What drives the social networks in a technical sense (I heard this in one of the IT Conversations I think):
Do you know them all? It is an interesting mind game to see how they all interact…
Category: thoughts
In a recent interview (well, that’s a big word, I was asked a question about Java…) I mentioned that there is still a future for Java on the Client. But is there?
There are so many Rich Internet Application frameworks and solutions nowadays: Flex, Lazlo, Ajax-based, Silverlight, etc… it dazzles the mind. What to pick? Why learn yet another tool, configuration and/or language?
As a Java developer, would it not be wonderful to do everything in Java. Drop the XML configuration and remoting. No JSPs or inside-out HTML, tags with HTML, Javascript, XHTML, CSS, and what not…
And I was amazed with the requirements of web applications: master-detail updates, dynamic drop downs, complex grids with excel behaviour, drag and drop, tabs… and all the roundtrips that are needed to get things done. We’ve come a long way now (see Google apps), but I think there is still something to be said for plain old Java GUI’s.
That was the entry point for a little project that I wrote. I’ve tagged it the “290% Java project” (stole that from the Oracle statement of a couple of years ago: “300% Java…”): Java in the Data layer, the Application Server layer and the Client layer.
How to accomplish this? Create a Swing or RCP “lite weight” client. Make this available via Java Web Start. Communicate simple POJOs via the Burlap and/or Hessian protocol, using a Servlet in Tomcat Server. Also use those protocols to store the data on disk (no database!). The remote server calls are defined by a clean Java interface. To create a Swing UI use a tool such as JFormDesigner (I hear good things of Matisse nowadays).
The client app runs both on Windows and the Mac, using Java 5 or 6.
This app is now being used for almost 2 years in a row, daily, both at home and at the workplace by around 10 people. It is like a bulletin board for a group, that is closed. Everybody in the group can read all messages, but you can specify who the message is intended for. Furthermore, it shows you directly if the message has been read by all that it is intended for (a feature that I did not come acros in email or other bulletin boards), and when it was read.
It was such a pleasure to create a UI in Java after all the struggles in the Browser world.
I presented this approach to a group of Java developers. I was surprised to learn that there is fear to start using this “all Java architecture” approach. The reasons being that there skills to program Swing or RCP are hard to find, JSP and JSF programmers are much easier to find. (Is this true?) Also, Swing seems to be considered hard to do and still has a reputation of being slow. Well… look at NetBeans; great job for a Swing ui! I just love the MVC model of it.
Some other points:
)There are some things to be aware of, or “some interesting issues”:
All in all, I really like this concept. Who dares to make the jump??? I think it is really suited for intranet apps that have complex GUI requirements, and need to be very responsive…
Let me know!
More and more phones, laptops and other devices that you can carry around have bluetooth and/or wifi capabilities.
This opens up interesting use of local wifi sites. In London center area there is free wifi internet access. Every 5 minutes an advertisement shows and the bandwidth is limited. You can also pay and subscribe to the service. That disables the advertisements and provides more bandwidth.
When I visited the Westminster area I had access to a freely available wifi connection. Unfortunately, the connection did not let me get online.
Instead it supplied a couple of web pages with local information: car park information and prices, a list of public buildings in the vicinity, local museums opening times,… Very clever…
An interesting concept: the wifi channel acts like a local information and advertisement bulletin board.
This can be done anywhere: proximity information! Think of music festivals that show the latest news and actual schedules. Or conferences that show background information for visitors.
Local contacts: when you walk into a hotel you automatically are assigned some phone numbers in your phone for room service and complaints. These are removed when you leave the building.
Bluetooth matching: State your interests with a bluetooth list on a trade fair. It will make your phone buzz when you walk past a stand that matches one or more of your interests… what is the progress there? I have heard of bluetooth dating on the streets this way, called toothing. Or was it a hoax?
Anyway, now that I have a wifi enabled phone, every now and again I scan the available networks wherever I am. And the shear number of them surprises me. It is a pity that a lot of them are not or public use. (And I love the names that some people think of for their wireless networks…)
Whatever happened to that project I was mailed about two years ago: get a wireless modem for 5 bugs. That was cheap! The deal was that you had to share your connection with everybody.
To make it useable and safe, it actually provided two wifi channels: one private for your local network, and one public. Now that wifi phones are available, this makes so much more sense!!!
update 9 april 2008: Recently I was at a pop concert in a big hall, and being surrounded by all these people I thought to check the bluetooth phones around me. And I was surprised to see so many devices listed! Half of the time it was ust the phone name, but the other half were names of the owners: “Suusje”, “Peter Br”, … So with bluetooth you can actually spot who is around you…
A while ago I was pleasantly surprised to hear about a project called “Many Eyes” that is hosted (and sponsored?) by IBM alphaware. That project was featured on IT Conversations. Not only the title of the project, but also the goal, reminded me a lot of the article that I got published during the last year of my Software Engineering study. The article was called “So many users, so many perspectives, sharing glasses and throwing remote controls”. It was about visualizing (dynamic) datasets and sharing the visualisations (using the glasses metaphor) with other online users, to aid collaboration between them.
The Many Eyes project does something similar: upload a (static) dataset (a text, or excel sheet, …) and choose a kind of graph to analyse the data. Then you can share this graph with others, publish it, and discuss it online.
The similarities in name and goal struck me…
I wonder if you can hook up some cloud processing on big datasets and then presenting the results with Many Eyes…
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