Today I read on the VistaDB blog that their database engine will run on Silverlight. I'm not sure if I want to put a complete database engine in Silverlight applications. Do I have to put the database files into IsolatedStorage or will it be only in-memory?

"OK, great you have this Silverlight application, how are you going to store the data? That’s right, using VistaDB! Since we are 100% managed we can live inside the Silverlight runtime and store the data for you. I think this is where the power of VistaDB being 100% managed is really going to start showing. You simply cannot embed any other type of database into Silverlight. Unless they are written in C#, and are 100% typesafe they cannot run in Silverlight. You cannot call COM interop, you cannot use a Delphi app with a managed wrapper. It must be 100% dot net."

I hope to have some time to look at VistaDB during the weekend. 100% .NET does not mean that everything that is written in C# is running in Silverlight automatically. Silverlight has only a subset of the .NET Framework included to have smaller plugin download size. So I'm more anxious to see it running in a Silverlight Web application.

Update 1: I got a message from VistaDB that it is not yet available, but I will get some bits and bytes next to test it.

Update 2: Here is the answer I got from Jason: "We already work with the CF, so we know how to scale back API's already. And yes, we work with isolated storage, and in memory databases today already (and we support partially trusted environments). So we feel there will be very little changes required to support Silverlight. I actually got a note from a MS employee telling me that they had us working with some tweaks internally to test Silverlight already. So that is what got me fired up to make it work out of the box so to speak. He told me that VistaDB under Silverlight would be a big success story for the framework and he wants to give us whatever resources we need to make that happen."

Maybe you have already heared about Google Gears. It is a small plugin that can act as a server to cache and serve application resources i.e. HTML, JavaScript or images. Another features is the database which is accessible like SQLLite database system. You can create and access tables with common SQL commands directly in JavaScript:

var db = google.gears.factory.create('beta.database', '1.0');

var rs = db.execute('SELECT recipe.rowid FROM recipe, recipe_aux ' +
                    ' WHERE recipe.rowid = recipe_aux.rowid AND ' +
' recipe_aux.rating > ? AND recipe MATCH ?',
                    [3, 'cheese']);

while (rs.isValidRow()) {
    console.log(rs.fieldName(0) + " == " + rs.field(0));
    rs.next();
}

rs.close();

I found an example where the Google Gears database is used from Silverlight, so this is working, too.

Time to jump ship?

AV technology is gradually dying and being replaced by far more effective IT security technology based on whitelisting.…

The latest antivirus report from AV-Comparatives.org rates a number of popular programs and test how well they do with heuristic scanning against viruses that haven't been identified yet. The results are not great for Microsoft's OneCare.

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This week the winners of the 11th annual Webby Awards, billed nowadays as the "Oscars of the Internet", were announced at a ceremony in New York. Much of the publicity was over the fact that David Bowie was there (Prince attended last year). But other than that, what were the highlights of the Webbys? In this post we'll review the winners list, and in particular the web 2.0 sites.

All up, there were nearly 70 categories. In the categories focused on web technology and social media, the clear winners were Flickr, LinkedIn and last.fm. Flickr picked up 3 awards (5 including two Peoples Choice ones), for Best Practices, Best Visual Design - Function, and Community. LinkedIn grabbed 2 awards, for Services and Social Networking. And last.fm won the Music category, plus was voted Peoples Choice for Best Practices.

Flickr accepting one of three Webby awards

Web 2.0 highlights

Flickr won the Best Practices award, and last.fm got the Peoples Choice award for the same category. Two Yahoo! properties were nominated here (Flickr and del.icio.us).

Flickr did very well out of the 11th Webbys, also taking the 'Best Visual Design - Function' award - beating Gucci.com in that category! - and best 'Community' site. They also got Peoples Choice in those last two. Thoroughly deserved! Indeed Flickr's attitude to community etc can be best summed up in a little thing they did this week, replacing the 'gamma' label on their logo with 'loves you' (see image to right). I think this may be something to do with a Flickr marriage that occurred last week, where two people met on Flickr and eventually married. It's the little people-focused things that Flickr does so well, so I'm pleased the Webbys recognized this.

LinkedIn won for 'Services' and 'Social Networking'. Also great to see that innovative online calendar company 30 Boxes was nominated for 'Services'. Facebook was Peoples Choice winner in Social Networking (no sign of MySpace!).

Last.fm took out the 'Music' category (where it was also Peoples Choice). Interestingly, Pandora didn't even make the nominees.

Other highlights...

• The winner of the best Business Blog was DealBook, a NY Times property. PaidContent and TechDirt, two of my regular reads, were nominated. Now, I have to admit I don't know a lot about DealBook - but here is a category where a hard-working and innovative blog could've been honoured over a big media property...
• guardian unlimited took the award for 'Newspapers', beating out NY Times (which was Peoples Choice).
• NPR podcasts won for Best Podcasts.
• Yahoo's Kevin Sites won for news/documentary/public service.
• The 'Broadband' award went to blip.tv.
• Yelp took out the Guides/Ratings/Reviews category, ahead of CNET and others.
• Nike Women took out the 'Retail' award, but interesting to see that CafePress got the Peoples Choice award in this category. TheFind was also nominated, which R/WW has covered before.
• A wiki site won for 'Travel' - Wikitravel. There is a lot of innovation happening in the travel sector, because Kayak.com and TripAdvisor are also very impressive offerings.
• Zopa won the Banking/Bill Paying category. It is an innovative P2P app that is changing the way loans are done - check out R/WW's coverage.
• Ask Mobile won the 'Mobile - listings and updates' award, ahead of Yahoo (Google and Microsoft weren't even nominated).

Two Webby Lifetime Achievement awards were given - to Bowie (whose website has always rocked) and to eBay. YouTube's golden run continues - YouTube Co-Founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley were named 'Webby Person of the Year'.

What have we missed? And what did you think of the winners list this year? I thought it was great that Flickr, LinkedIn and last.fm were honoured, but I felt that some of the other categories were not well represented with innovative web sites - e.g. some of the blog choices were too conservative and many of my favorite blogs weren't there. Tell us what you thought...

Pics: cameron and Amazin' Jane