An Overview of buzztouch, A Mobile App CMS for Non-Programmers

The other day I stumbled on a Make Use Of article about buzztouch, a "iPhone, iPad, Android app builder and content management system."  Since we're researching options for creating cross-platform mobile applications, and the article indictated that it was worth checking out, I decided to sign up and give buzztouch a spin.

buzztouch is designed to let non-programmers build a mobile app on the buzztouch website using a collection of web-based forms.  The app-building interface prompts you to create certain items, like a launcher icon for the app, a banner image for the home screen, and an "info" page for the app, but you choose what other content you wish to provide from a drop-down list of different components.  One component lets you create a screen of formatted text using CKEditor, while another lets you create an app screen using HTML, CSS, and Javascript.  There are components for pulling in remote content such as web pages, YouTube pages, streaming audio and video files, and RSS feeds.  One component lets you pinpoint one or more locations on a Google Map with brief location information that a user of the app can then use to get driving directions to those locations from their current position.  Even though I was casually playing with the system, I was able to create an app using several of these components in under two hours.

Once you've created the app, you can then download the native source code for the app:  you're provided with separated source code downloads for IOS and for Android.  The source code comes in a .zip file, which also contains a readme file with instructions on how to compile the source code for that particular platform and create the native app.  It only took me a few minutes to create an Android app from the source code, and it only took me that long because I had to provide a Google Maps API key to enable the mapping component I'd added (the readme provided exact instructions on the changes I need to make it the code to use the key).  I had my IOS developer colleague compile the IOS version of the app, and it was also smooth sailing for him.  The resulting app on the Android platform looked a little rough simply because of the generic design elements, but the IOS version looked pitch-perfect.

The first time you access any component or screen in the mobile app, there is a pause as the app retrieves the content or content instructions from buzztouch then caches it for local use.  This is where the content management system aspect of buzztouch kicks in:  any changes you make to the app on the buzztouch site get pushed to (or pulled by, not sure which) the mobile app.  So the app owner doesn't need to recompile and update the app through the App Store or the Android Market in order to make content changes.  If the mobile device doesn't have a network connection, then the cached content is used.

So what's my overall take on buzztouch?  I think that if you need to build a mostly informational mobile app, something that serves the same purpose as a mobile-optimized website, then buzztouch is a compelling option because of how easy it is to create the app and then update the content.  Even if your long-term strategy is to redesign an existing "desktop"-optimized website to be mobile-friendly as well, a buzztouch app could fill the void until that goal was reached.

If you need to build a mobile app that's more interactive, one where the user can send and receive custom data, then buzztouch is at best an incomplete solution.  There are no buzztouch components for collecting data (though the app itself will capture GPS info from the device in order to map where the app has been used, which is both useful and slightly disturbing), but you could probably use the Custom HTML component to create a web form that transmitted data via a regular form submit or via AJAX.  And there are as yet no components that let you access device-specific functions like the camera or accelerometer.

On the other hand, if you are capable of doing some IOS or Android coding, the native code provided by buzztouch could serve as a starting point for adding additional functionality:  the buzztouch folks seem to be open to folks using the generated code to advance their learning of native app programming.

So overall, I'm impressed with what buzztouch has done so far with the direction they've taken, and I hope they continue to improve on the platform.

E-readers: No One Has All the Answers Yet

Today I attended a presentation about a joint study being conducted between the English and Computer Science departments at the University of Maryland regarding the use of e-readers for academic reading. What was interesting about the study was that it wasn't just about whether students preferred using an e-reader device over standard textbooks, but whether the simultaneous use of TWO e-reader devices was more conducive to academic reading.

On the surface, using two devices to read instead of one seems a bit odd, but the premise of the study was based on research that showed that individuals engaged in academic reading (reading to learn, to synthesize information and translate into research notes) often had two or more sets of reading material (books, research papers, etc.) in front of them, and that they would go back and forth between those sources as they took their notes.

So at the beginning of the semester, the students in this literature course (which appropriately is a course that studies the history and future direction of books) were each given one of these e-reader devices developed by the Computer Science department. Each of these e-readers were about 7"x10", used E-ink for the display, allowed students to write notes with a stylus, and were optimized for quick page refreshes and overall book navigation. Now that the students have had a few weeks to acclimate to the use of the readers, they are each going to get a second one and try using them simultaneously. Although the presenter didn't go into great detail, the e-readers apparently have the ability to transfer and synchronize data with each other, so the students can decide to tackle the same source material with both devices or perhaps create references between two different documents.

To me, studies like these really highlight the fact that the e-reader market is still a young market and that no one has all the answers. Mainstream e-readers like the Kindle, the Nook, and the almost-here iPad may lead the e-reader market when it comes to casual reading, but there hasn't been as much of a focus on what works when it comes to e-readers for academic or professional use. As was discussed after the presentation, there may be a shift in the very concept of a "book" is as people explore not only different ways of consuming text-based content, but ways of producing and presenting the content, perhaps with the addition of other types of media.

It'll be interesting to see what comes out of all of this several years down the road.

Droid: My Experience So Far

So I went ahead and bought a Droid this past Friday. I haven't had a huge amount of time to play with it yet, but I thought I'd share some of my experiences so far:

• I'm not sold on the physical keyboard yet. The keys are very close together, so if you have decent-sized thumbs like I do, you have to really focus on your typing to avoid hitting two keys at once. Having said that, I have gotten better at it since my first day.

• I like the on-screen keyboards. The haptic feedback (the slight vibration when you hit a key) is nice, and I like the row of word suggestions that's displayed under the typing area as you type. I prefer it over the virtual keyboard of my iPod Touch.

• The screen is beautiful. I haven't had a chance to play any videos on it, but the application icons on the screen make the iPod icons look "soft" in comparison.

• The web browser is on par with the Safari browser on the iPod (no real surprise, as they both employ the webkit engine). The Android browser does not have multi-touch, so you can't pinch the web pages, but it lets you double-tap on the page to magnify it and I find that sufficent. Web pages load about as quickly as I expected (a bit slower over 3G, obviously).

• The new Google Maps Navigation with turn-by-turn directions is as cool as reported. I used it twice just to see how it worked, and it gave me perfect directions and was quick to recalculate the route when I went a different direction.

• I like having the ability to have widgets on my screen for things like the weather and Twitter, but because the default UI for Android only gives you three screens to work with, you have to be judicious about which widgets you want to display (though it's easy to add and remove widgets).

• I really like the notification system. If the Droid is "on" (i.e. the screen is lit), the notification/status bar at the top of the screen will denote if you have any new Gmail messages or Twitter updates with icons, and you can drag down the notification window to see a summary of what's going on. If the Droid screen is off/dark, and there are updates, an LED light in the upper right corner will flash. It even flashes different colors for different applications:  green if there's a new Gmail message, blue if Twidroid (my main Twitter app) has received new tweets.

• Android phones do not have a set media management programs like iTunes, so you have two options for copying your media files onto your phone: you can simply mount the phone's SD card as a hard drive via USB and copy the files manually, or you can download a program like doubleTwist (Windows only) or Salling Media Sync (Windows/Mac) that inspects your iTunes library and playlists and copies any non-DRM media over to the Droid. I couldn't get doubleTwist to synch my files (I suspect it just needs to be updated to handle the Droid), but Salling Media Sync was able to copy over the iTunes playlists I selected.

• Some Droid users have reported problems with the auto-focus on the camera for still shots.  I personally haven't experienced that problem. I was surprised that there was no way to specify what it was you wanted the lens to focus on within the shot: double-tapping on the screen causes it to zoom in rather than select the subject. Despite that, the few pictures I've taken look pretty good to me. There are one or two camera apps in the Android Marketplace, so I imagine that better camera applications will be developed for the Droid eventually.

• Speaking of the Android Marketplace, it's easily accessible via the Marketplace app on the Droid. You can find apps by category or via the search bar, and each application is listed with a price (quite a few are free or donation-ware) and a rating. It's easy to download an app, try it out, and then uninstall/delete it if it's not to your liking.

• The battery seems sufficient to me, though I probably haven't used it as heavily as some folks would. Since every app you turn on (and some apps start up automatically) stays on unless you explicitly kill it, having a program that can selectively turn off running apps like Advanced Task Killer if you don't want to waste power.  I also downloaded a widget that lets me selectively turn off the different radios/receivers on the Droid (WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS) if I'm not using them.

• The ability to multitask is sweet. I had the music player on while I drove to work this morning when it occurred to me that I hadn't shut off the WiFi radio on the Droid. So while I was stopped at a traffic light, I hit the Home button, swiped over to the right screen where my radio manager widget was, turned off the WiFi, and went back to the music player, all without missing a note of the song.

If anyone has any questions about the Droid, feel free to ask, and I'll answer them if I can.

Federal CTO Envisions a Purpose-Driven, Collaborative Internet

One of my favorite podcasts is Buzz Out Loud, a weekday live video stream and podcast from CNET.com that reports, analyzes, and banters about the tech news of the day. This past week, they conducted an interview with Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra, which I just finished listening to today.

The entire interview was quite interesting, but there were two particular discussions that struck me.

The first one was about broadband penetration: the Buzz Out Loud podcasters wanted to know what plans, if any, were being made to promote the rollout of broadband to those areas where such service was limited or unavailable. Chopra said that they hoped to address that issue with a national broadband plan due to be revealed in February 2010, but he said that his personal focus was more on encouraging innovation in developing applications that would further the adoption and development of a robust broadband infrastructure. In other words, it's not just about building the infrastructure for people, businesses, and government organizations to have, but creating compelling applications of that infrastructure that bring people on board and give them more reasons for wanting ubiquitous Internet access.

As web/Internet application developers, we tend to think of broadband, high bandwith, and Internet access as the infrastructure that allows us to build robust applications. It's kind of exciting to look at it the other way around, that creating useful, effective, compelling applications that people want (or perhaps even need) could promote and justify the expanse of the broadband infrastructure.

The second discussion was in response to a viewer question about the use of open source software within government agencies (SUSE and RedHat were specifically mentioned). Chopra said that that was really in the federal CIO's arena of concern, but that he personally was more interested in promoting the principles of "open collaboration" and the "sharing of intellectual property as we build value." He went on to explain that what he meant by that was that he didn't care so much if an application built for the government was built on a proprietary platform so long as that application became shared intellectual property between government agencies. That again was another point that I hadn't heard anyone make before.

I'd encourage anyone who has an interest in how the federal government hopes to leverage technology to the country's advantage to listen to this podcast episode. You can watch the video version or listen to the audio version, either streaming or as a download, at the following address:

http://www.cnet.com/8301-19709_1-10302978-10.html?tag=mncol;title

In Defense of Twitter

Since I've already defended Twitter in two other people's blogs this past week, I figured I should write my own post on the matter. That way, if I feel inclined to comment on Twitter use again, I can just post the URL to this entry and leave it at that (save myself some typing).

I wasn't enamored with Twitter when I first checked it out. I wasn't interested in the mundane things people were doing at the moment, and I certainly didn't think anyone really cared what I was doing.

But at cfObjective() 2008, it quickly became clear that Twitter could help me connect with fellow conference-goers and clue me in on what was going on in particular sessions, where people were gathering to hang out or go out, etc. And I've used Twitter ever since: I'm not on it every waking moment and I don't feel like I'm disconnected when I'm not on it, but I do make use of it.

I really feel that the simple trick to getting value out of Twitter is to follow people whose Twitter posts ("tweets") provide some value to you: information, insight, humor, whatever. Most of the people I follow are ColdFusion/RIA/Web developers, and they'll post any interesting links about those topics that they encounter as they surf the web. It's almost like a people-powered RSS feed of tech articles, except that you're getting the information from people you know and respect rather than random people.

Sure, there are the occasional tweets about where people are or what they're having for lunch, the tidbits of daily life, but those can be easily ignored if you're not interested. And yes, it can be a distraction if you're getting live updates from Twitter via a desktop client like Twhirl or Tweetdeck, but there's a simple solution to that: turn it off while you're working, and turn it back on when you're taking a break.

I'm not trying to push Twitter on anyone--you can live without it--but I think folks should give it a serious try before deciding one way or the other.

Mozilla Announces Jetpack, an API For Writing FireFox Adds-On with jQuery, HTML, and CSS

I found out about this last night from a tweet sent out by the jQuery Twitter account (which is probably a good indication that they like the idea).

The subject line pretty much says it all: Jetpack is designed to let current web developers use their existing skills with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery to build Firefox add-ons/plugins without the need to mess with Firefox's XUL mark-up language. While JavaScript has always been part of the add-on development process, the inclusion of jQuery should make performing certain actions a whole lot easier.

You can learn more about Jetpack via the following URLs:

• https://jetpack.mozillalabs.com/
• http://labs.mozilla.com/2009/05/introducing-jetpack-call-for-participation/
• https://jetpack.mozillalabs.com/tutorial.html

...the tutorials in the final link give you a good idea of the kinds of things Jetpack will allow you to do: the last example is a Jetpack add-on that will count and display the number of unread e-mails in your Gmail Inbox.

I want to give Jetpack a whirl, but I honestly can't think of any functionality I want to add to Firefox that I can't get from an existing plugin. Anyone have any suggestions for something to try with Jetpack?

It's interesting how web technologies keep being repurposed as a development option in other technologies (Adobe AIR, the upcoming Palm Pre's WebOS, and now Jetpack). Even though I'm not particularly interested in delving into all these different areas, I must say that I like the trend. :)

New AIR Application: focusTimer

A few weeks ago, Peter Bell wrote a blog post about the Pomodoro Technique, a time management technique that advocates setting aside a set amount of time to turn off all distractions (e-mail, IM, Twitter) and focusing on a single task. I had just recently starting adopting the practice of shutting down my e-mail client once in awhile so as not to be distracted by incoming messages, so the idea made a lot of sense to me.

Not having a physical kitchen timer like the Pomodoro folks use and finding my stopwatch to be somewhat inadequate, I decided to try and write an AIR application to fit my needs. And so the focusTimer was born.

It's a very simple app: set the amount of time you want to focus (the 25 minutes advocated by the Pomodoro folks is the default), and click the "Start" button. I didn't want to get caught up in checking to see how much time was left, so I added a button so I could toggle between seeing the time left and just a status message.

I wanted to keep the window small so that it could be moved out of the way, but I also wanted a strong visual cue for when the time was up, so the color of the window changes to green when you start the countdown, switches to yellow for the "2-minute warning", and ends in red when the timer runs out. In the two days I've been using it at work, I've found that I can move the window to the far end of my secondary monitor and still catch the color change out of the corner of my eye.

Finally, even though the idea is to block out all distractions, there are some interruptions that cannot be ignored, so the "Start" button toggles between a "Pause" button and a "Resume" button once the countdown has started. If your focus session goes completely off the rails, you can use the "Cancel" button to break out of it and start all over again.

Even though I wrote this AIR app primarily for myself, I figured other folks might find it useful, so it's now available for download up on RIAforge: http://focustimer.riaforge.org

Reaching the "Invisible" CFML Programmers

On Monday, Sean Corfield's thoughts on how Adobe MAX 2008 went were published on the Fusion Authority website. One of the events Sean cited in his article was a Birds of a Feather session moderated by Adrian Moreno about bridging the gap between expert/guru CFML developers (the ones most visible in the online CFML community) and "9 to 5" CFML developers.

I don't know the details of what was discussed in that session, but it relates to an issue that crosses my mind every once in a while: how do you reach out to developers when you don't know who or where they are? And, conversely, how do we help these "invisible" developers find (and participate in) the community?

I was a full-time ColdFusion developer for almost two years before I really became aware of the ColdFusion community. My predecessor, to my knowledge, never participated in the CFML community or went to any conferences or user groups, so it never crossed my mind that such resources existed. I don't remember how or when I realized that there was a community of folks with which I could converse about ColdFusion development (though it was probably at CFUnited '05), but the point is is that it wasn't an automatic process.

I think this is an area where Adobe needs to step up and promote the community as part of the overall "ColdFusion package". Every sale of ColdFusion should include a list of CFML community resources and a statement that encourage organizations to share that list with any ColdFusion developers they are aware of. If Adobe is skittish about including links to resources that might disappear over time, at the very least they can include Adobe-sponsored resources like Adobe Feeds or the new Adobe Groups site.

Even that kind of effort might not reach all the CFML developers out there: in some organizations (like mine) where the ColdFusion server is running in a shared environment, the organization that owns the CF license may not know who all is using the CF instance. So here's another idea: put links to community resources into the new Adobe Bolt. If Bolt is meant to be the premier IDE for CFML developers, then there's a good chance that even the "invisible" CFML developers will grab it and gain access to all the resources it provides.

CF411 and ColdFusion for Educational Use (Oh, And That New Browser...)

Blogging bullet-point style tonight:

• Charlie Arehart's new CF411 site has a MASSIVE amount of links to tools and resources for CFML and web development. Stop what you're doing right now, go to the page, and store it somewhere (your bookmarks, Delicious, wherever).

• The announcement that ColdFusion 8 Enterprise is now available for free for educational use (in other words, for learning purposes) was made on Monday. You can find out more at https://freeriatools.adobe.com/coldfusion/

  While I'm glad the announcement is out, I just wish it had been promoted better. There's still nothing about it up on the Adobe home page or even on Adobe's ColdFusion product page. Why not?

• Last (and least...), Google surprised everyone this week with their new Chrome web browser. It got so much attention that everyone stopped talking about the iPhone, which is admittedly pretty impressive.

  Like everyone else, I've played with it. Here's my take on it (yep, more bullet-points):

  • It runs pretty well.
  • It does seem to run JavaScript more quickly than other browsers.
  • It has a few nice innovative features.
  • It can be quirky at times and it has some flaws (but it is a beta).
  • It has promise, but it doesn't provide any new functionality that I find particularly useful to me.
  • FireFox will remain my browser at work and at home.

   

Leveraging the Ubiquity FireFox Plugin To Access CFQuickDocs Pages

If you're a FireFox user and you haven't tried out the new Ubiquity plugin created by the folks at Mozilla Labs, you should.

What is Ubiquity? The short answer is it's a command-line interface for retrieving and re-purposing web content. For example, the "wikipedia" command built into the plugin takes the word you type in, retrieves data from the top 5 matches for that word (as you type it, no less) in Wikipedia using an API, and displays that data with clickable links to the Wikipedia pages in the command window:



You can see even more interesting uses for Ubiquity by watching the video clip in the Ubiquity blog post.

One of the things about Ubiquity that hasn't been talked about very much is that you can create your own Ubiquity commands using JavaScript and then share those commands with other Ubiquity users (note to jQuery users: Ubiquity commands can use jQuery functions as well as regular JavaScript functions). To that end, I created a very simple command that lets me call up a particular CFQuickDocs page by typing "cfquickdocs" and the name of the CFML tag or function I want to look up:



As Ubiquity commands go, it's not that impressive, but it does let me pull up a particular entry faster than I used to (which involved going into my bookmarks, clicking on the bookmark, waiting for the page to load, and then entering the tag or function I want to read about). And all it took was one function call with four parameters:

makeSearchCommand({
  name: "cfquickdocs",
  url: "http://www.cfquickdocs.com/?getDoc={QUERY}#{QUERY}",
  icon: "http://www.cfquickdocs.com/favicon.ico",
  description: "Searches the CFQuickDocs for the CFML tag or function you enter."
});

Sharing a Ubiquity command is simply a matter of putting the command in a JavaScript file and then creating an HTML page that calls that file. So if I wanted to host/publish the above Ubiquity command, I could just add it via a <link> tag to an HTML file and host it somewhere, and a Ubiquity user could simply visit that page to install it.

If you don't have Ubiquity installed but want to learn more about developing Ubiquity commands, there is an online tutorial that explains the basics. Once you have the plugin installed, you'll have access to a command editor that lets you try out your commands as you code them, and you can read the code for all of the functions that come built into the plugin.

If You Build the App, Someone Just Might Use It: You Never Know

I was rather surprised to see my colorPicker AIR application included in a list of 10 AIR apps for web designers on the Six Revisions blog this past week. Then Gary Gilbert gave it more exposure by blogging about the Six Revisions post.

After seeing the Six Revisions post, I decided to check colorPicker's download numbers on RIAForge and got another surprise: the download count was just shy of 800.

As of today, four days after the blog exposure, the download count stands at 1119.

I built the colorPicker mainly for myself (and I still use it). I put it up on RIAForge because I thought a FEW people might prefer something a bit simpler than Kuler (Adobe's color palette tool). But given the number of slick color designer AIR apps that are out now, I would never have expected that many people to have given colorPicker even a glance.

It just goes to show that you never know what apps or code other people might find worthwhile.

Google's new virtual room service (Lively) may have potential

Yesterday Google launched a new beta project called Lively. Lively lets you create virtual rooms that people can join and then interact with each other via avatars. The concept is similar to virtual reality systems like The Sims or Second Life, but the difference is that you can put the rooms that you build on your own web page(s).

When I first heard about it, I thought the idea was a bit over-the-top, but I decided to at least try it out last night.

For a first version beta, it's pretty slick. You start off with a basic set of room layouts and room items (furniture, decorations, accessories) to build your room with, but you can choose to add different items from an on-line catalog (currently, all of the items are "free," which seems to imply a virtual currency may be established later when they let folks create their own stuff). Once you add an item to the room, you can move the item by dragging it and then rotate it as needed. You can also add mood music, either from the catalog of music or by uploading your own music file.

Once you've decided an avatar to represent you, you can enter the room and interact with the items (if there's a couch, you can choose to sit down on it). If there are other people/avatars in the room, you can chat with them just like you would in a normal chatroom and your words will appear in a conversation block over your head for everyone to see (or you can whisper privately to a single fellow occupant). Right-clicking on your avatar brings up a menu of gestures and animations you can have your avatar perform, like clapping, laughing, or dancing like John Travolta in "Pulp Fiction" (yes, it's as bizarre-looking as you might think).

I threw together a very simple room and then embedded the code to access the room on a very simple web page on my site. You can check it out if you like, but since you'll need the Windows-only plugin to enter the room, which is the same plugin that lets you create your own room and avatar, you're probably better off trying Lively out by creating your own room.

The need for the plugin to even enter a room is probably one of the biggest drawbacks of the service. The visual evidence strongly suggests that Lively runs off of Flash and was built using Flex (I once saw the standard Flex "Initializing..." dialog box while loading my room) so it's unclear as to why a separate plugin is needed. Maybe Adobe can work with Google to redo the plugin in AIR so it's at least cross-platform.

The other challenge facing adoption of Lively is, well, its usefulness. Right now, it's essentially an enhanced chat room. Some folks have said that businesses could use it to hold virtual meetings, but I don't see that happening unless Lively is upgraded to allow one or more room participants to speak via a microphone and provides a means of working with a presentation (Lively does allow you to display Flash videos within your room but I didn't explore that feature).

And while the idea of having a virtual room up on your home page or blog is kinda neat, it's not going to do you much good unless there's a compelling reason for people to come and hang out in groups in YOUR room. Centralized virtual realities like Second Life are never empty because there's just one world for people to go to: certain areas might be emptier than others, but there's always someone around to interact with. Still, I do see some potential uses for it with established communities. Popular online forums could replace their existing chat rooms with Lively rooms. Businesses could create a guest room or visitor room where website visitors could hang out before interacting with customer service avatars. Conferences like cf.Objective() or CFUnited could have virtual discussions rooms that allow conference-goers to discuss the day's events with non-conference goers ("Folks, the in-person BOFs will be from 8pm to 9pm, followed by the online BOF free-for-all in the Lively room from 9pm to...whenever.")

Heck, the folks on the RIA cruise in February could take the Lively "tropical island" room template and make a place to meet up with non-cruise landlubbers at some point during the cruise if they wanted to.

Who knows if people would make use of these rooms, but the beauty is that it doesn't take long at all to create a basic Lively room, so if it doesn't work out the time lost in trying isn't painful.

It'll be interesting to see if this goes anywhere. My guess is that it'll depend on how much time and effort Google decides to invest in it and whether it will scale effectively (I heard that there were load issues when it first went public yesterday, but I didn't have any real problems with it last evening).

BlueDragon Goes Open-Source: A Good Thing, But How Good?

Given all the other blog posts I've seen coming through my RSS feeds, this is hardly news at this point, but New Atlanta has decided to open-source their J2EE version of BlueDragon, a web application server package that runs/executes CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language, the language of ColdFusion):

New Atlanta announces free open source BlueDragon edition

I'm certainly happy about this development (as are many ColdFusion developers) because that means that anyone who wants to develop with ColdFusion will now have access to a robust CFML application server without having to spend money for the server software: money is no longer an excuse for avoiding ColdFusion.

But whether or not this announcement will have a significant impact on the prevalence of CFML as a development language in the marketplace remains to be seen. If New Atlanta makes an effort to market BlueDragon to web hosting companies who currently don't offer any ColdFusion development packages, we might see an increase in ColdFusion adoption simply because it's available as an option for developers whose clients rely on 3rd-party web hosting. They will also have to increase awareness of BlueDragon amongst the non-ColdFusion developer community and make it clear to those developers that BlueDragon is a serious, enterprise-class alternative to Adobe's ColdFusion server.

If New Atlanta does all that, perhaps we'll see that surge in ColdFusion adoption we thought would come when price was no longer an issue. But what if that surge never comes? What if price wasn't the big issue after all?

Then what?

Internet Explorer 8's Webslices Feature: Widgetizing Pieces of Web Pages?

The first public beta of Internet Explorer 8 was released today. In addition to supposedly being fully web standards-compliant, IE 8 comes with two new...well, capabilites: Activities and Webslices.

Curious (and admittedly a bit bored with what I was currently doing), I did a Google search and came up with a page that does a pretty good job of explaining Activities and Webslices:

IE8 Beta Is Out And With It Some Slices & Activities

The Activities capability allows web developers to provide XML code that will add contextual menu options to certain page content when you right-click on that content, allowing you to send that content to another web page or service, like sending an address on the page to a mapping service like Google Maps.

The Webslices capability is even more interesting (if I understand it correctly): using CSS, web developers can tag a piece of the web page as being a slice. End-users can then save this slice in IE, and IE will periodically check that slice for any changes. If the content is changed, the end-user is notified and they can pull up just that part of that web page as a pop-up widget in the browser.

I don't quite know what to make of it...it's like they've made it possible to send a request to a webservice from the page (Activities) and to make part of the page a webservice (Webslices).

It's an interesting idea, but what will the other browsers do with this stuff?

Thoughts on Future Trends in Computing

At our staff meeting today, my manager told us our director was looking for input on emerging "21st century" technologies and technology trends, and to send him our thoughts so he could pass them along. Here's what I sent:

• The introduction of applications that have both a web and and desktop front-end to access server-side data, with the desktop application provide offline functionality and data storage that can then be synchronized with the back-end data. Examples of this upcoming movement are Adobe AIR, Google Gears, and the Mozilla Prism project.

• Increased portability of programming languages to other platforms. It's now possible to code .NET or Java application in dynamic languages such as Python or Ruby.

• Increasing development of RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) based on AJAX, Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, and JavaFX. RIAs allow for more engaging and more powerful user interfaces and (in the case of the latter 3 technologies) make it easier to integrate audio-visual material into applications.

• The continued growth of "cloud computing," where organizations store their non-critical data on external servers maintained by a third party but controlled and accessed by the organization over the Internet. The chief example of this is Amazon's S3 data service.

• The continued trend of exposing the social (people-based) connections between data started by the social networking sites. The social networks themselves may stop growing, but the idea of using a person as a focal point for otherwise unrelated data is going to stick around.

...Hardly earth-shattering predictions, but other than within my particular unit, my organization isn't that hip to web trends.

Data Storage Forecast: Only Partly Cloudy

Over the past few weeks, the idea of moving data off of desktops and locally-controlled database servers and "into the cloud" (onto shared data hosting services like Amazon's S3) has been gaining more attention. A guy named Nicholas Carr went so far as to predict the demise of the IT department as businesses essentially outsource their data processing/data retention (NetworkWorld, 1/7/08).

There's no doubt that individuals store more data online these days than they used to because of the rise of applications like Facebook, Flickr, and Google Calendar. Any data that has a social aspect to it gains value by being "out there" for others to view and interact with.

There are also business processes that involve collaboration with other business partners, where arrangements are made to exchange information or tangible goods via a buyer/seller dynamic. Again, it makes sense that the data and even the applications that power such collaborations could be managed and hosted by a third party.

But there will always be a desire to keep certain data close to the vest, even if that means maintaining an internal hardware and network infrastructure. Colleges and universities are not going to outsource their student data to a third party, and medical institutions are obligated by law to safeguard medical information. Banks will probably take a pass on shared data hosting as well. Even if cloud computing becomes more accepted and reliable, there will always be groups and individuals unwilling to give up that control despite any cost savings.

Twitter as Alert System?

Yesterday's tragedy at Virginia Tech underlined the importance of sending out warnings regarding dangerous situations as quickly as possible and through as many channels as possible.

Listening to the news last night, it sounded like the VT administration used every channel of communication at their disposal: the campus website, mass e-mails, broadcast phone messages to all campus phones, and a siren system. The university I work at (the University of Maryland) also has all of those means of getting the word out.

The one communication channel that wasn't mentioned, however, was cell phones. That's not surprising: I suspect few universities specifically collect cell phone numbers from their students, and most students would probably be hesitant to give their cell number to the university out of privacy concerns.

But in light of yesterday's events, maybe universities should rethink that issue. Messages sent to land-line phones and e-mail addresses are only received if the recipient is at their phone or is actively checking e-mail. A message sent to a cell phone, which folks usually carry with them, has a much better chance of getting the recipient's attention immediately, even if they are walking between classes. While not every student owns a cell phone, those that did and received the message could spread the word to the people around them, getting the word out much faster.

So let's assume universities offered to send emergency messages (and only emergency messages) to students who provided a cell phone number to contact: how would the university broadcast an alert to those phones?

A long-term solution would be to put a SMS messaging system in place at the university designed specifically for this purpose (universities like mine that run ColdFusion 7, for example, could build an application using the SMS Gateway service provided by the ColdFusion server).

A short-term solution could be Twitter. Twitter is a social networking tool where you can receive short messages from friends via a web page, IM, or via SMS.

A university could set up a Twitter account to use to send out emergency messages, then instruct students to get a Twitter account (which is free) and "follow" the university Twitter account. The students can then control whether they receive updates from the university Twitter account via their phone or not.

Granted, this is not what Twitter was designed for, but I think it could serve as a stop-gap measure for getting warnings out until a more robust system is put in place.