DataPortability 2010

As many of you know, I am a big-time proponent of Data Portability. That simple concept that enables the free-flow of information in intuitive, secure, and informed ways has been a pet project of mine for some time. In fact, many of the products I have developed over the years, including Zude, Scrapplet, FGL, and xWinLib just to name a few, posses significant components of (and hopefully important contributions to) data portability.



I have been fortunate to be associated with the Data Portability Project (http://www.dataportability.org), the International non-profit spearheading the charge of Data Portability. My involvement has grown from “just a member” to a corporate officer and member of the Board of Directors. I am humbled by the caliber of folks that I get to work with in this group and others that share a mutual passion and vision for data portability. Today, the Data Portability organization counts among its members and participants many of the thought-leaders in the technology world and related organizations including: Facebook, MySpace, Google, Plaxo, Microsoft, Adobe, and more.

It is with this in mind that I am honored to have been elected as 2010 Vice-Chairman of the DataPortability organization and again member of the board. This is especially meaningful knowing all of the good things ahead for data portability and the consumers and producers of information. I look forward to the year ahead and am excited at the prospect of positive change that data portability will bring to us all!

--Steve Repetti
www.radwebtech.com

OpenAjax Hub 2.0 Released, xWinLib and Scrapplet provide advanced integration

Today, the OpenAjax Alliance (www.openajax.org) formally announced the new version 2.0 of the OpenAjax Hub. Their press release even included a quote by me:

"The new OpenAjax Hub 2.0 provides a comprehensive enterprise-grade solution for secure widget interoperability," said Steve Repetti, CEO/CTO, RadWeb Technologies. "OpenAjax Hub 2.0 is the glue that binds distributed objects and applications together in a trusted environment."

For those of you not familiar with the OpenAjax Hub, it is a powerful collection of technologies that enables secure interaction and communications between widgets, applications, and mashups. It's a great way for web objects to co-exist in this increasingly dynamic and real-time web. Both xWinLib and Scrapplet have OpenAjax Hub integration.


xWinLib (www.xwinlib.com), the cross browser windowing and web application library, includes enhanced support of the OpenAjax Hub by adding direct integration with all xWinLib-created browser windows and objects. This lets web elements automatically discover each other and communicate using the Hub. For example, RSS feeds can automatically update reader panes, even though neither has direct knowledge of the other; likewise text links can automatically render map and database information in separate widgets, panels, and web pages with their only association being interaction via the Hub.


An added level of advanced support is also provided. xWinLib uses the standard OpenAjax Hub communications engine as a delivery mechanism for extended messaging within the windowing environment. This includes the automatic delivery of enhanced messaging information thereby making real-time distributed communications even easier.


Scrapplet, the social aggregation website (www.scrapplet.com), includes OpenAjax Hub support and goes a significant level further by adding a powerful yet simple interface to the standard and extended implementation. Web objects can easily “publish” and “subscribe” to each other and automatically share events and other information over the integrated Hub. Check-box simplicity is combined with automated code generation and a host of other tools, pre-defined objects, and other resources.

For more details and to play in the OpenAjax Playground on Scrapplet:

- Main OpenAjax page
- OpenAjax Playground
- Documented Examples

Here’s the press release that just came out:

- OpenAjax Alliance Delivers Software for More Secure Enterprise Mashups


--Steve Repetti

Scrapplet’s Variation on the Square World

HTML is square; everything fits in tight little boxes that butt up against each other. Now, Scrapplet introduces the ability to add images to your pages and then rotate them 360 degrees in any direction. Add as many images as you want and rotate them to your hearts content!



Simply drag or use the wizard to add an image to your page, then access PROPERTIES -> ROTATION and specify the number of degrees to rotate the image!

Kwicks Concept Extended and Enhanced in xWinLib, Support for Floating Menus Added

I really like the Kwicks menuing system that is available for MooTools and JQuery, but I wanted even more flexibility and the ability to integrate it into the xWinLib windowing library. So, an exercise in 176 lines of code got me the following:

• Support for horizontal and vertical menus
  
• Sliding menus can be absolutely or relatively positioned
  
• Support for floating sliding menus
  
• Multiple menus can co-exist within a single page
  
• Menu "tabs" can be different sizes
  
• Auto-scale within specific width or height
  
• Customizable animation settings
  
• Auto-open to any tab
  
• Tabs open by rollovers or clicks
  
• Override custom class and style attributes
  
• Works with Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera, Chrome
  
• Requires Javascript
  
• Less than 1.5k gzip payload
  

Here’s the link to the demo page with full source code provided: http://www.xwinlib.com/demos/slidingmenu

Microsoft's BING Receives Enhanced Drag and Drop Support from Scrapplet and xWinLib

BING from Microsoft is the latest product to challenge Google’s control of the search market. Initial reviews were mixed but it does introduce a number of interesting features and it seems to be gaining some traction (not the least of which as the result of its automated integration with existing Microsoft searches!).

In any case, Scrapplet/xWinLib has added enhanced drag and drop support for images found using the BING search engine. Just search for an image and then drag it onto a Scrapplet or xWinLib-enabled page!

Google Web Elements Come to Scrapplet

Last week, Google announced the release of a new collection of gadgets, Web Elements. Quoting from the official Google website: "Google Web Elements allow you to easily add your favorite Google products onto your own website."

These include: calendar, conversation, custom search, maps, news, presentations, spreadhsheets, and YouTube News.

With this release I couldn't resist implementing them in a "friendlier" format within Scrapplet. It took me all of a couple of hours to create drag and droppable objects with customization wizards. Here's an example:



And now anyone can embed them with drag and drop ease via Scrapplet and the underlying xWinLib technology. Access your Scrapplet account and go to OBJECTS -> OBJECT REPOSITORY -> WIDGETS to try them out for yourself!

Scrapplet and xWinLib Announce Support for Apple’s New Safari Release

Apple computer today released a beta of their terrific browser, Safari, for both Windows and the Mac. Jason Biggs over at TechCrunch talks about it in his article “Safari 4: finally a reason to come back” and references the significant feature list and press release from Apple.


In my opinion, this is a really big deal and hopefully a sign of things to come. This is more than an incremental release and brings to Windows users a powerful and sexy alternative to IE, Firefox, and the other browsers. My initial reaction to the new Safari is: WOW! And. I say this for a couple of reasons: first, it really is sexy and follows the Apple mantra of easy to use. But, more importantly to me and the users of Scrapplet and xWinLib technologies, it works great and is fast!

As many of you know Scrapplet and xWinLib are extremely advanced browser-based applications/technologies that seek to normalize the complexities of the different browsers available today across a variety of platforms. As such, I am always interested in new developments in browser products and technologies and in particular I want to know if compatibility is seamlessly tied to innovation. I am delighted to say that the engineers at Apple have done a terrific job in both areas as Safari 4 works flawlessly with both Scrapplet and xWinlib-based applications. It installed easily, fired up, and in seconds I was dragging and dropping content, mashing up everything from all over the web.

Now, if Apple could just implement a world-class plugin infrastructure and object repository…

Scrapplet integrates Facebook's new Comment Widget

Scrapplet releases support for Facebook’s new comments object. Just select it from the Scrapplet object gallery (objects -> object gallery -> Comment- Facebook) and click or drag it onto your page. Seamlessly integrate with Facebook’s messaging system via Scrapplet integration with Facebook connect.



Now that Facebook’s comment widget is an integrated object within Scrapplet, it automatically inherits all of Scrapplet’s object properties, including appearance options, extended event handling, and even OpenAjax hub interaction.

xWinLib and Scrapplet announce enhanced drag and drop for Safari users

RadWebTech today released advanced drag and drop functionality for Safari users on the xWinLib and Scrapplet platforms -- no plug-ins required. Safari users now join IE, Firefox, and Mozilla users with the easiest and most powerful drag and drop capabilties on the web. Drag images, text, widgets, gadgets, music, video, websites, and more.

New Drag and Drop Plug-in Released for Firefox

Today, RadWebTech released the xWinLib_dnd browser plug-in for Windows and Mac-based Firefox (and Mozilla-compatible) browsers. It works in conjunction with the company’s xWinLib JavaScript library.

Once installed, the plug-in provides advanced drag and drop functionality for supporting web pages, including cross-domain drag and drop. Additionally, it adds a small icon to the bottom status bar of the browser with single-click access to a popup menu with a number of features.

The first site to fully support the enhanced functionality is Scrapplet (www.scrapplet.com). The enhanced functionality makes it easy to mashup pages and web content with drag and drop ease.

The plug-in also includes a feature where users can recommend advanced drag and drop adoption by sites that have not currently implemented the ease of use provided by the enhancement.

Webmasters may contact the company directly (bizdev@scrapplet.com) for information about adding the RadWebTech drag and drop functionality to their own sites.

To get the plug-in, goto http://www.scrapplet.com using Firefox. The site’s home page will detect if the plug-in has not been installed and provide an installation link to install it.

Report from the trenches: MashupCamp, fall 2008: DAY ONE

Just back from MashupCamp in Mountain View CA where I was surrounded by three days of geek nirvana.

MashupCamp is an “un-conference” that this year introduced elements of measured structure into a program that continues to grow and mature into the coolest event surrounding the mashup phenomenon.

Sponsored by media giant TechWeb, and led by the uber-media guru David Berlind, this year’s event was by far the biggest and best so far (and that’s saying a lot considering the success of the prior conferences!). There were a number of subtle tweaks to the program that cumulatively added to the experience.

The three day geek-fest started with the traditional opening by Dave followed by an introduction to the sponsors and service providers via the much vaunted speed-geeking sessions.

As Dave describes it, speed-geeking is the technology equivalent of speed dating: in this case, thirteen high-top tables featuring a like number of presentations with audience participants assigned to one of the tables to start. After an initial blast of the horn (more like a woo-woo sound), presenters have eight minutes to blow the socks off the crowd gathered around their area. Another woo-woo later, and, like musical chairs, the crowd rotates to the next station until all stations have been visited.

Speed-geeking is an assault on the senses brought forth by presenters and cherished by participants. It is a terrific high-speed fast-talking screen-flickering introduction to (mostly) killer products and technologies. Like falling down the techno-rabbit hole with a bungee cord attached – and an 8-minute return trajectory.

Some of the highlights of the solutions provider speed-geeking included:

Calais, http://www.opencalais.com
In a world of interconnections, Open Calais provides a cool way to generate relations, links, and other meta-tag information automatically from text, feeds, and other web content. This is a very ambitious undertaking and works wonderfully, though my observation is larger conversions are better handled as pre-processed components rather than real-time conversions (due to the time required to execute the conversion). Nevertheless, VERY COOL.

Mozenda, http://www.mozenda.com
These guys provide back-end functionality accessible via web services that allow users to “easily extract, repurpose, and publish web data.” A number of entrants in the mashup contest (held on day three of Mashup camp) used Mozenda for back-end interaction. Again, VERY COOL.

WetPaint, http://www.wetpaintinjected.com
Adding embedded wikis with off-site storage is trivially easy with WetPaint Injected. Many of the mashup contestants used this functionality in their contest entries, and it made traditionally static content dynamic and interactive.

Zembly, http://www.zembly.com
Helping you create apps that work in Facebook, Meebo, OpenSocial and more is these guys’ forte. They even provide application hosting options.

There were lots of other cool products and technologies demonstrated by the sponsors and solutions providers, including: IBM, AOL Developer Network, Elfenworks Foundation (they weren’t really a provider, but as a sponsor they represented a great cause and inspired a bunch of awesome mashup contest entries), Google, JackBe, OpenAjax, RadWebTech (editor disclosure: this is my company and publisher/creator of DistroMash, Scrapplet, xWinLib, and more), The Web Service, and even Yahoo.

One of the coolest things I saw at MashupCamp was from IBM, yup the big blue one! IBM is part of the OpenAjax alliance and co-hosted the first-day cocktail party. There they demonstrated an awesome variation on using the web collaboratively with independent synchronization across multiple browsers including hi-res video, audio, and event sharing (keyboard, mouse, and programmatic integration). This goes way beyond screen or whiteboard sharing and truly makes the web collaborative.

Since RadWebTech was also one of the co-sponsors of the MashupCamp event, I too was a speed-geeking presenter showing off our latest products and technology, including DistroMash, xWinLib, and Scrapplet. It was a GREAT conference for us (more on that later), and I can say with some authority that the best thing for a strained voice (inflicted from and hour and a half of frantic speed-geeking) is Sam Adams!

[This is part one of a three part series. Stay tuned for more]

MashupCamp 2008

Yesterday, we introduced DistroMash to the mashup community here in Mountain View, CA at the MashupCamp 2008 conference put on by David Berlind & company. It's a great feeling to get the kind of positive response that we did from developers and other industry insiders.

DistroMash uses RadWebTech's browser-based windowing and container technology (xWinLib and WebCapsulate) and combines them using Scrapplet as the presentation layer and administration console.

After 5 speed-geeking sessions, multiple chalk talks, and conversations with hundreds of techies, my voice has almost recovered -- just in time for a presentation today about DataPortability and more cool RadWebTech technology!

Kudos to Dave, Greg, Angela, and Elizabeth (along with parent company TechWeb) for a job well done...and, two more days still to go! Stay tuned!!!

See all the goings on at the MashupCamp website.

(The only thing missing from all of this is my wife, who was unable to attend this time [bummer, miss you!])

Embedded Cool

The following demonstrates "LIVE CONTENT" inside a blog. It is based on the xWinLib technology as implemented by the Scrapplet platform and the concept was originally suggested by Dave Berlind over at CMP. To see this in operation, drag the image and text box around, resize any of the objects, and drop a url into the live content area (currently, the drag and drop component is restricted to IE users UPDATE: drag and drop works with all browsers, only FF requires a 3k plugin available at scrapplet.com). LIVE CONTENT is expected to be available as a general release product shortly. Tell us what you think!


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