Group items tagged

Comments on the latest SVN article mulling the effects of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's anti trust ruling and proposed break up of Microsoft. comment: "Chinese Wall" Ummm, there was a Chinese Wall between Microsoft Os and the MS Applciations layer. At least that's what Chairman Bill promised developers at a 1990 OS/2-Windows Conference I attended. It was a developers luncheon, hosted by Microsoft, with Chairman Bill speaking to about 40 developers with applications designed to run on the then soon to be released Windows 3.0. In his remarks, the Chairman described his vision of commoditizing the personal computer market through an open hardware-reference platform on the one side of the Windows OS, and provisioning an open application developers layer on the other using open and totally transparent API's. Of course the question came up concerning the obvious advantage Microsoft applications would have. Chairman Bill answered the question by describing the Chinese Wall that existed between Microsoft's OS and Apps develop departments. He promised that OS API's would be developed privately and separate from the Apps department, and publicly disclosed to ALL developers at the same time. Oh yeah. There was lots of anti IBM - evil empire stuff too :) Of course we now know this was a line of crap. Microsoft Apps was discovered to have been using undocumented and secret Window API's. http://goo.gl/0UGe8. Microsoft Apps had a distinct advantage over the competition, and eventually the entire Windows Productivity Platform became dependent on the MSOffice core. The company I worked for back then, Pyramid Data, had the first Contact Management application for Windows; PowerLeads. Every Friday night we would release bug fixes and improvements using Wildcat BBS. By Monday morning we would be slammed with calls from users complaining that they had downloaded the Friday night patch, and now some other application would not load or function properly. Eventually we tracked th

Hacking Team admits that the hack occurred and that the documents are genuine.

Salesforce offers five separate editions of its Sales Cloud 2 product. Contact Manager Edition costs $5 per user per month, and somewhat resembles a cloud-based ACT. It tracks contacts, customer interactions, tasks, and hooks into Outlook and Google Apps, while also offering document sharing and mobile access. Group Edition costs $25 per user per month. It tracks sales opportunities, offers pre-built dashboards and basic reporting, adds the ability to capture leads from your Web site, and tracks Google AdWords performance within Salesforce.com. Group Edition is a good starting point for many SMBs, but Professional Edition is even better. It costs $65 per user per month, and it's is the real SMB sweet spot. It offers full reporting and analytics, custom dashboards, e-mail marketing, sales forecasts, granular permissions, real-time data sharing, and basic customer service tools.

Good Chart comparing four types of Data Stores: Key-Value, Tabular/Columnar, Document Store, Relational excerpt: The bottleneck is no longer around performance or the cost of computing - it's about quickly getting the information to thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of nodes trying to act as one computer delivering a service. Google and IBM both have written about the data center as a computer, and Facebook says it thinks of adding hardware at the rack level rather than at the server level. But the current means of storing and accessing data have not made this leap from a single server to a rack - let alone an entire data center. As programmers attempt this leap, they face several difficulties, which include working with existing software and programming languages and figuring out what problems and bottlenecks the new services built on these monolithic computer platforms will encounter. Plus, the IT world doesn't all move at once, which means plenty of jobs and workloads will continue with the old way of doing things - that is, relational databases such as Oracle's offerings and the open source MySQL, which Oracle now has a stake in thanks to its purchase of Sun. The result is not a steady movement to non-relational databases or other methods of storing data, but a back-and-forth as programmers and businesses figure out what kind of architecture they need and what problems they want to solve. For a closer look at the issue and a bunch of charts detailing how the landscape is currently laid out, analyst Matt Sarrel, has penned a report over at GigaOM Pro (sub. req'd.) on the NoSQL movement called "NoSQL Databases - Providing Extreme Scale and Flexibility."

Patent application filed on OASIS UOML access by API. 0002]The present invention relates to electronic document processing technologies, and particularly to a method for encapsulating Unstructured Operation Markup Language (UOML) into an Application Programming Interface (API).  BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  [0003]The UOML standard includes a series of docbase management system instructions defined according to a format of "action+object" in Extensible Markup Language (XML), which has been explained in detail in an UOML Standard published by of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS ). Since XML works across different platforms and with different languages, the UOML standard can enable the docbase management system instructions to be exchanged across the different platforms in the different languages. However, in practical applications, operations on a docbase are usually controlled by using programs written in programming languages, hence the programs need to parse and process UOML XML texts. If every application developer designs his/her own way of parsing and processing UOML XML texts in his/her programs, the workload of coding will increase significantly and the efficiency of coding will drop sharply.  SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  [0004]The objective of the present invention is to provide a method for encapsulating Unstructured Operation Markup Language (UOML) into an Application Programming Interface (API) of a programming language so as to improve the development efficiency of docbase management system application developers.  [0005]The method provided by the present invention for encapsulating UOML into an API includes:  Read more: http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20090187927#ixzz0xVS2ZUSr

Wow!  30GB free.  250 file formats with a "universal translation engine".  And HTML5. excerpt: "You can't have convergence unless you have the ability to translate files across different platforms and devices," Donald Leka, TransMedia's CEO, told Macworld. "There's a war between the big tech companies like Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, and Google, and these compatibility issues are not going to go away." Glide also lets you share any documents or media in your account with other users or the public. And with new desktop clients for Mac and PC that can sync a local folder up to your cloud storage space, Glide is taking on popular competitors like Dropbox, SugarSync, and Apple's own iDisk. Glide is free to use in desktop browsers and on the iPad, and free accounts get 30GB of space to start. Premium accounts offer 250GB of space for $50 per year.

The Future of the Open Web You're right that the browser wars do not matter - except for this point of demarcation; browsers that support HTML+ and browser that support 1998 HTML. extensive comment by ~ge~ Not all Web services and applications support HTML+, the rapidly advancing set of technologies that includes HTML5, CSS3, SVG/Canvas, and JavaScript (including the libraries and JSON). Microsoft has chosen to draw the Open Web line at what amounts to 1998-2001 level of HTML/CSS. Above that line, they provision a rich-client / rich-server Web model bound to the .NET-WPF platform where C#, Silverlight, and XAML are very prominent. Noticeably, Open Web standards are for the most part replaced at this richer MSWeb level by proprietary technologies. Through limited support for HTML/CSS, IE8 itself acts to dumb down the Open Web. The effect of this is that business systems and day-to-day workflow processes bound to the ubiquitous and very "rich" MSOffice Productivity Environment have little choice when it comes to transitioning to the Web but to stay on the Microsoft 2010 treadmill. Sure, at some point legacy business processes and systems will be rewritten to the Web. The question is, will it be the Open Web or the MS-Web? The Open Web standards are the dividing line between owning your information and content, or, having that content bound to a Web platform comprised of proprietary Microsoft services, systems and applications. Web designers and developers are still caught up in the browser wars. They worry incessantly as to how to dumb down Web content and services to meet the limited functionality of IE. This sucks. So everyone continues to watch "the browser wars" stats. What they are really watching for though is that magic moment where "combined" HTML+ browser uptake in marketshare signals that they can start to implement highly graphical and collaboratively interactive HTML+ specific content. Meanwhile, the greater Web is a

transclusion of hypertext documents. Transclusion is technically defined as "when you put that one thing in that other thing". In its current implementation, Twitter has declared that media which is shown within the Twitter interface comes from selected partners. But actually, the technology to allow embedding of rich media from almost any site already exists, using a system called OEmbed. Geeky stuff, but it's made by nice people who are pretty smart, and it lets any site say, "Hey, if you want to put our thing in your thing, do it like this". It works. Lots of sites do it. Nobody's getting rich off of it, but nobody's getting sued, and in between those two extremes lies most of what makes the Web great.

Excellent product release.  MarkLogic is trying to become the Google Search, Organize and Work for all things MSOffice.  Focus on MSOffice 2007 OOXML documents.

Lengthy article written by Tim Berners-Lee describes his concerns for the future of the Open Web.  Tim details the history of the Web, describing the principles that made the Web an Open Platform of universal access, exchange and collaborative computing.   excerpt: Universality Is the Foundation Several principles are key to assuring that the Web becomes ever more valuable. The primary design principle underlying the Web's usefulness and growth is universality. When you make a link, you can link to anything. That means people must be able to put anything on the Web, no matter what computer they have, software they use or human language they speak and regardless of whether they have a wired or wireless Internet connection. The Web should be usable by people with disabilities. It must work with any form of information, be it a document or a point of data, and information of any quality-from a silly tweet to a scholarly paper. And it should be accessible from any kind of hardware that can connect to the Internet: stationary or mobile, small screen or large.

Good article with excellent URL references.  Bottom line is that the W3C will support the advance of HTML5 and controversial components such as "canvas", HTML + RDFa, and HTML microdata. excerpt: The key question is: who's going to get their way with HTML5? The companies who want to keep the kitchen sink in? Or those which want it to be a more flexible format which might also be able to displace some rather comfortable organisations that are doing fine with things as they are? Adobe, it turned out, seemed to be trying to slow things down a little. It was accused of trying to put HTML5 "on hold". It strongly denied it. Others said it was using "procedural bullshit". Then Berners-Lee weighed in with a post on the W3 mailing list. First he noted the history: "Some in the community have raised questions recently about whether some work products of the HTML Working Group are within the scope of the Group's charter. Specifically in question were the HTML Canvas 2D API, and the HTML Microdata and HTML+RDFa Working Drafts." (Translation: Adobe seems to have been trying to slow things down on at least one of these points.) And then he pushes: "I agree with the WG [working group] chairs that these items -- data and canvas - are reasonable areas of work for the group. It is appropriate for the group to publish documents in this area." Chop! And that's it. There goes the Gordian Knot. With that simple message, Berners-Lee has probably created a fresh set of headaches for Adobe - but it means that we can also look forward to a web with open standards, rather than proprietary ones, and where commercial interests don't get to push it around.

Neil McAllister provides a good intro to HTML5 and what it will mean to the future of the Web.  It's just an intro, but the links he provides are excellent resources for deep dive. excerpt:  "Among Web developers, anticipation is mounting for HTML 5, the overhaul of the Web markup language currently under way at the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C). For many, the revamping is long overdue. HTML hasn't had a proper upgrade in more than a decade. In fact, the last markup language to win W3C Recommendation status -- the final stage of the Web standards process -- was XHTML 1.1 in 2001. In the intervening years, Web developers have grown increasingly restless. Many claim the HTML and XHTML standards have become outdated, and that their document-centric focus does not adequately address the needs of modern Web applications. HTML 5 aims to change all that. When it is finalized, the new standard will include tags and APIs for improved interactivity, multimedia, and localization. As experimental support for HTML 5 features has crept into the current crop of Web browsers, some developers have even begun voicing hope that this new, modernized HTML will free them from reliance on proprietary plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, and Silverlight."

Google has been making a number of acquisitions that are clearly Docs-related. Over the weekend, TechCrunch reported that the search giant is in the final stages of talks to acquire DocVerse, a startup that lets users collaborate around Office documents, for $25 million. The deal would also bring Google some key hires, since the startup's co-founders were managers on SharePoint, Microsoft's popular collaboration service. This follows the November acquisition of AppJet, a company founded by former Googlers that created a collaborative word processor. (It's worth noting that Google Docs itself was the offspring of several acquisitions, including Google's purchase of Writely.) Meanwhile, Google has been talking up the splash it wants Google Docs to make in 2010. Don Dodge, who just made the move from Microsoft to Google, recently told me, "2010 is going to be the year of Gmail and Google Docs and Google Apps." Even more concretely, Enterprise President Dave Girouard said last month that Docs will see 30 to 50 improvements over the next year, at which point big companies will be able to "get rid of Office if they choose to." Presumably features from AppJet and DocVerse will be among those improvements. I'd certainly be thrilled to see the battle between Office Docs become a real competition, rather than upstart Google slowly chipping away at Microsoft's Office behemoth.

Very cool!  Enables you to build a custom "real time" search "feed" widget that can then be embedded in blogs, wiki's or other web page documents.

Whether a patent constitutes "property" in the U.S. is an issue on which the Supreme Court has apparently never ruled. However, there is no question that the nation's founders viewed it only as a government-granted privilege, not a "property" right. The U.S. Supreme Court quoted Thomas Jefferson on the topic: Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. VI Writings of Thomas Jefferson, at 18

MailBrowser is incredible!  Watchout DropBox, this takes the whole sync and collaboration on attached documents to a new level. Also: gCalendar ext gMail Checker Plus MailBrowser ext GleeBox Google Quick Scroll (shows search results on page) IE Tab for Chrome (renders IE specific Web Pages in Chrome) Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (no waiting for Adobe or PowerPoint Reader) Forecastfox Weather Fastest Chrome: research aid for wikipedia and google search Apture Highlights:   better research than Fastest Chrome

RuleLab.Net is a web-based system for designing and implementing the business rules that operate on an application's XML data. Extend your existing applications by adding Rule building and Business Rules Engine (BRE) capabilities. Consolidate your business logic in an easy to read format, build, test, share, and deploy your Rules using the web browser; and integrate them into your system via the BRE. Intuitive GUI, English-like syntax, and centralized repository empower business users with direct access to the Rules.In the RuleLab.Net system, Business Rules are composed and managed over the Internet or Intranet using the web-based Rules Designer. It allows users to associate an application XML data template with Rules, create a vocabulary of natural terms, graphically build complex logical expressions, test the Rules on data samples, and store the Rules in a database. Features include strong data types, reasoning, rule priorities and dependencies, calculation formulas, looping-data-structure support, and a built-in set of computational, aggregate and other data processing functions. Rules and other system objects are stored in XML files that can be downloaded, modified, and uploaded to the online repository. Rule changes made online can be instantly deployed for runtime use by the applications integrated with the BRE. The forward chaining BRE parses XML application data against the ruleset, updates your data XML document, and returns it back to the application along with the comprehensive state information. Written in .NET, the BRE component can be utilized as a managed assembly, a COM object, or through the Web Service.

PALO ALTO, Calif - Box.net unveiled a redesign of its cloud-based content management (CMS) and collaboration system at a press event here today at company headquarters. The new interface, features and partnership announcements with NetSuite, Samsung and VMware are all part of the company's strategy to win over more enterprise customers. "This is an all new version of Box, remade for the enterprise, enabling a new set of workflows and features," Box CEO Aaron Levie said in opening remarks. Storage in the free version of Box has been upgraded to five gigabytes (up from one) and is unlimited for enterprise users of the paid version. Box has also increased the viewing area for content by 30 percent, added real-time updates of content including new comments, edits or deletions of a document. Updates are also ranked and collated to present the user with the most important information. Another improvement is a simplified administrative console designed to improve readability and organization. Overall, Box said it has developed a much more scalable framework for its user interface that makes it easier to roll out new features.