Lino Tadros, CEO of Falafel Software, recently participated in an SD Times interview, see the full text here. The interview focuses on the ever increasing pace of software and component evolution, and how component vendors like Telerik and software consultants like Falafel can harness that to bring value to their customers.

Ok, it looks good, hey it is black :) fancy touches and demos well in Steve Jobs’ hands.  But do I want one of these?

The answer is NO, for so many reasons.  I have to say I am disappointed.  I expected Apple to continue being on a roll and bring something that will change the Tablet market forever after the failure of Microsoft and others before it in the pursuit of consumer happiness :)

• No camera? What were you thinking?  I was expecting TWO of them in the front and the back.
• No multitasking? Really? this is not a phone, so that is not ok.
• Is this the Kindle killer, NO WAY, it is much better and easier on the eye to read on the Kindle.  Remember, FANCY and COLORS does not mean better.
• AT&T, really??? AGAIN???  you never learned from the IPhone deal that AT&T was your weakest link.
• “Excellent for surfing the web” Really? with no Flash or Silverlight support?  Which web are you surfing?
• No USB?  Really??? COMMMMEEEE ONNNN
• No HDMI or any other video output?  COMMEEEE ONNNN
• No 16:9 aspect ratio for watching movies?

This device is the “most important device of Steve Jobs’ career” as he said on stage two days ago in San Francisco while announcing the device.  No Steve, it is not, you have done very well, don’t sell yourself cheap with a statement like that.

The impressive part about the IPAD really is that Monotouch within 24 hours released an update to their product that will allow you to target the IPAD while continuing to build applications in C#.  I guess the good thing is that the binary format for apps is the same as IPhone while including some new namespaces for the new UI dimensions and layouts.  Kudos to the Monotouch team!

Is it just me or you agree with my opinion? Let me know here by posting a comment

I came across an interesting technique earlier this week. Did you know that you can return an anonymous type from a method and still have strongly typed access to its members? I got this technique from Tomas Petricek’s blog. Here is a quick example of how it works; for details of why it works please see the original article.

        private static object ReturnAnon()
        {
            return new { FirstName = "Captain", MiddleName = "Jack", LastName = "Sparrow" };
        }

        private static T Cast<T>(object o, T type)
        {
            return (T)o;
        }

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var anon = Cast(ReturnAnon(), new { FirstName = "", MiddleName = "", LastName = "" });
            Console.WriteLine(String.Format("FirstName: {0}", anon.FirstName));
            Console.WriteLine(String.Format("MiddleName: {0}", anon.MiddleName));
            Console.WriteLine(String.Format("LastName: {0}", anon.LastName));
            Console.ReadLine();
        }

Of course, just because you can return an anonymous type doesn’t mean that you should. As a general rule, I would say that if you are using the method’s return value in only one place, then it is OK to use this technique. However, the moment that the method is used from a second place, that anonymous type should be explicitly declared instead.

This is a very important placement. The Global 100 is Red Herring’s roll of the top 100 privately held global tech companies; sort of "the Fortune 500 list but for tech", according to Stephen Forte's blog. Our industry looks to this list to see who the next mover and shakers are.

Finalists are selected from the regional recipients or finalists of the Red Herring 100 awards in 2007, 2008, or 2009 from Asia, Europe, and North America. The award is based on their technological innovation, management strength, market size, investor record, customer acquisition, and financial health.

Congratulations Telerik!

FALAFEL is proud to serve as Telerik's consulting and training arm.

For very interesting info on Telerik, see Stephen's blog at: http://www.stephenforte.net/PermaLink,guid,9f76e8ed-67fe-4730-8754-f2144c0cb546.aspx

Falafel Software is offering an online webinar for Telerik’s Sitefinity CMS on January 11-12 from 9AM to 12PM PST. The cost is $399/person, click here to register.

Learn the Telerik Sitefinity Content Management System from the ground up. This online, instructor-led course provides students with knowledge and skills to develop a viable web site in two days (4 hour sessions each day). The course features real-world based training on Sitefinity installation and deployment, features and concepts, the Sitefinity Workspace, web site projects, page templates, page themes, web pages, controls, file manager, modules, services, users/roles/permissions, multilingual content management, caching, medium trust support, the project database, working with the application web.config file and configuring IIS. Learn troubleshooting techniques, tips and tricks.

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