Lost!

I decided awhile back that I would start coding a new web application. I can’t say anything about it now, but some of the future “web desktop” environments have been catching my eye. Today, I installed Mozilla’s Prism and Adobe’s Air. I’m impressed with one and annoyed at another…

Mozilla Prism
Prism was officially released yesterday (Oct 25th 2007) and received interest, but I’m guessing not as much as the Mozilla foundation wanted. Prism is branded as an extension of the web, but not really a new OS layer. After downloading the Prism application and installing, you run it and get presented with this window.

After typing in the required info and checking the boxes you want, you’re presented with a website inside a window - thats it. Nothing fancy, no special cool things - nothing but a window. Unfortunately, if I wanted this type of application, I’d fire up IE and use the F11 button with auto-hide activated. Then I’d just have a website with no border. About the only neat thing is that I can have an icon for said website. I chalk this up to a fancy internet shortcut. Actually, thats exactly what it is. Enter C:\Program Files\Prism\prism.exe” -webapp google reader@prism.app into your Run bar and *poof*, shortcut works. I’m sooo not impressed.

Adobe Air
After Prism, I wasn’t really in the mood to try something else, especially something that Prism is and isn’t compared to. Lets just say, theres no comparison - period. Wait, I’m sorry - they both have borders around the web application, thats it. I decided to download the eBay Desktop for Air and wow. As much as I absolutely hate eBay these days, they did a good job on the application. I would say that it has the functionality of AJAX, Flash and a few other things, all rolled into one. One other neat thing that kills current web applications is that properties boxes are not limited to the window that opens them. In a standard web browser, you might be able to drag an AJAX popup “properties” menu around but it stays inside the browser window. Air, however, allows the box to be anywhere on your screen. Right now, I’ve got a properties box up on one monitor, the application up on the other and I’m impressed. Stupid, yes, but Air actually makes it feel like a real application.

Since it’s cross OS, I can create an application for any OS, but as a website and pretty much know that it’ll roughly look the same and act the same. No more crying about Javascript and other issues. The other pretty cool thing, it installs as easily as flash (no restart required) and applications install even easier - one click, type in any security password (if you’ve got Vista or XP Security profiles) and the application installs itself after making sure you want to install said application and where.

The sample applications show some of the neat stuff it can do. I personally installed the Employee Directory since I’ve seen those inside several Corps I’ve worked for - blew me away.

The winner? Hands down: Air. I’m sold and I’ll be using it for my next web application. In fact, I have an application I might port over to it…hmmmmm.

For those wondering about Silverlight technology from Microsoft, it’s pretty much a direct competitor to Adobe’s Flash.

First, what is SQL? Structured Query Language, or SQL for short, is the “standardized” way of querying a database. Funny, but the word “standardized” really doesn’t fit into anything SQL since every database uses its own interpretation of SQL. There are several databases that just don’t play well with each other. Each database company, whether it be Microsoft, Oracle, or the Open Source DB’s like MySQL (technically a company) or PostgreSQL all have their own implementation of the SQL language. Each has their own quirks with different queries or keywords. After years of SQL being around, it’s still difficult to run a decent SELECT statement over multiple databases - why? Continue reading…

In an odd twist, Facebook’s code was published in the early morning hours of Saturday…. There are some people that have certain portions of the site and others have nothing posted due to Cease and Desist orders. From what I can tell, more than just one page was published.

The homepage of Facebook, with 24 file Includes, has more functions than I’ve seen in a file in a very long time. I’m also guessing that I only have the Code of the homepage since there is no HTML rendering Continue reading…

I’ve made the decision to start separating my general content and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) content. This means that my rants and such will stay here, but all my Alfresco, SharePoint and MOSS will be posted onto a separate website. Basically the ECM content is starting to get a little popular and people don’t want to dig through all the other non-related crap, so this is more of a divide and conquer attempt.

Before everyone panics, I will keep all the older posts, but migrate copies of them to the new website. I will also finish the Alfresco vs SharePoint (MOSS) series on both websites. After that series is done, all ECM related content will be located at……. www.protocol16.com If you’re a geek like I am, you should either know (this falls within the super-geek category, which I am not) or be able to find out what Protocol 16 is. After that, you’ll understand why I chose this domain name for my ECM related content - describes it perfectly.

I will also add a temporary header across this site for ECM redirection and all ECM stories will have a link inserted in the top to redirect any visitors coming from Search Engines directly to the new article on Protocol16.

On top of all of that, I’ve been running Lost! long enough to know that I want to customize some stuff on the new site. So, a new theme (which I’ve customized), new Plugins, etc. Whew - lots of work. I honestly have not made up my mind about Ads. I originally didn’t believe in them but started using them to attempt to supplement my bills, but I haven’t had too much luck. I may place ads on Protocol16 and not here, I may not have ads anywhere - only time and my stubbornness will tell.

Now, one thing I will not do is transfer all the comments over to the new website. Sorry, but it’s just too tedious to pull the comments, redo the back end to point to the proper post, etc. Not my cup of tea. With the new stories pointing to the old stories in an [Editors Note] style, you’ll get to see comments either way.

All of this would have happened a few weeks ago, but right as I finished up customizing WP, a new version was released and I decided I might as well jump in and break everything again. That and I couldn’t make up my mind over Theme issues…

Leaching images is a nasty habit. If you don’t know what leaching is - it’s when you put an image on your page, but pull it from another website. Kind of like the WordPress logo in most templates - it pulls directly from WordPress in case they change the logo later - it gets updated across the world.

Anyway, the John McCain camp decided to leach an image on their MySpace page. The owner found out and decided to teach them a lesson instead of just killing the pull or the image. He basically took a menu and turned it into a campaign policy message about Gay Marriage. Check it out on Newsvine. Boy, I’d hate to be the webmaster of that site…