Before we jump into today’s topic, allow me to introduce a very bright man I have the pleasure to correspond with on a regular basis. He is a senior global marketing professor at one of Louisiana’s top universities in New Orleans.

Although he is no computer expert, he fully understands the impact computers have in his field and always stays on top of the latest innovations to understand what can and cannot be done, how, and by whom. Sure, we don’t discuss the benefits of HFS+ over HFS but, for a person who did not learn to use computers before the age at which others consider retiring, I am always surprised by the extent of his knowledge and his good understanding of what’s going on.

There was just one hiccup… His personal experience as a computer user wasn’t extremely enjoyable. Since we meet on a regular basis, I had a chance to see his university-provided PCs go all the way from Windows 2000 to XP Pro, with all the small roadblocks that PC users are accustomed to : he was infected by viruses at least 5 times, had his hard drive entirely wiped by one twice, had to re-install Windows quite a few times and had to have someone work on the network for days every time he upgraded his installation before performance was satisfying. For the record, just let me say that he used an updated anti-virus from a trusted brand, that all this happened behind the university’s firewall and own anti-virus hardware and that the computer was remotely managed by the IT department, right next door…

So we discussed the idea of switching to the Mac and, a few weeks later, he brought home a Titanium PowerBook with Mac OS X v. 10.2 and an AirPort base station. In a few days, he was actively using Sherlock for his research, had switched to wireless computing and printing, had his own calendars and contacts maintained by iSync, used his iDisk as a bridge between home, work and the foreign countries in which he gives conferences and, last time we met, he was considering adding an iPod to his installation as well as opening a class website on his .Mac account… Of course, we had a few issues to solve like the cable guy telling him that Macs weren’t compatible with the Internet in New Orleans (LOL !) but nothing that a quick mail couldn’t solve — remember that, this time, he was on his own.

In other words, the switch was a success and, during our last informal meeting, we began talking about why he felt more at ease on the Mac and what he, as a newbie, would like to see improved with computers in general.

He suggested that computers should engage in a dialog with the user, try to understand what he likes and wants to do.

Wanna listen to some music right after unpacking your computer ? On goes an animated tutorial about music capabilities and one button to push to to to the iTunes music store or the built-in radio tuner : instant gratification or, in other words, a feel-good experience for the user. Wanna learn more about the internet ? On goes a movie to present the basics, while Mail and Safari launch.

Since even the keyboard and mouse are sometimes intimidating for newcomers, we thought of using Apple’s Speech recognition technology too and mix it with tutorials like the ones used on .Mac. Just tell your computer what he wants to do and he will immediately show you how to do it.

Even though we only talked about installation, I soon realized that computer interfaces indeed lack the power to make suggestions. If your printer doesn’t work, what about giving you basic troubleshooting steps — and not in the help, one click away at most — or suggest places to go to to get some ?

Those of you who use Macs or develop for it know that Apple is already halfway there : the setup assistant that starts up automatically when you fire your Mac up for the first time is quite close from what we discussed, the icons placed in the Dock by default are pointers to what you can do ( Apple puts iLife, Safari, QuickTime and a few others in there automatically, so you can find easily what you want to explore first ) and, the error messages guidelines provided to the developers stress the importance of being clear, making suggestions and having well-worded buttons — not “Printing queue failed [OK], [Cancel]”…

I know it does not sound very impressive at first sight : a beefed up assistant, built-in tutorials… Sure, it’s no 3D interface but imagine the difference it could make for users who do not necessarily understand the in and out of their machines. It’s not yet another wizard but an interface that tries to understand what your needs are and to adapt itself according to them.

Some Windows or some Linux interfaces, for example, are full of wizards that get in your way instead of helping and this is mainly because they do not work with the user, because they try to replace the interface instead of introducing it to him. Apple does not believe in wizards : they believe in carefully designed assistants that give you a hand when you request it and introduce the real interface for you so you know what happens and how to change it later if you want.

Until next time, dear Mac users, enjoy thinking different !

And you, what do you think about interfaces ?

I’ve been waiting for the Jolt award home page to be updated with the winners so that I could blog on O’Reilly network’s productivity award, but it’s been more than a week since the award ceremonies at SDWest. You can download the winners list in this pdf. The night began with the announcement of P.J. Plauger as the recipient of the Dr. Dobbs Excellence in Programming award and ended with Dreamweaver receiving the Software Development Hall of Fame award.

In between, SD awarded three productivity awards and one excellence award in each of fourteen categories. In the General Books category the productivity awards went to “The Art of UNIX Programming” by Eric S. Raymond, “Lean Software Development” by Mary and Tom Poppendieck, and “Pragmatic Starter Kit” by Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt. Dave and Andy’s series is a wonderful set of short targetted books and it was great to see the judges recognize the importance of this self-published series so soon after it launched. Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister’s “Waltzing with Bears:Managing Risk on Software Projects” won in this category and Lister gave the night’s best acceptance speech about collaboration on this book.

Head First Java was a finalist in the technical books category. Winners of productivity awards were “About Face 2.0″ by Alan Cooper and Robert Reimann, Scott Ambler’s “Agile Database Techniques”, and Diomidis Spinellis’ “Code Reading”. The excellence award winner was David Astels “Test-Driven Development: A Practical Guide”.

O’Reilly’s two finalists in the “Websites and Developer Networks” category were java.net and the O’Reilly Network. The java.net site is less than a year old so the cliche of “it was an honor just to be a finalist” is something we really felt. The O’Reilly Network won a productivity award along with the Java Ranch and Tigris.org. The Excellence award went to IBM developerWorks. Kyle Hart and I were in the audience for O’Reilly and so, at her urging, I went up on stage and accepted the award and passed it on to her to take back to Sebastopol.

Accepting the award for the network was a nice cap on a wonderful year that I’ve spent working for O’Reilly. I was hired about a year ago to help launch java.net and to eventually edit ONJava.com as well. I don’t know if all of O’Reilly is like this or if the group I’m in has always been like this - but the Online Publishing Group is a collection of bright, dedicated, and generous individuals who work unselfishly as a team. I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed going to work as much as I have this past year. It is a cliche to say that the award belongs to everyone in the group, but it really does.

I apologize in advance for the names I leave out. I don’t know all of the people not affiliated with the sites I work on. The producers and copy editors Sarah, Terrie, Chris, Tara, Shawn and Jamie prepare and polish the site daily. The programmers and IT folks Dave, Greg, Tony and Gene provide the infrastructure on which we run. The site editors Derrick, Edd, chromatic, Kendall, Chris, Mary, Preston, Shawn, and Simon solicit, select, and shape articles. The management Dale, Nancy, Bruce, and Derrick provide support and set direction.

Add to this mix the synergies we get from working with the folks from the books side of O’Reilly and from working with and attending the O’Reilly conferences. Our authors help point us in the right direction and having a vocal readership that is encouraged to chime in at any moment helps make this site what it is.

So thank you and congratulations to everyone. The award couldn’t have gone to a nicer group of people.

Related link: https://ali.apple.com/

In January 2000, Apple introduced KidSafe as part of its iTools strategy, beginning to bring and collect online content that would be suitable for children and educators. A few months later, the service featured 100,000 web sites and was widely used by schools and parents worldwide. At that time, I had the occasion to browse support forums for it and the amount of feedback was incredible.

The KidSafe project has now evolved and changed to merge with the Apple Learning interchange (ALI). In a few words, the ALI is a site where educators and content providers post ideas of lessons, curriculums and other interesting material for other students to use. For some, the ALI is a place to find great teaching ideas while, for some others, it is a central meeting point for educators and parents that has become part of their life — I am not kidding : have you heard about the Apple Distinguished Educator program ?

In case you’re wondering why I am talking about a learning-related site on this blog, that’s because I have always found the ALI interesting. However, a few months ago it was undergoing heavy changes and alterations that made me discontinue my weekly visits…

Well… I went back yesterday and I was stunned ! What I once knew as a great-but-slightly-too-conservative-looking site has now become a true element of the Apple site : it is dazzling with content, images, movies and, best of all, ideas.

Sure, it is still a site for educators — more than ever, in fact. However, it is now also a true source of inspiration for anyone who has to work with people, even with adults.

Indeed, even though Apple has tutorials on its business pages as well as free online seminars, only the ALI provides you with so much real life content that has been tested and proven effective with the most difficult audience : kids at school who sometimes wish they were somewhere else.

Oh ! Did I mention that it is entirely free and even accessible to Windows users ?

So, if you are an educator or a parent, go and browse it ! You will find tons of great content and ideas for the children you are taking care of… And even if you are not, there are lots of great ideas to borrow from classes that you can apply to your own ads, presentations or manuals…

Until next time, dear Mac users, enjoy thinking different !

And you, did you know the ALI ?

Last night Bill Coleman, CEO of Cassatt and the “B” in BEA, spoke at the SDForums Distinguished Speaker series on “The Next Big Thing.” Coleman set the stage by saying that for him it has never been about the technology. Instead, it is about “the innovation to apply technology to increase productivity and bring value.” Coleman said that the Cassatt employeed have heard him talk many times about “the three v’s: vision, value, and values.” At last night’s address, however, he promised to focus the discussion on productivity and value.

Productivity, in Coleman’s view, is the basis for everything. It’s the search for the free lunch. Perhaps you won’t get more for less, but the goal is to get more return on the same investment. The two sources for this free lunch are innovation and specialization. Coleman provided examples from the agricultural, industrial, and information revolutions. Each revolution proceeds in cycles that include invention and then exploitation of that invention.

Value is the second fundamental force. Coleman explained that innovation won’t be adopted unless “someone gets enough value to justify their switching cost.” If you want the P.O. then what you offer “better be urgent and not just important.”

One contribution of the industrial revolution was the creation of a chain of commerce where you source parts, manufacture, distribute, and then get paid. He argues that until recently “IT has contributed nothing to the GDP because it hasn’t changed this chain of commerce.”

Dell and WalMart are two examples of how the net allows experiments with the chain that results in changing the economics of running a business. Dell started at the endpoints with the observation that “I can touch my customers for free” and take capitol out of the equation. WalMart changed the supply chain. They also turned over the merchandising of every store to the local manager.

Coleman pointed to Amazon, ebay, and Google as examples where “the ends are in charge. These companies are leveraging unlimited free reach.” Where the chain of commerce after the industrial revolution is push (we make so much stuff and push it onto the supply chain), the new model is pull.

For Coleman, “the killer app of the web is the fact that everyone can self-serve.” He predicts (with the usual qualifications) that between now and 2020 we will be in the build-out phase of the web. Later this decade there will be an inflection point as service oriented architecture is adopted. Web Services is a solution he sees for calling a service from one module to another.

On the hardware side, clustering and grid computing will become more important when SOA hits. At that point he sees a need for systems that can self-configure, self-optimize, self-heal, and so on. The effect, Coleman said, is an adaptive real-time system. As with previous revolutions, he predicted that this will economically destroy what came before it. “The first to go is the technology industry” Few companies who were leaders in the past will survive. Not only will the economic order change but the political order will change as well.

Coleman’s final prediction was that around 2020 the material revolution will follow the information revolution. Already we are inventing nanotechnology but not exploiting it. Biotechnology is just being exploited. Coleman said the material revolution will feature the convergence of nano and bio.

During Q and A Coleman said that “outsourcing of IT is a bad idea, but outsourcing at the low end is not.” If you aren’t in the server business, outsourcing your servers might make good sense. You can not, however, outsource your key productivity. He also addressed open source, saying “open source never inverts or disrupts. Itprovides continuous improvement to a stable base.”

What are your thoughts on the next big thing

Related link: https://local.google.com/

Google Local Search lets you search for businesses and services in a localized geographic area defined by an address or other location information.

It looks especially useful with those of us with web-enabled mobile devices.
I’ve already added the new Google URL to the Favorites list on my Pocket PC Phone Edition.
It lets me find businesses in the area I am at by just entering an address or even just a zip code.

I hope the Google people read blogs here on the O’Reilly Network though. I’d like to ask them to change the layout of the screen so that it fits portrait format mobile devices screens (like a Pocket PC Phone Edition or Nokia 3650) better. All they need to do is place the search box, address box, and search button in a vertical layout instead of horizontal and it will work great on a mobile device.

They even have their own model for a great mobile devices formattted page at:

https://www.google.com/ie

Tried Google Local Search yet? What do you think?

Related link: https://craphound.com/sterlingsxsw04.txt

I took notes this morning at Bruce Sterling’s rant-a-thon, but as soon as I saw Cory Doctorow’s Impressionistic Transcript, I realized that that’s what you really want. The talk was full of interesting tidbits that will merit further reading and thinking, from Brazilian politics to the “creative class” to the “torrent of filth” on the internet today.

The only thing not captured here is the funny exchange between Sterling and Doctorow after the keynote. People were asking Sterling to repeat his street address for the party tonight, and Doctorow said, “It’s on my blog.” Sterling’s friendly rejoinder, “Don’t post my home address on your blog!” was a moment to remember for any fan of these authors, who have frequently dealt with issues of identity and privacy in their writing.

Later note: in retrospect, it may not have have made much difference, given Sterling’s description of the aftermath. And for a great roundup of blogging and transcripts for everything SXSW, see Mike Slone’s link Round Up

The SXSW awards ceremony was a blast, with some hilarious moments — with any luck, some of the video skits will eventually be posted to the awards web site.

O’Reilly Network didn’t win an award, but we can’t feel too bad — we were in the company of some really terrific sites. The complete list of winners is available here and makes for some entertaining web browsing.

I was delighted when CSS Zen Garden won the best of show. This CSS demonstration site gathers innovative style sheets from contributors. Just click on the name of the design, that style sheet is loaded onto the very same html page. If you haven’t visited the site before, you’ll be amazed at the variety of presentations that are possible simply with a change of style sheets.

During the awards, I sat at the same table as Kevin and Tom from OK/Cancel, a great web site for geeks. I scored two of their trading cards featuring two of my design heroes, Don Norman and Edward Tufte, as superheroes with special powers:

Congratulations to Kevin and Tom for winning the Humor/Satire web award!

I had the good fortune to attend the entertaining session, “Wireless Science: Field Studies and Remote Sensor Networks” given by Col. Dave Hughes at SXSW Interactive on Sunday.

Much of Hughes’ work was done as part of an NSF project to explore the potentials of using wireless technologies for biological data gathering from remote and difficult locations. For example, rather than boating several miles down a river in remote Alaska to retrieve data from a sensor (and then only when the weather cooperates), data can be retrieved from the sensor via wireless. There are some pretty interesting challenges in getting above the tree canopy or collecting enough solar energy in polar climates. You can read more about the project at Biological Science by Wireless Project pages.

Hughes also talked about his part in the installation of a wireless “cyber cafe” at Base Camp on Mt. Everest (including a hilarious story of his insistence on riding a Yak while there). The Everest project is part of the vision of Tsering Gyaltsen Sherpa, who is trying to restore telecom to the area after Maoists destroyed a repeater tower in June 2001. Reliable telecommunications is vital to the local economy and perhaps even to preserving the Sherpa culture. Hughes gave an impressive demonstration of voice-over-ip by calling Namche on Everest live at the session, which worked very well despite the fact that a regular traceroute to the same location showed an extreme amount of latency. For more on this fascinating project, see Linking Everest.

Hughes, whose energy and enthusiasm was apparent throughout his session, ended his talk by saying, “So that’s what I’m doing at 75.”

A great benefit to being a technology writer is that I can rationalize just about any new toy purchase, even if it’s justifying it to myself. A chapter in my soon-to-be-released book, Digital Photography Hacks, focuses on camera phone tricks. Of course I had to get my hands on a camera phone to fully explore its hackable nature.

I played with a Treo 600 for a while, and really enjoyed using it. In fact, you’ll see it in some of the book illustrations. But the Treo had a major drawback: no Bluetooth. Since my PowerBook has Bluetooth built in, and I’m running Mac OS X, it seemed to me that any phone I get serious about needs to have this connectivity.

I sought the advice of MobileWhack guru, Rael Dornfest, and he suggested I look at the Sony Ericsson Z600 Smartphone. Among its other great features, the Z600 has Bluetooth and syncs nicely with Mac OS X. After just a few days of use I came to one conclusion: Bluetooth is important to me.

Here are a few areas that I’ve come to appreciate how this technology improves my daily workflow:

• File Transfer - I take a picture with the Z600’s camera phone, then send it to my PowerBook or the Palm Tungsten T2. It takes seconds to do so. I can transfer other files among the devices just as easily.
• Address Book - I knew there was a reason why I was diligently maintaining the Address Book in Mac OS X. Now my contacts with their phone numbers — correctly designated as “Home,” “Office,” or “Mobile” — are tucked away neatly in the Z600. Took about 90 seconds. Oh, and I can send new addresses directly to the phone from the Address Book app because it is Bluetooth enabled. So I have the option of using iSync or direct sending.
• Calendar and ToDos - I can even check my appointments in the Z600. iCal data syncs wonderfully too, and it splits my appointments and ToDos into appropriate menus on the Z600. Oh, one hint here, be sure to set your phone’s time and date and GMT timezone (in my case -8.00H for San Francisco) for the calendar times to sync correctly.
• Web Browsing and Email on the Palm — This is cool. The phone is in my pocket and I’m browsing the Web and checking email on the Palm, which is also BT enabled.
• SMS on the Palm — Text messaging is much easier with the Palm than with phone buttons. Palm OS 5 comes with a great SMS client that talks to the phone in your pocket.
• Share Internet from PB to Phone — By using a slick little AppleScript called Share2Blue2th, I can use the Z600 to share the Powerbook’s Internet connection over Bluetooth out to the phone for syncing Avantgo or testing WAP pages. (Untested at this point. Thanks to C.K. for helping me get this wording right.)

The Z600 has an easy on/off switch for Bluetooth, so when I’m out and about in public, I can turn off the connectivity and not have to worry about Bluesnarfing.

I’ve been following the Bluetooth story for quite sometime, and I was wondering if this technology was ever going to get off the ground. Well, for Mac OS X users, it’s not only off the ground, it’s flying high. I’m better organized than ever, and it isn’t even work to do so.

First a confession.

I’ve been using Filemaker Pro 7 as an alpha/beta tester for over a year now. During that time I was writing articles for O’Reilly on Filemaker 6, knowing a new version was around the corner. And let me tell you, it was killing me. There were so many great new features in Filemaker 7 I wanted to write about, but couldn’t.

Finally, the time has arrived! I’m free…free!!!

This week, all over the web, you’ll see a whole slew of party line PR regurgitation, but I’m going to write a different type of piece. Within a few days you’ll see my Top 10 reasons of why Filemaker 7 is a must have! So keep your eyes peeled.

While browsing the web, a few days ago, I realized that something had changed on my favorite sites… The flashy banners had been replaced by ads for the upcoming WWDC ‘04… Ah, the cheery but tasteful ad, carefully designed every year to attract developers to the Mac event of the year !

Even though you may think that I have gone cuckoo, now is the time where the Mac web wakes up again, as the Mac OS X development team prepares to hand out the coveted 10.4 beta CDs ! Rumor sites are fighting to get some crunchy details before anyone else, developers are anxiously waiting to see if the new frameworks will allow them to make their applications even better and we, mere users, are anxiously waiting for the report…

Last year, Apple introduced the world’s most powerful personal computer, the PowerMac G5. It was a wonderful announcement and, to speak in Jon Rubinstein’s own words, this is “one kick-ass machine” ! Without doubt, this announcement was an essential step in Apple’s strategy and has prepared the ground for the years to come — with amazingly powerful devices against which other chip manufacturers struggle to compete…

Panther was also introduced : a new interface, speed gains, 150 new features… Probably Mac OS X as Apple dreamt it when the project was first launched a few years ago. The few Mac OS 9 users who hadn’t yet made the switch have joined us this year and the transition is now over…

A bit later during the year, Apple re-vamped its entire software line : iLife, QuickTime, Safari, FinalCut and all the others… All the Apple applications (consumer or pro) got a facelift to run more quickly, more efficiently and take advantage of the latest hardware developments. We, Mac users, are accustomed to frequent (and free) updates but this year was a firework !

Apple also released some cutting-edge peripherals. The iSight is no ordinary webcam — or video conferencing would have long almost replaced the phone — and the iPod is an engineering marvel. Even better, the iPod Mini is getting rave reviews from both music and technology lovers only a few weeks after its introduction.

In other words, Apple seems to have focused on updating its lines and getting comfortable with cutting-edge technologies. And comfortable they are : considering how many new things were introduced this year and at which rate, the ride was remarkably smooth !

As silly as it may seem, this positive turn can be seen everywhere : the ads are new, the stores are getting better than ever and even the Apple.com site is undergoing a discrete but real facelift.

Finally, Apple has finally found its place back in the hearts of investors… Un(F)ortunately, some investors couldn’t bring themselves to see Apple as a serious challenger in the computing industry. This perception, that probably changed with the introduction of the XServe, is now almost gone — just look at Apple’s stock this past week-end. Apple is also a debt-free company now… and that is huge !

Finally, and most importantly, Fred Anderson and Peter Oppenheimer have provided investors with a look into the future that, coupled with positive magazine articles has convinced those who weren’t…

So, what’s next ?

Well, like you, I cannot know in advance and the O’Reilly Network is not the place to engage in speculation. However, the various partnerships — both technical and commercial — in which Apple plays a key part, the announcements they have already made this year and the evolution of Mac OS X over the previous years lets us envision that some great things are to come…

What is sure, though, is that Apple is now free to release more innovative products than ever, products that consumers will be willing to try and adopt now that the more “traditional” part is secured. They can, to a certain extent, take some risks and re-introduce breakthroughs in a industry that is suffering and had stopped seriously innovating for a while.

Of course, I am not expecting things to work like magic : nothing does and, even if you are Apple, you need to come up with ideas and work extremely hard to make them come true and to succeed in selling them. However, as you can see, I am not too worried. Apple has already proven that it can do great things and resist to adversity. A ride to success is never entirely smooth but obstacles are part of the game and can even be beneficial.

So, let’s buy our conference passes ( if we are developers ) and include a few good news sites in our bookmarks ( if we are users )…

Until next time, dear Mac users, enjoy thinking different !

I recently moved my 802.11b router to the room next to our living room and quickly started having signal trouble. Nothing shocking about that, except I moved it to a location that was the same distance from my laptops as it was before, and line of sight, by the way. So what could cause such a drastic state of affairs?

Microwave oven? No.
Solid Walls? No.
Electronics? No.
Concrete, Metal, Bullet-Proof Glass? Nope.

Since I couldn’t find the source of the problem, I was certain it had to be my wireless card or wireless antenna. Nope and nope.

After one week of experimentation, and about $1,000 worth of my billing time, I finally stumbled on the problem. Attached to our living room is a studio. Between the studio and the living room is a doorway. To keep the cats and dogs from turning the studio into a barnyard, we put up a wood framed screen door. While wood has a low level of interference, it turns out that the metal mesh screen in the door was preventing the Airport signal from leaving the room. Now we’re talking a distance of less than 10 feet, line of sight, transparent, and yet I couldn’t even get one bar.

I’d love to know the physics of why this happens, if anyone out there can explain it.

Got the answer?

Related link: https://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/MonoMeet.html

I got in a little late; I took a 6:45 train out of Kingston and then I
went to the wrong place. But it all worked out in the end, and I
figured out where I needed to be (Residence Inn Boston Cambridge).
The Wi-Fi hotspot here wants 25 cents a minute ($3 for the first 15),
which is completely out of control. I’m trying out the Sony Ericsson
GC82 EDGE card, and I can’t get a signal here (zip code 02142) from
AT&T Wireless. So I’m back to my T-Mobile GPRS, which is working
great (up for an hour and a half at the time of this writing).

10:20 Introducing Mono for Developers

(Miguel de Icaza, CTO, Ximian)
Most of the Mono team is in town, but some of them are not awake
yet…

Goals:

• Improve Linux developer productivity
• Migration from Windows to Linux/Microsoft budget re-use:
  training, books, etc :-)

• Open Source implementation of .NET

Mono Success Stories

• City of Munich: ASP.NET (350 servers, 150,000 users)
• SourceGear: Vault Software
• Embedded System vendors: embedded Mono/tiny profile
• MonoDeveloper IDE: ported from Windows *fast*
• still compiling more stories

Tidbits

• Java runs on .NET (IKVM)
• OpenOffice (Sun has added .NET Support, so it will “just work” with Mono)
• Mono has been split into two stacks to avoid patent issues:
  • Microsoft Compatibility Libraries: ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Winforms
  • Mono: Mozilla, MySQL, LDAP, Gnome#, Evolution#, iFolder, etc.
  • People who don’t want to deal with it won’t ship the Microsoft Compatibility Libraries

Roadmap

• Mono 1.0: June 2004, supports .NET 1.0 and 1.1, Core, ASP.NET, C# 1.0, etc.
• VM already supports generics, preview of generics to come.
• Mono 1.2: December 2004, adds C# 2.0, ASP.NET 2.0, .NET 1.2, XML 2.0
• Further out: Avalon, Indigo

Mono C# is fast

• Mono C# rebuilds itself in 2.5 seconds
• 50,000 lines of code
• Implements C# 1.0
• Self-hosting since January 2002

We also got a demo of the href="https://www.monodevelop.com/">MonoDevelop IDE, a great port
of href="https://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/">SharpDevelop to
Mono. It’s quite impressive–very nice intellisense support, nice
build support.

Update: Edd Dumbill has written up some more detailed coverage.

Feel free to post a talk back if you have updates, comments, clarification, etc.