Posts filed under 'Miscellaneous'
Just wanted to share a quick note that I’ll be presenting a webinar tomorrow Thursday October 2nd where I’ll talk about hosting Alfresco in the clound and demonstrate an integration to Amazon S3 for unlimited content storage.
When: October 02 2008
Where: Online Webinar - 12pm EDT (GMT - 4)
Software
as a Service (SaaS) and cloud computing are some of the hottest trends
in technology today. Amazon has quickly come out as a top provider of
pay-as-you-go infrastructure services such as virtual computing, queue,
payment and storage services.
Learn how to extend Alfresco to take advantage of Amazon S3 and EC2 for unlimited storage and scalability.
This session covers:
- Amazon Web Services, specifically EC2 and S3
- A tour of the Alfresco Content Store.
- A look at a community project to integrate Alfresco to Amazon S3.
Register here
October 1st, 2008
This is a little off-topic, but I noticed that my Google Alerts search for “Alfresco Content Management” is now returning SPAM messages. It seems that spammers have now figured out a way to get fake posts stuffed with all types of keywords on Google Groups and other places get treated by Google as an “Alert” and get Google’s own infrastructure take care of delivering the message straight to users’ inboxes!
I applaud them for their ingenuity, but that doesn’t prevent me from wishing that all spammers, phishers and their ilk grow warts all over and be forced back to the depths of the abyss from which they came.
May 24th, 2008
As part of a “Built in 60” project, I recently developed a Google OneBox module for the Google Search Appliance using a simple Web Script and an XSL stylesheet. I’ll be posting the code within the next few weeks.
In the meantime, please enjoy the following screenshots:
March 19th, 2008
As some of you may know, we recently celebrated Alfresco’s Community Conference in San Jose, California and are ramping up for another one in Barcelona, Spain at the end of April. What you might not know is that we also held a more “intimate” three-hour technical session the night before. We kept this event deliberately small so as to ensure that every attendee could hear and be heard.
As part of this session, I introduced an Alfresco “developer challenge” I call “Built in 60″. The idea is to conceive and implement simple Alfresco extensions in roughly an hour (not a hard limit, but rather a guideline to limit scope). The response by my team and the attendees was quite encouraging.
As part of this initiative, my fellow Alfresco colleagues implemented a few “Built in 60″ projects including:
- Web Script-based Wiki
- GroovyBean-based Root Scoped Objects for JavaScript
- iPhone UI for Alfresco
- Workflow Inspector
- Apple Dashboard Gadget
We’ll be posting code and implementation details in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, checkout the following presentation which outlines these projects:
March 19th, 2008
I’ve been giving some thought to different technologies and trends that I feel will experience tremendous growth or otherwise positively impact web development during the course of 2008. Naturally, these opinions are my own and not those of my employer. Now, in no particular order, I list some of my top picks:
- Dynamic/Scripting Languages for Java: Particularly Groovy, JRuby, and Rhino (JavaScript). Developers are looking to become more efficient/agile and traditional compiled languages (even Java) tend to get in the way of productivity.
- Server-side JavaScript/ECMAscript: Alfresco uses it for Web Scripts, so does Aptana Jaxer and WSO2’s Mashup Server… A developer at Google even wrote Rhino (JavaScript) on Rails! Expect more of this in ‘08.
- Cloud Computing: Especially from Amazon (EC2, S3, SimpleDB, SQS, and FPS). Though there are some competitors out there with comparable services, Amazon is just about the only place where you can get virtually everything under one roof. Besides, who doesn’t have an Amazon account already? The only thing that would make Amazon AWS better would be a powerful “Control Center” from where I can manage all aspects of my grid environment… Perhaps Enomalism will help?
- Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and Development Tools: In particular Aptana, Adobe AIR, Adobe Flex & Flex Builder, OpenLaszlo, Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and JavaScript libraries (extJS, jquery, etc.) among many other related tools.
Here are some things that I’m excited about but will probably need a little more time to mature. Perhaps by the end of the year or early 2009 we should see some interesting developments from:
- BungeeConnect: While SalesForce dominates the Software as a Service market, Bungee Labs may be able to offer synergistic and perhaps competitive services along with a slick web-based IDE. I’ve been toying with it a bit, and feel it needs a little more baking time in the oven. Keep a lookout for Kapow Technologies and other vendors in this field.
- Grails: Groovy’s answer to Ruby on Rails. It recently became a 1.0 product (which means “Beta” in my book). Now that there’s a startup behind it (read: venture capital), I hope to see rapid improvements and a stronger community form behind it. But it’s probably not going to really make it big until late ‘08 at the earliest. I am a bit concerned about G2One’s business model… Too early to tell.
Finally, here are some things I really dislike:
- JSR 170 (JCR): Many content management vendors (including us) have a JCR-compliant content repository but the spec has lots of failings that its successor will be addressing at least in part. Regardless, it’s biggest Achiles heel is that it’s strictly Java-only… This is a non-starter in my book. In this world of web services (REST, SOAP, AJAX, etc.), we need something that’s cross platform and easy to invoke. JCR ain’t it.
- JavaServer Faces: Ugh! Kill me now! I can’t think of any Java web framework that gets more in the developers’ way than JSF. Many will disagree, but IMHO, it’s totally unproductive.
- Facebook: I got Facebook-fatigue within 3 minutes of signing up… Now, if we could take some of the core concepts and bring them behind the corporate firewall… Project Networks… Oh, wait! I’m talking about Alfresco 3.0!
So… That’s what I think…
What are your thoughts?
February 7th, 2008
Jeff Potts provides us another bit of Alfresco goodness, this time in the form of a Web Scripts tutorial!
Read all about it at:
http://ecmarchitect.com/archives/2007/10/25/777
October 25th, 2007
Here’s the first of four unedited recordings from the Alfresco + Liferay Meetup held on July 18th. In this recording David Caruana and I discuss Alfresco Web Scripts. You can access the slides from this presentation from http://web.meetup.com/44/files.
September 12th, 2007
I decided to have a little fun with my new toy.
So here’s the Alfresco Web Client as seen through an iPhone…
July 1st, 2007
Just a quick note to let readers know that in an effort to encourage communication with the community and to help people make new connections, I’ve created two channels on Jaiku.com:
For those of you wondering what this is about, think of Jaiku as a mini-blog that adds the notion of channels where multiple people can post messages, thoughts, ideas, stories, links, etc. in very short form (140 characters).
Jaiku supports RSS feeds and there are a variety of “widgets” and desktop tools for posting and reading Jaiku posts.
On a more personal note, I’ve revived my personal blog and have started a personal Jaiku as well. In both I’ll discuss topics that are less Alfresco-centric and of more general interest to me and potential readers. Please join me there!
___________________
Alfresco + Liferay: West Coast Community Meetup
Join us on July 18th, 2007 in Ontario, California for our first CMS and Portal community event. Learn more at: http://alfrescoliferay.osmeet.com
June 25th, 2007
I’ve been using Aptana and RadRails for my AJAX and Ruby on Rails development for quite some time. I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that Aptana had acquired RadRails and has integrated it into their Eclipse-based IDE thereby making Aptana about the only true independent Web 2.0 IDE.
Something that’s even more interesting is that Aptana recently announced support for Adobe’s AIR (formerly known as Apollo), which makes me wonder… Will Adobe acquire Aptana?
It seems a reasonable prediction to make. I outline a few of the reasons why such an acquisition would make sense:
- Commercial Viability: Aptana is open source and I’m not sure the marketplace would pay for an otherwise free IDE. Beyond JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA and Code Gear from Borland , I just don’t see another independent for-pay IDE especially when it’s already release as free open source. Aptana hasn’t really announced a business model, so I’m left to guess that they could charge for support or perhaps for “premium features”. Neither of those approaches sound viable.
- Technical Fit: Adobe’s Flex Builder, though a commercial product, is actually an Eclipse-based IDE. Integrating Aptana would be a breeze.
- Strategic Fit: Adobe is most certainly making its mark as a Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform and tools provider. Additionally Adobe Flex is on its way to being released as open source and Adobe AIR/Apollo combines Flash and more “traditional” AJAX technologies to serve as a RIA runtime engine. Adobe only lacks a tool that combines AJAX and Flex to form a compelling solution for developers. Aptana would fill that gap nicely while accelerating Adobe’s time-to-market.
Anyone agree? Disagree? Please share your thoughts.
June 15th, 2007
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