On The Margins

Monday March 14, 2005

[ Java ] Fingerprint for Commerce

Edeka, a German supermarket chain, has piloted and plans to use finger prints as proof of identity at point-of-sale, Reuters reports. As an exercise, consider why it would be harder to do less secure to do same with ATMs? Presence of a person or (persons) around the cash stand, who can view the finger being placed on the fingerprint reader may provide a clue.

Commerce, Identity, Germany.

2005-03-14 09:52:52.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Monday January 17, 2005

[ Java ] Workplace Blogs, Wikis and Groupware

To what extent workplace blogs and wikis act as effective groupware?

A Sloan School of Management study by Wanda J. Orlikowski focuses on organizational issues in implementing groupware. Here's a central conclusion of the study.

. . . in competitive and individualistic organizational cultures--where there are few incentives or norms for cooperating or sharing expertise--groupware on its own is unlikely to engender collaboration. Such products will be interpreted as counter-cultural, and to the extent that they are used they will promote individual not group aims.

2005-01-17 00:47:36.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Friday January 14, 2005

[ Java ] Blogs, Participation and Protest

One apparently unfounded blog can turn a possibly well-meaning protest ("not one damn dime") into a bizarre hot-bed of rumors with cold tracks requiring clarifications (by Bill Moyers).

2005-01-14 14:22:00.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Tuesday January 11, 2005

[ Java ] WP Photo Report from CES

The Washington Post has an interesting photo report from the Consumer Electronics Show, 2005. The diversity in concepts and their usefulness is, as usual, astounding.

2005-01-11 14:59:46.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Friday June 25, 2004

[ Java ] Group communications in Java

There's nothing more embarrassing and worse than missing a BoF you're supposed to be a speaker in. Nevertheless, because of some other commitments, I'm missing this year's JavaOne.

It would have been an honor to share the podium with Bela Ban, the lead for the JGroups project, and I would really encourage people to attend this wonderful BoF. Given presentations I've seen from Bela, it will be a truly educational experience.

What Bela has done for the Java community is quite significant. He and his cohorts have implemented a wonderfully simple group communications toolkit in Java.

His work is an outgrowth of earlier effort with Professor Ken Birman's research group at Cornell.

Isis, Horus and Ensemble are notable cousins of JGroups. For Ken, Spinglass is the most recent rendition of his research program.

JGroups is worth a download and play, and we have certainly done some studies with it. In fact, we designed and prototyped a failure detection system built on JGroups. There were some problems but nothing major that the JGroups community effort (and better knowledge of how to use group communications systems) should not be able to resolve.

2004-06-25 14:37:42.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Tuesday June 22, 2004

[ Java ] Soft phones in Java !

I remember the days when people were wondering about Java's survival.

Today it is used in some of the coolest, most disruptive telecommunications technologies.

VoIP-info.org has a list of these technologies which include some soft phones in Java. I'd be interested in knowing if anyone has tried them. Some samples are: Ubiquity's SIP User Agent, NIST's JsPhone and iptel.org's BonePhone.

Has any of you used any of these phones?

2004-06-22 13:44:34.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Wednesday June 09, 2004

[ Java ] Connectors . . . where do they end?

Some people think of J2EE connector architecture as a technology for dinosaurs or for connecting to dinosaurs. . . Neither is strictly true . . .

Well, it is not easy to write a connector . . . or should I say an unconventional connector . . . but you can certainly do much more than what's obvious from the spec.

For example, some people are developing connectors to PLMN intelligent network protocols such as TCAP / SS7, SIP, etc., or similar other protocols one encounters in the GSM, GPRS, UMTS networks and others are developing connectors to a diversity of management protocols for network elements.

In either case---whether the J2EE application is being used as a super-filter for network element events or as a service control function---there is a lot of room to develop new ideas about how to use the connector architecture ! ! !

2004-06-09 14:55:17.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.