Colorado Springs Open Source Meetup (Web Frameworks)

Attended another Colorado Springs Open Source Meetup tonight. The first talk was on an open source WYSIWYG editor called KompoZer. Check it out if you like. Reminded me of Nvu which, as it turns out, seems what KompoZer was birthed from.

The second talk for the evening was on Web Frameworks by Matt Raible. Good speaker, both entertaining and humorous. The slides for his talk can be found here. He does a quick comparison of Grails/Rails backends with GWT/Flex frontends. The winner? There is none. It depends on your temperament and what works for you (or what fits best with how your brain is wired). Basically, you just need to spend some time reading and experiment with a few or all of them. There is plenty of material on the web to get you started.

I’ve dabbled with GWT (liked it…but it’s Java…and Java isn’t fun anymore), PHP (yeah, quick to get started, many web hosts support it…but it’s ugly and a pain to work with), haven’t tried Air/Flex/Flash yet (looks interesting but not fond of the proprietary roots), Ruby (love it, elegant language), and JavaScript/AJAX (not as much fun as Ruby but starting to like it). Personally, I think a mix of Ruby, Rails, and JavaScript is the way to go. I am having fun with them and the tooling is fairly decent. Plus, I also think that JavaScript + CSS3, HTML5, and SVG (and other graphic support) will soon be powerful enough to rival that of GWT+Gears and/or Air/Flex/Flash. That’s just speculation though. What do I know.

A couple of new concepts I hadn’t heard before though: SOFEA and SOUI. From a high level, it is a way of thinking about all these various web technologies/frameworks and mixing and matching them. If you were to architect your web application carefully using RESTful designs per se, you could run Rails with Flex on top, or GWT, or AJAX, etc. It’s got me thinking. Maybe it will gnaw at you too.

Tags: Colorado Springs Open Source Software Group

Colorado Springs Open Source Meetup (Blender)

It has been a while since I last attended the Colorado Springs Open Source Meetup. This time the talk was on Blender and OpenOffice. I’m not even going to attempt to talk about Blender except to say I wish I had more time to play with it. Pretty amazing stuff but comes with a stiff learning curve. BTW, a good discussion on Blender can be found by listening to FLOSS Weekly - Episode 25 - Blender if you haven’t checked it out already.

As for OpenOffice, I use it in a rather limited capacity. Actually, I’ve been using NeoOffice but tonight convinced me that I need to drop NeoOffice and check out OpenOffice again. It has improved quite a bit since I last used it. It even supports extensions. Neat.

I spoke with Gary, who runs the Colorado Springs Open Source Meetup, and offered to give a talk on Ruby, Ruby on Rails, etc. I mean, c’mon, the meetup has only been running since January of this year and still, there is no talk of Ruby or Rails? That needs to change. Hey Brett, if you are listening, I think you should fly up. We could give a rather compelling demo of Ruby, Rails, and Google Maps.

Colorado Springs Open Source Meetup (JCatapult)

Tonight’s open source meetup discussed the Apache Commons Project that included a logging demo (i.e. Commons Logging, Log4j, etc.). This talk was given by Gary Hessler.

The meeting ended with a talk by Brian Pontarelli who is the founder of Inversoft. Brian has been pretty much the sole developer behind JCatapult which is what his talk was about. JCatapult is a web application framework, written in Java, that is built upon a slew of other technologies such as:

• Struts 2
• Hibernate
• SiteMesh
• XWork
• JSP/JSTL
• FreeMarker
• Joda Time
• JPA
• Google Guice
• FCK
• ANT

Actually, I would go a step further to say that JCatapult is higher level web application framework that sits on top of Struts, Hibernate, etc. to give you more capabilties out of the box like generating scaffolding for forms, CRUD views, unit tests, simple components such as login and security, and database management (supports database migrations like what you would find in a Ruby on Rails setup).

Check it out, if you like. The demo was interesting but I’m quite happy sticking with Ruby on Rails for now.

Tags: Colorado Springs Open Source Software Group

EclipseCon 2008 - Day 4

Today is the last and final day at EclipseCon and here are a few notes (organized by sessions):

Panel: Services Versus Extensions by Neil Bartlett, Jeff McAffer, James Branigan, and BJ Hargrave

The panel discussed the pros and cons of OSGi Services and Eclipse Extension Points with James mentioning how Jazz can fuse the two together. While I could not find an article that would explain all three in detail, I did find Neil Bartlett’s article that compares services to extension points.

For those that might want to follow this space more, I suggest visiting Neil’s blog.

Creating Your Own Extension Points: It’s Easier Than You Think! by Mark Melvin

The PowerPoint slides are worth checking out.

Tags: Eclipse, EclipseCon

EclipseCon 2008 - Day 3

It is day 3 at EclipseCon and here are a few notes (organized by sessions):

Eclipse 4.0 by Steve Northover, Jeff McAffer, Jochen Krause, and Mike Wilson

• The goal is to build a better desktop application, make it easier to build plugins, and bring Eclipse to the web.
• The biggest news seem to be around the Rich AJAX Platform (RAP) which is a subset of SWT to bring Eclipse to the web.
• The Eclipse versions are splitting. 3.x will be supported into the future while 4.0 moves forward. Changes applied to 4.0 will be applied to 3.x when apt.

PDT - The PHP Development Toolkit by Assaf Almaz

This talk had very little content as it was mostly an overview of what PDT 1.0 currently does and what is going to be new in PDT 1.1. It will be interesting to check out the new PDT 1.1 features when it is released this September (the first milestone is in May). PDT 1.1 will be built upon Eclipse 3.4 and WTP 2.0 (although the presentation mentioned 3.0 so I am confused about that).

Check out the PDT Project page for more info.

The Future of SWT by Silenio Quarti and Steve Northover

A significant amount of work has gone into SWT but more is needed to work within HTML, Flex, Silverlight, etc. Some demos where shown displaying SWT cross-compiled to run in Flex and HTML + Dojo Javascript library. There are implementations for WPF and Cocoa as well. Check out the demos.

Introducing the new Web Tools Javascript Features by Phil Berkland

The JavaScript Development Toolkit (JSDT) is a sub-project of the AJAX Toolkit Framework (ATF) project and currently in incubation. The talk started out with a brief overview of JSDT and then quickly dived into a demo of JSDT features to write and edit JavaScript code. JSDT looks to be more interesting than JSEclipse but check out the demos for more info.

Tags: Eclipse, EclipseCon

EclipseCon 2008 - Day 2

Another day has passed at the conference and here are a few notes (organized by sessions):

How eRCP stacks up against Android and other Mobile Rich Client Platforms by Ken Walker and David Girle

Ken and David built web apps using the following technologies:

• eRCP: Supports a very small user base. Not many apps are developed using eRCP.
• Android: Easy to setup. Only needs the SDK and ADT (Eclipse plugin). Really brings the desktop and mobile world together. Supports JDK 1.5.0. UI is a bit ugly though. Easiest to use but works in an emulator only as no devices exist yet.
• WebKit: Has a popular and large user base due to the iPhone. Works on Android.
• Others (things to consider): Java ME + MIDP 2.0, Adobe Flash/AIR, Silverlight, and GWT + Google Gears.

Based on this discussion, I would focus on the WebKit since it has a good user base already and can be easily tweaked to run on Android as well.

Java Annotations by Walter Harley

I’m glad I don’t have to work with annotations much.

Android and OSGi: Can they work together? by Neil Bartlett and BJ Hargrave

The answer is yes. Neil and BJ demonstrated running Equinox and Concierge on Android and made mention of a couple other OSGi technologies:

• Equinox
• Concierge
• ProSyst
• Felix

Code from the demo can be found here.

Introduction to the Jazz Technology Platform by John Wiegand

• Jazz is built upon layers (listed from top to bottom): Clients (Eclipse, Visual Studio, etc.), Jazz Server Kernal (works with Jetty and Tomcat), Databases (state is stored as structured items stored as XML and arbitrary content stored as BLOBs), and finally the Equinox OSGi Framework.
• Supports Lucene full-text search.
• Authentication is performed by the Jazz Team Server communicating with a corporate directory server (LDAP).
• Teams have projects and projects have processes.
• In the future, Jazz will support more of a Web UI and communication protocol.

Probably best if you just check out the Jazz Demo Videos rather than refer to my notes.

Android, OSGi & Cloudsmith: Cool Things Come in Threes by Ken Gilmer, Lucas McGregor and Henrik Lindberg

Interesting talk that discussed using web technologies to develop, test, and use applications and hardware. For instance:

• Cloudsmith + Eclipse Spaces + Felix + Android.
• Cloudsmith + Felix + Bug Labs
• Cloudsmith + XDrive

The demo showed a picture taken by a Bug Labs device and uploaded to an Android emulator.

Introduction to Groovy by Andres Almiray

• Groovy is a an agile and dynamic language built on Java.
• Looks like Java code which means the learning curve is very low for a Java developer.
• Compiles to Java byte code so that it can run anywhere Java does.
• You can use dynamic or static typing.
• Variable interpolation can be used: ${my-variable-to-substitute}
• Exceptions can be caught but if you choose not too catch them, they will be promoted as runtime exceptions by Groovy.
• Supports annotations (JSR 175), generics, enums, and closures.
• Supports operator overloading.
• There is an Ecipse plugin for developing Groovy code in Eclipse.

In case you are looking for other languages that can compile to Java byte code, they are: Scala and JRuby.

Tags: Eclipse, EclipseCon

EclipseCon 2008 - Day 1

EclipseCon 2008 is being held in sunny Santa Clara, CA this week (Monday - Thursday) and I am here attending as well as helping out with a few presentations:

• Embedding Eclipse Equinox for Fun & Profit
• Remotely deploying Equinox with Maynstall
• Where’s the Data? A Device Kit Tutorial.

For those of you on site, hopefully you have attended the Band XI presentations this morning and you will join us this afternoon for the final presentation on Device Kit. Otherwise, check out the links for further information as the Band XI team has been doing some very interesting work in the embedded space using OSGi technology.

Even though I am only operating on four hours of sleep (more than I can say for the rest of my comrades) I must say it is great being here and getting a chance to see some of the old OTI crowd. It almost feels like the annual technical conferences held many years ago before IBM consumed OTI.

I’ll be posting notes and content as (or when) I can throughout the week. Stay tuned.

Tags: Eclipse, EclipseCon

Refresh Denver (Web Business Startups)

Tonight’s Refresh Denver Meeting was about web businesses. Namely, startups and small businesses in general. It was panel discussion led by SuzAnn Brown and Heather Morgan from Launchpad Interactive and Alex King from Crowd Favorite. I didn’t manage to take very good notes this time around so a lot of this is from memory, my own thoughts, and discussions after the meeting had adjourned. Here are my notes and thoughts:

• Establish a Business Plan - It is wise to have a sound business plan.
• Create Your Company Entity - A business license is not a bad idea but, more importantly, establish your business as an Limited Liability Company (LLC). Otherwise, kiss your personal assets away when things go bad.
• Seek Legal Council - You might be savvy or think you’re savvy, but lets face it, your not. Legal contracts, licensing, etc. is tricky and it would be wise to have someone you know and trust on your side to handle this. Take a page from Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Workweek book and outsource this instead.
• Fixed vs. Time and Material Payments - A fixed payment is where you perform all work for a set price regardless of the time or additional resources needed to make it happen. Tricky and sometimes costly as you might underestimate or have unforeseen issues. Being payed for time and materials allows one to scale and get payed for the work done. In either case, it would be wise to establish a clear and well document list of work items to be performed. Also, it is not a bad idea to underbid and overproduce.
• Source Code Reuse - As you grow your business you might want to think about building a foundation of core software that you can redistribute amongst your various clients. This not only makes things easier for you but saves the client money too. However, ownership of the intellectual property can get murky and is another reason for having an lawyer on hand to ensure both parties get what they want.
• Education - Check out the HTML Writers Guild and Lynda to get more web training under you belt.
• Collaboration and Project Management Services - A couple online services recommended by the panel for project management were: BaseCamp and TasksPro.
• Seek a Mentor - There are free service out there via other business groups and or educational institutions that will help provide objective feedback of how you are doing. Find one, it’ll keep you honest.
• Remember the Dream - Keep a threshold on what it is you are doing and remember to take a step back and remember what you initial goal and mission was. As with having a mentor around, this will keep your from meandering off track.

Tags: Refresh Denver

Colorado Springs Open Source Software Group

Gary Hessler has just created an Open Source Software Group for the Colorado Springs area. I have never met Gary or know much about the group but have signed up as a member out of curiosity. If you live in the area, you might want to check this out as well. Here are the details of the first meeting:

• Date: Thursday, Feb 28, 2008.
• Time: 7:00 PM.
• Location: East Library Community Room at 5550 North Union Blvd.
• Meeting Topic: A general discussion of existing open source software in order to become more aware of what exists today.

See you there.

Tags: Colorado Springs Open Source Software Group

Refresh Denver (Round Table)

Tonight’s jQuery discussion was postponed since Mike Hostetler, the speaker, was at the hospital welcoming a new baby into the world. Congrats, Mike.

Instead, Matthew and Chip, kicked off a round table discussion to make good use of the time. It was a chance to meet everyone in attendance as well as forum for discussing new ideas and ways of improving the Refresh Denver experience. Some of the topics discussed were:

• Venue - The Hive, while handy, is too small for the group. We need a space sponsored by a local business that is willing to accommodate 30+ people, a projector, and WiFi.
• Location - Should the meetings be held in central Denver or to the North, South, etc? It was a mixed vote. The key is to be near an area where food and beverage are within reach for hanging out and socializing after each event. Very important, you know.
• One Point of Origin - Do we use the WordPress site, the Google Group, or a mix of both (not to mention the Upcoming and Twitter sites).
• Monthly Topics - Matthew/Chip suggested that there be a revolving topic discussion: technology, design, business. Each month would get one of the three in a repeating cycle. It should make for a well rounded experience, not to mention some mingling between business folk/entrepreneurs, designers, and developers.

One thing that I found interesting from listening and talking to others (granted there is wide range of talents and ages in attendance) is what appears to be a lack of syndicated feed usage. People either bookmark a web site or use e-mail but not a feed reader as much. Maybe my perception is skewed but there is a clear distinction between these forms of communication and a huge benefit if used wisely.

Tags: Refresh Denver