You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Technology' category.
Guy Kawasaki’s new venture Alltop collects popular Blogs and categorizes them. It makes it very easy to stay up to date on a wide area of topics like Social Media, Marketing, Enterprise IT, Food and Wine (some of my favorites).
Yesterday Alltop launched the category Rich Internet Applications. It includes great resources on RIA and specifically Flex and AIR development, like the blogs from Ryan Stewart, Mike Chambers and Peter Ent. Check it out!
P.S.: Yes, this humble little Blog is included as well.
Wordl is a nifty tool to create word clouds from text or del.ici.ous tags. Here is my del.ici.ous cloud…
Just found this good article on ReadWriteWeb about Flex and AIR usage for enterprise applications. Specifically interesting since I have been pushing this topic for the last 3 years with a special focus on the SAP ecosystem. Today there are many companies using Flex and/or AIR to make enterprise apps user friendly and engaging (Philips, Fender, SAP and many more) and that number is rising fast. With SAP’s announcement to enable embedding of Flex applications in their WebDynpro UI framework we will see a further surge of Flex adoption in the enterprise. To learn more visit SAP TechEd this year. I will be there.
read more | digg story
I haven’t blogged a lot about Adobe products recently, and yes I work for Adobe so I am biased. For the last weeks I have used internal releases of the just announced Acrobat 9 and Acrobat.com and I am very impressed. I don’t work in the Acrobat team, but during the last year I did a lot of research on collaboration in the enterprise and started a seed project in Adobe Corporate Development to envision and build a solution which will allow people to mashup custom workspaces on their desktop and collaborate with others in real time - all that without expensive IT investments but a simple subscription to a hosted service.
With that perspective I found the new Acrobat release in combination with Acrobat.com a significant move for Adobe into the next generation enterprise collaboration space. So what impressed me the most? Acrobat.com delivers a suite of hosted services for document management and collaboration. What is truly amazing is that you get a real-time collaboration service including audio and video conferencing as well as screensharing for up to 3 participants for free. This service, called Connect Now can be accessed directly in the free Adobe Reader and in Acrobat. So while looking at a document you can kick off real time application sharing and then switch over into screen sharing if needed. Connect Now can really jump-start the momentum for web based real time collaboration in the enterprise. No more signing up and scheduling for a web conferencing session. Just use your Acrobat.com account, email your collaboration room URL to others and do it. No need to involve the IT department and since the client runs in the Flash Player no complex installs either!
Additionally Acrobat.com features document file sharing, including the ability to review documents right in the browser or embed them into your blog (see below) or web site.
There is even an AIR based client with a nifty “mini-mode” for easy uploading. Finally if you haven’t tried Buzzword, the flash based online word processor yet it is now integrated in Acrobat.com and features new capabilities like PDF generation.
So what’s new in Acrobat 9 then? Yes, there are significant performance improvements customers have asked for and that’s very important, but there is much more. There are three features, which impressed me the most. The integrated real-time collaboration is really cool and useful. This allows you to work in real-time with others on reviewing a document. Once you start the real-time collaboration session flipping pages, zooming and other features are synchronized in real-time between users. This is not traditional screensharing but two separate instances of Acrobat working in synch. I believe this type of application collaboration will become more and more popular and is also an important feature for my current project. We are actually using Cocomo, which is the public developer API for Connect Now.
Acrobat 9 also treats Flash content as a first class citizen. This means you can embed Flash movies and widgets right into your PDF document and they stay fully interactive (including Flex applications). Talking about movies in PDF, the Acrobat team has built a set of video annotation capabilities. Now you cannot only mark up the document but you can make annotations right in the video. While not so important for my daily work this is a true time saver for people collaborating on video content editing.
One last feature you should check out in Acrobat 9 are portfolios. A small team started with the mission to make PDF’s engaging and fun to work with. Not a small feat since we are talking about boring documents. In collaboration with the Adobe Experience Design team they came up with a really cool way to package documents into an animated and dynamic portfolio. Best of it no programming skills required. Leveraging the power of Flex users can choose from different ways to present and browse the documents in a portfolio. It is hard to describe so I suggest you have a look at it yourself.
Beyond all the single new features what really excites me is that this release rings in a new era of productivity applications for the enterprise, which combine an engaging user experience with the networking power of the Internet. Genesis, the code name for the project I am working on, is another major step into this direction. So keep you eyes open and you will learn more about Genesis here and in a new Blog I will start soon with the rest of the Genesis team.
Since my post on enabling Google Maps with GPS on the BlackBerry Curve 8310
As a first step I reviewed the different Themes (Options -> Themes). I decided to go with the “BB Dimension Today” Theme. Having the latest unread messages, upcoming appointments and missed call information all on the homescreen is a great feature and allows me to get the key information I need at a glance.
Another important decision is the assignment of the left and right buttons on the side of the Blackberry. They will allow you to access important apps without using the trackball. Got to Options -> Screen/Keyboard and scroll down to the “Convenience Key Opens” menu items. I decided to leave the right side key with the default which is the camera, so that I can start it quickly for a snapshot. I changed the assignment of the left side button to “Browser”. That allows me to open the integrated web browser easily, which I use to Twitter and to check my Google Reader.
While you are in the Screen/Keyboard options menu you might also want to adjust the Backlight Timeout (I use 30 seconds) and turn off the key tones and trackball sound (Set “Trackball - Audible Roll” to Mute).
Next I switched over to the applications screen (with the button left of the trackball, lets call it menu button). Wow what a mess! So many application icons, many of them I will never use. I checked out every application and decided to keep the following icons (to hide an application icon highlight it and press the menu button and select “Hide”):
First row:
Profiles - Since I need to switch often from Normal to Vibrate mode this is my most important icon
Messages - E-mail is obviously the heart of the Blackberry
Calendar - Also important, but often it is sufficient to me to check the upcoming meetings on the home screen
Browser - I actually have the browser as a shortcut on the left side button so I rarely use the icon to access it
Media - Just use it to browse the pictures which I took with the integrated camera
Second row:
Lock - That is another icon I need a lot, so it is just on scroll click away from the top
VoiceDialing - For me that was the big surprise feature. If you have not yet used it try it out now. It does not require to record the names, but applies voice recognition based on the spelling of the names in the directory. Works great for me (without any training), especially with a Bluetooth headset
Camera - I have the camera as a shortcut on the rigtht side button so I don’t use this icon that often
Tasks - Frankly I have not used tasks at all so far (don’t use them in Outlook either), but thought the app might come handy eventually
MemoPad - The MemoPad is a little useful application. I use it to keep track of my baby son’s weight and height, gift wishes from my wife and other random things
Alarm - I use the Alarm when I am traveling, since I do not trust hotel alarm clocks. Did you know you can turn the Blackberry off and the Alarm will still work? Just don’t take out the battery 
Third Row:
Gmail - For my private email I use the Google Gmail client for Blackberry
Google Maps - What a great app. Just got much better with version 2.0.1.
Options - Need to be able to continue to tweek the Blackberry
Manage Connections - This has significantly improved over older Blackberries. You can easily enable/disable Network as well as Bluetooth connections
Turn Power Off
You really want to make sure that the most important apps for you which are not accessible via buttons on the device can be accessed with no or minimum usage of the trackball. So the most important app is in the upper left corner, other important apps down or left of it and so on.
Now let’s talk about customizing the sounds your Blackberry makes. Adjusting the ringtone is actually not as straightforward as I thought. Keeping in mind that all sounds are associated with the profile which is active, select “Profiles”, scroll down to “Advanced…”, select the profile you want to modify (let’s say your active one) and hit the menu button (left to the trackball). Select “Edit”.
To change the ringtone, select phone and then you can change the Tune (second menu item). I am using the Ringer_ClassicPhone. Here you can also adjust the volume and other parameters.
That’s it for today. Hope you have fun with your Blackberry and let me know some of your customization tips in the comments.
In case you have not seen it yet. This brilliant YouTube Video makes the round today in the Blogosphere. It is so funny because it’s true (like Dilbert). Also thought this is a perfect fit for my Blog theme “Straight out of Palo Alto”.
Enjoy!
Last week I upgraded my 2 year old Blackberry to the latest BlackBerry Curve 8310
The key new feature of the 8310 however is the integrated GPS. I noticed on Internet forums that a number of people have challenges using the GPS with Google Maps. I guess that’s not surprising since RIM does not advertise this feature, pushing instead the paid for maps and direction service from TeleNav. After some tinkering I have good news. Free Google Maps works great with the integrated GPS and here is how I got it to work:
1) Make sure that the GPS is working and has connection to satellites. Go to Options -> Advanced Options -> GPS -> select the menu and choose “Refresh GPS”. The display will tell you the number of satellites it can reach and your location. I noticed it does not work in my office in San Jose or in close range to high rise buildings.
2) Download Google Maps from google.com/gmm (using the Blackberry browser) and follow the instructions to install it on your Blackberry (I have Google Maps version 2.0.1). Do not use the Google Suite installer for Blackberry (which includes additional Google apps), since according to some reports has a different Google Maps version which does not work with the internal GPS.
3) Go to Options -> Applications -> Google Maps -> select the menu and choose “Edit Permissions”; Select connections and select the menu to expand it. Make sure you allow “Location (GPS)” and “Carrier Internet” connections for the app.
4) Save the changes. Go back the applications menu and start Google Maps. Hit “0″ and it should now show a blinking point which indicates your current location.
The amazing Larry Lessig now on Slideshare (with audio). His presentation on patents and its impact free culture is an instant classic.
So here are my top five pictures on Flickr (ranked by number of views). It seems that Flickr users are primarily interested in girls (no surprise here) and computer memorabilia (probably also no surprise given the number of geeks who use Flickr).
#5 Girls in Tub @ Tao in Las Vegas (1380 views)
I took that picture less then a year ago when I was partying with some friends at the Tao night club in the Venetian. The club is great, but I still prefer the Sunday School parties at Body English (Hard Rock Hotel).
#4 Friendly Elevator Service (1388 views)
I was staying in the Hilton for the ASUG annual conference in Anaheim. The girls were there for another event (obviously) and had hijacked the elevator. Back then Craig Cmehil, who commented on the picture, was still a software developer at Hella. How times change. Now he is a Community Evangelist at SAP and probably is traveling more then me.
#3 Original Apple 1 (1542 views)
Another cellphone camera picture taken at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. If you are ever in the Bay Area make sure you visit this great exhibition. They also have a good speaker series.
#2 Adobe Illustrator 1.0 (1626 views)
More views then the Apple 1 picture… Makes me proud to work at Adobe. It is amazing what a loyal community of users Adobe has in the creative community. Who knows, maybe one day my first Apollo application picture will be featured in the Computer History Museum.
#1 Girls Gone Wild (19,028 views and counting)
Well, what can I say… I posted this picture on Flickr with the specific purpose to get many views. A little experiment to see how many people would find and view a photo with cute girls and tag baits. Eventually I put it also into four photo pools. While I expected about 1000 views the result was astonishing. Over 19,000 views (10 times more then any other of my Flickr pictures). Also even so the photo is over 2 years old the number of views continues to increase at a steady rate. I have to admit that I even didn’t take this picture. While I was working at a trade show in Vegas my brother Thomas and his friend had fun at the Palms Hotel pool and they took the picture with my camera.
I will check back again in three years and lets see if any other of my pictures will get more views eventually. I heard that cute baby pictures are also popular 
Today I wondered which of my Flickr photos have the most views. I hadn’t checked for a while so some in the top ten were surprises.
Lets start with #10 At the Pool of the Palms (963 views)
This is the only picture in the top ten which does not have a proper name on Flickr. It was taken at the pool of the Palms hotel in Las Vegas. My brother is ordering a drink from a hot waitress. Initially I was wondering why this is in the top ten but then I realized it is right next to the number 1 picture…
#9 Homebrew Computer Club Retrospective (1232 views)
Taken with a cell phone camera at the 30th anniversary of the Homebrew Computer Club at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. This is one of a number of pictures in the top 10 with a lot of geek appeal. Hey it even features Steve Wozniak.
#8 My little handheld computing history exhibition (1267 views)
Another computer history related picture. This collection actually sits in a corner of my office. My favorite is the Sony MagicLink in the back. Back in 1996 I worked on an interesting project between a German telecommunication company and General Magic.
#7 Prototype Ebay client based on Adobe Apollo (1273 views)
This is the newest top ten picture. It was taken at the 2006 Adobe Max conference. I think this was the first time the E-Bay Apollo Prototype was demonstrated in public. Time will tell if this becomes a historic photo (I certainly hope so).
#6 Crowded Booth at SAP TechEd 2005 in Vienna (1301 views)
I have no idea how this picture made it to number 5. I assume it was linked in a Blog or on the SAP Developer Network. I guess never underestimate the power of the SAP developer ecosystem.
The top 5 will come soon. So look out for my next post, including the number 1 picture with 18862 views (and counting).
Big news from Adobe. This will make Flex the de-facto standard for Rich Internet Applications.
read more | digg story
Well it is not quite April fools day yet, but Nat Torkington from O’Reilly has posted this hillarious entry on his blog. We all know the semantic Web is around the corner… not (watched Borat yesterday).
Thirteen years ago I started to work in the area of electronic data interchange between companies. The biggest challenge was to get an agreement on the semantics of the message (just look at the numerous ways a Name and Address Field can be qualified) and have different applications interpret the data in the same way. The UN standard EDIFACT, as complex as it is, went a long way, but then came XML which was supposed to solve everything. What a lot of people did not understand then is that XML is just syntax and the semantic problem was still not solved. Until today the electronic exchange of business data in a many to many scenario remains challenging. But I am digressing. Here are some of my favorite parts of Nat’s post:
2010: Semantic Web developers release a new XML format. This will be hailed as the final step to the completion of Web 3.0.
They’ll skip version 7, and release “Firefox X”. X will support RSS for blogs, IM, twitter, and the new communication system that flashes updates from your friends every 2 seconds in yellow on black 64pt type as you work. “Crack”, as the system will be called, will be so addictive that it drives sales of Firefox X through the roof… As the corpses stack up in city streets, the professional time-wasting class known as Knowledge Workers will have been eliminated from the world.
Ryan Stewart was the first to blog it. The Alpha version of the Adobe client runtime code named Apollo is available for public download on http://labs.adobe.com. Could Apollo ring in the beginning of a new class of desktop applications programmed with web technologies?
read more | digg story
Adobe just released on Adobe Labs a web application called myFeedz. Based on your personal profile, your tags and your reading behavior it will present you news stories based on RSS feeds and web sites which are relevant for you. It has a very slick AJAX UI. Looks like the Netflix movie suggestion feature for RSS feeds and web site. Its for free so try it now.
read more | digg story
As a a father of a 6 week old baby I am fairly busy with little time to blog. However today I took the time to review my Blog statistics for 2006 (well I started this Blog in July 2006). The result is a bit surprising to me. I expected that the core topic I am writing about, Rich Internet Applications and the adoption in the enterprise software space and particularly SAP would be of most interest to my Blog readers. Turns out that the most read post on this topic ranks only number 3. It is my report on the SDN Day in Las Vegas and also benefited from the Scoble effect, since I met him for the first time at the show and he did a brief interview with me. Reminds me that I never saw a published version of that interview… well he has a lot of content and this probably fell through the grid 
Validating the long tail theory, number 2 is my posting featuring Trial Bike videos on YouTube. Bike Trial is certainly a sport not widely know around the world. Yet my post about it got significant views from Readers who were searching for keywords “Trial Bike Videos” on Google. Highly specialized content continues to rule the Internet. There is a sequel to this story. I sent a link of the posting to my friend Volker, who introduced my to Bike Trial back in 1988 and he just emailed me that for Christmas he got a new trial bike from Koxx. So he is ready for more action. He also sent me a link to this extreme trial bike video which clearly tops all my previous videos.
Coming to Number 1… Recently Shel Israel gave a number of tips on how to improve Blogs to make them more interesting. He states “It is better to be useful then boring”. While it seems obvious, it is easier said then done. My post on “How to embed YouTube videos into a Wordpress blog” clearly hit a nerve with many people out there and based on the comments proved to be very useful. So maybe it is not a surprise after all that it received the most visits in 2006.
I am curious how Blog traffic will change in 2007 and what topics will be on this list in a year from now. Happy New Year!
Today Michael Arrington covers Apollo, the Adobe runtime which supports web applications on the desktop, on both TechCrunch and in an interview with Kevin Lynch on TalkCrunch. The coverage spawned a number of reactions on the web and a top position on Techmeme. While Apollo is not released yet the interest is positive and people like Alex Barnett, Ryan Stewart and Amy Bellinger predict that 2007 will be the year of Rich Internet Applications.
While the initial focus of Apollo sample apps is very consumer oriented (e.g. E-Bay client or MP3 Player) I have been contemplating for the last year how Apollo could be used as a Rich Client for Enterprise Applications. I had a number of good discussions with various people from SAP as well as SAP customers. The key capabilities enterprise users are looking for are usability, performance, offline abilities and desktop application integration. I presented my thoughts for the first time in May at the Americas SAP User Group Conference in Orlando.
Back in May the interest was fairly limited but some early adopters realized the potential impact Apollo could have on the way we interact with enterprise applications. Since then the interest has significantly increased, especially since Shai Agassi discussed SAP’s project Muse at SAPPHIRE.
Here are some use cases for Apollo:
- CRM client for Account Managers with offline support
- Client for Employee and Manager Self Services
- Dedicated client for Support Staff and Field Services (see also the recording of the SAP Flex Demo)
- Enterprise Performance Analytics Widgets
I predict that significant adoption of Rich Clients in the enterprise will follow about two years after the adoption for consumer apps. IT departments tend to be conservative and there are still a number of difficult issues to solve, incl. the security of offline content and local system access. Also the synchronization between online and offline usage is a challenging topic and it will be critical to figure out which information is stored for offline usage for a particular user.
Mike Chambers has a link to a 10 minute video interview / discussion with Christian Cantrell of the Apollo team on his Blog.
For ongoing news about RIAs and Adobe Apollo see RIApedia, the new Blog from Mike potter (Developer Relations at Adobe) and check out this cool yourminis app.
There are currently only two entries in my Upcoming.org event list, but both are very special and I am looking forward to attend them. They are also quite different, but somehow related (I cover that later).
Next week Monday I will participate in the third Web Monday Silicon Valley in Palo Alto. This informal meeting which allows participants to cover all aspects around Web 2.0 originated in Germany and is now established in the Bay Area as well. If you are interested to learn more about the Web 2.0 scene in Germany and discuss or present your ideas make sure to sign up. I attended the first meeting and presented Flex development on top of SAP. If time permits and people are interested I might even talk a little bit about Apollo and show some demos.
If you are interested in chameleons or reptiles in general you might want to visit the San Jose Reptile Show on Saturday, November 11. If our baby boy is not born by then I will certainly be there and discuss chameleon breeding with the experts. Last time when I attended the show they had an amazing variety of reptiles on the showfloor.
So how are these two events related? Well Web Monday discusses technology innovations in Germany… SuSE Linux is from Germany and has a chameleon as a logo… Chameleons are being shown at the San Jose Reptile Show… and now I feel kind of stupid for writing that. Time to go to the gym.
I am currently sitting in a session on “Building Dashboards with Flex”. Interesting stuff, but to many details for me. So here are more notes on the keynote session this morning.
Kevin is back to discuss how HTML, Flash and PDF come together on the client side, outside of the browser. Yes you have guessed it, time to talk about Apollo. Ed Rowe comes on stage to demonstrate the current status of Apollo. He describes Apollo as a cross OS runtime which enables developers to deliver Rich Internet Applications for the desktop by leveraging existing skill sets in web technologies.
He takes Sho’s browser based Music Player and runs it outside the browser in Apollo. The application can read and write files from the local disk and pull album art from the internet via web services. The cross platform story is critical to Apollo. Ed switches over to a Mac and uses the same application with exactly the same code. Nice!
The Apollo runtime sits on top of the OS (Mac, Windows, Linux in the future) and runs applications developed in Flex or HTML and can also embed PDF files. Ed shows Google Maps in Apollo. It works smooth, proving that Apollo can handle complex Ajax applications. He then brings up contact panel in Flash mashed up with Google Maps. The seamless integration of Flash and HTML rendering including transparency between the layers is impressive. Developer APIs for Apollo will be available both for Flex/Flash as well as for AJAX/JavaScript.
Here is a list of other key Apollo features:
- Local file access
- Online/offline detection
- Drag-and-drop
- Clipboard access
- Backgound windows
and many more…
Ed explained that there will be SDKs to develop Apollo applications similar to the current Flex SDK. Soon you will be able to sign up for Apollo SDK news on www.adobe.com/go/apollo.
Kevin comes back and shows some early Apollo applications. I was particular impressed by the Ebay client prototype which allows user to manage auctions. Some nice effects in there to browse auction item pictures and create pictures/videos on the fly with a webcam.
Another impressive example was a rich text editor and collaboration tool developed in Flex and deployed on Apollo. Other examples included a finance application for mortgage and loans, including PDF forms and an instant messenger for mySpace.
Wow I think I am just seeing the future of desktop applications.
Finally Kevin showed an Internet TV application developed by Adobe as a showcase for Apollo. It is driven by RSS and downloads videos to your desktop so you can watch them when you are offline. It takes advantage of the fullscreen video mode of the Flash Player 9 upgrade, also available on Adobe Labs.
I want it now!
However the biggest news was Adobe’s announcement to create an investment fund for $100 Mio. to invest in companies creating RIA’s and especially Apollo applications.
In the end a brand new Jaguar XK was hauled out, which Kevin cateorized as the largest mobile Flash device in the world. The console of the car is completely based on Flash technology.
I am sitting here in a crowd of a couple of thousand people enjoying a special performance of the Blue Man Group. It is 8:40am in the morning in Las Vegas and I am at the opening session of the Adobe MAX conference. When I registered last night I got a good amount of conference schwag including the special MAXUP T-Shirt for presenting today in the MAXUP track. I also like the conference bag. Unlike the typical black bags which I tend to leave at the conference, this one is actually cool and I think I can re-use it as a diaper bag I will post a picture later.
Kevin Lynch kicks of the keynote and previews the upcoming Reader 8. Nice effects in there for previewing pages.
Now Shantanu takes over and talks about the Macromedia acquisition. A video of customers talking about their reaction when they learned about the acquisition highlights the excitement about this marriage. Shantanu talks about other milestones this year, including the launch of Flex 2 and Flash Player 9 as well as the announcement of Acrobat 8.
Kevin takes over and talks about Flash Player 9. Just during the last months the upgrade rate to the new player has been faster then for any previous Flash Player release. The Flash Player is really a ubiqutous virtual machine available cross-platform and cross browser. One factor for the dramatic adoption of the new Flash Player version is Flash video which has seen significant adoption over the last year from sites including MySpace, Yahoo, ABC and others. Kevin also mentions that there are now over 200,000,000 PDFs on the web.
Kevin switches gears now and brings a number of people on the stage to demo the improved Designer Developer workflows in upcoming Adobe products. It becomes very clear that Adobe is truly understanding customer needs here and a lot of the new integration features receive applause from the audience.
1st example: Designer developer workflow for HTML website development
- Start with Photoshop
- Add interactivity in Fireworks
- Finish and deploy with Dreamweaver
The website creation workflow starts often in Photoshop and not in Dreamweaver. The presenter highlights improvements in bringing up Photoshop files within Fireworks. He also demos the ability to load multiple Photoshop images into Fireworks and add common elements like a navigation layer on top of the images and then add interactivity to the navigation bar. The result can be saved as HTML. This is a great way to create quick mock-ups which you can share with end-users and clients for feedback. In the next step the project is being opened the in Dreamweaver. A highlight is the new way to copy and paste images from Photoshop to Dreamweaver, which kicks off a workflow which allows the designer to add important web properties like accessibility tags to the image.
Additionally Dreamweaver enables the developer to add AJAX features to the site with the Spry framework. Instead of coding, features like AJAX animations can be configured through wizards in Dreamweaver. The Spry Framework is posted on Adobe Labs.
2nd example: Flash Workflows with Dynamic Media
Again the process starts of in Photoshop. Some of the usability features of a future Photoshop release are being demonstrated. The demonstration on importing a Photoshop .psd file in Flash got a round of applause. The import keeps all layers intact. A lot of nice import features I do not understand, but audience seems to like it Next step is to use After Effects to apply engaging experiences to Flash. Sample shows how to use a brand new technology called “Puppet Tool” in After Effects and animate a character. Finally some more 3D animation features get added and the result is exported as Flash.
The team also demonstrated a brand new audio application (cannot remember the code name) for creating soundtracks and to incorporate audio into Flash which will be available this week on Adobe Labs.
3rd example: Designer Developer workflow with Flex
Sho Kuwamoto talks about Flex application skinning and using UI components designed with Illustrator in Flex.
He starts in Flex Builder and creates the basic application layout for an iTunes like application with multiple buttons for controlling the music and a datagrid for displaying the songs. In a future version of Illustrator the integration of symbol graphics will be better integrated with Flex. He exports the button images out of Illustrator as .swf. Then he imports the swf’s in Flex and assigns them to the generic buttons using the “Style†functionality.
Switching from the designer to the developers perspective in Flex Builder, Sho now defines the Web Service connectivity for the application. He points out the ease of coding with MXML, code hinting and code highlighting. Sho creates the whole music player application in 10 minutes… on a Mac! Yes, this is not a typo… Later this week Adobe will announce a public beta of Flex Builder for Mac. Cool! One more reason for me to switch to a MacBook.
Ben Forta enters the stage and shows new features in ColdFusion for back-end development and the Flex Builder integration with ColdFusion.
4th example: Electronic Document Workflow
Ben demonstrates PDF functions for electronic document workflow. He starts with a plain non-interactive PDF form document and imports it into the Adobe LiveCycle Designer. The new field recognition wizard in Designer 8 is impressive. Ben shows how to use the Designer to add more interactivity to the form, standard functionality available today. What is new is the cross-over between interactive PDF forms and Flex/Flash applications to interact with data. Seamless integration between a PDF version and a Flex version of the form is being worked on. He also shows the future Guide Designer in the LiveCycle Designer which supports the generation of Flex wizards based on XFA/PDF forms. A lot of exiting stuff which will bring the Flex and LiveCycle world closer together.
Need to catch my next session. More about the keynote later, including Apollo update and the $100,000,000 announcement.
I am sitting at the San Jose airport and waiting for my flight to Las Vegas. I actually just returned from the European SAP TechEd on Friday. It was a great event and we had a lot of Adobe related activities. I specifically enjoyed the SAP Developers Network day and showcasing Flex to SAP developers. Enrique Duvos, our European Flex evangelist, helped me with the sessions and I learned some more Flex Tips and Tricks. He also gave me a great presentation highlighting 10 reasons why one should use Flex to create Rich Internet Applications. I uploaded it on Slideshare, but the Adobe Myriad Pro Font got butchered in the process.
BTW Slideshare just opened to the public today (it is still in Beta), so try it out!
I also filmed some of the highlights of SDN day and SAP TechEd, but did not have a chance yet to edit and upload the video. The interest in Adobe technology was overwhelming and our booth was busy 8 hours a day. I had a good meeting with Eddy de Clercq. He created SDN World and we discussed how SDN World could be improved with Flex. I am hoping I can find a Flex engineer at MAX who is interested in this little side project. Talking about MAX, the Adobe customer conference… That’s the reason I am traveling again to Vegas (at least third time this year I think). I am very excited since this is my first MAX conference and people told me it is very energetic and lots of hands-on and ad-hoc techie stuff going on. I am particular interested in all session around Apollo (and obviously Flex). Even as an Adobe employee you sometimes learn more at a conference then back in the office. Next week I am having a workshop with SAP Research around Adobe technologies and MAX will be a good opportunity for me to get an overall update on interesting products and projects.
Also I am presenting at MAX. There will be an invitation only session (Wednesday 10:00 - 11:30am) for Adobe partners to learn more about the strategic partnership between Adobe and SAP and why this is relevant to the larger Adobe ecosystem. I am presenting together with Roman Bukary from SAP. If you are at MAX, work for an Adobe partner, but did not get an invitation please let me know and I will get you one.
I am also doing a cool Flex SAP mash-up demo as part of the MAXUP un-conference. Don’t know my time slot yet, but will update you later. It would be great to meet some readers of my Blog in person. Since I am Vegas regular, I know also a lot of good bars and restaurants
Need to get into the plane now…
Update: My 15 minute presentation slot at MAXUP (5th floor of the conference center) is tomorrow (10/24) at 11:30am.
While flying to Amsterdam I finally had a chance to play around with the new Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0. My first little project was a Book Arts Jam video. Since I work for Adobe I am obviously biased, but I have to say I was very impressed how easy to use the software is. I have had no previous experience with video editing software and yet it was very easy and fast to create this clip from my recordings, pictures and music.
So here it is. The Book Arts Jam video featuring a demo of the Letterpress printing process.
I just learned today that there will be a shadow unconference called MAXUP as part of the Adobe MAX developer conference. That’s excellent! I find these events often more useful then the “real” conference program. The SDN Day as part of SAP TechEd was a good example. Even back in the 90’s when the term “unconference” did not exist I really enjoyed technology discussions and working on ad-hoc projects at hacker meetings like the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.
If there are enough people who are interested I could talk about Flex integration with SAP and do some demos. Well, I hope to see you at MAXUP in Las Vegas (or next week at SDN Day and SAP TechEd in Amsterdam).
P.S.: Funny Fact - Adobe MAX will be my last conference for a while since I expect my first baby around mid of November. It is a boy and his name is Max… and no, this has nothing to do with the conference… What do you think? I am not that crazy… Well I am geeky enough however to have reserved his domain and put up a baby blog.
James Ward, an Adobe Flex evangelist, just posted a first report of his experience running Flex2 applications on the pre-beta Linux Flash player 9. Sounds very exciting and he even has a screenshot. Finally you will be able to write your Rich Internet Application once and run it consistently on Windows, Mac and Linux in IE, Firefox, Mozilla and Safari.
I have been working with JBoss on a Flex based collaboration client and the results have been stunning. It’s beautiful, extremely fast, and as soon as Flash Player 9 on Linux debuts it will work the same on any OS or browser, without any “if IE†workarounds! When Apollo is available this will get even more interesting since we can take the same collaboration client application and run it offline, without the browser!
Great interview from Knowledge@Wharton with SAP’s CEO Henning Kagermann. He discusses how web technologies transform enterprise software, the importance of partnerships, including a discussion about the strategic partnership between SAP and Adobe, and his interest in rock music.
read more | digg story
Congratulations to my friends Rashmi and Jonathan on officially launching SlideShare and being immediately covered by TechCrunch and others. I have been an early Beta user of SlideShare and was especially intrigued by the ease of use of the service. It allows you to upload PowerPoint presentations, tag and share them with other users, either on the SlideShare site or via your own Website or Blog. In true Web 2.0 fashion Jonathan decided to release early (and hopefully often) so the current functionality provides just the basic features, while I bet that we will see many enhancements based on user feedback over the coming months.
I uploaded my slide deck on “Enhancing the Usability of SAP Applications Using a Rich Client” four days ago and it is right now the most popular deck with 120 views… yeah, my 5 minutes of fame have finally arrived And even better now you can view the slides right here as well…
I think an important decision was to use the Amazon S3 service to handle the storage of the actual content. The instant availability of high bandwidth and storage via web services really changes the game for every company in the Web 2.0 field. Remember your typical Web 2.0 announcements which got covered on TechCrunch or Digged? You try to reach the site/content and it is slow or not available at all due to the spike in demand. With services like S3 this is no longer the case and it gives a start-up the same scalability like Amazon.
I have a couple of enhancement ideas for SlideShare as well…
1) Be able to view/browse slideshows on SlideShare without logging in. Only uploading should require a user account (similar to Flickr)
2) Be able to upload slides with audio and/or add audio to slides using SlideShare
3) Handle animations in the Powerpoint slides
4) There are some font issues which you can see on my slides (e.g. 4 and 5)
5) A lot of people commented that slides cannot be set private to specific user groups. I am personally not very interested in that feature since my slides are used for evangelizing technology and I want to reach as many people as possible.
I have also some related ideas which I am refining right now. But thats something I want to first discuss with Jon over a glass of beer.
Keep up the good work!
Now that I am fully recovered from Las Vegas (yes it took two weeks) and already preparing for SAP TechEd in Amsterdam I wanted to capture my memories from the Demo Jam. As you probably know I participated this year in the SAP TechEd Demo Jam showing how to create an Adobe Flex application and connect it to an SAP backend.
My original idea was to present a Rich Internet Application for a customer support scenario which we already developed with our SI partner company Roundarch. It is pretty cool and shows the web service communication between the Flash front-end and the SAP backend as well as real-time data messaging between multiple clients. Great idea, but didn’t fly with the SAP Demo Gods. They wanted to see live development on stage. Great, so here I had two weeks left to develop a new demo which can be delivered in 6 minutes and includes live development against an SAP backend.
Luckily I have great colleagues who helped me out. Juergen Hauser, who is working in the Adobe SAP partnership team in Walldorf showed me how to create and configure Web Services in our test SAP ABAP server (which is located in Ottawa). Then I worked with Flex evangelist James Ward to create a compelling demo which is simple and short enough to be delivered in 6 minutes.
We finalized the whole project on the morning of Demo Jam day. So obviously when I did the dry run that afternoon with Jeff Word, nothing worked. I know I had it all under control, but Jeff was definitly nervous. I spent the rest of the afternoon practicing all steps and rehearsing the demo. Two hours before the start of the Demo Jam I hooked up my laptop on stage did a couple of more trial runs and everything worked… Yeah! Then the official part began and as presenters we were huddled into the VIP area with Shai and he exchanged some war stories about live demos. Next was a photo shoot of everyone and at that point in time I just wanted to get on stage and get it over with. Well unfortunately my demo was the second to last, so I spent time joking around with Ed and Dan who had the demo slot before me. After what seemed to be an eternity finally it was my time to enter the stage (while Ed and Dan showed of their excellent SAPlink demo). A quick check to see if the computer and network are still up and running… OK! Quick check of the application itself… OK and ready to go. So here was my turn in front of about 1000 attendees. After the introduction from Jeff the clock started (did I mention you have only 6 minutes?) I started the SAP GUI and entered the transaction code “WSADMIN†to call up the Web Service Admin UI. Nothing… Really, here I stand and nothing happens, UI does not come up (it worked just a couple of minutes earlier). Well, I thought now you need to improvise, so lets bring up Flex Builder. Just when I started to talk about Flex Builder (and in the back of my brain tried to figure out how I can build this application without access to the SAP Web Service) hell broke loose on my screen, various pop-up boxes informed me that I lost my VPN and network connection. I was paralyzed. That was the worst case scenario the demo super Super-GAU (a German abbreviation for the largest accident which can be assumed).
Jeff recognized my pain and was kind enough to ask the audience to give me a second chance and have the last demo presenter go first. That gave me exactly 6 minutes to fix my problem. I checked the network cable and general settings… Everything seemed fine, except I had no network connection. The SAP IT guy came to help and saved the day. He noticed that I had both wireless as well as the wired internet connection running. Apparently at the minute I started to demo the wireless connection timed-out for a couple of seconds and my computer got so confused that he refused to connect to the internet at all. After I manually turned of the wireless connection, everything worked again and just in time for my second chance. This time the demo went smooth and the audience went wild (especially after showing them the shark ;-). So believe it or not, but in the end I made second place and was classified as the best recovery every at a Demo Jam. Congratulations out to Ed and Dan who won with their excellent SAPlink tool!
For those of you who missed my performance you have three options:
1) Come to SAP TechEd in Amsterdam, where I will compete again
2) View the recording of the whole event on SDN TV
3) View my ScreenCam recording of the demo which includes some more background about the technology being used
Hope to see some of you in Amsterdam!
A while ago I signed up for Ning a service which lets you create your own Social Website without coding (well you can even code PHP if you want to). I never used it until I received an email tonight, that Ning has added new templates which make the creation of your own site easier. They added Ning Videos, Ning Photos and Ning Group.
To test drive the service I created a new photo site called “Las Vegas Parties“… I felt I have some expertise in this area
I like the wizard driven approach of creating the site. However adding the actual photos seemed tedious (no client uploader utility). I would have liked to just add my pictures from Flickr, but there was no obvious way to do that. Just to get the site started I uploaded some party pics from Tao into a new album. It seems that only I can post into that album, while I would expect that also other users can upload their Tao pictures into the same album. I probably need to dive deper into it.
I have also a great idea about creating a custom Ning group. More about that later, but let me know if you know other services you like/use which provide an easy, but yet feature rich way to maintain a virtual group of people (discussion board, photo sharing, calendar, user management, etc.).
Update:
Om Malik is fairly upbeat on the Ning enhancements
In short, it allows niche sites to cheaply add community tools to their existing web presence. This could be a precursor to a fund raising effort by the company that has so far been privately funded by Marc Andreessen.
John Battelle is also upbeat, but points out that Ning might try to boil the ocean…
In short, it’s not about one company owning a space - video, or social networking, or photo sharing. It’s about letting anyone have these kinds of services. That’s biting off a hell of a lot, and there is much to prove, but if the planets align, I have to say, it’s an impressive play.
Sorry for my blog posting pause. I am suffering post TechEd Las Vegas Stress Syndrom… which means I had a pretty bad cold.
I just browsed Flickr and found this great picture of me and Robert. Looking forward to see the full video on podtech.net very soon.
Also stay tuned for a great story about my participation in the demo jam.
I just came back to my hotel room in the Venetian after a long day at the SAP Developer Network day. It was great. Mark, Craig and team organized an excellent event with the right mixture of organized sessions and freestyle activities and meetings.
Mark Finnern kicked the event of with references to Burning Man and Foo camp.
After that a networking session allowed everyone to meet different members of the SDN community. Juergen, James and I started to get ready for the Flex hands-on workshop. In our two workshops we had about 50 attendees who brought their laptops to install Flex Builder and start developing Rich Internet Applications with Flex.
Here is James Ward demonstrating Flex Builder.
The hands-on sessions were very productive and we got a lot of positive feedback on the Flex Proof-of-Concept application which we developed with RoundArch (a Rich Internet Application for customer support linking back to an SAP application).
During the breaks I met Robert Scoble and later he did a brief interview with me talking about all the activities between Adobe and SAP. This should be available soon on the SAP channel of PodTech.net). I invited Robert to meet in Palo Alto or San Jose to give him a demo of all the work we have been doing with SAP on improving the user experience. Later in the day Robert also interviewed Shai.
We had also a lot of interest in the SDN sessions on SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe presented by Juergen Hauser, Les Woolsey, Blair Powell and Mohan Bethur. We are off to a great start and I expect a lot of people in our sessions and our booth during the next days at SAP TechEd.
Finally SDN Day closed with a party at the Hofbrauhaus in Las Vegas. Below is SDNer Harald Reiter and me enjoying a Weissbier. We had a lot of fun on our table and Mark, Craig and Thomas stopped by as well.
Its time to sleep and prepare for another big day tommorrow. I will present Interactive Forms with Markus Meisl as well as Apollo and the Adobe Engagement Platform as part of the SAP Client strategy presentation. Finally and most importantly I need to mentally prepare for the Demo Jam tomorrow evening. If your at SAP TechEd please support me with a lot of noise!
The last days have been pretty hectic. I am getting ready for SAP’s number one tech event the SAP TechEd. This meant installing SAP Web Application Server on VMWare, getting the demos ready, figuring out who needs to go to which workshop, preparing for the Demo Jam and many more things. I am flying to Las Vegas on Sunday and expect a long night since I still need to get an SAP Web AS ABAP server installed on a machine which is hopefully waiting for me in the hotel. I do not have a monitor yet, but hopefully someone can help me out (if you know where I could use a Monitor in the Venetian Hotel on Sunday afternoon/evening please let me know. Even better let me know if you have a box with the Web AS 6.40 ABAP stack which I could use for the SDN workshop).
I am very excited to meet Robert Scoble who will be at SDN Day (the SAP Developer Network Event the day before TechEd starts officially). He will do interviews for PodTech (Until today I did not realize they have an SAP Channel, cool!).
So here is a summary of the Adobe content at SAP TechEd and SDN Day we have lined up….
- Two hour hands-on workshop (bring your laptop) to develop Rich Internet Applications with Flex and connect them to SAP (if I can get the ABAP Server running
- Four session around Interactive Forms at SDN Day, meaning talk to our developers about the technical details of SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe
- Demo Jam - Yes I will compete with a demo showing live coding in Flex Builder developing a cool Flex app connection to SAP in 6 minutes (Please support me with a lot of noise
- 12 (!) presentations and workshops featuring Interactive Forms in SAP NetWeaver. This is a great opportunity to get educated on one of the hottest technology in SAP NetWeaver
- Exhibition Pods: We have one booth (booth #1) which features everything you want to know about Interactive Forms and allows you to talk to the experts (no sales or marketing people allowed on our booth!) and one pod (pod #1) in the NetWeaver village featuring Adobe Flex technology. It is great to be twice #1
Well I better get some rest before the crazy days start!
P.S. One more update - I will present the Adobe Engagement Platform and Apollo as part of SAP’s session “Next Generation of Client Technology for SAP“. We are absolutely dedicated to bring rich and engaging user experiences to SAP customers.
Make up funny facts about SAP and post them here…
SAP Facts (Chuck Norris style)
My favorites:
Oracle still hides the fact that FUSION stands for: Finally use SAP in our network
SAP is such a great software that initially there weren’t any errors.
But in order to have any work to do at all, they made up some bugs
SAP is so efficient in creating software, there is actually only one
developer writing code, all others are architects and managers
That is really upsetting. I liked the service and used it on every flight to/from Germany when it was available. It was actually a reason for me to prefer Lufthansa (which offered the service) over United. I thought the price was not outrageous (I think $29.99 for unlimited usage on a flight). CrunchGear reports…
Company chief Jim McNerney said, “Regrettably, the market for this service has not materialized as had been expected. We believe this decision best balances the long-term interests of all parties with a stake in Connexion by Boeing.â€
CrunchGear » Blog Archive » Boeing Drops Connexion
I hope since the equipment is now installed on the planes that Lufthansa and other airlines can find an alternative service provider for the satellite Internet service.
BTW, I am sitting at the SFO ariport waiting for my flight to Munich… maybe one of the last flights with Broadband Internet…
Today I tried to integrate a YouTube video into my WordPress. It did not work out of the box. Initially the video would break the layout in Firefox and not show up in Internet Explorer. It turned out that the problem is the Rich Text Editor in WordPress. Even if you select the HTML editing mode and copy over the HTML provided by YouTube it fails.
To make it work I changed back to the older WordPress Editor…
1. Login to WordPress admin
2. Go to Options >> Writing
3. Uncheck both Users should use the visual rich editor by default &
WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically
4. Go to Users
5. Uncheck Use the visual rich editor when writing
6. Go to Write >> Write Post
7. Paste the ‘embeddable player’ code for your YouTube video in the write box
8. In the code change the width of the player to “500″ (depends on your template, but in my template the standard “600″setting ruined the layout in IE.
8. Publish blog
Now it works (see my previous blog entry).
A week ago I decided to finally update the sound system of my car. A main decision criteria was to get a very good connectivity to my iPod. After doing some research I decided to go with the Alpine Mobile Multimedia System IVA-W200. It has an excellent video touch screen and an easy and fast way to navigate the iPod. I got it installed at Bay Car Stereo in Mountain View and they did an excellent job.
Here is a short video how to navigate the iPod from the Alpine.
I attended the first Web Montag in Mountain View in June and really enjoyed the opportunity to exchange various technology ideas. I presented a Flex 2 application integrated with SAP web services. About half of the attendees were Germans or Swiss and the others Americans with an interest in Germany. I was really intrigued by the presentation of Stefan and Felix who build Plazes, a web site which keeps track where you last logged on to the Internet. I became addicted and use it a lot (as you can see from my Plazes batch on top of the Blog).
David Hornik (VentureBlog), just wrote about Entrepreneurship In Europe. I agree with him that it is even harder to build a successful start-up in Europe. What is important to understand however is that Europe is not one country. Each individual European country continues to have its own culture and therefore also deals differently with technology and start-up businesses. A lot of activity is actually going on in Ireland, but as you can tell from initiatives like the interest in Web Montags all over Germany other countries have grass roots efforts as well. As we discussed at Web Montag a major hurdle of starting a company in Germany is the fact that in case you fail (which is very likely) your reputation can be ruined. Therefore fewer entrepreneurs take the risk of starting a company. Interestingly several Silicon Valley executives came to the same conclusion in a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The 2nd Web Montag in Silicon Valley will take place on August 14. Now you have the opportunity to join the discussion and help foster American German technology relationships around Web 2.0. I hope Shel Israel reads this and has a chance to attend since he is doing research for his next book “Global Neighborhoods”. Unfortunately I cannot attend since I will be in Los Angeles for a short vacation. But I certainly will come again next time.
Over on FlexLive.net Zee is discussing ideas how to increase the adoption of Adobe LiveCycle software. LiveCycle is Adobe’s product family of J2EE server software for forms and document creation and management in the enterprise.
Zee writes…
“Well, first the product managers have to realize that grass-roots adoption matters even for enterprise prodcuts…
Hopefully, core products in the LiveCycle lineup such as the form server and the workflow engine could all be made free by the LiveCycle 8 release.”
I agree that it is important to ensure that enterprise developers get easy access to the software for evaluation and prototyping through a Developer Network. However the decision to introduce new enterprise software applications in a productive evironment includes other factors. I would argue the license fee of enterprise software is typically only a minor factor in Total Cost of Ownership considerations.
An important element to enterprise adoption is the requirement that the new software integrates seemlessly with existing enterprise applications (what I like to call “being a good corporate citizen”). IT departments are busy maintaining and updating existing software; Introducing new software means stress and uncertainty.
Making it easy to deploy, integrate and maintain the software in an existing infrastrutcure will lower the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership of the software) and therefore make a decision to introduce new technology easier.
Therefore Adobe decided to partner with other enterprise software companies. Specifically our strategic partnership with SAP is an important element to accomplish wide adoption of LiveCycle… and yes I am biased since I am the Product Manager for the SAP Adobe partnership. Over three years ago we started to work with SAP to tightly integrate forms functionality into SAP applications. I actually spent two years in the SAP headquarter in Walldorf to facilitate the integration and evangelize Adobe software.
Today SAP is shipping core componets of LiveCycle (incl. the LiveCycle Designer and modules from LiveCycle Forms) as part of their SAP NetWeaver application platform. It is called SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe and actually is included in the default installation of the SAP Web Application Server. Interactive Forms provides the infrastructure for both print forms (e.g. invoices, orders, paystubs, tax forms) as well as interactive PDF forms in SAP applications. SAP is currently migrating over 2000 print form templates from legacy technology to Adobe based forms technology (about 900 forms are already migrated and available with mySAP ERP 2005). It is just a matter of time (since it takes SAP customers a number of years to upgrade to new releases) till every SAP customer will use Adobe forms technology. Given that SAP owns the majority of the enterprise software market I would argue that this is a pretty good strategy to cross the chasm.
So to a degree we are actually already executing a twist of Zee’s idea. The core forms technology is delivered free to all SAP customers as part of SAP NetWeaver. The license allows SAP cutomers to use the technology free of charge for print forms. Only if customers want to use interactive PDF forms in a production environment they require an additional license (which is distributed by SAP).
Finally since Interactive Forms is based on LiveCycle Forms technology other products like LiveCycle Policy Server or LiveCycle Barcoded Forms will be of interest to SAP customers as well.
“I doubt any LiveCycle product manager would be reading my blog, but like I said, grass-roots matters.”
Well, I am reading your Blog and I also forwarded it to the LiveCycle Product Management team.
Kevin Lynch recently disucssed the Adobe Engagement Platform with Knowledge@Wharton