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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

• 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.

• 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.

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.

(click to view)

I was a little late getting to the party as traffic was heavy and the place itself was a bit of a treasure hunt. Greg Owen from Effective UI was the speaker. He was quite knowledgable about the Adobe AIR platform but I can’t say that I learned a lot from the presentation. I think I was hoping to see real-time coding splendor from within the Flex Builder IDE. Oh, well. Chip’s demo of Map My Pix is worth checking out. Chip demonstrated with Map My Pix that a user can drag and drop photos onto a map pulling timestamp and location information from the EXIF data found in images (although I’m not positive how the location information is captured as I write this).

After the meeting I got a chance to talk to Mike Hostetler from Crowd Favorite and ate dinner with Scott Balay from Triple Jack Poker and Heather Morgan from LaunchPad Interactive at Protos Pizza (which is on the first floor of the same building as The Hive).

It is really nice to see the Refresh Denver group growing. The Hive was packed and everyone is enthused and curious about technology. For me, this is a welcome change. Something I’ve been trying to find for some time now.

For additional information, check out Chip’s wrap-up notes.

• Technology: Microformats
• Speaker: Scott Reynen
• Related Technologies: RDF, OWL, GRDDL.
• The W3C is not necessarily in sync with Microformats.
• Operator - A Firefox plug-in that supports microformats.
• HTML 4.0 supports microformats.
• The WordPress Sandbox Theme uses microformats.
• NetNewsWire - A feed reader for the Mac that supports microformats.

It was a learning experience for me and I really enjoyed meeting everyone that attended. Would have liked to have spent more time with everyone and that might be possible in the future. It sounds like this type of event just got off the ground during May of this year (for Denver that is). I am looking forward to more events like this and would even be up for hosting something like this in the Colorado Springs area. If anyone is interested just leave a comment, otherwise try to attend the next Refresh Denver meeting.

Introduction

Today was the second and last of the WordCamp conference. The following are my notes from the day.

10am - HyperDB and High Performance WordPress

Speakers: Barry Abrahamson and Matt Mullenweg

Interesting WordPress statistics. Best if you check out the slideshow.

10:45am - Blogs at the New York Times

Speaker: Jeremy Zilar

This was a spur of the moment presentation. He spoke about how they are using WordPress to power The New York Times. Check out their theme layout. Very cool!

A few blog essentials were discussed:

• About Page - Every blog should have one and it should describe the purpose and goal of the blog.
• Blogroll - I do not like this name as I call mine “Links of Interest” but this is where you link to the favorite sites you follow and subscribe to so that others can tune in.
• Posts - Well, you do not have much of a blog without them.
• Blog Title - Should be short, catchy, and to the point.

11am - Designing Massively Multiplayer Social Systems

Speaker: Rashmi Sinha, Ph.D.

She is a founder of SlideShare which is definitely something worth checking out. She spoke of first and second generation social networks and their evolution. Check out her slides. I also recommend watching her Perils of Popularity slideshow.

12pm - BBQ Lunch

Good but Joe’s BBQ is better!

1:15pm - Musical Interlude by Andy Skelton

Entertaining. Unfortunately, he had to sing about my accidental killing of rabbits near the Natural Bridges National Monument. Hey, you try driving in the evening and see how many you can avoid as they throw themselves at your tire(s)!

John Pozadzides has captured Andy Skelton’s performance if you want watch it.

1:30pm - Past, Present, and Future of Web Publishing

Speaker: Dave Winer

It is a shame that only an hour was given to Dave to speak. He had a sheet of topics to discuss and only covered a small portion. He spoke of the following:

• OPML Import/Export - All social software should have OMPL import and export capability.
• Future Safe Archives - We need to solve the problem of using technology of today in generations to come. It should be possible to view data stored today millions of years from now without having to know how to configure and manipulate the machinery and software in use today. For example, can you still read a 5.25” floppy disk on your computer?
• Data Portability - Data should be portable and accessible in as many forms as possible.

2:30pm - Usability Analysis

Speaker: Liz Danzico, Happy Cog

Liz has been working with the Automatic team to improve the WordPress usability experience. Most of her work will not be realized until the release of WordPress 2.4 but what is planned looks great. She spoke of the following:

• Desire Lines - When developers/designers create user interfaces they design with one idea in mind but in actuality users might use the software in an entirely different purpose or find shortcuts to getting things done faster. It is these shortcuts that are known as “desire lines”. When designing software, it is good to think of what desire lines are and build them in. Easiest way to do this is to be the user of your own software.
• Object Oriented Design - Think of design in terms of objects. I like this approach, being an object oriented developer. Examples of excellent object oriented design would be: Tumblr and the iPhone.

3:30pm - State of the Word

Speaker: Matt Mullenweg

He spoke of the following:

• bbPress - Bulletin board software that supports themes and plugins.
• BackPress - I did not take very good notes on this for some reason (maybe I thought I could link to it) but it has a user system, supports HyperDB, and supports script loading.
• WPCP - Work is being done on a WordPress Caching Proxy for improving WordPress speed and performance. Sounds interesting for high volume sites.
• WordPress 2.3 - Will have plugin update notification, tags (sweet!), and improved draft/pending post/page writing support.
• Blicki - I have been searching for a plugin that would allow one to add Wiki capabilities to WordPress and now I have found it.
• Windows Live Writer - Need to study this more. It’s been on my “ToDo” list but it sounds like this is a great offline application used to publish to WordPress as it supports most, if not all, WordPress API.

4:30pm - Developer Duke-out

Speakers: Matt Mullenweg, Michael Adams, Ryan Boren, Mark Jaquith, and Andy Skelton

Entertaining but was not able to stay for all of it as I had to hit the road. I need to get more involved with WordPress development. Baby steps first, starting with this web site.

Introduction

Today was the first day of the WordCamp conference. The following are my notes from the day.

Breakfast

Stopped for chai and scones at the Kape on 16th Street between Sanchez and Church. Serves Filipino cuisine and a great atmosphere. WiFi access is free. Check it out if you are ever in San Francisco and want something a little more quaint off Market Street.

10am - Podcasting

Speaker: Dan Kuykendall (author of PodPress)

I have been playing with Podpress off and on for some time now but am currently not using it on this site. This is about to change. Dan’s talk was mostly about showcasing Podpress, what it can do, and where it is headed. I like the fact that it supports not only audio but video. He mentioned that while YouTube video support is not there yet he is working on it. Sweet plugin.

The hardware/software that Dan is using for his podcasting setup is:

• MAudio Mobile
• AKG Perception 100
• Audacity (but Garage Band on the Mac is better).

11am - Blogs vs. Journalism

Speakers: John C. Dvorak and Om Malik

Always entertaining to hear John speak. I liked the fact that he supports and embraces blogging. A forward thinker that others in his field should aspire to.

12pm - Subway Sandwich Lunch

Curbed the hunger.

1pm - Kicking Ass Content Connections

Speaker: Lorelle VanFossen

Interesting lady. Energetic, boisterous, and strange but also friendly. I got a chance to chat with her later while having drinks with the rest of the WordCamp crew. I thanked her for the work she does on her site as I am an avid reader. Here are a few notes:

• Write something new.
• Have a fresh perspective.
• Never fail to stop asking “why”. Question everything.
• Think before writing/publishing. Try not to be the first but absorb and digest the information first.
• Blog for you first.
• Be a mirror for others. Once you find your community, they will understand and relate to you.
• Blogging is like archeology. The work that we have done and will do will be a wealth of information for future generations to use. This is something we have never had before and it feels good being part of it.
• Do not always complete a thought. Your audience is smart, let them fill in the blanks.
• As bloggers, it is our duty to comment back on other peoples blogs and keep the conversation going.
• Write timeless posts.
• Push yourself and go for extremes. Good advice for anything you do.
• Do not be an island, be part of the community.
• Do not be afraid to fail as failure is the pathway to success.

Those are my notes but you can watch the video for yourself.

2pm - Blog Monetization

Speaker: Jeremy Wright, b5media

Not sure I learned anything outside of what I already new. His lecture was mostly a panel discussion where he brought up three people from the audience and moderated. The different types of WordPress expriences by the people on the panel was interesting but not sure if this type of information was relative to the topic.

Nice guy though. Managed to survive Dr. Pepper shots with him later in the evening.

3pm - Getting Involved with WordPress

Speakers: Lloyd Budd (WordPress Quality Assurance) and Mark Jaquith (WordPress Development)

Nothing out of the ordinary here as they spoke about the following (much of which can be grokked from the WordPress site):

• Bug Tracking: trac.wordpress.org.
• Documentation: codex.wordpress.org.
• Source Code: Use svn co http://svn.automatic.com/wordpress.
• Development Mail List: lists.automatic.com.
• Development Instant Chat: Use #wordpress on freenote.

4pm - Designing the Obvious

Speaker: Robert Hoekman, Jr.

Apparently Matt really liked his book of the same name. I plan to check it out despite I thought the lecture was the worst of the day. I guess, in the last couple hours before Robert’s lecture, he decided to through his slides and improvise. Bad move, dude. Should have stuck to the slides.

Still, here are a few notes:

• Web site speed matters if you want to keep users.
• Surface feed syndication on your site and make sure it is understood. Use graphics or graphical documentation that illustrates the point clearly.
• Show the most popular posts.
• Show related posts.
• Show recently viewed posts.

5pm - Whitehat SEO tips for Bloggers

Speaker: Matt Cutts, Google.

This was the best speaker of the day despite being ill prepared. Really enjoyed listening to him talk and what he had to offer. Details of Matt’s talk can be found on his site. Here are a few of my notes:

• ALT Tags - Use them. They are not only good for when images do not load but for those who are blind.
• Use post creation dates as they are good for giving the reader a sense of date and time as well as chronological order.
• Be wary of URL address usage as it can screw up your search results. Choose one format and stick with it. For example, use www.aeonscope.net or aeonscope.net but not both.
• Ad Sense - Try thinking about using the following tags in your posts to control Google Ads for a specific post rather than the entire web site (which is what you get by default):
  

7:30pm - Lucky 13 Bar

Open bar and with the WordCamp crew and attendees. Had a lot of fun meeting people.

Related Notes

Here are few related notes from the day starting with a few of the people I met during the day:

• Crystal R. Williams - She is a slave to coffee.
• Kari Unebasami - This is not her main site. I didn’t write down the link. Drat.
• Julie Nelson - She is trying to create a community around summer cottages in Canada. She has a hard road ahead of her due to the elder demographic she is trying to reach. I can not even get my parents connected!
• Mike Melanson - A Linux engineer using WordPress.
• Harald Rudell - A systems engineer using WordPress.
• Eleanor - A photo blogger.

Plugins worth checking out:

• Democracy - Allows for user polling in posts.
• SEO Title - Improves post title search capability.
• Brian’s Threaded Comments - Thread comments like a forum.
• WP Mobile - Enhances your web page so that content can be easily consumed on mobile device.

Finally, a few links:

• Finding Dereck - This is an author who is using a blog to create the main character of her new book through user participation. Clever.
• SOB Awards - Awarded to successful bloggers.
• Google Webmaster Central Blogspot - Web master tips and tricks.
• Google Webmaster Central - Tools for web masters.
• Google Keyword Tool - Improves your understanding and use of web keywords.