Andre’s Blog

June 30th, 2006

After a longer than expected drive with Dave Olson of Elastic Path and Will Pate of Flock from Vancouver we got to Seattle and checked in to Edgewater Hotel. Then headed over to the opening reception. It was great to see so many Canadians down here, the crew from Bryght and RainCity were in full force after wrapping up DrupalCamp.

Friday morning I slept in a bit but got here in time for Michael Arrington’s talk. Seems the hype and/or buzz is alive and well, Seattle must have Kool-Aid factory near by. Amont other things Michael defined his rules for success:

1. Makes Money (giant liquidity event – thanks Boris)
2. Makes the internet a better place to hang out.

I suppose the second is subjective (I never use Digg or find it that useful but it’s a traffic juggernaut and Michael loves it) , but the first is not;-) It was interesting to see the different opinions even amongst folks building consumer services online. Michael is certainly sure of his model and views…he even told an audience member their opinion was a bad one;-) Ouch.

Dave Dederer (founding member of the President of the United States of America) gave and interesting talk comparing the blog-o-sphere to bands and comparing and contrasting the two spaces. Basically how to share and Marc Canter on Apple “their slimeballs!” Ethan from WB on musicians “Musicians get a lot of sex, which is an interesting predicament.”

Senator John Edwards talked to the group, nad he was relieved the plan had changed and he was not giving a keynote. He was very big on net neutrality and using the new internet for political goals and issues. “If the democratic party wants this country (USA) we’re going to have show a little back bone and courage…” I’m not sure but I think people say that kinda stuff all the time;-)

I’m won’t be blogging detailed notes from every talk but, I’ll keep puling out a few little bits of interest from each talk and provide links.

Technorati Tags: gnomedex, gnomedex06, seattle, senatoredwards, techcrunch, michaelarrington,

Posted in Technology, Web 2.0, Business | 2 Comments »

June 8th, 2006

We have an rss feed that you can subscribe using iTunes right here: http://ebadre.audioblog.com/rss/ajaxradio.xml.

Participants:

• Andre Charland – CEO and Co-Founder of eBusiness Applications
• Dave Johnson – CTO and Co-Founder of eBusiness Applications
• Alexei White – Product Manager and AJAX Evangelist at eBusiness Applications
• Christian Van Edeen – Schenker Canada

Schenker and AJAX

• Built a large scale internal applications with an AJAX UI
• Users are around the world
• Very data intensive
• controlled IT environment
• Using

• Nitobi Grid

• Prototype

• PHP and lots of home grown stuff

REST

• Pros and cons
• Tim Bray’s post
• REST is good for scaling

Google Spreadsheet

• Seems like a good UI
• Do do we trust google with yet more of our data
• Does not seem really good for business use
• Good enough for soccer moms, probably

Technorati Tags: podcast, ajax, enterpriseajax, rest, google, spreadsheet, schenker

Posted in Technology, Software Development, AJAX, Business, Usability – HCI | No Comments »

June 7th, 2006

Tantek Writes:

…there will always be smarter, more clever people building on each other’s work than your secret internal committees, your architecture councils, your internal discussion forums — no matter how many supergeniuses you think you may have…

Via Tim Bray. Precisely why we are thinking hard about what and how to open source and trying to figure out the biz model that supports that.  Thanks for the inspiration guys!  Any tips?

Technorati Tags: innovation, os, opensource, community

Posted in Technology, Software Development, Ethics and Sustainability, Business | No Comments »

June 3rd, 2006

James “The Brains Behind Nitobi” Douma and Jake the Snake have both started blogging!   I’m excited to see what James has to say as he knows more about AJAX and most computer topics than anyone I’ve ever met (JavaScript, Games, Ontologies, AI…you name it!).  And Jake being the newest blood has some already brought in some great tools like Trac and Js Elipse, so expect big things from this HogTown boy!  Do I sound like a boxing announcer or what!

Now we just need to get Pam the task master, Wendy the graphics guru,
Omar the money man and Agus the AJAX Padawan, but soon to be Jedi, into the
blog-o-sphere and Nitobi will be 100% blog-o-fied.

Technorati Tags: eba, ajax, blog

Posted in AJAX, Web 2.0, Business | No Comments »

June 3rd, 2006

I hooked up with Cote’ from Redmonk and Charles from TheFrontSide to chat about “Enterprise AJAX”. It was a fun conversation and Cote already has it up here. Part 2 is coming soon so don’t worry. They’re old buds and do the Drunk and Retired podcast together, so I was the new kid on the playground.

Some highlights:

• Global namespaces are a pain, and so is global domination;-)
• Next time we’re going to talk about tips to make JS and AJAX components work together and hopefullyform a group to make components work together, maybe Open AJAX is already on it but I’m not sure
• How do you optimize AJAX? I defered too my much smarter colleague on JavaScript Benchmarking Part by Dave Johnson
• How do you sell AJAX? Good question. Nitobi sells components, development, training and consulting
• My favorite point was an acronym that Cote demystified for me, AJAX is now officially a Magazine Driven Architecture (MDA). ROFL I had a good chuckle about that! Wonder if I could get away with a wikipedia entry for that!
• AJAX is all about usability…but I always say that
• AJAX spreadsheets and ODF together are going rock!

Some of the stuff I wanted to chat about was how TheFrontSide compares to GWT and if Charles is concerned by the current bruhaha with Morfik. Next time guys.

And arrggh we just got an XBox 360 for the office! So much for productivity! But team moral is way up:)

Download the MP3

Technorati Tags: ajax, redmonk, eba, cote, podcast, thefrontside, javascript, enterpriseajax

Posted in Technology, Software Development, AJAX, Web 2.0, Business, Usability – HCI | 1 Comment »

May 31st, 2006

Notes from the second Nitobi Podcast.  Recorded with Andre Charland, Dave Johnson and Alexei White.

Yahoo API’s versus Google versus eBay APIs

• Geo Coding and Mapping APIs
• tight licensing, despite the appearance (the illusion of freedom)
• can’t put them behind a log-in for example
• hard to build a business model
• Alexei is working on an RIA / AJAX polling and survey tool
• Dave was looking at eBay API for a grid demo to show off live scrolling and updating of auction items
• Yahoo Maps may not be quite as good, but the APIs are more powerful and flexible
• Will more open win? Or will better software win?
• How are these companies going to build business models
• Who’s going to provide the micropayments?
• Pushpin have the same data
• Yahoo Patterns will have an API soon
• Amazon Web Services Site

• S3 REST based storage service
• Mechanical Turk – is an addictive

Windows Live Mail

• I like deleting with the keyboard, and there should way more keyboard nav on the web

Translating higher level languages to Javascript

• Morphik suing the internet and google WTF mate
• Reg has a blog post about it: http://web2.0central.com/archives/202
• Dear Pioneers! WTF

Enterprise AJAX – the book we’re writing

• MVC
• send us suggestions: djohnson [at] ebusiness [dash] apps [dot] com
• We need Enterprise class AJAX case studies: awhite [at] ebusiness [dash] apps [dot] com

Podcasting with cote and charles about enterprise AJAX on Thursday

• Drunkandretired.com

Java and AJAX

• Dave’s Jupiter Media Webinar June 14th – http://developer.com
• What’s most popular?

• JSF

• Struts

• Spring

Java IDEs

• NetBeans
• Java Studio Creator
• Eclipse

Who’s looking at this?

• http://eclipse-ecosystem.blogspot.com/2006/05/indeed-some-work-to-do-in-eclipse.html
• http://google.com/trends?q=eclipse+java%2C+netbeans%2C+intellij%2C+jbuilder%2C+jdeveloper&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
• Tim O’reilly: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/02/whats_up_with_netbeans.html

Grid 3.05 Release: http://www.nitobi.com/technologies/webdevelopment/codeandcomponents/ebagrid/default.htm

• Improved Toolbar
• Performance way up!  Faster smoother user experience!
• Fixed some character and encoding issues
• Size / Footprint has been cut down
• Check out the demos
• We’re releasing that May 31st

Hipsters!  Get’ em

• How to know when you have a hipster infestation: http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/spoofs_satire/do_you_have_hipsters.php

Technorati Tags: podcast, enterpriseajax, ajaz, api, mapping, ide, java, eba

Posted in Technology, Software Development, AJAX, Web 2.0, Business, Usability – HCI | No Comments »

May 30th, 2006

My good buddy, RainCity Studios CEO, Rob Scales won the “The Canadian New Media Award – Best Graduate of the Year”! From Rob’s blog:

A few month back I posted that I was nominated by the Canadian New Media Awards for the Best Graduate of the Year. Last night Megan Cole, Raincity Studios Marketing Champion was in Toronto on my behalf since I am in China..

MC kissing the award!

Congrats from me and the rest of the team at eBusiness Applications and DogLotion! You deserve it Rob! Keep on keepin’ on! Looking forward to working with you more.

Technorati Tags: canadiannewmedia, award, graduate, robscales, rcs, raincitystudios, cmna

Posted in Technology, Software Development, Web 2.0, Business | No Comments »

May 29th, 2006