jump to navigation

Google Ajax Search for Bloggers July 13, 2007: Posted in Search, Ajax, Blogs

Google has added new dimension to blog search: “Search your blog world”. The
new blogger search, which is in the draft stage, uses Google Ajax Search
powered by Linked Custom Search Engine. It searches your own blogs
content as well as anything you have linked to in your blog posts, including
link lists and blogrolls. The search results follows the CSS rules of the blog
itself.

This search widget can be configured in your blog’s Template | Page Elements
tab, in the “Add a Page Element” popup.

 

JBoss Portal 2.6 July 4, 2007: Posted in Portals

JBoss releases much awaited Portal 2.6 version. The new release bring in significant improvements in personalization, security, workflow, usability aspects along with integration with Google Gadgets. The new features of JBoss 2.6 portal includes (from Red Hat’s JBoss Releases Portal 2.6):

 Here is my take on new release: There has been a significant change in the product usability but I still feel it lags in front of its competitor open source product, Liferay. Though the drag and drop feature is implemented but its no where near what Liferay provides. Google Gadget integration has added much life to the portal which lags the number portlets available out-of-the-box. Pre-built LDAP integration is nice and JBoss jBPM is really capable to handle pretty complex workflows. Above all one thing that remains same from many versions is that it works only on JBoss Application server and this totally defeat Liferay’s SOA point of view (Service Oriented Liferay). 

Translations - Web 2.0 Extn? Or Web 3.0? June 13, 2007: Posted in Trends, Web 2.0

There is lot of talk about Web 2.0 all around with focus on making web as a platform, enhanced user experience etc. with DATA as the primary focus area. But one thing that is still missing in Web 2.0 is about translations – from one language to other. There is lot of data in different languages which might be useful for me, but due to language constraint I am not able to really utilize that. Google is making head-ups in this area as well where they recently added new languages to their blogger including Hindi. They also came up with the concept of file a search in one language and you specify the results language. I am sure soon Google’s blogger will give option where you type post in one language and it will give you option to translate post in other languages using automatic translators and your post will appear in different languages to different people based on their Geography settings. Is this going to be Web 3.0?
How CMS will adopt this?

Google Gears: Missing Open Source Community? June 6, 2007: Posted in Open Source, Trends

Few days back I wrote about making web applications offline, well Google again are way ahead of the crowd and they already came up with the same called Google Gears. It is an open source web browser extension that enables web applications to provide functionality while user is offline. Google basically talks about 3 main layers to achieve this

LocalServer - which caches and serves application resources like HTML, JS,CSS, images etc locally on the clients machine

Database - which provides browser-local relational data storage on user’s computer with domain based security

WorkerPool - which pools asynchronously in the background to contact online application

A pretty cool Beta release with few samples and open APIs. But I am really sad that Google Gear installer doesn’t work for people who are behind proxy. I even posted in the Google Gear group but can’t see any response. There are presently around 227 topics floating in that group and almost 55-60 of the topics are around installation problem ( search for install, installation, 80040800 etc.)

Most of developers are behind company proxy’s and due to such issues people are loosing interest even when its an interesting development. Well for open source, community is the main source for information,ideas etc. and Google is lagging in that.

JAX India 2007: Day 4: SOA and ESB for Enterprise Architecture June 1, 2007: Posted in Portals, Open Source, Trends, Conference, SOA

The day 4 was a surprise for me, as the number of attendees reduced many
folds. Well I went to attend the session “Leveraging SOA and ESB for
an Enterprisse Architecture - Bryan Cheung“. Looks like Bryan is a
big fan of coffee specially from Startbucks and he all the way of his
presentation used Startbucks as the example. He basically used the topic well
to showcase Liferay’s capabilities and even coined a new term called SOL
(Service Oriented Liferay) :). According to him, from SOA point of view
there are 3 important things with respect to service offered:

Specialization  -  Specialized in Coffee. Need not worry what is
happening inside to make worth coffee cup

Interface - Always the same interface, ask for a coffee at counter, pay the
amount and get the coffee

Reliability - Whether in US, Europe, India the taste is the same

And Liferay too does in the similar fashion, same services with almost any
Operating System, Application server and database combination.

Few other sessions are covered by Binil on his blog post JAX India 2007:
Day 4 report

Well in all JAX India, though looked promising with the
Buzzy catchy title, the overall feeling was that it didn’t meet what
was expected out if it. I was really surprised at the Oracle counter,
where I asked info about their new Web Center suite and the answer I got back
is to fill a feedback form and get the CDs which has all the information.
If that is the case, I am better of searching over Internet :)

Also, in terms of arrangement, there was a lot of confusion about which
session happening in which Hall. It was a complete mess and people were just
running around to catch up with the sessions. I was in Hall B for a session
and the next which I wanted to attend was in Hall A. So after session I sent
to Hall A to get a surprise that the session I want to attend has been shifted
to Hall B. The time I reached there, all the seats were full and there was
hardly any space to stand. A better organization is required.

Anyways Thanks SDA India for hosting such event and looking forward to a
better organized and more targeted sessions next time. A Big thanks to all the
speakers who cam all the way to share their experience and knowledge.

More reading at  Hits and Misses: JAX India 2007

JAX India 2007: Day 3 : Posted in Trends, Conference

The first two days really made me think if it is worth to travel all the way to Tata institute to attend sessions. Well I did not make it that day to JAX India 2007 but here are updates from Amit Agarwalla from Day 3. Happy Reading !!!!

JAX India 2007: Day 2: JSF, Java Architecture Management, Best Practices WS, Java IDEs May 30, 2007: Posted in Trends, Conference

The Day 2 of JAX India saw the start of 40 conference sessions spread over 3 days. Here is extract of the sessions that I attended.

Introduction to JSF for Struts Developers - Craig McClanahan

The session was targeted to cover an overview about Java Server Faces. The agenda includes:

Origin of Struts

Craig started with giving an overview of how Struts came into existence.
The main reasons was

In the Mean Time…

As the time went on, Standardization started taking up the market with lots of new Standards, like componenting for interoperatability, target for drag and drop etc.

JSF Key Concepts

Craig stretched on the key concept of Components which brought JSF in existence.

In all the session did touch upon the high level fundamentals of JSF but my expectations were different. I would have preferred a sandpit project like Hello World demo which would have given a better understanding. Anyways this is my thought.

The second session was an interesting presentation on IDEs future.
Java IDE(s) - Then, Now and Eventually - David Intersimone

The session was around 20 minutes but the content of the presentation was really good. Few key things from the presentation:

Future of IDEs

The next session that I attended was Increase Project Success with Java Architecture Management - Alexander Von Zizewitz.  The presentation was really cool !!! He depicted dragon as the Complex Java Project with a small man with sword and shield in his hand as us trying to overcome the dragon :) Here are few interesting points from his presentation:

Known project problems

And if we fall in the pitfall of the above problems, we start just making it work and then start the real problem like:

So what are the ways to control Java Projects that Dragon doesn’t rule the world:

So once your system is divided into horizontal layers and vertical slices, start mapping code to logical diagram on the following lines:

Once you are done with this, measure the overall coupling at system level, sub system level, package level etc. using Component Dependency technique.

5 Golden Rules to ensure technical Quality

 In all the presentation was interesting and provoke at looking more into SonarJ tool which Hello2omorrow has come up with to solve such issues.

Apart from these I attended Best practices for inter-operable Web Services - Thilo Frotscher, the details of the session are already covered by Amit in this blog.

In all the sessions are not too much impressive may be due to limited time allotted for each session. Looking forward to Day 3 at Jax India 2007.

JAX India 2007: Day 1: Web2.0? But I am Barely keeping up with Web 1.0 Right Now ! May 28, 2007: Posted in Ajax, Usability, Trends, Collaboration, Web 2.0

Its been an exciting day on the inaugural day of JAX India 2007. The day was
meant for workshops and I attended half a day workshop on
“Web 2.0? But I am Barely keeping up with Web 1.0 Right Now !”
by Craig R McClanahan. Here is extract from the session:

The session covered from history of web to what is Next Generation web (Web 2.0) and what we should do towards it. Here is extract from his presentation:

HISTORY OF WEB

He started with his experience of Web way back when he started in 1975. From Lonely computers, which were self-absorbed applications to telephone lines (part lines to kids line) which lead to evolution of Internet and standards like HTTP and HTML.

MAINSTREAM WEB APPLICATIONS TODAY

This section of the presentation covered about how the current web applications are. Few main highlighting points are:

NEXT GENERATION WEB DRIVERS

Craig stressed on using next generation web rather than Web 2.0 with emphasis on 4 key drivers:

Enhanced User Interfaces

The driving force is the limited usability of web applications compared to applications installed locally. Ajax and DHTML are the immediate solutions.

Lightweight Programming Models

Web as a Platform

The read/write web 

WHAT SHOULD WE DO

Craigs Top Ten Suggestion List

10 - Expose Data/Logic as services

9 - Incorporate External Content

8 - Seek QOS (Quality of Service) deals from Sources

7 - Give QOS Deals to users

6 - Adopt Agile Processes

5 - Test Driven Development

4 - Architect for Scalability

3 - Embrace Heterogeneity

2 - Reach out to Mobile Clients

1 - Enable User Provided Content

The session turned out to be good for users who do not have exposure to Web 2.0. The first 45 minutes where Craig covered History of web and existing applications was bit too extended and I was looking for more on Web 2.0. Let’s hope the other sessions lined up around Web 2.0 will be able to provide more insight.

Internationalization in a different way : Posted in Search, Content Management, Trends

Some days back Google launched a new feature on Google Translate, where search query is in one language and the results can be a from the web pages in other language.

From Google: How does this work?
1. Search for Dubai tours from English to Arabic.
2. We translate your query into “جولات دبي” and find Arabic web page results.
3. Finally, we translate the Arabic web page results back into English for you.

This will bring in a whole new experience in the Internet world. It gives an opportunity to explore all the hidden information which was impossible before due to language barriers. I will expand this article to how it will change in the CMS world.

Is Ajax making sites less reachable? May 17, 2007: Posted in Ajax, Usability, Trends, Web 2.0, SEO

We have been talking about Ajax and Web 2.0 technologies for sometime now. At one end Ajax becoming an asset from usability point of view but on the other hand it is making sites less search engine friendly. Search engines for now are not intelligent enough to make a server side request and retrieve the information to index. So it boils down to Usability Vs Search-ability? Which one to achieve?

What is the best way to achieve a balance between the two - making my site usable as well as search-able.

Here is one of the possible approach:

Step 1: To design your site without any Ajax. Javascript
Step 2: Then modify your website to include small Ajax, Java scripts components making sure that the content that gets hidden is available else where in the site which does not deploy Ajax

older posts »