mardi septembre 28, 2004

Bloglines Web Services
Bloglines.com, probably the best-known online RSS aggregator has announced a Bloglines Services. The API provide three calls: Notifier, Sync, Blogroll.

Note, unlike other online Web Services (google, amazon and others), this doesn't require a key, but simply your Bloglines.com credentials.

This seems to be the base for integrating rich-client RSS readers and sounds like a good step towards my ideal blog reader although, at first glance, I can't find the WSDL files... :-(

( sept. 28 2004, 06:40:16 PM CEST ) Permalink Comments [1]

The network is the (USB) key
Some time ago, I got a USB key. Very often, it proves to be very handy, if not a life saver. I use it to carry my presentations, JVMs, product installs, documentation, etc.

Setting up a network is still complex. I was sitting for two days at a customer site with no access to their network (for obvious security reasons). Connecting all four Sun laptops proved to be more pain than gain (needed a hub or a twisted Ethernet cable or wireless capabilities, needed a DHCP server or hard-coded IPs/netmasks, needed a FTP server, etc...). It felt like all those scripts or programs I spent hours writing for only a couple of uses... Here again, the USB drive came to the rescue and people could get working.

( sept. 28 2004, 11:16:39 AM CEST ) Permalink

IT value and choice
So I spent most of last week traveling with the Java Studio Creator team (Jim, Tor, Octav, and Craig) meeting with customers. This was a lot of fun and I learned quite a lot listening to these guys. One of the meetings we had in Toulouse got together about 25 people from several local integrators. Tor describes how the demos went.

One blog posted afterwards (in French) seems to complain about the fact we can't just throw away Struts code and move on to JSF. Indeed there is no magic tool to convert all Struts code to JSF (although the Struts-Faces Integration Library comes close).

This is quite interesting thinking. I would characterize this as Microsoft thinking - choose .Net and all choices are made for you (technology, implementation, tools, etc.). I usually tell customers new to the J2EE world that there's good news and bad news. The good news is you have choice. The bad news is you need to make (and understand) theses choices. Well, for most companies, IT is meant to be(come) a competitive differentiator and having choice is key. For other companies considering IT as a cost more than anything else, having choices done for them is better. For those people and for others, Java Studio Creator has made choices (JSF-based JSPs) so they don't have to. If the tool moves on to integrate Struts capabilities, then let it guide you.

BTW, Craig McC has blogged on Struts and JSF here.
Also, another Creator team member blogging.

( sept. 28 2004, 09:37:26 AM CEST ) Permalink