Google Mini + docs == Domain Library

Google servers have been around for some time & the mini is a low cost version that handles modest numbers of documents (50-300k). More advanced aversions like Google OneBox support tight integration with middleware from the big players (Cognos, Oracle, Salesforce.com, SAS, etc.).

Combine the Mini (~$4,000) or Google OneBox (~$30,000) with an open source CMS and get a domain specific site for almost nothing.

I can think of organizations that would spend $30,000 just deciding which $4,000 box to buy before they spent $500,000 on a proprietary CMS!

Google Calendar & Stuff

Google has released their long-awaited calendar. It can be used as part of a larger offering, as outlined below.

Here is a simplified view of how I plan on using the calendar:

• Blaine's Calendar :: for my use
• Blaine's Work Calendar :: for exposing work issues for to co-workers
• Blaine's Recration Calendar :: shared with people I want to co-plan biking, flicks, dinner, etc.
  
• Work Calendar :: shared by all co-workers
  

I like Google Talk, but find that it often confuses people because I use multiple machines & it can look like I'm available when I'm not (or don't want to be) unless I spend a lot of time managing my Google Talk visibility.

The Google anouncement (critical text):
This special beta test lets you give Gmail, Google's webmail service, to every user at your domain. Gmail for your domain is hosted by Google, so there's no hardware or software for you to install or maintain.

• Gmail - 2 gigabytes of storage and search tools that help your users find information fast. Instant messaging from right inside their accounts.
• Google Talk - Users can call or send instant messages to their contacts for free – anytime, anywhere in the world.
• Google Calendar (coming soon) - Users can organize their schedules and share events and calendars with others. Learn more
• Control Panel - Easily manage user accounts, aliases, mailing lists, and chat settings.

Editing this post was a real pain because neither blooger nor gmail (both owned by google) can handle html properly. Cutting and pasting between them is an exercise for the foolish. [If you ar foolish, as I am, try pasting to plain text then copying again to the gmail or blogger target.]

Ultra-fast release cycles @ myspace

Getting frequency of release cycles right is hard.
Tension between the OSS pressure for frequent releases and IT department's desire for releases once or twice a year is an issue for companies like Red Hat and JBoss. (RH just purchased the latter.)
The mylar project at eclipse is headed in a different direction. They are inspired by things like the myspace model, in which a two week cycle is considered long.
My take:
Anyone who wants to be adopted by the under 30 set, better figure out myspace. A combination of ajax applications (not pages) and eclipse desktop clients with automatic updates allows a balance between IT and user needs.

Red Hat buys JBoss

Free software company worth $420 million.
Red Hat, a company which sells and supports a branded version of Linux, with close partnerships with companies like Oracle and IBM, announced its decision to buy JBoss, another OSS company with a world class application server. JBoss development is facilitated with an eclipse based IDE. Ed Burnett published a rough transcript of the announcement, which has interesting comments on OSS in general.

EclipseCon 2006 :: 21 March Schedule

One cool thing about eclipseCon is the quality of the web documentation -- I especially like the capacity of anyone to post their own recommended track and the ability to see flexible color coding of recommendations. [If this is not obvious, be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page. I wish I had published my own track.
Here is what I'm looking at today:
Stein's keynote
Pollock's Your Action is My Command -- commands are new to 3.2
Franklin's Redoing Undo -- looks like it will have some material on headless eclipse -- I'm always interested in headless + Franklin is a Smalltalker. That never hurts.
Ward's keynote
Elder's Common Navigator Framework --- looks like its the best way to approach navigation
Merks' XML Binding --- I'd like to understand DOM vs EMF better.
I'll also attend the short talks in the Theater as they are more RCP oriented and
Instantiations demo of their new RCP tool at 8 pm.

Thus spake Joel

Joel Spolsky has not been my favorite writer; I almost skipped this morning's keynote type talk. Fortunately I did not. If nothing else, his characterization of K. R. was worth the trip:

He is so stupid he could not empty a boot full of piss if the instructions were printed on the heel.

Joel presented his magic formula for successful software:

1. Make people happy
2. Think about emotions
3. Obsess over aesthetics.

Always focused on the popular image of his audience, there were plenty of references, verbal and visual, to people, generally not of the same gender as the majority of the audience, wearing not all that many clothes.

Fortunately, his motivation for his three principles really was well done and informative. I now know I need to study the design of the Poupidou Center, a guy named Rapaile, and the principles of misattribution.

Who is K.R.?

FolderShare Syncs Files

Microsoft purchased a few months ago. Pretty cool.

Open Source at Eclipse: Callisto M5 and the Callisto Great Bugs Contest

Open Source at Eclipse: Callisto M5 and the Callisto Great Bugs Contest
While the plug-in archiecture of eclipse allows interoperation, or at least co-existence, between diverse tools and applications, tools are often based on different eclipse releases and conflicts are common. The Callisto project will bring several of the major projects into alignment and allow tools based on them to have a firm foundation which exploits recent progress. Callisto will be released with eclipse 3.2 which will appear in June 2006. [Major releases of eclipse appear each June.]
Projects based upon some combination of BIRT (OO Report Writer), Data Tools Platform, Eclipse Modeling Framework, Graphical Editor Framework, Graphical Modeling Framework, Eclipse Test and Performance Tools Platform, the Visual Editor or even the C/C++ IDE should probably start building on the current (M5) release of eclipse 3.2. There will be a few rough spots, but by the end of July a great deal of stability in the core components will exist.

Selenium IDE

Complete IDE for building Selenium tests. Don't use Selenium? Hope you are not building web pages.

Netgear RangeMax

Oddities of setting up the the base station drove me nuts.
But, speed.
I get 500 mbs most of the time.
There may be better stuff, but this sure beats 802.11b/g.
The cost is about twice as much as 11g, but I'm getting almost the effective throughput of some 1gig networks!

For example, my wireless connection at home is about twice as fast as my wired connection at work.

Loosely coupled books on Radar

The clever crowd at O'Reilly Radar shows how they keep their book list up to date with Backpack, the Amazon Web Services, and unchanged day-to-day notes on books.
The result: syndicated book lists from big guns at O'Reilly.

xamp eclipse web tools

xampp is the way to go to get php, mysql, and apache going quickly & with them eclipse web tools serves up content with ease. XAMP rather than LAMP i.e. these packages have the core stack configured to work as a stack on the Windows monster.
Several packages include more -- Tomcat, Cocoon, etc.
Ruby?
RoR?

What is a report?

I guess that is a pretty broad term, lets ignore reports from the fireing of guns, annual reports from Enron, and reports of poor manners sent to the principal 's office.