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It didn’t go down too well when an elderly relative asked me over Christmas ‘what exactly do you do?’. After fobbing him off with the usual ’something in computers’, he was shocked to find out that I spend most of my time ‘Grabbing people’s brains and shoving them into a PC’.

This kind of blog-related-violence is normally associated with Twenty-Major (Warning , Parential Guidance required , unless you’re over 80), so before you call the police , let me explain.

Look at your hands. Unless they’re scarred and calloused (from the weekend’s DIY) the chances are that you work in the knowledge economy. You could work for a Bank , Insurance company, Legal company or be a medical professional but most of your work consists of one thing:  You push pieces of paper around that have some magical value.
Or you would push pieces of paper around if it hadn’t all been computerised in the last 10 years. Now you swap files and emails to get things done.  And you swear on a regular basis when the computer can’t find the information you’re looking for, or someone doesn’t understand the email you sent them. But the important bit, the information processing,  still remains in your brain.

Which brings us to Red-Piranha (site update in progress) and the shoving of people’s brains into a computer. While we can copy an MP3 music file (with Adam’s and Bono’s imagination in it) and send it around the world, but we can’t photocopy your brain. We don’t want all of it, just the part that gets the magical value-added work done. The bits about drinking beer and playing volleyball on the beach we’ll quite happily leave with you.

So this is what Enterprise Web 2.0 is all about : getting the computer to take a load off your brain so that you’ll have more time to spend on the beach drinking beer. Chapter 3 (draft) of our Enerprise Web book has just been put online, which shows you exactly how to do this.

We sponsored them in 2006 , before they were famous. For 50 Quid we ended up in the Irish Times (I’m the one at the front wondering what’s going on behind me). Not a bad return on  investment.

This time around it’s a bit more expensive , but it’s good to give something back to the Irish Blogosphere. We’re not well versed on the black arts of public relations (most of our marketing spend goes to Google Adwords, plus the blood sweat and tears of 1 to 1 communication), but we’ll probably do some sort of tie in promotion for Irish bloggers.

Any suggestions?

Now that I’ve get the mobile internet thing cracked, I find myself wandering around public areas, eyes downcast in the manner of somebody looking for change to get the last bus home.

The reason is the effect of the battery life of the mobile internet (HSDPA) card. Before I got 3 hours plus out of my laptop (unless I was running Oracle on it , in which case I got about 20 minutes tops). With the card, it’s about 2 hours. This means that while (at a gasp) I can cover a train journey from Drogheda to Dublin and back again, any delay means that I’m looking for a power outlet. Hence the I’m-not-really-looking-for-loose-change situations.

Spatial Ireland have loads of Google Maps, but no mashup covering ‘free powerpoint locations that won’t blow your laptop’. While I may put together a Mashup (if the guys from DartMap can do it then so can I), here’s the list to kick start things.

• Dublin Connolly train Station, in Oslo Coffee Bar near the ‘Bean and Gone’ coffee shop end. Currently blogging from here - signal good , but the coffee is woeful.
• Irish Rail commuter trains, look for the single seats near the toilet - there’s a 50-50 chance of there being a plug there.

Anybody have others to add to the list?

Update: Vodafone should give me Sales commission. While trying to as discreet as possible (if that’s the word for a red card and lollipop aerial hanging out of your PC) 2 people spent about 5 minutes each asking where they could buy one. Just shows that Ireland Offline is right about the (unmet) demand for broadband.

This is going to get ugly. Yes, I’m learning CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) , the thing that does the pretty colours on this page. Normally , this sort of thing is done by Graphic Designers (the cool people who wear black), not people like myself (who spend too much time in the Server room). Think 3 year old kid with a paintbox , and you won’t be far off some of the weird and wonderful effects that you might see in the next couple of days.

All because I want to add a photo to the top right corner. And stop the ‘linked in’ and ’skype’ links floating all over the place.

It may be 10 days to early , but the time I tweak it with all the bits and pieces from the previous theme (Google Analytics and Search, Linked In, Photo, Top Picture, Feedburner etc.) it may well be January.

That and the previous theme didn’t like Internet Explorer 6 too much.

  [link to wordpress]
This one is called fluid-index and is available from the Wordpress site.

I’ve been following what Conor from Argolon’s blog for a while, so it’s good news that his startup Loudervoice is now going into (alpha? Beta1?) trails. Even better that the problem that he’s trying to solve is directly relevant:

Tired of having your knowledge and expertise under-exposed and unread? We aim to change that.

Having been through the ‘we’re-a-startup-going-to-change-the-world-oops-just-failed-miserably’ route, I’ll be interested in how his business model differs from the likes of Experts Exchange.

Update: For info , Experts Exchange business model is to allow people to post questions and pay for answers. The experts themselves receive nothing but ‘brownie points’. I can’t see why people would want to post and lose control of their information especially as you have to log in and pay to see the answer (not very Google-able), but lots of people do.

Update 2: Ok , this time, Loudervoice really is open for Beta. Really.

I’ll blog about it in more detail later, but I’ve just posted the first chapter of the Enterprise Web 2.0 book online. It is being written as a dissertation for the Msc. in Advanced Software Engineering in UCD , Dublin. The working title is ‘Financial knowledge capture using Rules , Workflow, Search and Enterprise Web 2.0‘.

To kill 4 birds with one stone, It also serves as a manual to the updated Red-Piranha project.[link to old website (search only). New website in progress] .

No matter what car you drive , the chances are it was influenced by the Mini. Introduced in the UK in the 1960’s a whole generation of families was crammed into a car that popularized the notion of front wheel drive. While small , it was practical and drove so well it even starred in films such as The Italian Job. Recently, a more modern version was released with none of the parts but all of the spirit of the Original.

We’ll come back to the Mini, but if you build websites using Java, then at some point you have used Struts. The original Struts is proof that a framework / project / product doesn’t have to be the best to be the most widely accepted. It just has to be in the right place at the right time, and ‘do what is says on the tin’ - in this case a fairly useful implementation of the ‘Model-View-Controller’ design pattern.

So what’s the link? Seeing the original Mini from the outside may bring a smile to your face, but on the inside it’s cramped and unfortable. You may have happy memories of websites you built using the original Struts, but lately your thoughts have been straying to more modern frameworks, perhaps with Ajax and integration with Spring built in.

This is where Struts 2 comes in. Like the Mini, it has (almost) none of the parts , but all of the Spirit of the original. It’s based on Webwork which sounds scary, but most Struts Drivers will be able to climb in , find the Struts.xml file and get the engine running within minutes. Struts 2 is easier to drive (JavaBeans instead of Action Forms), more powerful (it can use Ajax and JSF) and comes with more optional extras (e.g. it’s integration with other frameworks like Webwork and Spring).

Best of all the Struts team have a clear migration path between the old and new Struts. You can use both side by side in your garage application, and change over the parts piece by piece. Spare parts for the original Struts will still be available for quite some time, both from the original team and the large dealer developer network that has built up around the framework.

What do you think? When Are you going to give Struts 2 a try?

… try these , as suggested by the Health Tech Blog.

I’m not sure why it’s taken them so long, but Technorati have finally deemed it worthwhile to index this blog. Google have been doing it for the last 18 months with their blog search.
[Link to Technorati results for this blog]

Now all I have to do is figure out how to use the Technorati tools properly.

Every company now has a web site. Struts is the most widely used Java framework for building these websites. Struts 2 is a radical overhaul, making it easier to use, yet more powerful at the same time.

In January, I will start delivering a course on Struts 2 for IACT - the Irish Academy of Computer Training.

This course is an overview to programming for the Web using Struts 2 and Java (free course outline here), including an introduction to the language for people already programming in other languages like Visual Basic. It covers what is different about developing web applications, the problems the Struts 2 framework solves, and how to develop applications within it using the Eclipse IDE. Optional components include JUnit, Ant, Log4J and building Web-Database applications.

If you’re a Struts 1 Developer looking for more than the free outline then I do plan to blog about upgrading your skills over the coming weeks. If that isn’t quick enough, you can always hire me for a 1-2-1 mentoring session

Update: The Course notes are now also available on the wiki / knowledgebase.

If you remember Applets, then you are so 1990’s man. Right back before the dot-com boom , everybody was putting these Java programs in their web pages to do things simple things like display a financial chart (guilty as charged , my ‘lud). Oracle still uses them in some versions of it’s applications as a half-way house between it’s older desktop applications and a completely web only solution.

Fast forward to 2006 and these ‘heavy’ applets have been replaced by light web pages using Ajax and Flash, which don’t require a user download to run. Pretty much anything a Java Applet can do can be done in Ajax (if you have enough time and patience). Ajax developers have been pretty inventive in using Flash to solve problems (e.g. allowing web pages to store information on your local PC), so it may only be a matter of time before this gets picked up.
It’s ironic then, that the very technology that is meant to replace it , ends up giving Applets a new lease of life. It won’t suit everybody or every problem. An ‘ideal’ problem for this to solve is where the user interaction, business logic or security requirements are at the ‘higher’ end of the scale. While you could solve it using Ajax (basically javascript on steroids), using Java Applets and having a nice IDE to develop and solve your problems in may pay off in the long run.

Jan of Trampoline Systems explains in more detail.

If you’ve reading this blog for a while , you’ll know that I’m into Business Rules. You know, the logic (formal and informal) that are unique to each company / organisation and govern how an insurance claim gets settled , the price you pay for an airline seat, or how your order from Amazon get’s shipped. Rule Engines are a way of getting this knowledge out of people’s heads and into a computer.

Rules are a very simple idea (you just state what you know to be true), but rule engines are not. Ironically, the problem most people have is ‘this is to simple to work’. If you want to get find out more more, the ‘Down to Earth Business Rules blog’ from Artemis Alliance is a good place to start.
They also have a Squidoo Lens (a set of links to other resources) that is worth looking at.

Finally , after 6 attempts, we now have mobile data access up and running. Todays events unfolded as follows:

• O2 refund cheque finally arrived at 9am this morning via Registered post.
• Yours truly runs down to nearest Vodafone shop to get his sweaty paws on a Vodafone HSPDA / 3G card.

Surprisingly , given the travails of the last 6 attempts, it just works.

Forget your Web 2.0 , Barcamp, Networking events. This is how it is done - exactly like it says on the Tin. It’s (nearly) Christmas. 12 Pubs . Drogheda. If you need any more information than that, check out the web site.

This Years Route:

1 Trinity Arms
2 Carlies
3 Clarkes
4 McPhails
5 McHughs
6 Sarsfields
7 Carburys
8 Mariner
9 Cellars Bar
10 Barocco
11 O’Sheas
12 Storm

I want a cow for Christmas, and you can buy one here.

Ok, so it has absolutely nothing to do with Technology, but it’s a good cause.

I don’t normally post as the result of a mass email, but this is one of the more useful ones.

Ken of Calmar has just sent out information on Irish Consultants .ie - it does exactly what it says on the tin.

It’s not just for Information Technology Consultants (where yours truly lives), but the site also covers:

• Advertising & Media
• Archaeological
• Design
• Environmental
• Financial
• General Management
• Health & Safety
• Human Resources
• Information Technology
• Legal
• Marketing
• Property Management
• Public Relations
• Research & Development
• Risk Management
• State & Semi State Agencies
• Training & Development

Basic listing is free, although a ‘premium’ listing costs around 300 Euro. That sounds a very ‘Web 2′ business model , even if the site (thankfully) doesn’t use those words!

… have a read of this instead. Ireland is probably unique in having , within the last 10 years , benefited hugely from offshoring (why do you think all the US Companies are here?), then benefited again from being about to offshore work itself.

Thanks to Bill for the link.

Dear Open Source Santa,

Now that you have Java in your open source toy bag, can I have Duck Typing please ? It shouldn’t be too hard to do, since the elves in Ruby-Wonder-Land have been making toys with Duck Typing for years. I’ve been a good boy all year and promise to play nicely with the .Net kids next door.

You don’t know what Duck Typing is? Sorry, I forgot that you’re more than 1000 years old. Little Jamie next door got Ruby last year and he says that ‘if it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck , then it is a duck’. He says making the computer do more work makes it a lot easier to write programs.

My Teacher says not to be greedy, and that you’re very busy making Toy Trains. She says just ask for getters and setters. You know, the boring code like ‘getSomeValue()’ and setSomeValue(). She says the Apache imps have been very good with Dynaforms but that writing a Java web application is still just too slow.

Rudolph will tell you that writing get(”someValue”) is about as cool as having a bright red nose. He would also want to put ’someValue’ in one place only (the web page). Having to write config files and javabeans feels too much like homework.

Santa, I know there are other children that need changes to the core Java code more than I do, so maybe you know of an open source project that already has this.

Paul

P.S. :I still want to keep compile time type checking to make sure I don’t make any mistakes.