Have you noticed the change in Microsoft's messaging recently? There have been several article similar to this one:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/06/25/microsoft-by-the-numbers.aspx

They all have the same tone. "We make more $ than x so it doesn't matter if x is getting good press." 

I'm not predicting the end of Microsoft because with that much cash and a monopoly position in desktop operating systems they will be around for a long time to come. What I am predicting is that Microsoft has now officially become IBM. When Microsoft was young they vowed to fight against 'Big Blue' and their corporate values of profits over innovation. 

The press from Microsoft recently is not about how happy their customers are, how innovative their products are or how they've driven prices down for consumers like Walmart proclaims. Instead, the press is self serving and arrogant. It appears that the posting of major financial numbers is aimed more at keeping employees from jumping ship to Google, Apple or their own web startups.

Yet, Microsoft's stock is flat. As flat as it has been since Gates handed the helm over to Ballmer. With record financial numbers you'd expect Wall Street to boost stock prices every quarter. Why isn't that happening? 

I suspect that analysts on Wall Street see the same thing that I do. Microsoft isn't exciting to developers. Developers were the driving focus for Gates and despite Ballmer's 'Developers, Developers, Developers' chant he doesn't back it up with actions. Without developer support Microsoft will wither into a corporate safe option and eventually transition from a software company to a services company like IBM.

The sad part is that Microsoft has really smart people and has a really great development stack with .NET. I love working with .NET but the pressure from SPLA licensing for Windows Server products, increased partner program requirements and lack of web innovation is forcing me to consider alternatives.

To me, it looks like they've run their course. They have the monopoly and there is no where else to grow without squeezing every nickle and dime out of their customers and developers.  They aren't executing in Mobile, they aren't innovating on the web and desktops are going to become a smaller market faster than many people think. Unless Ballmer retires and a software guy (Maybe Ray Ozzie) steps up to steer things in the right direction, Microsoft will soon be 'Big Blue 2.'

How long have you been using ASP.NET? Have you ever tried a database other than SQL server? Why is Apache the most popular web server in the world and you've never installed it?

Challenge yourself to try something outside the Microsoft ecosystem. You don't have to change but trying something else will give you perspective. There is a story that a Lotus sales rep was giving a product demo in the 90s and when he couldn't find a setting in the software a Microsoft sales rep stepped up and showed him where to find the option. The Microsoft rep had studied the competition so he could make informed arguments about why his product was better. Developers should do the same. Try Rails. Try PHP. Try Git. 

Check our Rob Conery's recent presentation for inspiration:

http://66.29.219.11/conery_ndc_talk.mp4

I would like to take a moment and thank Microsoft for driving away developers. The .NET framework is an awesome application stack, ASP.NET was incredible when it first came out and ease of administration on SQL Server is near perfect. But like all good technology from Microsoft, it is quickly ruined by MBAs hoping to squeeze out another record-breaking quarter on Wall Street. 

ASP.NET has been responsible for bringing more new developers to Microsoft than any other recent product. Sharepoint looks like it's on fire too. What do these products have in common? They are web based applications. Every major company that runs Microsoft has Office and Windows licenses. They aren't hiring millions of new employees for whom they need to purchase new licenses. But, those same companies and millions of smaller ones are creating thousands of new web sites every day. Existing web sites are growing too, and that means more web servers running Windows.

Apache is the world's most popular web server. Unlike desktop operating systems where Microsoft holds a 90%+ monopoly, they should be fighting for market share in servers. But they aren't. Instead they are attempting to squeeze every last nickle and dime out of their web developers through SPLA licensing. This ingeniuous program forces anyone running an IIS web site to pay Microsoft every month for each processor or user that access the site. No exception. The EULA for Windows Server (emphasis on the SERVER part) does not actually allow you to run a server except on an internal network. External servers are subject to SPLA licensing. Let me repeat that. You CAN NOT purchase a copy of Windows Server for a one time fee and run a web application on it. 

I'm getting very tired of getting the monthly shakedown from Don Balmer. 

So Thanks Microsoft! Instead of reasonable licensing that would encourage adoption of your web server platform you're driving developers away. I really like .NET but I'm not sure I like it enough to deal with your MBA thugs. 

StripesAndPolkaDots.com just launched a site redesign on BV Commerce 5 with Global Web Solutions (GlobalWeb.net) and WebWorxInc.com in Richmond, VA. Stripes & Polka Dots specializes in unique gifts, necessities and “just gotta haves.”

If you’re looking for Personalized Bmbroidered Gift Items, Blankets, Burp Cloths & Bibs, Sippy Cups, Snack Cups, Bow Holders, Wall Letters, Koozies, Travel Tumblers,
Personalized Stationery, Badge Reels, Laptop Sleeves, Checkbook Covers, Key Fobs, Luggage Tags, Headbands, and much, much more visit StripesAndPolkaDots.com today.

Recently, a BV Commerce customer contacted me and asked me to “fix” the broken redirects in BV Commerce. Their SEO expert system was reporting that 302 redirects were used in BV Commerce and that this was “very bad for SEO and everyone knows it.”

You may have heard the term “301 redirect” and that it is a good thing for search engine optimization. Here’s a little primer on 301 vs. 302 redirects as it pertains to shopping carts and SEO.

The SEO system was walking through every page in the client’s web site and when it found a link to the shopper’s order history it encountered a 302 redirect to the login page. This is the way the software should work but it caused the SEO report to display a warning that 302 redirects are not good for SEO.

When a web browser requests a page the server return a Header and most of the time some HTML to render. Part of the header is a response code. This is a code number that tells the browser how to respond. For example, you may have heard of a “404” error which is the HTML response code for “Missing Object” meaning that the server can’t locate the requested object. If you mistype the name of a web page you may get a “404” error.

“301” or “302” is another response code and they both tell the browser that the requested resource has moved to another location. The big difference is that a “301” code tells the browser that the resource has moved permanently and the “302” code tells the browser that the resource has moved temporarily.

Google and other search engines send out “bots” which are really just web browsers to look at every page in your web site. So, search engines see “301”,”302” and “404” response codes just like any other web browser.

Let’s say that create a page called “LatestNews.html” on your site. Google comes by and indexes the page making a link to “LatestNews.html” in their database. Next month, you rename the page to “OlderNews.html” Google comes back later looking for “LatestNews.html” but it’s gone. Your server may be smart enough to send a “301” redirect which let’s Google know they need to update their database to “OlderNews.html” instead of “LatestNews.html”. However, if your server sends a “302” response. The next time Google comes back they will try “LatestNews.html” again because the “302” code is a temporary redirect.

SEO companies advise clients to always use “301” redirects so that search engines reflect the current names of the pages in your site.

In the case of the BV Commerce customer above, the “302” redirects they were seeing came from the Login.aspx page of the site. When the search engine tool walked through the site it tried to access the order history section. Since the tool was not logged in as a customer, BV Commerce sent them to the login page with a 302 redirect. A 301 redirect would have told the tool that MyAccount_Orders.aspx does not exist any more and is instead called Login.aspx. This is not what you want recorded in a search engine database.

301 = the page/image/resource has moved permanently to a new location

302 = the page/image/resource has moved temporarily to a new location

It's been a while since my last blog post. Things have been very busy at BV Software and I'm excited about what we have planned for 2010.

•  BV Commerce 5.7 is currently finishing PCI compliance testing. I had hoped it would be ready before the end of the year but it will most likely be January before everything is officially certified. This is a free service update for anyone with the maintenance plan.
•  BV Commerce 6 is nearing its first beta version and I'm excited to be able to start to release some details. The entire core source code has been ported to C# and all future development will be in C#. That probably doesn't mean much to merchants but developers will want to be prepared. One of the main reasons for this is that c# is rapidly becoming the preferred .net language (other than dynamic languages like f#). The second reason is that Express versions of Visual Studio are single language only and when we standardize on C#, developers will be able to compile all projects using the free software.
• Originally, BV Commerce 6 was using ASP.NET MVC for the store pages but we kept webforms pages around. As development has progressed, webforms 4.0 is proving to be just as effective for most pages and much faster to work with since BV Commerce 5 is based on webforms and we have less to rewrite/test. There may be some MVC pages in BV Commerce 6 but if you're used to working with BV Commerce 5 you won't have to learn a whole new development system.
• BV Commerce 6 is on track for a spring 2010 release. It will be a free upgrade for all maintenance plan customers. 
• I'm not quite ready to release feature changes for BV Commerce 6 but the admin pages are getting streamlined and there are some nice new search features for the store side.
• The BV Commerce user conference planned for early 2010 has been postponed. The economic environment has made it difficult for many people to get travel budgets and I'm looking into the possibility of a webinar/virtual conference or scheduling an in-person conference for later in 2010 as the financial world improves.

Take a look at this screenshot for an Apple rumors web site. The article is about a new Apple computer mouse but the ad is for Disney. Clearly the ad placement service just saw “Mouse” as the primary keyword on the page and figured “Mickey Mouse” would be a good ad.

It looks like the ad came from fmpub.net (Federated Media Publishing). Maybe they should categorize their ad placement web sites so that AppleInsider.com doesn’t get travel ads.

Update: Just to be fair the new Apple mouse is called "Magic Mouse" and the ad service might be keyed to "Magic Kingdom" and "Mouse" but they still should realize that an Apple Computer rumors sight isn't talking about Disney.

Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2010 was released this week and I noticed a change in font rendering.

VS2010 uses WPF for the presentation layer which brings a lot of nice improvements. Better window redrawing, multi-monitor support, and accelerated graphics but it also introduces a significant change in how fonts are drawn on the screen. WPF uses a separate rendering engine to draw glyphs. This allows for some great transform effects, scaling, etc.

Here is a comparison of the same code block with my default color scheme in VS2008 and VS2010:

VS 2008

VS2010

When you compare the images you can see that VS2010 renders Consolas 14pt much bolder than VS2008. To me the text seems “blurry” and harder to read than in 2008. That’s a big deal if you spend hours at a time working with text.

I also noticed that the line height is slightly larger in VS2010. This means that I’m getting a few less lines on screen than before. That can also be a big deal for productivity.

It looks like Microsoft needs to make some WPF changes or I need to find a new font that is optimized for code work in VS2010. The ironic part is that Microsoft created the consolas font specifically for working on code in Microsoft tools!

As part of our PCI upgrades, BV Commerce 5.7 will include an enhanced logging page. We’ve changed the name from “Event Log” to “Audit Log” to better reflect the functionality. You can no longer clear out entries in the log until they are at least 1 year old. This is part of the PCI spec and allows administrators to audit the events of their site.

Also, we’ve made it easy to filter events by category. If you just want to see “user” related events you can filter with a single click. The “BV Internal” filter is where we put application exceptions that aren’t related to your normal store operations. This change should also help keep the audit log uncluttered with programming details that most merchants will ignore.

Rumors are that the long awaited Apple Tablet will see the light of day next year. Apple has been contacting various print media about distributing their content via iTunes. Steve Jobs is probably trying to lock up the ebook market just like he did with music. According to rumors the big push is for content providers to add interactivity and video to their static print content. This is something that Kindle and other ebook readers can't handle right now.

Other than handing control of publishing for another industry over to Apple I can see a big problem. You can already have interactive content and video with print. It's called the World Wide Web. It's a special place where anyone can publish text to a thing called a "web page" and if they are so inclined can add video or interactive features.

If interactivity is the only reason to buy an Apple table I'll be amazed by Steve Jobs' ability to sell people something they already have. I suspect that print content will just be a small part of the tablet and the App Store will be the big reason people will consider it.