wanted his autograph, you had to pay $50 for a reprint of the first spiderman or the 1st Avengers comic and pay $14 for shipping so that they can mail you back the comic...
Something interesting was this iPad app used at almost all the kiosks... Square! which allows vendors to take a credit card payment from anyone and they get charged 2.5% per transaction...

Joker and Harley Quinn

<--- I thought this couple's costume was pretty awesome! and they were willing to pose for everyone so that people could get a good shot of them.

a group of girls dressed up as anime :-)

I spent about 4 hours at the Convention Center.  The worst feature at this convention was the food.  It looked pale and not very attracting... they had hamburgers and tacos, but I skipped them and left the Convention Center seeking good eats ;-)

I was actually surprised to see the Wonder Twins!

LA 1st Street Food Festival and Today's Comikaze

Last year I attended the very first Street Food Festival in L.A. and I made q little quick video of it. Today I'll be attending the very first Comic Expo in L.A. organized by Stan Lee's new company Pow Entertainment! If I get lucky I'll make up a video about it too! if not, then I'll just write a follow up article packed with pictures!

Here is that good old Food Festival video I did last year...

Microsoft's Vision on the Future of Healthcare

At this year's Mix in Las Vegas (I really hope I can attend the next Mix!) Daniel Makowski had a presentation about what the future for Healthcare could look like... Most of the things displayed in this video can be achieved using current technologies, but I don't know of any vendors that produce these yet. I do know that in Spain, they've developed a Kinect enabled image / record library used by surgeons while in surgery so that they can view/flp thru images on the screen using kinect which allows them to keep their hands sanitized while viewing records and there is no need to re-sanitize their hands... but let's watch the video now! Enjoy and dare to dream !