Saw an interesting article today on the future of Java and .NET given the impact of AJAX in an increasingly web enabled world.

As I am a java programmer, and now getting more involved in .net work, this got me thinking. What is the role of java and .net now? Is there a need for non web based business solutions? With business integration engines able to handle moving data around internally within an organisation and the meteoric rise of AJAX in the web environment the areas where traditional Object Orientated languages can prove useful are diminishing. Personally I am not a fan of rich client interfaces in a business environment preferring to keep the user interface simple and place as much of the business logic on the server side. Keep the data flying back and forth across the network simple and reduce the work required on the client machine is where I position myself.

Having said this I do enjoy working with AJAX sites and experimenting with what it can do, although not as far down this route as I would like to be. At the point where it becomes more invasive on a business side I hope I am ready to make the change to developing AJAX solutions, and would enjoy the experience.

I see this one popped up on Techtrend a few days ago. From what I see looks very cool, and secure.

For more information on the security side of it check out Steve Gibson’s podcast on Hamachi and how it is helping close up the holes in vpn’s.

Pandora

Heard about this one a couple of days ago and haven’t stopped listening since. The mixes seem to be reasonably good and being able to add new stations at the click of a button allows for changing moods very easily.

Tried it on my laptop and things didn’t go so good so I think this may be one to run on a machine you’re not using at the time. Listening to a mix based around Orbital at the moment and the mix is good, unfortunately one based around the Beastie Boys was not so good.

Flock Developer Preview is now available.Our code couldn’t wait any longer to be free!But! This preview ain’t for the faint of heart! If you’re the bleeding-edge type and don’t mind a few scrapes and busted knees from time to time, feel free to give it a whirl.We’ve got interesting ideas in this thing. We want to know what we’ve done right how we could improve. And we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us!So if a bucket of source code and developer binaries sound enticing, head over to our Developer page now.

Flock

Been trying this the last few days and fits very nicely with blogging and online bookmarking. I like the fact that it is clean, crisp, and allows me to tag favourites. Still getting used to the new way of handling favourites with ‘collections’ and ‘tags’ and how they all work together. Nice little feature is the collections bar just above the viewing pane, a drop down list on the right lists the collections and choosing one will change the toolbar to the options within that collection.

It’s now available for download so go check it out….