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Microsoft alum Alex Hopmann writes today about creating XMLHTTP (which is the basis of “Ajax” for my less geeky readers). “XMLHTTP actually began its life out of the Exchange 2000 team. … That weekend I startup up Visual Studio and whipped up the first version of what would become XMLHTTP. The first verison (sic) didn’t have async support hooked up and was pretty crude, but it was enough to help Jim and Bob… .”

It’s an interesting read, both from a historical perspective interesting to those of us that pay rent based on work derived from it, and also to those interested in what makes a particular technology flourish.

Towards the end (it’s a long 2000-word piece), he shares this insight which I think it broadly-applicable:

“The lesson to take out of this thing is to appreciate the importance of shipping and having the patience to let something succeed. It feels like [people] measure [a new platform] by how many apps have adopted it on the launch day. That is just crazy and it doesn’t get the basics of how big a shift these sorts of things can be and how long it takes to move the mind-set, learning, and deployment of a big new platform.”

via

Interesting new this morning: Second Life (Viewer) in now an open source project. Though I’m not active in Second Life, I’m intrigued and think this development says good things about its future. Very interesting.

They only open-sourced the Viewer, but in many ways — almost by definition — they world/environment is already open-source. I guess the laws of physics for SL are not yet open, but that doesn’t bother me.

Releasing the source now is our next invitation to the world to help build this global space for communication, business, and entertainment. … [W]e welcome the inevitable with open arms.

Update: Marshall Kirkpatrick asks, in a paraphrase of WeBreakStuff, if the open-sourcing of the Viewer is akin to the early WWW days when “the early proliferation of browsers made the web much more usable.”

O’Reilly Radar > Second Life at Seminars on Long Term Thinking

Thursday evening, the founder and CEO of “Second Life,” Philip Rosedale, will explore some of the early lessons about long-term thinking (and everything else) to be gleaned from the emergent behaviors of massive multi-player world building…

“‘Second Life:’ What Do We Learn If We Digitize EVERYTHING?” Philip Rosedale, Cowell Theater, Fort Mason, San Francisco, 7pm, Thursday, November 30. The lecture starts promptly at 7:30pm. Admission is free (a $10 donation is welcome, not required).

I wouldn’t have guessed it, and most wouldn’t by looking at the trends, but Bambi Francisco at MarketWatch reported a few minutes ago on comScore numbers showing that of the 7.1BB vidoes streamed by 106MM unique people

“Yahoo! [is] the No. 2 most popular video site as measured by video streams. Yahoo ranks No. 1 as measured by unique streamers (similar to unique visitors), but barely beats out MySpace. YouTube ranks No. 3, having generated 649 million video streams in July. … MySpace’s figures do not include YouTube videos viewed on MySpace. The views are only of the site’s own videos viewed either on their property or embedded across the Web on blogs or on distribution partners. So, YouTube’s 649 million video streams count the videos viewed on YouTube as well as blogs that might have embedded a YouTube video.”

Yahoo also has the second-highest streams per streamer at 39.

YouTube streamed 79.9% of Yahoo!’s count, while Google came in 8th with just 7.4% of Yahoo!’s streams (and only 7.9 steams/streamer).

I have no problem admitting that I’ve watched tons of YouTube videos, and, while a much smaller number, I’ve watched many more on Google than Yahoo. I’ve never watched a MySpace video. YouTube’s player Just Works, and that makes all the difference. No matter what happens in the industry shakeout, I am personally grateful to them for making video a reality online.

I know, I know, you LOVE to go to work/school on a Friday. It’s your favorite day of the week and there’s nowhere you’d rather be than in your office/cube/classroom. That’s cool — I don’t judge — but, but, but next Friday (Sept 29th) you realllly should play hooky and sneak down to Yahoo for our first every public Hack Day and Developer Day. It’s gonna be quite the event, and I wouldn’t want you to miss it. Really, you should come.

Sold? Cool: learn more and request an invitation.

Developer Day, Friday from 9-5, is packed with 20 sessions across four tracks. They are not to be missed: Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of PHP will be giving a talk. So is Iain Lamb, (an Ajax/DHTML pioneer who co-founded Oddpost which evolved into the new Yahoo! Mail product). JavaScript guru Douglas Crockford will be dropping knowledge, as will many others. Web-celeb and Flickr’s chief software architect Cal Henderson will be speaking. The plenary is by none other than Yahoo!’s VP of Product Strategy, Bradley Horowitz, (a very rare opportunity to hear him speak [for free]). Most of the authors of the open-source YUI Library will be guilding hands-on sessions dedicated to many YUI components (I’ll be teaching a hands-on session about YUI’s three CSS components.

But that’s not even the cool stuff!

We’ve got top-tier entertainment lined up for Friday night, and while they won’t tell me who it is, Michale Arrington (who’s in the know, and MCing this event) writes:

The entertainment lined up for Friday night is going to be incredible, although a non disclosure agreement prohibits us from saying who it is. I can say with confidence, though, that everyone attending the event will be very, very happy they were there for Friday night’s party.

Then the REAL fun starts: 24 hour hackathon.

Be there! (Tons of press will be, so if you miss it you can read or hear about it the next day.) We’ve got people coming in from Australia and everywhere between here and there, so beg borrow and steal and get yourself here too (You MUST register in advance - security will be tight… for real.)

Drop me a line if you want more info or whatever. Tons of people have blogged about this, so instead of linking to ‘em all I’ll just point you to Technorati: http://technorati.com/search/hackday.org?sort=authority

How often do you get a real and important opportunity to stand up for what you believe in? If your answer is “not often enough”, then join me at the “Free Josh Wolf” party tonight at House of Shields in downtown San Francisco. (Event and location details on upcoming.org)

Jackson West summarizes it well:

Josh Wolf is a Bay Area journalist who was imprisoned for refusing to cooperate with the federal grand jury and turn over video footage that wouldn’t have even necessarily been relevant to their case.

Why does this matter to you? Because it means even journalist and citizen could potentially be legally compelled to aid in surveillance of political activity. Because journalists, artists and bloggers have the right to take private notes and recordings in order to cover events and craft stories. And because an attack on Josh is an attack on freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.

Josh needs help with his legal bills and rent. Booze and music will be on hand, you just need to show up and support Josh. It’s the patriotic thing to do.

And eddie has the whole back story.

Here are links (from eddie’s coverage) that you might visit:

• Legal Defense Fund
• Chronology of events leading up to Josh’s incarceration
• Video of Josh speaking about his case outside the courthouse
• Heated discussion on Scobleizer on the merits of this
• Josh’s own blog is being updated by his mom and has the latest news on his situation
• Free Josh Wolf blog has been setup
• Former NY Time’s reporter Judith Miller tried to visit Josh, but was denied (video)

See you tonight!