Schematic

If you’re located on the West Coast of the US and fancy a gig working for Oracle in Redwood Shores, CA they’re currently on the scout for experienced Flex developers to fill a Senior or Principal Technical Staff role in the System Management Product’s Database Diagnostics and Tuning group.

Candidates must be interested in UI development and learning advanced Oracle RDBMS features. They also must be experienced in Java Servlet Programming, DHTML, SQL and PL/SQL. Candidates with experiences in Flex or Actionscript would be considered as exceptional, and would be a big plus to the team.

The group works hands in glove with the key members of the Database Server team for all their projects. The cross-functional working relationship with every RDBMS functional area is a key differentiator, and we cherish our ability to be a part of a bigger organization, and be recognized as such. If you think you are interested in answering questions like - How can I make the biggest improvements in the system? Or why is the system slower today than it was last week? – Visually and accurately; if you like distilling the complex into simple, we would like to hear from you, NOW!!!!

Prior to any consideration for this opportunity, Oracle requires that you complete the following 3-step process:

· Logon to https://irecruitmen t.oracle. com and create a user profile
· Keyword search IRC948333
· Apply for the Software Developer role

As part of Oracle’s standard employment process, candidates will undergo a complete background check prior to an offer being extended. These background checks are conducted by a professional third party firm at no charge to the applicant and include: prior employment verification, education verification, social security trace, criminal background check and motor vehicles records (where required for
position).

Odd sounding name, even stranger sounding definitions (especially when you check out the Wikipedia or German versions). Doof is a nice looking Adobe Flex based (”freemium”) social networking, casual gaming site.

After some initial sign-up problems, I found Doof to offer a range of stock-standard games - ranging from arcade and action, to cards and puzzles etc. With the typical gaming-fare of leagues, tournaments and competitions to keep the more competitive gamer entertained. Certain parts of the site, (i.e. the elite games or specific virtual goods), are locked down and require an ongoing (pay based) subscription.

You’ll also find a lot of the typical social networking site (i.e. Facebook and MySpace) offerings here, such as the ability to create profiles, friend lists, and update your status (as well as customised news feeds).

According to Social Networking Watch, Doof is privately-owned by the London based Money Gaming Corporation Ltd, which is headed up by CEO Liad Shababo. Shababo started his online gaming site career as an affiliate for online gaming companies in 2002, eventually starting up MoneyGaming.com in 2005. MoneyGaming.com allowed people to play games of skill against each other for real money.

Shababo’s plans for Doof include creasing the user base, enhancing the site functionality, predominantly around the interactive community features, whilst at the same time, growing the games, competitive options, player customisation features and integration options with existing social networking sites and platforms.

If you didn’t get a chance to make it across to Adobe MAX in Chicago this year, Adobe Australia are holding a “Refresh” event for the local developer communities. This is your chance to hear first hand the about latest news and announcements made during the keynotes of Adobe’s largest single developer event!

Over the last few posts i’ve looked at UX and SOA, SOC & Web 2.0 as motivators behind the recent adoption/popularity of rich Internet applications.

Another key motivator driving the adoption and development of Rich Internet Applications is Brand. To understand why brand would actually play a part in any RIA development process we need to step back a few years.

Back in October 25, 1994 HotWired (the online sibling of Wired Magazine) was the first web site to sell online advertising space in large quantities to a wide range of major corporate advertisers. They were also the first company to provide click through analytic reports to its customers. This (sales) initiative was the brain child of Rick Boyce, a former media buyer with San Francisco advertising agency Hal Riney & Parnters.

In late 1996 Hewlett Packard partnered with San Francisco-based online agency, Red Sky Interactive, to produce what is now regarded as the worlds first interactive rich media banner ad (dare I say Advergame). The ad was developed by Red Sky programmer Chris Hurwitz (using Macromind Director) and allowed users to play the classic videogame Pong within a banner ad. Looking back, it seems quite poignant that the world’s first rich media ad was based on the world’s first video game, Pong.

So what’s all of this got to do with RIA motivators I hear you asking? Well actually a quite a lot. Ask yourself - which came first - the brand or the application? The answer (in most cases) is the brand. Sure there are a few brands that have evolved from an application (Microsoft for example) but, for the most part, a large proportion of all RIA’s are an extension of an organisation’s existing brand. As such, RIA’s are often referred to in advertising circles as ‘Branded Applications” (or Branded Utilities).

The guys over at Teknision are leaders in the branded application space, and are one of the few digital agencies on the planet who actually get the power of RIAs. A belief that Teknision have (that I whole heartedly share) is that “traditional campaigns focus on entertainment to deliver a message, while branded applications provide a valuable service in order to deliver an emotional connection with a brand.”

Unlike existing Flash based corporate web/micro-sites, branded applications offer organisations the opportunity to excel where other traditional (brand or web based) experiences fall short. Applications like Nike+ harness the power of the web, the idea of a (social network based) community, a smattering of innovative Apple hardware, all wrapped up within an intuitive application to produce an unmatched user experience that is engaging, useful, interactive and most importantly begs to be revisited time and time again.

Amongst all the other benefits that RIAs provide, branded applications add enhanced customer loyalty to the mix. By providing a tangible, longer lasting service to their customer, brands that choose this path dramatically set themselves apart from those that are still intent on interrupting the consumer wherever they are.

The introduction of new technologies like AIR and Silverlight will continue to speed up the proliferation of branded applications (AMP is a classic example of this). As such, companies need to spend some serious time looking at how they communicate, not only their offerings, but also themselves to end users. Old skool (branding) mentality is a thing of the past. Customers (aka clients) are becoming more discerning when evaluating brands (oraganisations and their offerings). They are are demanding longer lasting, more tangible benefits such as those provided by branded applications. Anything falling short will be seen as little more than noise.

I’m just about to hit the hay and thought i’d post some of the (now public) announcements which will no doubt be hitting the blogesphere tomorrow (or today) - depending where you are in the world.

For those interested i’ll be writing more detailed, and complete outlines of the following posts tomorrow (once i’ve woken up).

Adobe Acquires Virtual Ubiquity (Buzzword) - This is HUGE news as Virtual Ubiquity are the creators of ground-breaking online word processor RIA, Buzzword. Built entirely in Adobe Flex, Buzzword can run either in an online mode (via any Flash Player 9 enabled browser), or offline (from the desktop) as a stand-alone AIR application.

Adobe announces Share - Adobe announces new free online document sharing service, codenamed “Share”. Looking very much like an online version of Flash Paper, Share allows users to select, upload, and preview documents they wish to share with friends, colleagues, etc. Recipients are in-turn sent a message to view the document, and set whether the files will be publicly accessible or restricted. Built using Adobe Flex, the rich UI provides a smooth experience, integrating simple workflows to upload and share documents with high quality online previews to speed up finding the right document. Jump in and take Share for a test-drive here on Adobe Labs.

More than just hot AIR - Adobe has announced a swag of major organisations who have embraced the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) and will be demo’ing applications at MAX this week. The companies include: Anthropologie, AOL, Business Objects, eBay, The Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc., Nickelodeon’s Nick.com, PayPal, Philips Lighting, QVC, salesforce.com, SAP, and Yahoo!.

Adobe Media Player (AMP) - Whilst on the theme of major organisations adopting Adobe technologies. Major television broadcasters and leading content publishers including CBS, PBS, Yahoo! Video, Meredith Corporation, Blip.tv, Fora.tv, Motionbox, MyToons and StimTV are collaborating with Adobe to distribute video content via the new Adobe Media Player (AMP). AMP is a lightweight desktop AIR based application that offers viewers the ability to subscribe, and watch content online or download and view videos offline, all with full-screen hi-def playback. To download and try the demo version of AMP drop by Adobe Labs.

FlashLite 3.0 Announced - This is major news for developers looking to bring video to mobile devices. This latest upgrade to the FlashLite Player provides improved performance along with ability to embed or stream Flash video content to mobile devices.

Andrew Muller sours US/Australian relations by refusing to tip our taxi driver - In all fairness we can probably write this one off as a combination of jet-lag and naiveness. Luckily the cab driver in question had another fare jump in, just as we fled to the sanctuary of our hotel - so wasn’t able to pursue Mr Muller for his $2 tip.

I’ve been very fortunate to be invited to speak at Adobe’s major conference event of the year MAX at Chicago.

Apart from all the great new products that will be launched, events like this are always fantastic for catching up with colleagues from around the world, and networking with new contacts and partners.

The conference facility (McCormick Place) is MASSIVE. It takes a good 10 minutes to walk from one side to the other.

I’m about to head over to the Welcome reception and O’Reilly Ignite session. Ignite is very similar to the WebJam sessions we have in Australia only on steroids. They have 16 x 5 minute sessions. With each speaker getting only 15 seconds to discuss each slide. It should be a hoot!

I’ll be blogging most of my adventures, and the sessions I attend, so be sure to stay tuned.

One of the great things about attending conferences is that you often overhear little tid-bits of info that you may never come across in the mainstream (or even stumble across on Google).

I picked up this little gem whilst sitting in on Thomas Burleson’s (Creative Minds) session at Web on the Piste in Queenstown, New Zealand.

So, one of the features of Dreamweaver i’ve always thought was pretty cool was the ability to have a split Design/Developer view which allows you to see any changes you make to your code, updated in the design view (in real-time). I often wondered why this feature was never included in Flex Builder. To be fair, it was originally in version 1.0 and 1.5 (which were basd on Dreamweaver), but dropped in version 2.0 (with the new Eclipse build).

Here’s how you can replicate the combined Design/Develop workspace view in Flex Builder 2.0 and 3.0.

- Open a new project (in Source mode)
- Right-click on the page tab (at the top of the page) and select ‘New Editor’
- This should then create a copy of the current tab/page
- Select the tab and drag it down your workspace (to where ever you want to position your new custom view)
- Set the view mode of the new tab to Design and viola!

You now have a split Design/Source mode workspace that allows you to update code and see the changes reflected (in real-time) in Design mode (and vice-versa).

2 x teams, 2 x webites, 2 x clients, 24 hours - No excuses, no extensions, no budget overruns (and lots of coffee, red bull and chocolate).

I’ve just got back from judging the inaugural FullCodePress competition and have to say it was a great experience. Adobe was proudly one of the sponsors of this charity event, which set out to design and build 2 x websites for 2 x not-for-profit organisations within 24hrs.

Both teams put in an outstanding effort, with the competition being tight….very tight. Infact, at the final bell there was only 2 points (out of 100) separating the 2 x teams.

The winning team was Team Code-Black (NZ) who were developing on-behalf of the Grampian disAbility Advocate Association. This orgainsation helps provide a community voice, and information resource, for people with a variety of disabilities, from the remote Grampians region of Victoria, Australia. Their winning effort can be seen here.

Close runners up - Team Australia were developing for The Ripple Effect. A not-for-profit organisation that works with schools and orphanages in Thailand to deliver projects that help change the lives of children and their communities. Their effort can be seen here.

Each of the teams participating was made up of 7 members;

1. Project manager
2. User experience advocate (information architecture and usability)
3. Graphic designer
4. HTML/CSS
5. Programmer
6. Content editor/writer
7. Captain’s choice (can be someone from any specialty)

It’s worth keeping in mind that both of the sites still require a tad of polishing before they’re officially launched. When this happens, you’ll be happy to know that it isn’t just a case of build, deploy and forget. Each of the clients will be receiving ongoing training and support in the updating and maintenance of their sites. To ensure their long-term success.

Once again - well done to everyone involved!

By-the-way, word on the street has it that the next FullCodePress event (tentatively slated for February 2008 in New Zealand) will raise the bar even further, with 32 countries slated to take place - so watch this space!

If you’re playing a round of Web 2.0 Wankword bingo I guarantee that by the end of this post you’ll have a winning scorecard. All jokes aside, this second post in my RIA Motivator series aims to look at a few more of the main drivers (motivators) behind the recent popularity of rich internet applications (RIA).

Last week we looked at the UX Motivator, and this week we’ll be focusing on how existing (and new) application architectures, combined with the emergence of Web 2.0 flavoured applications, are directly playing a part in the evolution of the web application ecosystem.

In the following weeks i’ll be looking at some of the other factors i’ve identified as major contributors to the uptake of rich internet applications;

• Corporate Champions
• Brand Awareness/Enhancement
• Financial Benefits

OK, so i’m not about to wade into the whole ‘what is Web 2.0′debate. If you’re a little late to the party, and are still playing catching up, I suggest you start by taking a squizz (look) over Wikipedia’s definition. In a nutshell, Web 2.0 can be distilled down to a few key points/features;

• The “Network as platform” paradigm - i.e. delivering (and allowing users to use) applications entirely through a browser (mind you, AIR kind of skews this point a bit).
• Users owning the data on a site and exercising control over that data.
• An architecture of participation that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it.
• Applications that have a richer, more interactive, and user-friendly interface - (read: UX Friendly).

So from the whole Web 2.0 concept we can see there are a couple of touch-points that directly relate to rich internet applications. Primarily the richer, more interactive, and user-friendly applications. Combined with the whole Network as platform paradigm. Both of which are core benefits of RIAs.

In addition to this, if you take a quick look over at Mike Arrington’s Techcrunch you’ll see how every day he critiques and profiles scores of new (and reborn) Internet products and companies. Hundreds of which fall squarely within the Web 2.0 arena. Not surprisingly, a large percentage of the UI’s of these applications have been developed using RIA technologies such as AJAX or Flash (this includes Flex). Further consolidating that User Experience (UX) is a major motivator in this space.

So now we can see the connection between Web 2.0 and RIAs, how do service-oriented architectures (SOA) and service-oriented clients (SOC) fit into the scheme of things? Once again, i’m not going to wax lyrical giving you a definition of SOA when Wikipedia already has a great definition that covers the basics. Fundamentally though, SOA is nothing more than an (architectural) model for taking complex legacy (or new) application architectures and simplifying/streamlining them into ‘loosely-coupled’, discrete pieces (services) that can be presented for consumption by either a client (i.e. a SOC), or other agent. If we break SOA down further we can see that it consists of;

• Data Model(s)
• Services
• Messaging
• Persistence
• Cross Platform capabilities
• Clean Patterns

So whilst SOAs are great news for the back-end, what about the front-end? For the most part, the front-end still consists of a Client/Presentation-tier model that’s comprised of browsers, applets, and fat clients. Wouldn’t it be great if we could take the (above) benefits of SOA and reproduce them in a portable, lightweight, ubiquitous service-oriented client (SOC)? Well i’ll let you in on a little secret - it’s already been done - and it’s called Flash Player. Thats right, Flash Player is a great service-oriented client.

Up until now, it’s been way too easy (for the uneducated) to write Flash Player off as nothing more than a purveyor of skip-intro’s and animated eye-candy. After all, thats where its roots came from - right? Guilty as charged your honour. So with that in mind - it’s easy to understand why there’s always been such a misunderstanding about the power of Flash Player. But love them or hate them (i.e. eye-candy & animations), these are what kick-started Flash Player’s global career. Funnily enough, it’s this rich media background thats given Flash Player a significant head start in the services-oriented client space. So whilst Flash Player can still handle motion graphics, audio, and full-screen video, behind the scenes, it has evolved into a robust, secure, ubiquitous cross-platform runtime. Containing 2 x virtual machines (VMs) and an ECMA-Complaint scripting language capable of handling a multitude of SOA based services.

Lets have a closer look at some of the main benefits of the Adobe service-oriented client (aka Flash Player);

• Ubiquitous - Installed on 98% of web enabled PCs.
• Lightweight - Weighing in at a featherweight (1884k) Flash Player is a true lightweight client when compared to the Java VM (7100k) or Microsoft SilverLight (~4200k).
• Cross Platform - Develop your applications once and Flash Player presents them consistently across browsers and across OS’s (Mac, PC and Linux)
• Persistence - Flash Player is essentially a state-machine that has the ability to maintain persistence on the client.
• Messaging - when combined with LiveCycle Data Services, Flash Player is capable of real-time pub/sub (as well push) messaging.
• Data Model - Leveraging Flash Player’s ability to maintain state, data models can be stored (and manipulated) on the client before being sent back to the server.
• Binary Socket Support - To leverage interoperability with existing custom protocols, and increase data transfer performance.
• Robust Security - Flash Player enforces security sandboxes for applications, content, data, and URLs to safeguard sensitive data.
• ActionScript 3.0 - A powerful ECMAScript complaint object-oriented programming language.
• Services - The crowning glory of Flash Player (in relation to SOC’s) is it’s ability to plug directly into a variety of SOA-services - whether they be HTTPServices, WebServices or Remoting (RPC) Services.

At this point, I think it’s about time I fess’ed up. I’ve been using Flash since before it was born in 1996 (as Future Splash). I’ve also been evangelising the benefits of the Player, the platform and rich internet applications for just as many years (way before Web 2.0 or SOCs were around). I now also work for Adobe. So one could argue that I have a slightly biased view on this particular flavour of SOC - and you’d be right. The reality is though, the only thing that i’ve seen that even comes remotely close to Flash Player as a true services-oriented client is JavaFX. Unfortunately, JavaFX is very much in its infancy (it was only born on May 8th this year!), and is not what you’d really call lightweight.

So as you can see, the concepts of Web 2.0, SOA, and SOC are all very much related to rich internet applications. Based on the touch-points outlined above it’s inevitable that they should play a role in motivating organisations, and stake-holders, to take a closer look at their benefits of rich internet applications as a whole.