Again about Google DevFest 2010

Yesterday I had to leave an hour earlier from the Google DevFest 2010 event, as I have to  catch up with my wife, she was waiting for me for the second Antenatal Class. I missed the Code Lab, the Maps and Buzz T-shirts. Ouch. 5:30pm I had to leave while they ended the event on 6:30pm.

Flash back: After lunch time, there were some presentations on Google Apps, by Patrick Chanezon, followed by success story of people who developed applications for Google Apps. One from creately.com (http://www.creately.com). Another round from SingPath (http://singpath.appspot.com).

One thing that was missed a lot is the power points (aka power plugs). It was awful so many people carrying laptop and no power plug on the Connexis Theater. Almost everyone were running out of battery.

I just don't know why the crowd was kinda lacking enthusiasm to verbally respond to the speaker on stage with 'ooo's, 'aaaa's, 'yeah's, 'alright's and stuffs. Most of the time the crowd was silent.

Nevertheless it was a must-attend event of this year. I will attend the next event for sure.

 

In Google DevFest 2010

Currently I am attending the Google DevFest 2010. Timothy Jordan and Bob Aman in their presentation on Open Social.

Today the registration was pretty crowded, and they differentiate based on the first letter of your first name. I was in the "A-F queue". The queue was long and the registration process was draggy.

They changed the schedule a bit, Daniel Lee presented the Google Maps as opposed to the initial schedule on the web site: Google DevFest 2010 in Singapore. He showed us how to create a coffee shop location based informative web site as an example.

After the first session, Jeremy Orlow, an engineer working on the Chrome team, explained the HTML5 and the Chrome. They skipped the Q&A for HTML5 and Chrome. May be they pushed forward because we're late because of the registration, so in order to finish during the lunch time, the organizer advised to ask in person to Jeremy during lunch time for anyone who want to ask questions.

Then here comes the third session, and its about  Open Social.  Tim was of more lively presenter than others I think. More like MC may be? Google Buzz API stuffs, atom, OAuth, Salmon, Pubsubhubbub etc.

Now running on Wordpress 3.0

When I was editing one of the posts, I got a notification to upgrade to Wordpress 3.0. The upgrade was seamless (at least I didn't notice any glitches).

I wish some other application will be able to do the same thing when upgrading.

Great job, Wordpress team!

PyCon Asia Pacific 2010 has been firmly announced

Now they announce the PyCon Asia Pacific 2010.

http://apac.pycon.org/

9-11 June 2010, at Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium, Singapore Management University.

SGD 250 for corporate.
SGD 200 for early bird individuals.

Highlights:

• Steve Holden, Chairman of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) will be coming  as one of the keynotes
• Mark Hammond, author of "Python Programming on Win32"
• Wesley J. Chun, author of "Python Core Programming", now software architect at Google
• Martijn Faassen, a long standing member of the Zope Foundation

My blog on domain danielbaktiar.com launches today

Today I have finally made a successful copy of my dbaktiar.wordpress.com. Now that I run wordpress blog on my own domain danielbaktiar.com.

There is some minor glitches, such as the exported than imported Wordpress now produces "&gt"s where it should display ">". Right now I just simply edit them one by one as there's not so much such occurrence. Overall I am highly satisfied with the smooth migration. The Wordpress team had done a great job to make it very easy to migrate and move Wordpress blogs around!

I decided to setup my own domain and hosted site because I need some degree of freedom in customizing my website, CSS, javascript, and also to put AdSense as well, too name a few.

Oracle Announced the Outline Strategy on Integration of Sun

Oracle has announced  the outline strategy and its commitment  on Sun Microsystems integration into Oracle. It was in a Webcast and for those who missed it, could get it from the website.

This is the link from Oracle website.

We already noticed some additions on links in the Oracle Technology Website (http://otn.oracle.com) which includes newly added Sun's technology portfolios.

EU Commission Approval of Sun Microsystems Acquisition by Oracle: Lesson Learned

Yesterday James A. Goosling, the founder of Java platform, put a picture in his blog: "So long, old friend...".
After the EU Commission approved Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) acquisition by Oracle Corp (NASDAQ: ORCL), Oracle expects that Russia and China will also accept it. The main foreseen obstacle to the agreement was the EU Commission approval. Now that it has been approved, the acquisition is expected to go smoothly.

Some people began speculating on the fate of open source projects, which nurtured by Sun, yet they don't believe that Oracle will give enough support for those open source projects. One high profile fear was from Monty Widenius, the founder of MySQL, which after selling the company to Sun left MySQL (the company), and forked a new database project: MariaDB. He campaigned to prevent the acquisition of MySQL by Oracle. Now we see the result, it seems that he lose the campaign. Some voices also speculate about the fate of OpenOffice, Glassfish, etc after the acquisition.

This matter once again prove: "a technology is good, but we also need to make money". Of course Sun Microsystems is not the first to go down, there were a lot of dead carcasses of open source companies ended up acquired by profitable commercial companies that sell their proprietary products.

Sun is highly respectable company, which produced a lot of very good products. All hail respect to the company that bred the Java technology and platform, which took over the world. Yet, after this high profile achievement, the company still need to make money to bring value to the shareholders.

Lesson Learned: Companies Need To Make Money In Order To Sustain the Business

I guess this serves as reminder for those people (including me) who wants to make a company based on sophisticated technology, either open source or closed source; take note, when we start a company, we also need to make money.

Now that Wikipedia site had grown that big, the non-profit model required it to campaign for more money to sustain its operation.

Micro Focus Acquired Borland Software...

While I've been busy preparing for my wedding day this Sunday, one recent acquisition captured my attention. I just received the information that Borland Software now acquired by Micro Focus. If you are developers groomed in the era of 90s, you should know or at least have heard  about this Borland Software. The company has been a major player in the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) software for popular languages at those times, such as TurboC, TurboC++, TurboPascal, TurboProlog, Borland Pascal, Delphi, and JBuilder series. For some time it also acquired the once famous dBase IV's Ashton Tate, and have its own Quattro database. The IDE business was later totally spinned off to a wholly owned subsidiary named CodeGear.

Borland also produced good quality JEE application server series: Borland Enterprise Server, which was used with some of former employer's clients.

Last 3-5 years, Borland Software had shifted its focus into Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), by acquiring companies such as Segue Software, Inc. I was sent by my employer that time for a training on their productsand sales knowledge of these ALM products (Borland SilkTest - automated testing tool, Borland SilkPerformer - load testing tool, Caliber) back to year 2006. These products compete with Mercury (now subsidiary of HP) Load Runner, IBM Rational Robot, etc.

Just recently this year we heard that Borland Software sold off CodeGear to Embarcadero Technologies. So, right now, Borland was left only with its ALM products and application servers/ORB brokers product, now sold to Micro Focus.

Borland ALM

No, this is not about alm for the needy...

ALM = Application Lifecycle Management

Very interesting, Borland Software Corporation, has shifted from the well-known segmentation as IDE maker into Application Lifecycle Management, and Lifecycle Quality Management. Now it's IDE division will be divested. The Borland Enterprise Server and Visibroker is still held, but not the JBuilder, Delphi, C++ Builder, C# Builder (Borland Studio).

I still remember the time when Borland -- with its TurboPascal, Borland Pascal, Borland C++ -- rules the wave. I also own a licensed copy of Borland C++ 3.0 from Borland, along with its large box, 10 diskettes, set of books, Turbo Profiler, Turbo Assembler which we get from winning the International Computer Programming Computer 1992, Kuala Lumpur. I really love the way Borland as the IDE maker made the Object Windows Library (OWL), which I think is pretty much simpler and easy-to-use. After experiencing MFC in 1995, I still think the OWL is better. But, of course people will be fed up when they have to change the way they use the framework across versions (from 1.0 to 1.1), due to the changes the way operating system handle events.

At JUG-ID they also discussed on the rate of failure of IT projects. I think it is still the common issues in IT development. I believe that that's also an old story for you. People who's been more than 3 years in development should know that the rate of failure of IT projects is high.

Without proper Lifecycle Quality Management, large and long running projects are doomed to failures. Components have to tested thoroughly. Functionality have to be tested over and over again across deployed version. Requirements change. New process breaks down old stable version. etc. etc.
The virtue is that Borland has provided end-to-end tools to do such thing.

I was lucky to be sent (sent by default, coz Mr Pacul was too busy at that time, and some other doesn't have a passport readied) to the Sales Engineer training. It was really a mind changing experience!

For me now, testing is not just to JUnit (regression test). Quality must be embedded into the process of software development, not just test the code after the developers said they have completed the task.

Is it applicable with Java? With JBoss? With JEMS suite? With RedHat stack?
Yes, it is agnostic of the platform. It supports both Java and .NET platform. GUI and Web based. Event telnet session and many others.