Loosely Coupled, Explained

John Hagel has a very good definition of the term, Loosely Coupled. He defines Lossely Coupled as, "an attribute of systems, referring to an approach to designing interfaces across modules to reduce the interdependencies across modules or components – in particular, reducing the risk that changes within one module will create unanticipated changes within other modules. This approach specifically seeks to increase flexibility in adding modules, replacing modules and changing operations within individual modules."

John writes of the benefits of Loosely Coupled system and how if this term is not understood and used properly will waste the benefits the new wave of technologies can provide. He does not mention this new wave of technology but It has to be Web Services.

New face of spam

I just received this spam which was sent to my machine using Windows messaging service (using "net send"). It's irritating but there is a solution as this Securityfocus article shows.
Update: Read more about it in this recent article on Wired: Wired News: Spam Masquerades as Admin Alerts

Atlast, am back

OK, I didn't say that I'll be back, but yes I'm back...:). We (I and Monica) were off on a quite long vacation to Pune, India. So now we will be updating the site on a regular basis. There will be some updates on India, things certainly have changed back home. Also, a lot has happened since my last post in the tech world. It will take some time to catch up on things. So keep checking.

XML Web Services: Means to an End

Don Box on end to the Web services era, at least on a standards level:

Don Box, an architect in Microsoft Corp.'s developer division told an audience of Web services conference attendees Wednesday: "The end of the XML Web services era is near. I predict two years from now we won't have this conference."

Box said XML Web services are a means to an end. "We have to get the plumbing sorted out," he said. "We have a couple more years of plumbing work, but after that we move on to applications," he said. Box said the "protocol work is starting to wind down, the infrastructure is catching up with protocols and it's time to start thinking about applications."
Very well said.

Don't stop Blogging, Sam

Sam says that he's got kind of bored right now with the blogging and that he would like his blog to morph into something else which he has not decided yet. Well, Sam yours is one blog we goto for .Net related stuff. Your blog has become a huge knowledgebase of .Net news and articles. So keep the ball rolling while you try to find what you need to do with your blog. Cheers !!

Web Services' True Promise

This time Informationweek reports on Web services hype and reality:

"With Web services, as with any software project, your chances of success hinge on basic but essential steps such as performing a thorough needs assessment, gaining a good understanding of the technology and the vendor landscape, and using a pilot program before undertaking large implementations. Once those fundamentals are covered, chances are that Web services will result in greater efficiencies for your business. And that's what will transform the technology from today's hype to tomorrow's reality."

Another interesting paragraph from the same article.

"The fact is that the Internet never made anyone rich, never increased a company's bottom line, never made anyone's life easier. What the Internet does do is provide a valuable tool that lets businesses and individuals benefit from squeezing inefficiencies out of their processes. Just as a Steinway piano won't turn an ordinary person into a virtuoso, new technology won't let an IT department with a lackluster plan achieve significant benefits."

Going overboard on open source?

In an editorial on ZDNet:
"Open source is supposed to be about freedom. Unfortunately, certain advocates have lost sight of that goal. People should be free to use software which best fits their needs, whether or not it adheres to a particular programming philosophy. I suggest that open source proponents spend their time crafting interoperability guidelines rather than creating a protected environment, which artificially boosts open-source adoption while hiding it from the full rigors of competition."

Miscellaneous: Web Services and Few Good Blogs

Microsoft today released Web Services Development Kit for building ASP.NET Web Services that use WS-Security, WS-Routing, WS-Attachments and DIME.

Gordon Van Huizen writes about enthusiasm and skepticism involved with Web services. [via Emergic.org]

Here are some good blogs that we have come across recently:
JK's Observations - About India, Kerala, Technology, Books, Movies
Sanjay's Journal of Coding Tips - Writes mostly about Technology
AnitraPavka.com - Accessible Usable Design - On Usability and Accessibility
Sanjiva Weerawarana's Radio Weblog - Author/Co-author of WSDL, WSFL specifications.

Push-Button Innovation

Technology Review reports on innovation in US Telecom business :

"Innovation isn’t what companies do; it’s what customers adopt. In fact, the telecom sector remains a fabulous market for innovative uses of bandwidth. But innovation shouldn’t mean getting people to use more bandwidth; it should be about getting people to change their bandwidth behaviors...."

"...Push-button innovation doesn’t ask customers to buy new equipment or learn how to program; it treats them as people who might be prepared to tap a few extra keys to get a little extra value for a small additional fee. Telephone companies need only get a certain small percentage of callers to push a few more buttons to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in cash flow...."

Mark my words

Mark my words, better still write them on a piece of paper and store them in a safe place. Rajesh Jain, Managing Director of NetCore details his vision of a new software platform which will bring computing to the masses in the developing word, what he calls the emerging markets. Rajesh could very well be the first MD (equivalent of CEO/CIO?) to come up and discuss his visions so openely in a weblog. I have seen CEO's discuss about a particular product or some new technology(although how many CEO's do we know,have blogs) but not complete vision of a new software platform in such details. But will he be the last one. No, this is just the beginning. Blogs have the potential of becoming the central mouthpiece of organizations around the globe. What better place to talk about your organizations mission, vision and values then in your blog. "Very soon every CEO will blog". Congrats Rajesh.

An Awkward Triangle

OK. A detour from the usual blogs. The Economist reports:

"So it is something of an embarrassment to America that General Musharraf is a military dictator and self-appointed president. This week, he has moved to tighten his grip, expressing the sentiment, dubious to democrats, that, “if you want to keep the army out, you have to bring it in.” He was speaking at a televised press conference on August 21st, at which he announced his own coronation as president, army chief and chairman of a powerful new National Security Council (NSC) for the next five years."

Ever heard of dictatorship.

The Waking Giant

In an article on Line56:

"If there is a dark horse coming up on the outer rail, it's Web services and their associated uptake. Twenty-one percent of companies are currently in enterprise-wide or multi-enterprise integrations of one kind or another; 8 percent are in business unit-wide implementations; and another 41 percent are in incremental rollouts or pilots. Though 20 percent of companies are still thinking about Web services, just 10 percent show no interest.

While many had predicted that Web services would remain mostly within the four walls initially, the fastest adoption will take place with business customers, followed in order by internal operations; suppliers and trading partners; and consumer customers.

A clear majority of companies say Web services will be used to complement current infrastructure, while 6 percent say it will be used separately, and 12 percent will use services to replace previous integrations. Companies have a variety of plans for Web services, but most (69 percent) say "existing Web-based applications" have the highest appeal.

25 Ideas for a Changing World

Businessweek writes: "In this era of change--in government, the markets, corporate behavior, and the management of information--here are 25 ideas to help set us on the right path."

Ultra-Liberal RSS Parser and a RSS Finder App

Mark Pilgrim has written a RSS Parser and he defends himself as to why he made it so liberal by comparing it to the internet browsers: "Look at it this way: imagine you made a browser that only rendered sites authored in valid HTML or XHTML. How much of the web would your users be able to see? 1%? 0.1%? Less?" Agreed.

bstpierre.org extended the same script and made it web accessible as RSS Finder. Cool. But why does it return two possible feeds for our site. Hmmm.

Target aims at ECommerce via Amazon

Information Week writes:
"Target Corp. last week unveiled a new Web site--yet another case study in how Amazon.com Inc. has become a provider of E-business services. The new site, built on Amazon's technology and hosted by the online retailer, is the first end-to-end E-business deployment Amazon has done for another company, but it may not be the last."

The way they have transformed themselves from just being an Online Book shop to being a E-Business service provider is amazing. What do they get back by hosting the Target site and giving them their technology? Three things - "Amazon gets an undisclosed percentage of all sales from Target's retail sites, as well as annual fixed fees", Amazon's merchandise also available at the Target site, so another channel opened up and the third benefit is that now the world knows Amazon provides E Business services also. I love Amazon.

Are you ready for the Magic of Web Services?

Are you and your organization ready for web services ? Ready or not, here come Web Services, screams the title of this article on ZDNet. As suggested by this article, we think that its time the organizations who want to to be leaders in their streams start working towards developing Web Services and then deploying these. Yeah, we know the security is a big concern, but we can always start with giving just the read access to the users and then when the security standards are ripe, just plug these in. Till that time, SSL and certificates should suffice. What do you think, Let us know at webjives@webjives.com. We will expand upon this topic of Web Services readiness in a following article, so keep checking.

Update: On a related note, Read this report at CRMdaily, How To Prioritize Web Services Development.
"Mission-critical apps should be upgraded first. The goal of this step is to create a single front-end interface to enterprise systems for multiple end-users inside the organization. - We are not very sure if we should start with Mission critical apps as this report suggests. It has to be internal applications as reported, maybe intranet based or applications feeding to different business groups within the enterprise but certainly not mission critical apps.

NYT: The Rich Get Rich and Poor Get Poorer. Or Do They?

Virginia Postrel quotes work of Sala-i-Martin, an economist at Columbia in this article on New York Times:

"Over the last three decades, and especially since the 1980's, the world's two largest countries, China and India, have raced ahead economically. So have other Asian countries with relatively large populations.

The result is that 2.5 billion people have seen their standards of living rise toward those of the billion people in the already developed countries — decreasing global poverty and increasing global equality. From the point of view of individuals, economic liberalization has been a huge success."

I am no economist, so can't comment much, but I found one thing disturbing. This article would not have materialised if not for research by Sala-i-Martin and other people and still we don't find links to Sala-I-Martin's website (Wow, What a site he has ?). Also, Check out the following article from Robert Barro in Business Week Online published on 6th May 2002. Doesn't these two articles look similar. And while Robert Barro remained unnoticed, Virginia Postrel got a whole lot of not so deserving appreciation because of huge readership of NYT and also by the fact that her article got talked about in the blog circles and that she herself maintains a blog.

Related Links:
http://www.financialexpress.com/columnists/full_column.php?content_id=9012
http://www.columbia.edu/~xs23/papers/GlobalIncomeInequality.htm

Economist: Swearing by the Numbers

This article by Economist talks of Corporate cleaning in the aftermaths of Enron, WorldCom bankruptcies:

"...there have been a raft of measures to clean-up corporate America. One of the most high-profile of these is a new requirement that chief executives and chief financial officers of America’s biggest companies confirm, with their own signatures, that their financial report “fairly presents” the condition of their companies. Most will have to do this by Wednesday, August 14th. Few are opposed to this measure, but sceptics wonder whether it will have much effect...."

I wonder, how many CEO's, CFO's will actually end up in prison. The same article presents instances where CEO's and CFO's have asked their Juniors to sign off on such a declaration. Now what would you call that. Isn't that fraud ?

Number 600 for Bonds

Barry Bonds hits his 600th home run to join the elite gang of Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays. Cheers !!!

"With a 421-foot, solo shot to center field in the sixth inning, the San Francisco slugger joined Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays -- Bonds' godfather and idol -- in the exclusive club. No player had crossed the threshold since Aaron did it in April 1971."

Tech giants back new Web services

"Microsoft, IBM and BEA Systems plan to announce new specifications Monday that the companies hope will help drive adoption of Web services.

The first specification--called Business Process Execution Language for Web Services--is a programming language for defining how to combine Web services to accomplish a particular task. Web services are emerging methods of writing software that allows businesses to interact via the Internet.

The second, WS-Coordination, describes how individual Web services within that task interact. A software programmer, for example, can stitch together Web services into a sequence of operations to accomplish a particular task. The third specification, called WS-Transaction, is used to ensure that transactions all complete successfully or fail as a group."

Good. But where is the Locomotive of this train. InfoWorld seems to have the answer.

Where will Web Services be deployed?

John Hagel writes in this two part article on his blog :
"Confusion reigns supreme in the Web services world....Technologists unwittingly contribute to this confusion. Let's take two examples. Read the technology press and you hear two themes. First, Web services are about the dynamic composition of applications from many micro-services. Second, Web services will be deployed first within the enterprise and then migrate beyond the firewall."

And then goes on clearing this confusion. I am not sure if I understood the "dynamic composition of applications from micro-services". What are micro services? Is it the components of a huge legacy (need not be mainframe, and generally a mixture of Mainframe and Open systems) application because that's what will drive the push to web services. These components, credit card processing, order tracking etc would be the first to be turned into web services and when you have opened the doors with these small small web services, these will operate not just within an enterprise, inside the firewalls but will reach out to the partners (or anyone else) of the enterprise who want to consume the services offered.
All in all, I really enjoyed reading John's articles and his blog.

Windows XP: What's the Business Verdict?

Newsfactor reports on adoption of Windows XP by home and corporate users:

"Greg Sullivan, Microsoft's lead Windows XP product manager, told NewsFactor that XP's overall adoption rate is higher than for any other Windows product.
"Windows XP continues to be the fastest-selling version of Windows in history, with over 46 million copies sold through OEMs and retail outlets since its launch last October," Sullivan said.
That number includes both home and corporate users; Microsoft has declined to release a breakdown of home version versus professional version sales.
John Meyer, senior industry analyst at Giga Information Group, told NewsFactor: "Our belief is that the majority of that 46 million is people upgrading home PCs. For right now, companies are definitely upgrading, but there's not a huge wave of them...."
"There are leading-edge firms, like financial companies, that tend to be early adopters," he said. "They're the ones that have already upgraded -- the large enterprises."

True, This is the case. Almost all our friends including us have XP now and the financial company we are currently working at is going for XP in a big way.

What's New at WebJives.com

Atlast, We have our own RSS feed. It's at http://www.webjives.com/rss.php. Also, We have a BlogRoll (Look at the Sidebar). These are few blogs we read almost daily. There are many other blogs also which we read frequently, we will add these to our blogroll at a later date. There are few more blog links in our Elsewhere page.

Why SOAP Sucks and Why SOAP Rocks

The best part of this presentation is the conclusion derived by Matt Sergeant. In short, SOAP sucks but SOAP implementations rocks, REST is better only if you can use it (difficult to use with no tools support).

BlogStreet [via Scripting.com]

Check out BlogStreet, a Blog Neighbourhood Analysis tool. You just give it a blog URL and it returns the related blogs based on its blogroll. Cool.

Also, Check out Emergic.org, blog by Rajesh Jain. His is the company behind BlogStreet and also he is the one behind IndiaWorld (with websites as khel.com, khoj.com, samachar.com and bawarchi.com) which was acquired by Sify for $115 million. How could we miss out his blog? It's our kind of blog..:)

Deceptive Marketing [Via Sathish - Random Thoughts]

Sony Ericsson is embarking on a new $5 million campaign which will use actors to market their new mobile phone, T68i which can double up as a digital camera. "In one initiative, dubbed Fake Tourist, 60 trained actors and actresses will haunt tourist attractions such as the Empire State Building in New York and the Space Needle in Seattle. Working in teams of two or three and behaving as if they were actual tourists, the actors and actresses will ask unsuspecting passersby to take their pictures."

Yes, Its unethical and very deceptive and I certainly don't approve of such kind of marketing. But is it going to benefit Sony-Ericsson. In my opinion it's going to hurt Sony-Ericsson themselves. How? Let's see. Today we all resist marketing which is thrust upon us. These companies must realize that to successfully market their products, they need to create an environment where consumers will market to each other (mostly through word of mouth, through internet, telephones etc). As Seth Godin writes in his book, Unleashing the Ideavirus, All of us are sneezers to some degree, maybe not powerful sneezers but to some degree promiscous sneezers. So when we sneeze good about a product we liked, it will be the best marketing the product can have. But if consumers come to know of something so unethical and deceptive as this campaign, they will still sneeze but this time sneeze will contain bad words about the product and the company.

Now that I know, If I happen to be at any of these places and someone comes to me and asks me to take their snap, I am going to think twice and chances are if they forward me their T68i, I may not even look at them.

Indian Blog Portal

Vikas is talking of building a Blog Portal for Indian Blogs and has even gone and published a table design as a starter. Here are our few suggestions, though. The table can have another field which will store the number of hits for blogs. Also, Most of the blogs have a small description for them, so we can include this information also. As for the location of this directory, we can register a new domain name and the site can be hosted anywhere (?? Kamat.org's web server, if Vikas has some bandwidth). To start with Vikas can be the editor and then later few more people can be inducted as editors for the Portal. Indeed this is an ambitious idea, but achievable. Our 2 cents.

XooMLe

How could I miss XooMLe? Beau Lebens left a comment on our website directing us towards XooMLe. Thanks Beau. XooMLe is an implementation of Google API using REST-Approach. And if you don't know what REST is, check out this great new article by Roger Costello. We had also blogged about few REST articles in the past, so you can even search the archives for that.

Is .NET dead yet?

In an article on E-Commerce Times, the writer asks, Is .Net dead yet? I must warn you, It's a very confusing article. After asking the question, She goes and talks about how the transition from "legacy" applications to .Net applications will take place and that the biggest challenge for MS will be keeping the development tools easy to use. So, What information did she convey? Well, I have no clue, You decide. Also, Why is everyone so keen to declare Microsoft's .Net initiative as dead so early. How old is .Net, not even 2 years and already we are seeing such articles. Some days back Sam Gentile and others had rebutted one such article. Well guys, .Net has just started and is maturing real fast, no matter what these short-sighted guys write, .Net is here to stay.

Hot, Steaming Hot

Well, Looks like you guys voted our blog as hot blog. Thanks!!

Update: I just came across few blogs with 9.5+ rating, So mebbe we are not that hot. I guess the title of the post should be, Hot, Steaming Hot, not Boiling hot.

.Net comes to Apache

Now you will have options selecting the Web server to run your ASP.Net applications on. Covalent Technologies today released the Covalent Enterprise Ready Server which will support Microsoft ASP.NET Web services development platform.

"With Covalent's Enterprise Ready Server, a server package that includes Apache, developers will also be able to use Microsoft development tools, which are fairly popular, to build their Apache applications. Microsoft's Visual Studio.Net includes Visual Basic.Net, Visual C++.Net and C-Sharp, a new C-like language from Microsoft that Java programmers say looks awfully familiar. All of these tools can be used to build Apache applications now.

Userland Software's deal with Salon

Salon.com in partnership with Dave Winer's UserLand Software will allow user's to publish their own weblogs through Salon. These blogs will be powered by Radio Userland tool. The service along with the software will cost the users $39.95 a year (30 day free trial period). Read this Press Release for more details. Now, you head over to Recently Changed Weblogs page on Salon, You will see a high-water mark at the bottom of the page which stood at "70 weblogs, on 7/24/2002; 5:44:06 PM". This high water mark looks like the total number of weblogs created under this partnership. In just 2 days they've reached this figure and I know this will have an exponential increase(atleast for the next few days/weeks). I understand most of these started under 30 day trial period, but even if half of these guys actually bought the service, that translates into handsome $$ figure for both Userland Software and Salon. So, What's the moral of the story(read partnership). No it's not dollars for Dave Winer (actually it is). As for me, this shows the power the medium of Blogging brings to these people, And who does not like power and power at $40 is no big deal. Just my 2 cents !!

Code Secure

This article from MSDN explains cross site scripting with very good and simple examples. We all have heard of cross site scripting in the last couple of years and most of the times it was in context of some vulnerability with IE (different versions). Threats from Cross Site Scripting (or XSS) includes account hijacking, changing of user settings, cookie theft/poisoning etc. If you don't take care, this could be easiest forms of hacking. Here's the URL once again:
When Output Turns Bad: Cross Site Scripting Explained

HOT or NOT[via Scripting News]

Well, So many interesting things keep happening in the blog world. Here's one we stumbled upon today. So you guys decide, Is our Blog HOT or NOT?

Dive Into Accessibility

I knew it was coming what with all the success this series had. Mark Pilgrim has released his wildly popular series "30 days to a more accessible weblog" as a book, only this time the word weblog has been replaced by the word website. I would recommend this to any serious blogger, website designers, user experience designers, programmers, my managers, friends, foes and everyone I meet in the next few days.

REST + SOAP [via Sam Gentile's Radio Weblog]

Sam Ruby has a new article on REST + SOAP. A must read for anyone trying to comprehend SOAP from REST architectural style .

Cool Dude, We've got a SONY VAIO

Atlast, It arrived. Our Sony VAIO (GRX500 series) Notebook. With a screen of 15" (XGA), it's not a compact and lightweight eyecandy, but it's what we wanted (in fact Deepak wanted to go for the one with 16.1" screen, No way). It is powerful with 1.6 MHz Pentium 4-M processor and then we got it customized with 512 MB RAM, DVD/CD-RW drive and a 30 GB hard drive. With Windows XP Professional operating system, shall we say We've arrived at the .Net scene. There will be no excuse for not learning .Net and trying out few things now (At work, .Net is atleast 6 months away). And this beauty in purple and black didn't come alone, it came with an Epson Color printer (free after rebate) and a free DVD(Black Hawk Down)

Amazon Web Services Implementations @ Speed of Light

In just two days (not even two exactly) after Amazon.com launched web services, we are already seeing some very cool implementations of Amazon API. Here are some we really liked:

Amazon Light
Amazon Similarity Maps
Mockerybird: Amazon API various implementations list

If time permits, we will also try to provide our own implementation in a day or two. Check out blog.hebig.org, for some more Amazon API examples .

High-technology companies spend less on technology

This article points to a recent Forrester Research report that shows high-technology firms spend less on technology than other companies. One of the reason it cites for this behaviour is that in most of the tech companies, the CIO's reports to a CFO and "With finance more likely in charge, these firms demonstrate less executive commitment to technology than the average company does--ironic, considering the industry is technology". Also, most of the big IT firms eliminate the spening by utilizing in house developed products and applications. The article lists many other reasons to support the finding's of this report. Read it all here.

Amazon.com Launches Web Services

Amazon, today launched web services targeting website owners and developers. Developers will now be able to create applications which will allow them to search and display products from Amazon's catalog. Also, another newly exposed web service will allow them to add Amazon.com products to shopping carts, wish lists, and registries from third party locations. The whole thing is free. You just need to download the development kit which has quite some examples and then you will need to register yourself with them to get the developer's token just like the key used with Google API. It wouldn't have hurt if the toolkit had few .Net and Visual Basic/ASP samples.

Magnificent Victory

Congratulations to all the fans of Indian Cricket for the most amazing win in recent years. Finally we are out of the jinx.

What's that site playing?

Now here's a cool tool which will allow you to maintain your streaming playlist. "BlogAmp is a free Winamp plugin that allows the user to keep in his personal web page a list with the last songs played in his Winamp. This list is updated by FTP in real time." Keep an eye for our playlist, coming soon.

Microsoft's Palladium: What the heck is it?

Good FAQ on Palladium, a new security initiative by Microsoft. "Palladium is not a separate operating system. Rather, it consists of enhancements to the Windows kernel and to hardware, including the CPU, peripherals, and chipsets. Together, these enhancements will support a trustworthy execution subsystem within the PC--think of it as a very secure little computer inside your larger, insecure one."

Few good articles at Builder.com

How to thrive as a developer among nondevelopers - "Being a developer among nondevelopers is a challenging situation. You have the opportunity to make significant contributions to the organization thanks to your skills. Properly handled, a career as a lone wolf can be highly rewarding."

Eight reasons why extreme programming won't work in your shop - "XP can work in a development shop if both the development team and the business organization are realistic about what XP can deliver."

XML Web Services Developer Center

Today has been a day of some cool discoveries. Check out the XML Web Services Developer Center at MSDN. A cool feature of this website is links to few blogs under community section. Although this list can be more exhaustive, but it's a nice start. All the action seems to be taking place at Weblogs. While at the website check out the new article by Don Box on Understanding GXA.

World’s largest circulated English broadsheet daily: The Times of India

The Times of India has now become the world’s largest circulated English broadsheet daily. It replaced USA Today to take the first place. The Times is the best newspaper published in India. One of the first things we do in the morning is read the The Times of India online. Cheers !!!

.Net Architecture Center

Another good website by Microsoft on Enterprise Architecture. According to them, "An enterprise architecture (EA) is a conceptual tool that assists organizations with the understanding of their own structure and the way they work. It provides a map of the enterprise and is a route planner for business and technology change." Since we are currently working on Enterprise Architecture Integration (EAI) applications we will be looking out for EAI technology patterns.

Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 1.2 Working Drafts Published

The Web Services Description Working Group has released the first public Working Draft of the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 1.2 and Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 1.2: Bindings. WSDL 1.2 is an XML-based language that describes a Web Service - the data exchanged, the protocol to use, and its location on the Web. WSDL 1.2 Bindings describes how to use WSDL 1.2 with Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) 1.2, HTTP, and MIME.


NOTE: Read more about WSDL and how it is used to define web services in our article, Defining Web Services using WSDL

Jakob Nielsen - User Empowerment and the Fun Factor

Designs that engage and empower users increase their enjoyment and encourage them to explore websites in-depth. Once we achieve ease of use, we'll need additional usability methods to further strengthen joy of use.

Web Page Reconstruction with CSS

Christopher Schmitt writes about reconstructing pages using CSS layout to get rid of HTML elements(most notably, tables) that's used for presentational purposes. Using Digital-Web Magazine's table based layout, he builds his own CSS driven site. Note the resullts of this exercise, a much smaller HTML page in size, no use of spacer images, and a much smaller use of images. Howzzat !!

Guardian Unlimited Lists us

Guardian Unlimited has placed us under Tech Blogs they like. Wooohoooo...

Sathish links us at his blog, Random Thoughts. Thanks Sathish and btw, We had learnt about Guardian from your blog. Also, if you wanna read blogs by Indian bloggers, head over to Indian Bloggers List maintained by Anita Bora. Apparently, Anita has not listed her blog in the list.

Clay Shirky: Half the World

But saying "Half the world has never made a phone call" makes no more sense than saying "My car goes from 0 to 60" or "It rained 15 inches." Without including the element of time, you cannot talk about rate, and it is rate that matters in dynamic systems. - One of the most finest articles I have ever read. Clay Shirky writes about economic dynamism and differentiates between statists and dynamists and by some wonderful research concludes that Economic dynamism is a far better tool for improving telephone use than any amount of erroneous and incomplete assertions on behalf of half the world's population, because while The Phrase has remained static for the last decade or so, the world hasn't. While at his website do read other great articles on topics such as Economics and Culture, Open source, Globalization and Media and Community.

Business Plan Archive

Let us all learn from our mistakes. The University of Maryland?s Robert H. Smith School of Business with help from Webmergers.com have launched the Business Plan Archive website. This website is currently in the process of collecting documents from dotcom startups and it will soon make these available online so that future entrepreneurs and researchers can learn from the past successes and failures. So if you were ever associated with dotcom boom, head over to this site and help build this unique archive.

I almost missed this interesting news story about software bugs. Software bugs cause US economy about $59.5 billion a year. Another revelation from this article is that better testing could expose the bugs and remove bugs at the early development stage could reduce about $22.2 billion of the cost. Now that's some news. A must show to all the managers who want to reduce the development time at the cost of testing.

Community Computing

This month's Software Development Magazine's newsletter (DevTalk) talks about Simputer. For those who don't know what it is, Simputer(Simple, Inexpensive, Mobile Computer) is a handheld device which has been designed by students and professors from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) at Bangalore, and engineers from the Bangalore-based design company Encore Software Ltd. The Simputer runs on Linux and packs 32 MG of RAM and 16 MG of Flash memory. At about $200, Simputer is costly for most indians, rural or otherwise. But with its smart-card reader, Simputer extends access from the community to the individual: For the cost of a card (a proposed $1-2) and a nominal rental fee, each villager can buy a smart card that stores all his or her information, and allows Internet and e-mail access. I could not find a online link to the story but keep watching this space for it to appear.

Get out more - Travel the world, virtually. This news article provides few very good links to virtual libraries, tours, documentaries etc.

Microsoft, IBM offer WS-Security spec to OASIS - "Microsoft, IBM, and VeriSign have submitted WS-Security, a group of Web services security specs first announced last April, to the OASIS standards group. The growing list of all-star players that have already agreed to serve on the OASIS technical committee includes BEA, Cisco, Intel, Iona, Novell, RSA, SAP, and--drum roll, please--Sun Microsystems." - One thing I also noticed about this submission was that it was offered to OASIS and not W3C.

On a related note, Learn about the various existing and upcoming XML security standards.

The New Don Box Home Page [via Sam Gentile's Radio Weblog]

Well, We are placed sixth on google when you search for Elephant's Toes. Cool. This might change though with people still blogging about it. I guess another rule to The Google Challenge should be that, you are allowed to blog only once on the keyword and that's it, no more blogs using that keyword atleast for that week. There are some very amusing posts, though. Read it all by searching Google for elephant's toes.

The Glass Engine [via John Patrick's Weblog] - One of the most amazing use of technology I have seen recently. It allows you to navigate through Philip Glass's works based on few parameters like sorrow, joy, intensity, density etc. The Glass Engine is an IBM research project to enable deep navigation of more than 60 of the composer's works.

WildLife fact of the day - Elephant's Toes

According to Hindu mythology, the world is supported on eight pairs of elephants, called lokpalas. These "lokpalas" are said to have been created by the Hindu God, Brahma, out of the cosmic egg at the beginning of creation. Guarding and holding up the Earth as they are, elephants are now believed to be guardians. Well that was mythology, now for the fact. The elephants are large in size and guess what helps to balance it's own load, It's their toes. Behind elephant's toes is a large pad, called tippy toes which cushion their steps. An Asian elephant has five toes on the front of the feet and and four on the back. This distinguishes it among other things from African elephant, which has only four toes on the front feet and three on the back.

Mark Pilgrim is running a series of stories titled "30 days to a more accessible weblog". Here he tries to answer few questions on how to make your site (although he mentions weblogs, but I feel that these stories applies to any website) more accessible to people with disabilities. Till now he has presented five stories with five different protagonists, We've had Marcus and Jackie who are blind, Bill who is not able to use Mouse and relies on Keyboard for navigating between links, Michael who is colorblind (he can only see shades of grey) and Lillian, an immigrant who does not have administrative access to her machine and does not understand why CNN.com web site cannot be made larger.

Look Ma, Not even a single table.

We've removed the last table that was holding the Site Logo. Now we've a pure tableless layout throughout the site. There have been a lot of discussion about using tables vs CSS based tableless layouts. Here are few links that will clear some confusion:

Tables or CSS: Choosing a layout by Craig Saila.
Why avoiding tables (for layout) is important by Dave Polaschek

For us the reason to make this transition was to make this site more accessible, more usable.
Also, the site now validates as HTML 4.0 Transitional and CSS. Another step closer to more accessible design.

We are taking part in The Google Challenge. It's a cool idea and rather simple. "Each week the staff will decide on a "keyword" for the week, this will happen on every Thursday. The keyword will be posted on the frontpage of this site. Then all particpants of the challenge will get an email* notifing them of the keyword and other general site update information. Then the blogger will write an entry in their blog having to do with that subject. Then a week later the staff will search Google for "keywords" with the mature filer ON. We will go through Google until we find the top 5 bloggers. They will be listed on the frontpage. We do not have any funding so no cash prizes will be awarded. This is all in fun."

Somehow this went out of my radar. Digital Web published an interview with Eric Meyer (CSS Guru), some days back. In the interview Eric answers questions on CSS Standards,CSS Positioning, Netscape and other very relevant topics. While I am here, Eric has a CSS Experiments section on his website. Here you can view some really cool CSS stuff with the latest being, pure CSS menus demo which he uploaded this morning.

What Do You Want to Patch Today? - More bugs in IE, SQL Server, More possibilities for hackers, More patches for you and me to download and install. The cycle never ends.

Sweet Sweep...Lakers Threepeat

Once again, Lakers are the Champions.

Web Services to aid DOS attacks

Atlast I know what REST stands for. Now to the next part, why so much excitement and confusion over it.

Check out Paul Prescod's (the man in the midst of most of the conversations centering on REST) home page for more details on REST.

This is the social network killer app. [David Watson]

Defining Web Services using WSDL

Yeah, that's the title of our first article. The article provides the anatomy of a WSDL document and closely examines the components of WSDL with the help of a sample web service written using SOAP Toolkit 2.0 and Visual Basic 6. Go, Check it out and let us know what you think of it.

W3C weighs in on Web services.

Gartner believes that Web services will drive most of the innovation and new thinking in application development and deployment through 2007. Gartner is taking a very closer look at Web Services. Check out the latest spotlight on Web Services.

Microsoft today announced TrustBridge, a new technology that will allow different organizations using the Windows operating system to exchange user identities and interoperate in heterogeneous environments using industry-standard XML Web services protocols including Kerberos, WS-Security and forthcoming protocols in the WS-Security family. Well, This was coming for some time after the industry wide push to secure Web Services gained momentum.

Update: Find out more about the Windows "TrustBridge" technology and how Microsoft will support federation via WS-Security in a variety of products.

Mozilla 1.0 released. Finally !!

"CSS is the promising young recruit who hasn't realized his full potential.".- We agree. A nice article which demystifies CSS and sorts out realities and also gives futuristic view for each CSS promise discussed.

Read The F***ing Story, Then RTFM - Cultural differences and perspectives when reading the Manuals. Guess, You can make use of this article if you are internationalizing your application and are targeting different cultures around the world.

RSS For Non-Techie Librarians - Well, We are not Librarians and we consider ourselves techie, but still this article is cool and introduces you to RSS(Rich Site Summary) and the tools and resources available to enjoy RSS feeds. We have been wanting to provide RSS feed of WebJives.com for some time now. Looks like another future project !!

And Yes, We like and use NewzCrawler too.

The design of some of the leading online stores is mediocre at best, but it is improving, according to a new study by Web site usability expert Jakob Nielsen.

This morning I examined the website logs and found out that the site is getting quite some hits from Brainstorms and Raves website. Well, we found out, Shirley Kaiser, website owner and author of brainstormsandraves.com has mentioned our website in her blog (Friday Feast # 11). Thanks Shirley for the kind words.

XML Namespaces and How They Affect XPath and XSLT

Good article demystifying Namespaces and use of Namespaces in DOM, XPath and XSLT.

Lakers still rule the West

Mike Bibby and the Kings were almost there but in the end the pressure was too much for Kings to handle. Lakers are in NBA Finals (third time in a row). It was a great game, evenly contested which kept us to the edge of our seats all the time in the fourth quarter and then in the overtime.

Mike Bibby gave another great performance and established himself as a star along with Kobe, Shaq, Jason Kidd et al.

The companion web site of Eric Meyer on CSS is up and running. From what I have heard and read, this book will be very different then the present books on CSS and will contain projects with lots of examples.

While I am here, Eric Costello et al are also out with their new book, Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation. Check it out.

Training Tools is offering free web based course to Photoshop 6. There are other free courses too.

Web services are for business intelligence, too. The second part of this article talks about the SOAPification of business intelligence(BI).

Check out the smallest website in the world, Guimp, and while there don't forget to play the amazing games they offer. I wonder, what the usability gurus must be thinking after looking at such a site. Jakob, Norman ?? :)

Well, I am blogging after a long period of time. In between we were off to a very refreshing weekend at Smoky Mountains, Gatlinburg and Cherokee. Whitewater rafting was fun.

Check the June 2002 issue of Business 2.0 magazine. The feature article is on How to beat Bill Gates and Microsoft. Makes me wonder how many journalists make their living off Microsoft. If this article catches on, the next thing we know is that the same journalists are featured on some tv/radio show where they again bash microsoft and in the process generate some cool pocket money, not to mention the fame and the name they will get by featuring in such shows.

Google: Glossary, Sets, Voice Search, Keyboard Shortcuts. [Scripting News]

Once again Google Rocks. Apart from Keyboard Shortcuts, I don't know if I will use others but then again Google provides the option and that is where it is different from other search engines.

Dilbert and the Google Doodle

Throughout this week, Google will be featuring sketches of Dilbert. Finally on Friday they will be coming out with their new logo although the current Google logo will remain unchanged.

Spider-Man Rocks!!

Atlast we saw Spider-Man. Cool visual effects and some great words of wisdom:

"With great power comes great responsibility."

Some cool .Net Resources

Are you building web services using VB.Net. Well then you must read this online book, Real World Web Services for VB Developers by Yasser Shohoud. Yasser has also written quite some cool articles on web services fundamentals.

Well, now that I am pointing to .Net resources, here are some more:

DotNetExtreme

.NET Remoting

DotNetBips

and last but not the least Sam Gentile's website. Sam also maintains a radio weblog where he blogs about everything related to .Net. Here you can find links to other gurus in the .Net space. Enjoy !!

Congratulations

Our Heartiest Congrats to Pawan and Amita on becoming proud parents of a baby girl. Welcome Shruti !!

Titanic Failures

Discussion on HP/Compaq merger and why this merger has very little chance of success.

Going Offshore

Global Services Jobs Migrate to India Via Internet. We will be seeing more articles/news item similar to this one since the telecom deregulation has happened in India. For effective coordination of offshore projects, communication was one hindrance(not that till now companies could not communicate, only that it will be cheaper now). This takes care of this issue. Now once VoIP services are in place and functioning, more and more companies will try to reap benefits of offshore development/support/maintenance. Way to go.

Watch out this space for an article on Offshore Development and its challenges.

Kobe Bryant = Magician

Wanna contribute to the next NASA Space shuttle project, run to ebay/yahoo with any 8086 chips you might have in your possession...:)

Say no to “printer-friendly” versions and yes to printer-specific style sheets. Eric Meyer, CSS expert, has come up with an article on designing print style sheets using CSS. Time to make WebJives use print specific styles.

Joel is out with few observations on software development process, Five Worlds. This time again, he has stirred quite some discussion (in the .Net world).

Another Google API Implementation

David Watson is out with another Google API implementation. This time using VBA. Works great although it opens a maximum of 10 browser windows (depending upon search results). Thanks again David for mentioning us in your post.