Cloud computing has made some progress in the last few years… not a lot of progress (if you consider adoption progress) but nonetheless it is getting there. This article talks about Elastra which puts MySQL and PostgresSQL is SaaS environment on the Amazon S3/EC2 cloud. This sounds like a cool idea from the standpoint of almost infinate scaleability however is this approch applicable for most companies? I am not sure the cloud can add direct value to an organization knowing that hardware is pretty cheap at this point and that a database like MySQL can be had for free and the tuned to meet application needs. The cloud would be useful for on-demand growth and shrinking of the data store but what applications can you think about that have dynamic data storage needs? Huge analytic processes that consume temporary storage may be one possible use but most transactioanl system have no such need. I am still on the fence about cloud computing and still think it is buzzword used by neo-nerds to gain some tech yardage on unknowing management.

This is the coolest thing I have seen in quite a while and have to say I more than a little suprised that it exists. I worked on a custom java-based custom automated analytics application about a year back and the analyst I worked with went on-and-on about Bayesian classification within his SAS analytics. The reality is if you look at what you can do with this API you will find it quite amazing for a handful of problems. Think in terms of NLP problems or text mining… this won’t get you 100% of the way there with either but can add considerable value in helping.

Check out this sample code:

FisherClassifier fc=new FisherClassifierImpl();
fc.train("The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog's tail","good");
fc.train("Make money fast!", "bad");
String classification=fc.getClassification("money"); // should be "bad"


Looks pretty slick to me and I already have an idea of how I can use it!

A cool vid of me on the track …

this is the bike to look for …

this is the vid …

While surfing the serverside i came upon this article on a cool small and lightweight Java API for connecting to the dreaded MS Exchange. The API is provided by JEC and sadly looks to be a closed source pay-for API however the functionality is HOT ! Full integration with calendar, email, tasks and contacts … just think about the possibilities there … with on-line and mobile integration you can have quite a nify little app.

In a progressive OpenID play Google has announced that it will now be a provider of OpenId. This move from Google furthers its play in the Web2.0 space by providing what logically is single sign for Blogger. More details from Techcrunch …

Effective immediately, Blogger users are able to use their blogs URL as an OpenID login, after toggling the option via the draft.blogger.com admin menu. Google’s baby steps follow the announcement last week that over 250 million Yahoo users would be able to use their Yahoo logins as OpenID. Reports have put users of Blogger at somewhere between 10 million and 50 million, although the service is renowned as a haven for spam so how many legitimate bloggers will take up this service is unclear. It also isn’t being provided as yet via the regular Blogger quite yet, only via the Blogger in Draft service (although this is available to those who wish to use it), however this is the regular first step for new features in Blogger so it could be expected to become a standard option sometime later this year.

Amazingly, you already have an OpenID if you have any of the following:
AOL — openid.aol.com/screenname
LiveDoor — profile.livedoor.com/username
LiveJournal — username.livejournal.com
Orange (France Telecom) — http://openid.orange.fr/
SmugMug — username.smugmug.com
Technorati — technorati.com/people/technorati/username
Vox — member.vox.com
WordPress.com — username.wordpress.com

I have been spending some time looking at the various social networking ‘technologies’ that exist and even more compelling are the APIs that can be leveraged to provide ’something’. The something had not yet been defined however the APIs certainly have. A few examples of ‘good reads’ include:

Data Portability and the supported standards here

After reviewing the standards, hCard, APML, RSS, XFN, etc.. it is possible to begin to understand how a more generic data portability solution in the marketing sense can be constructed. Just some less than random thoughts around this stuff…

I explored the Eclipse RCP framework once again, last time I went down that road was 2 years ago, and just like before I came up empty.

A little background; the application I am working on requires a sophisticated UI that would benefit from context menus, drag-and-drop and other UI capabilities you often take for granted in a rich client application. Considering this, I looked at Eclipse once again to provide me with the general RCP framework from which I could build my UI. All went well until I ran into issues with the DataBinding component and having to tie an editor or view component to a model object. In order to do this, Eclipse has been working on the DataBinding framework however this framework is not complete and leaves a bit to the imagination. Having struggled with the details of the DataBinding direction, capability and slow development cycle (along with the need to get my app done ASAP) I jumped back to a web-based UI.

Bottom line is this, if I had the time to fully investigate and offer time in developing the DataBinding framework I could easliy get through the RCP issues.

Eclipse RCP is close but not quite there yet … perhaps a year from now this will all change and Java on the desktop will be back in vogue.

I am currently working on developing an automated marketing application that involves the automation and deployment of high-end mathematical / analytical models. This application uses the standard cast of characters including Spring / Hibernate within Tomcat (JBoss may be an options for JEMS) along with other cool technologies like Opensymphony Quartz and OSWorkflow. This project is proceeding so far as expected with the majority of the data access and persistence layer already completed and tested within JUnit. At this point, I am working on the workflow engine (OSWorkflow) and have found it to be very flexible yet lacking any real meaningful documentation. That said, the OSWF users forum has been pretty helpful but is what you should expect from any open source technology.

Some key notes thus far… again, I am deeply impressed with Spring it keeps evolving in the ‘correct’ direction as a light weight J2EE framework that uses standard POJOs as a ‘design pattern’ over EJBs. This is either the 2nd or 3rd project where I have used Spring and the support from the open source community is getting better, for example OSWF has Spring and Hibernate support within their API and provides some documentation on how to ‘wire’ OSWF into Spring and Hibernate (Hibernate Session/SessionFactory). Further, since OSWF and Quartz are Opensymphony ‘products’ there is good use of Quartz within OSWF… cool stuff, really.

The UI of the application will use portlets, ajax and more-less standard MVC with Spring (because I like Sprring MVC better than Struts).

So that is pretty much a 100,000 ft. view of my world and what I have been toiling over for the last several months.

I was referred to this article on Java Server Faces by a buddy of mine in an effort to change my view on JSF technology. Last time I was in the JSF camp I was run out by threats of needing a special WYSIWYG editor, long ramp-up time because the concepts are difficult and general technology confusion. I never went back to visit JSF since…

In a world of a thousand MVC and quazi-MVC technologies it becomes important to standardize your shop on just one. Far too often I use Struts for one project, Spring for another and now potentially JSF for yet another. Yes I did say I may use JSF for something in the near future. Here is the reason(s).

1/ JSF is getting mature and has some good adoption.
2/ JSF provides MVC and (here is the big one) a JSP tag lib for UI widgets … shizam!
3/ you can standardize your projects on JSF so you get project-to-project knowledge transfer as well as more ‘reusable’ code (like that ever happens).

Finally, JSF is portable and agnostic in that you can run it within other frameworks or along side other frameworks like the mighty Spring framework.

JSF was once hailed as the next great UI / MVC solution and I have to tell you … I think I will be going back into their camp again to check out their goods.

click

I was listening to iTunes Radio station ‘ChroniX Aggression’ and this tune came ripping across. As usual I didn’t pay attention until I started bobbin’ my noggin’ and thinking to myself ‘this is a pretty rocking’ cover of a great song. I snapped over to iTunes from my IDE and noticed the bands name. Being curious about what they look like and who they are I found their http://www.deadstar.com URL and clicked through.

I am not going to review these guys or say anything about if they are good or bad all I am going to say is watch out for them. They have the look of these dudes although not as scary. Here ya go…