March 30, 2007

Google Notebook gets a new UI

Google keeps improving their product! The new update is to Google notebook and there is lot of changes to the UI part. Google team have also added some new features to it like sort, sections for the existing notebooks and the introduction of multiple languages.
But this sort feature is just a small part. You can combine note of a notebook into sections and name these sections. These sections are highlighted with a different color and you can easy add notes to the section by simple drag and drop. But that's not all, you can also export the entire notebook to Google Docs!!! Another notable update is the "Note this" option in the pop-up menu when you right click on a web page. And finally for those who use the FF and IE plugins, they too will experience the new user interface!

So which service of Google is next for update? I hope it is Calendar, because for some time, they haven't added new features to it. We will have to wait and see what Google brings out.

March 29, 2007

What is Adobe targeting?

Adobe released alpha version of Apollo (a cross-OS runtime) on 19th March. Since I was keeping close watch on Adobe site, I downloaded Apollo and started playing with it. Both Flex and Apollo have brought great excitement to be because of their UI, easy to work with and FDS (Flex Data Service). So with these new products what was Adobe's long term goals? Are they looking at capturing web from java and ajax?

What I thought was, yes Adobe will steal a big share from ajax in near future. But I got a new vision of what Adobe was targeting today when I was looking for example applications in the Adobe labs. "Adobe LiveCycle Data Services 2.5" is what caught my attention! LiveCycle Data Services 2.5 is the next generation of Flex Data Services. On reading the first paragraph, I first action was to learn more about LiveCycle a server-based software for enterprise automation. So now you can guess what's on Adobe's mind and why they are changing FDS to LCDS!

The main idea is to integrate the Adobe products like LiveCycle, ColdFusion, Breeze and obviously Flex/Apollo to build a enterpise solution set that will help in business process management(BPM) to content management and finally compete with existing technologies like Documentum (java based), SharePoint (Microsoft .Net based), Lotus (from IBM). The major advantage of Flex and Apollo is its interface design and their cross-OS runtime. The sucess of Flex and Apollo is very important for Adobe to compete in the market and take a big bite! But its going to be a tough war because Apollo is going to have security issues due to the FileSystem APIs and how well the developer community is going to accept it. Another mater of concern is Adobe is a money making company. Every product is price tagged and that will effect the view of any developer which Adobe is eying. S0 will Adobe succeed in the new leap? I am sure that they have pumped in lot of money for Apollo. Will it be a sucess and turn other pressure other runtimes like java and .net? Time will tell about this but I am already into studying the new technology!


March 28, 2007

Did someone from Microsoft visit me?

Usually I do not give much care to details of my site visit statistics provided by statcounter. One of my friend who has a link on my site found a unusual entry in her statcounter report. She a entry from Redmond,USA and the ISP was Microsoft Corp. Since her entry's referring link was from my site, I too had a detail look at my report. This is what I found:So, was the person from Microsoft?

March 26, 2007

Flex + Documentum

I started learning Adobe Flex recently and how I got inspired about RIA is through my brother Reji. I did fiddle and play around with Flex SDK and I really like it. With release of Apollo alpha, I am sure there is more adventure coming up my way :) .
This weekend I tried out two things with the flex:
  1. Maintaining HTTP Session in flex
  2. Connecting Flex with a Documentum repository
Both of these objective turned out to be quite simple but I will explain the second project that I did. For those how don't know Documentum: Its a ECM (Enterprise Content Management) Tool from EMC. My aim was to create a simple login screen, validate the user and login to a DocBase.
I made use of the HTTPService provided by the FDS (Flex Data Service) to rend the user's login information. At the server side I had a java servlet that received the login information as request parameter and then authenticated the user. If the user was a valid user, I just returned a string embedded in a XML and finally displayed it using the alert box in flex.

The code Flex code and the servlet is available for download and one important note for developers using Documentum is that: "You should consider using Flex for building web applications on top of Documentum". I will put up a DQL executer next week.

March 24, 2007

End of Transition Period!

Let me present you my renewed blog! The Techno paper!! My work just delayed the transition. I was planning to put a custom template and due to lack of time couldn't do so. But I am happy with the new template and will start blogging! I will not be updating my old blog from now on and all the old post have been transfered!
Any suggestions and comments on my new blog is welcome!