Steve’s Little world

So there is a great article on “A List Apart” about making maps without using the G or the Y (hat tip to the map room). It does a nice job introducing some of the open source players in the market. I put a small comment in the discussion about using deCarta (caveated it with a warning that it is a blatant product pitch) and there was a response. This blog post should serve as a way for people to give feedback if they want on my comments or about getting started with deCarta services. I did not want to hijack the discussion there with a big discussion with deCarta - so it was not that I was trying to drive traffic here - I was just trying to not dilute the discussion on their original post.

Little birdies have been telling me that ArcWeb Services is no more - folded into other services and the staff dispersed. There is no more purchase options on their page - only renew. Well, Nature Valley and all you other Arcweb Service customers, I could always recommend another service that is fast, stable, and scalable. You can start for free and then move on to exactly the same API when you are ready to make some bling. Same API whether we host it or if you bring it behind the firewall; novel concept - ain’t it.  If you are interested go ahead and contact me or sales@decarta.com

Well here we go at mashup camp. It is nice to catch up people from last year, such as Ted from Bungee Labs. I really like the way David runs these events, he is funny and is flexible about how things go and they always seems to be fun. I am not sure if I want to try lead a session today or tomorrow but it should be fun to hear the discussion.

Some ideas:

• What you want in a mashup API provider (other than free)
• Moving beyond pushpins with location stuff
• The dark side of mashup - authentication and relying on services not your own

I don’t think I am going to live blog this one - more of just a thoughts either during the day or sometime on friday. I am also thinking about entering the contest now that I grok our API. This could be a fun way to make a demo.

Wireless is grinding to a crawl - we’ll see how it holds up…

If you want to meet up with me here is some of the things I will be going to in the near future:

1. The web 2.0 mapping and social network meetup in Menlo Park - This should be fun with Mapfacture, remapper, and mashed life giving presentations

2. Mashup Camp at the Computer History Museum -  had a great time last year and lookin forward to going again. Love the lightning round when you get to see all the cool apps people are making but it is also nice to hear the big boys talk about where they will push the enterprise.

3.  CTIA in Vegas - I am going to Mobile Jam beforehand. I really don’t like Vegas but it will be fun to be floor for this extravaganza. I will be working the booth so stop by.

4. Web 2.0 Expo - I will be there in the Tele Atlas booth looks to be a great floor as well. Come on over for a chat. I will be showing some of the demos I put together.

Farther out I am planning on attending Where and  for sure going to be at WhereCamp, perhaps Location Intelligence and Extend08.

Have I mentioned that I love living in the Valley…

1. Google releases a Contacts API - hooray to having a way to get all my contacts in and out of google apps

2. Firefox 3 really is faster and pretty nice looking as well.

3. Busy playing with PostGIS, Java, and some JavaScript - demo should be here relatively shortly for new stuff coming in our 4.3.1 JS API.

4. I am predicting that MS is gonna pull out of the deal and that this was all a ploy to decimate Yahoo!

5. I really hope the rumors about Apple taking the lock down route to being the gatekeeper to iPhone apps is false but somehow I don’t think it is. How come Apple keeps getting these free passes - meet the new boss, same as the old boss

6. I miss Sean’s posts about birds

7. My birthday is next Sunday - so you better get the Wii and various games in the mail soon.

Just got my sign in to Fire Eagle [previous discussion]- they also gave me 4 signups to share. First emails to scitronpousty gmail get them.

Rick Hillegas

If he covers 2 way replication I will be one happy camper

JavaDB (Sun’s version of Apache Derby - which is IBM’s old DB)  is availale on Apache license. Runs on the CDC stack [so where is the list of CDC phones]

It is 2 meg on disk, sweet spot is embedded databases (could be embedded in your app). It is still being worked on by Sun and IBM.

You should consider tear-off databases like a wide of post-its. Refreshable, disposable, and usually short lived. Use in location based apps or storing incremental publishing of content - tear off a week worth of content for reading later.

Nice demo of the app.

I don’t think he is going to cover 2 way replication - no soup for YOU. So he is defining a tear off as a one way. Could still be interesting but less so.

They build pieces into the toolkit to help with the checkout and synching data. The cycle insures that the data is always complete.

Coming next quarter - table functions - any abitrary stream data and wrap a table around and then use SQL to filter and work with it. Contact him if you have questions.

Darkstar with Mobile for MMPORG

Darkstar is the server infrastucture with a bunch of clients connecting to a lot of servers with some metaserves gluing it all together.

To use it with mobile you need proxy in the middle - so you end up with a 3 tier arch. This guy is working on making a HTTP proxy to that there is minimal resource use and easy to use for client (phone). He is writing integration with the netbeans mobility pack.

Nice screen shot

Great time limit enforcement by E-Ming (the Sun guy from our DevCon mobility panel).

NEXT

Adaptive instrutmentaiton for MIDP testing. There are some arch. reason that it is hard to test.
Solution
Redesign App  - not so good

They suggest to modify the binary - insert special code on the fly. Arch slide which bores me. You basically add one line of code to constructor and then the test framework can then gain access to the code. All done for me…

NEXT

What can the JCP do for you. It is more about what you can make the JCP do for you.  He believes in the romantic vision of a single developer building a great app getting onto the platforms. So he is talking about the need for individuals rather organizations on the different committees. Here comes the call to action - volunteering with 4 things

1. Vote - 1/3 of jcp members vote

2. Subscribe to the ME related lists

3. Help - review  MIDP 3.0 and send an email  -action not words

4. Show up - Terrence has a room over at the mansion to start discussion the issues.

NEXT

Do we need a mobile developer alliance? Carriers and OEMs are shooting themselves in the foot to leave revenue on the table. Problem is too big and compicated to be handled by any one group. He thinks only the developers can solve it bc they have the most skin in the game. Wants developers to start talking now and figure out where to go from there.

NEXT

Putting Java on devices Sun’s Java engineering Services - a pitch for their consulting services that puts Java on tons-o-devices. Mostly for OEMs and other people who move physical products. [All done for me]

So it seems other in the blogosphere are talking about frameworks as well

Ping out to InfoQ and Bill de hÓra. I like Bill’s discussion of leaky abstractions and the comments that follow. Can I please give a shout out to Eelco from Wicket. He has maintained an open mind and a great discussion in all the different places where I have seen him contribute to this discussion.

Of course they say it better than I do and hey, they also mention Django so Sean doesn’t have to.

For me it is not that frameworks are inherently bad, it’s just perhaps not everything is a nail for their hammer.

And I find it very interesting that .NET developers are nowhere to be seen on any of these threads (except for Matt Priour). Theories on this one are welcome…

Wireless toolkit for CLDC
supports more 23 JSRs including OpenGL and SVG
There is a new JSR for J2ME for XML processing which would be good with our openLS service

Worth the price of the conference alone
watching a javaVM working on WinMo6 on the HTC TinyTC - I think it is phoneME but with just a quick browse I don’t see how they got it running.

I am not really paying that close attention since I feel like Netbeans is the platform for Mobile development. Perhaps I should, so I can see some of the cool things I can do, such as SVG support and visual designer.

Visual Designer is a graphical UI for developing application flow on the phone. Looks like they took Matisse and are now using it for CDC screen design. Damn matisse is sweet.

Ok but the TLA in the Java mobile space is killing me - bring me android or the iPhone. Something to simplify this model, more to follow on this thread…

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SVG and Advanced Graphics
The TLAs are killing me so I am trying to watch some eye candy
SVG tiny is mostly cell phones and SVG basic is for browsers and perhaps smart phones.Nice demos and I am fading fast…