Barney's Rubble
Reddevnews.com!
Doug welcomes the newest member of the Redmond publication family, <i>Redmond
Developer News</i>.
Half of my readers say I'm too tough on Microsoft, while the other half complain that I'm Bill Gate's puppet. Then there's my mother who thinks I'm perfect.
My mother and the Microsoft fans are going to love this column as I'm going to say nothing but nice things.
Last month I neglected to mention the two-year anniversary of Redmond
magazine. Times have never been better. And last July was the first birthday
for Redmond Channel Partner magazine aimed at VARs, systems integrators
and resellers.This month we are launching our third magazine in 25 months,
Redmond Developer News, aimed at corporate development managers.
This new book has me more excited than Richard Simmons shopping for gym shorts. Microsoft is doing some rather remarkable work to support software development that, when added together, represents a transformation, even a revolution, in the world of Microsoft software.
Let's start with Vista. This OS offers up a dramatic new interface that could have come from Steve Jobs' sketchbook. At some point it will gain an advanced file system that will handle multiple data types with ease and organize your work in a million different ways—so you can actually find what you're looking for, for once!
Office 2007 pushes the UI envelope further, finally getting rid of the glut of menus and options that serve mainly to confuse, replacing them with context-sensitive ribbons of options.
Developers have an abundance of new tools. Office itself is becoming a full-fledged development environment—build an app this way and your users won't be saddled with hours and hours of training.
Web services is an area that Microsoft is 100 percent serious about, and that
means Redmond is there to help you with your Web apps. .NET is now benefiting from years of hard Microsoft work, and it looks like
.NET 3.0 could be the charm. While the Java community is no slouch, I'm not
sure if it has the same cohesive structure, clear game plan and sense of leadership
that is driving the .NET ship.
And Microsoft is finally getting serious about Service-Oriented Architectures
(SOA), a term you could barely get the company to utter a year ago.
Some of you might be asking why we keep launching print publications. Aren't blogs, RSS and the Web all shoveling dirt on the graves of magazines? Not if you launch the right magazine the right way. And as much as our readers might love our newsletters and Web sites, there's nothing like sitting down with a cup of coffee (Irish or otherwise) and cracking open your favorite magazine.
So check out Reddevnews.com and be sure to tell us what you think -- I'm at
[email protected]!
About the Author
Doug Barney is editor in chief of Redmond magazine and the VP, editorial director of Redmond Media Group.