May 31, 2007

Google's new products..

Google may be busy at Google Developer Day, their first worldwide developer event kicked off in Sydney and won't stop until it's reached 10 locations around the world. The last location is at Google's offices in Mountain View, California. But in mean time they released a bunch of new products:
This might not be end of the list, we will get new stuffs as GWT is gearing up for making use of other Google APIs.

Google Gear is an answer to dojo's offline web applications. It is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline. It consists of three modules that address the core challenges in making web applications work offline:
  1. Local Server - Cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) locally.
  2. Database - Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database.
  3. WorkerPool - Make your web applications more responsive by performing resource-intensive operations asynchronously.
The interesting part is Google Reader is already having this offline feature. You need to download the runtime and use it.

Google Mashup Editor provides simple tools and features that allow you to create mashups in minutes. Its still in the beta stage and is not available for the public. You need to sign up and wait for your account to get activated. For now all you have is the tour available to see the features.

Now about the Mapplets, they are mini-applications that you can embed within the Google Maps site. They are simple Google Gadgets that can manipulate the map using Javascript calls that are derived from the Google Maps API. Mapplets are currently only available in a special Developer Preview version of Google Maps. The Mapplets documentation and gallery can also be accessed.

So time also, Google have answered to Microsoft's Popfly and to dojo's Dojo Offline Toolkit and ya its also a release against the Adobe's Apollo and Dekoh runtime.

May 29, 2007

Alternavites to Google Pages

Are you using Google Pages like me? Have you checked out if we have alternatives for Google Pages? I set out today in search of a free, user-friendly and web 2.0 based products which will help in building personal and community web sites. And I did find a few interesting sites for you to think before you build your site using Google pages! Initially when google make out with Google Pages in the Google Labs, I have thought the reason why it was built when they have Blog service in place up and running. Blogging was and is meant to provide a fast way to publish personal and community information and share content on internet. But I still wonder what would have come of Blogger if Google have introduced multi page blog site or combined Google Pages power with Blogger.

Leaving this though behind, lets see our alternatives to Google Pages: Jimdo , WetPaint, Wikia and WikiDot. Searching the net lead me to two types of site creation "webware". One the normal multi page site creator and the other wiki style. Still all these products or webware have made their best efforts to make it user-friendly, free, and ya an alternative to Google Pages.

Defintly all these products had its pros and cons and I am not going to complete my analysis within a day. I shall give details of each product later but for now a intro to these products will do..

Jimdo is a php based multi page site creation tool. It has both free version and a pro version. The major difference in pro and free is the storage and the ability implement own layout. Here is the list of features. Another attraction for Jimdo is its guest book and image gallery.

Wetpaint is the wiki styled site creator with large amount of layouts and styles to choose from. It has EasyEdit toolbar which helps in editing the page faster than Google pages and Jimdo. Apart from these advantages, wetpaint has functionality to add Calender events, image gallery etc. Users also have easy access to invite people to his wiki site and also to email the pages in the wiki. They also feature a search box for each wetpaint site.

Wikia is yet another wiki based site creator which is more community centric. The home page itself has a list of categorized wikis. It also features a "Featured Wikia" box where one of Wikia is featured. Wikia also have multiple language support and the site looks like typical wikipedia site. Wikia also features a built-in search box and tab options like article,discussion, edit and history just like wikipedia or any wiki styled web site.


And now the final product wikidot, also follows the wiki style and claims its greatest feature as being "free, free, free!!!". Wikidot also provides the easy tools to create and modify the contents. It also support heavily the concept of community. Their Module concept helps in building interactive portals.

So with these four products introduced, I am sure you all have to think before taking up Google Pages as your site hosting option. And hold I have not mentioned Yahoo's Geocites. I started my personal site with it and have left it long ago, I will see what yahoo done in these years to compete with Googles and others products later.










May 28, 2007

In between vacation!

Was quite busy the last week to blog, and this weekend i am sitting across the arabian sea on vacation! So for the next two weaks I will blog little and will be roaming ;)

May 21, 2007

flickr Slide show

flickrSLiDR allows you to add flickr slide shows on to your website or blog by simply adding some HTML code. The only requirement is the flickr URL address of the user, photo set or group you would like to display. There is also some attributes available to customize the slide show display.

Adding the slide show is a simple 3 step process. Visit http://flickrslidr.com/ and fill the form...


Copy the HTML code from the text area and paste it in your required webpage. Check out my new Album.

May 18, 2007

Google Experimental!

Everyday Google comes out with something new. For the past few days they have come out with Web History, and New look for Google search:

Apart from these changes Google have been trying new ways to present the search result and display information that will be more useful to users. Google Experimental shows off some of the new ways they are working on. Have a look!

And a new feature to Blogger is the draft auto save feature! Just found it ;)

May 16, 2007

Linux Kernel 0.01!

Linux have come a long way since its creation. I was wondering recently where did the first version go? Surely we use 2.6 kernel on Ubuntu or RedHat (Two distros that I have extensively used..) but I wanted to see the first kernel code! And ...

After some search and scratching the web, I finally got what looked like one of kernel ancestors: Linux Kernel 0.01! All the linux kernel is archived at kernel.org. You can download from version 1.0 to the latest version 2.6.x. And its all available at http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/ for download. So If you want to see how Linux kernel was (and is).. Have a look!

Sun launches Project Orbit

After last week's release of JavaFX, Sun new avatar in mobile devices is Orbit - A project to bring openLaszlo to devices. Aim of Orbit is to extend Java ME platform with OpenLaszlo. It will offer an unprecedented level of development portability and flexibility across a wide variety of Java technology-based phones, television set-top boxes, and other connected devices. Support for OpenLaszlo applications further enhances one of the key strengths of the Java platform - the ability to support development environments and authoring tools targeting a broad spectrum of developer skills and preferences.

So Orbit is : Sun's Java ME viewer of Laszlo content. It is a Java ME CDC/Personal Basis application that uses the Rhino engine to run LZX programming language Web 2.0 (AJAX style) applications. Building the project and its success will enable OpenLaszlo to become true multi-runtime platform and also capture market. The main advantage of OpenLaszlo's LZX language is that it can be compiled to either Adobe Flash, or to Dynamic HTML (commonly known as Ajax). With the Orbit project, the OpenLaszlo interactive application experience will be available to developers targeting Java ME, without giving up the unique strengths of that runtime. In short, Orbit is going to be a viewer ( player) like Flash player and is an application that rest on Rhino JavaScript engine which runs on the Java ME CDC/Personal Basis Profile stack.

Looking at Orbit, Its a real good innovation, but my question is what will happen to JavaFX Mobile? Is Sun planning to add OpenLaszlo into it in some way? Or are they escaping from the new Product family (JavaFX) itself?




May 14, 2007

Tim Berners-Lee on the Semantic Web

I have already explained how we are moving to semantic web in one of my previous post titled "Moving to Semantic Web" on 7th May. I just viewed a video interview in Technology Review.

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web explains how the Semantic Web works and how it will transform how we use and understand data. He explains how his 15 years of work is paying off. You can view the video from here.

May 11, 2007

Microsoft SharedView : A Review

Micorsoft SharedView (Code named Tahiti ) is now a beta product available for download. It's a fast and easy way to share documents and screen views with small groups of friends or coworkers; anytime, anywhere. Use SharedView to put your heads together and collaborate. It is easy to install and all you need to get connected is an internet connection and a Windows Live ID. The main application runs in the system tray and places a toolbar at the top of your screen:

The current version can have a maximum of 15 users. To start the initiator have to sign-in (Start New Session) using in Windows Live ID. Once logged-in he can invite anyone to the collaborate through Instant Messenger, E- mail or Phone.I tried using E-mail where the invited user is given a session name and password to join the session. The next step is where all users accept the invitation and will be able to see what all application they can share from the toolbar's share button.

The user can share any application from the list and share with all the participants.

Looking at the new application I feel, Microsoft is about to throw away NetMeeting! You can install the latest SharedView application sharing software free from here. SharedView supports Windows XP, Vista Home Premium and Ultimate, and Windows Server 2003. SharedView Beta is only available in English.

Gosling talks about JavaFX

James Gosling, the co- founder of java talked with CNET News.com's Stephen Shankland about the new application platform, JavaFX. Gosling talks a bit about how JavaFX will compare to Adobe's Flash (Flex and Apollo) and Microsoft's Silverlight. Here is the video!

So, as the heat increasing in three camps (Adobe,Sun and Microsoft), what will happen to other small projects that have made their venture into this hot field. Two notable camps are Dekoh and Dojo toolkits offline web applications. Dekoh is making of the existing technologies including Adobe's Flash and is going to make use of JVM,HTML,Java script and XML for RIA development. Dojo on the other hand has come up with a caching proxy to save the web application and will use the existing scripting languages. Flex makes use of the MXML and Action script which is poplar among developer but JavaFX script is not! Developers will take time to adopt, learn and start using the new scripting language. For a developer, he will have to wait and see what the industry will accept and only time will tell! And for now... simply go about your daily work :)

May 10, 2007

New features for Techno Paper

My blog just got new features and they are :

  1. Tag Cloud: The Tag Cloud displays all the labels in my blog. It's a better way of displaying my labels as it will take less space compared to blogger's default list style. You add the tag cloud to your blogger too. Visit phydeaux3 , which provides you the complete guide for installing a tag cloud onto your blogger.
  2. Search: I have removed my Technorati search. Instead Techno Paper will have a new Google Custom Search widget on top right. The custom search have better features compared to my previous search. I have also put a custom search on my web site which is capable of searching in both, my site and blog.
  3. Feeds: The modification in this is still not complete though! I have removed some of the feeds and arranged it (Looks much better now). I am planning to remove some of it again and change its layout.
That all for visible changes! You will find some more changes next week ;)

May 09, 2007

Inside JavaFX !

Sun revealed its new product family: JavaFX for development on Desktop, Web , mobile and other electronic equipments like TV and Setup box. The product features a new content scripting language called JavaFX Script. For now, Sun and released JavaFX Mobile and JavaFX Script the first applications from the JavaFX family. Sun defines JavaFX as "JavaFX is a new family of Java technology-based products that will help content providers create and deploy rich Internet applications (RIA)." They also talk about its ability to create interactive content, applications and services from desktop to mobile devices to the living room.

At a glance JavaFX is going to make use of all advantages java currently provide - write-once-run-anywhere, portability, application security model, ubiquitous distribution and enterprise connectivity. JavaFX Script is going to help developers create interactive content and it will be not a procedural scripting language. At the same time JavaFX Mobile will be Sun's software system for mobile devices.

The new scripting language have the following features:
  • JavaFX Script uses a declarative syntax for specifying GUI components, so a developer's code closely matches the actual layout of the GUI.
  • Through declarative databinding and incremental evaluation, JavaFX Script enables developers to easily create and configure individual components by automatically synchronizing application data and GUI components.
  • JavaFX Script will work with all major IDE. Plugin for Eclipse is already available!
  • Unlike many other Java scripting languages, JavaFX Script is statically typed and will have most of the same code structuring, reuse, and encapsulation features that make it possible to create and maintain very large programs in Java.
  • JavaFX Script is capable of supporting GUIs of any size or complexity and make use of Swing.
Sun has also started Project OpenJFX, which is a project of the OpenJFX community for sharing early versions of the JavaFX Script language and for collaborating on its development. The JavaFX Script downloads, NetBeans and Eclipse plugins are available here. You can also find demos for the script. And here is "hello world" fx script:

     import javafx.ui.*;

Frame {
title: "Hello World JavaFX"
width: 200
height: 50
content: Label {
text: "Hello World"
}
visible: true
}
So to get started all you need is an IDE with JavaFX Script plugin and JDK 1.5 +. You can find the tutorial and language reference at https://openjfx.dev.java.net/.

May 08, 2007

JavaFX an alternative to Ajax?

Sun is all set to release a new product range during JavaOne conference. The new product is a java-based product family called JavaFX, which cover development of desktop,web and mobile. It will introduce a new scripting language called JavaFX Script.

Rich Green, Sun's executive vice president said the platform as "JavaFX is a complete software system from the metal on up" and "JavaFX Script is a scripting language focused on the content-authoring and content creation crowd. It is a means of creating visually impactful, high-performance, dramatic Web and network-facing artifacts or experiences that run all the way from the desktop running Java SE (Standard Edition) all the way down to mobile devices powered by JavaFX Mobile".

JavaFX Script will focus on user experiences on the interface and highly animated content. It will be also easier to use thus development of the application will be easy and the JavaFX is not a procedural language. The programmers will be able to make use of the existing Swing and 2D APIs. and finally JavaFX will be open source!

So, JavaFX is Sun's answer to Abode's Flex and Apollo and Microsoft's Silverlight? I would say YES! So, JavaFX will offer an alternative to AJAX and also vies with Silverlight and Adobe's Flash (Flex and Apollo) and will enter RIA competition through this. Dekoh , another RIA project based on Java will also turn out to be a competitor for JavaFX. To get more on JavaFX we will have have to wait a few hours and I will update as soon as I get more information.


Linux moves to Mobile Phones

Ubuntu Linux is onto new grounds - The Mobile/Hand held devices! They aims at building a open source platform for hand held devices with an initial release by October 2007. It will be built by the Ubuntu community along with some Intel staff.

It interesting to see Ubuntu advance fast these days as they have already become one of the popular Linux distributions on desktops. They have also released sever editions and now onto mobile devices. To start with, some "Geek" have already installed a tuned Ubuntu version on a mobile (I lost the link). The project will be called Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded Project. The major work set to start after Ubuntu Developer Summit and aims at providing a open source platform for hand held devices which still pose problems like: power consumption, low processor power and also need better graphical user interface, connectivity to internet etc.

So we are now set to see Linux move into hand held devices, we also have other existing players like Nokia who has set up open source community,beta labs and development technologies already. Yet another competitor is Microsoft, who also has a Windows version for hand held devices.

May 07, 2007

Moving to Semantic Web

You must have heard this before : "Web 2.0 is dead and over" and for who haven't try this. So if you believe web 2.0 is dead,where are we heading? and if you don't believe this entry is to make you think about it. About the next web : Semantic web!

The work have already started. Radar Networks is a company pioneering the Web 3.0 or semantic web. They have stated to release their product in 2007 itself. They have also graph representing the growth of web:
Looking at the graph, we are to leave behind (may be not totally avoid it) and move into new stuff named OpenID, SPARQL, SWQL etc to reach Web 3.0 and finally the WebOS. You will see that we have already started the work on all these technology that will help us reach Web 3.0 and beyond. OpenID will help in decentralized digital identity for users and it will be on open platform. SPARQL and SWQL are going to play a important role in getting information. May be you can say RSS and Atom are the ancestor technology to collect information but SPARQL and SWQL which is rule language will bring out a better informative web to users.

Keeping aside the development of these technologies, lets see how the present technology will help to move from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0. So web 2.0 is not dead? I would say no! And the major reason is we still have development in Ajax,RIA technology. It not the matter of how many web 2.0 projects is undertaken or successfully completed today, but its how we built,use and evolve (modify) these new technologies that we have today to make Web 3.0 or semantic web or intelligent web or ... so Web 2.0 is not dead but evolving.

With the work on Web 3.0 no and running, and we also see new technologies screaming "cross-platform,browser-independent etc.." its all about using these new query and rule languages and develop a semantic web. And for this we will definitely see Mashups, widgets, RIA applications and advanced search mechanism playing a major role.

May 04, 2007

Songbird : A Web Player

Yesterday, I stumbled upon a very interesting "baby" product called Songbird. Its a digital jukebox and Web browser mash-up built on Mozilla Application Framework. Even though Songbird is at version 0.2.5, its very fruitful media player and will definitely stand out in the coming days.

The main attracting features of Songbird are: Cross-platform (available for Linux,Mac and Windows), Support for "Add-ons" similar to what you have in Firefox, and its ability to connect to iPod and other USB devices. But that's not all, it has features like library, skins (called feathers), flow control and mixing, CD burning etc. Some interesting features that you will not see in other media players are XUL rules ( yet another application of Mozilla's UI toolkit ) , multi-language (around 45+ supported now) and web browser with integrated search both for web and your local library. It also features a sleek mini mode as show below:



Well, if you are still not happy with the mini mode, you also have the feature to minimize it to system tray. To do this you have an Add-on. You even have notifications when a song starts! This feature startled me because, my media player lack this functionality. Right now we have less add-ons but I am sure you will get more as Songbird becomes popular because of the "developer ease" in building add-ons.

I have started using Songbird and dumbed Windows Media Player 11 because of many reasons: Its open source, there is good a look and feel, the features that have explained above. And to end with the Songbird team is giving away T-shirts (which costs!!) but you can always get a Songbird button from your blog or web site and showoff your support to this product.

May 02, 2007

Adobe to open up Flex

I am bit late for this entry but here it is: Abode has announced its plan to open source Flex and its development. This press release appeared on Abobe's site on April 26th (and I was busy preparing for my final review).

According to Adobe, they are to release ActionScript components from the Flex SDK,Java code for ActionScript and the MXML compiler. The open sourced Flex SDK will be available under Mozilla Public License (MPL).The MPL will allow full and free access to the source code, allowing developers to download, extend, and contribute to the source code for the Flex compiler and framework classes. This show Adobe's commitment to open technology initiatives, including the contribution of source code for the ActionScript Virtual Machine to the Mozilla Foundation under the Tamarin project. At the same time it also show how Adobe is planning to tackle its rivals like Dekoh, Dojo etc which are already open.

Now Microsoft's Silverlight is yet to see the open source light. And I am sure that's not going to happen. Another set back that Silverlight will have is that, the support for linux (Unless mono project take up the task). So... keeping the heat on RIA technology all these products are going to change our internet experience in next 2 year in a big way!

Digg goes out of service?


Digg, one of the community-based popularity website goes out of service just after multiple entries regarding HD-DVD key. You can also find entries that say "This page does not contain the HD-DVD key"! For example check this out. But look at the URL and you will see that the page indeed do not contain the key ;)

I found that the entire Digg site was not down! Instead the entries that contained the HD-DVD key had the page shown on the right and other Digg entries worked fine.

After a break...

I am back after a small break! and I have lot of things to catch up with... From my office works, my site updates and off course my blog!!! and there is lot to talk about.

First, I am over with my Masters course from VIT. My final review of the project turned out to be one of the best review I ever got ;) Second, After a long time.. I went home!

On the technical side... My first update today was for my web site. I just added real time visitor stats on my site. The service is from statisfy.net. Which have built a good mash up using Google maps. You can view my real time stats here. Thats not all... Google have come up with their new stuffs and I am behind. With new features from Google in Gmail, Calendar, etc. Another news making camp is Microsoft, Adobe and Dojo.. ( I will write seperate blog entries soon.. so watch out).


And for now... I am at my office desk ;)