A quick summary of the Barcamp talk on Enterprise Web 2

Until now, innovation has stopped at the corporate firewall, with most of the Web 2 activity taking place in the personal and consumer space. With blogs (slowly) coming to the attention of the business mainstream, what is next to be taken up? Why should large companies bother? How will they implement it, or is Enterprise Web 2 just a fancy name for stuff they are doing anyway? More importantly, will anybody make a living out of it?

Any thoughts / comments / suggestions on what people what like to see?

Do you remember Dustin Hoffman in Rainman? He was an idiot-savant (not the PC Term) that was a genius at Mathematics, but had talent for little else. Too often we’re like that - genius in our own niche (IT, Law, Sales, Marketing, Finance) but useless outside of it.

ShareIT is an attempt to break outside of these niches and share useful knowledge in the small business sector. The slides below are from the first ShareIT event in Cork (held last week), with a follow up event in Dublin (Microsoft Campus) on April 28th.

(Updated with links to the Dublin Event)

I’ve been playing with Yahoo’s latest toy - see Yahoo Pipes in 10 easy steps.

It’s a very good example of a Web 2 tool. While it is still in beta it already allows you to combine / filter / clone and edit RSS streams. (RSS = a summary of a website, offered by many sites, including this one - just look for the orange logo). In the same way that SQL queries a database, Pipes allows you to query Websites (or to be more precise RSS streams) for the information that you want.

Yahoo Pipes is worth checking out for the following reasons:

• The user interface (finally) puts Gmail to shame. Just how do they generate the dynamic / curvy pipes linking the boxes?
• It’s completely graphic. Users with at a ‘power user of Excel’ level can generate streams that would previously have taken an experienced programmer a number of days.
• It’s another piece on the Web2 infrastructure. All other desktop apps have migrated to the web. It was just a matter of time before developer tools did as well. Does it make sense for you? Your call.

Pipes, for the reasons below, is not yet going to displace teams of Java people who do nothing but code RSS streams all day. Before, the choice on many IT projects was Build , Buy or use Open Source (or various combinations of those three). Online Web 2 apps and services (of which pipes is only one example) gives a fourth option to put into the mix. So what does Yahoo pipes need to overcome the ‘toy’ label and become a ’serious’ option for IT projects?

• The problem is, it’s free. How do Yahoo intend making money out of Pipes? More accurately , will they make enough money so that my project can still use it in 3 years time.
• You’re stuck with Yahoo. If you build against pipes, you’re stuck with them. Even in the database world, it is possible, if expensive, to switch product supplier. I’d love Yahoo to open source pipes to solve this dilemma, and allow them to build a business around the ‘pipes hosting’ part.
• It’s completely graphic. This is mainly a good thing but no doubt most developers would still like the option to see and edit the generated code.
• It’s hard to extend. If there is a way of extending it with my own ‘widgets’ , then I missed it. I can host RSS-generating code on my own server, but this detracts from pipes overall ease of use.

What do you think - will Yahoo Pipes take off , or be quietly abandonded?

Yahoo Pipes allows you to take RSS Feeds (Website summaries) and combine , filter, sort and otherwise manipulate them according to what you need. This sample shows you how to do this, based on several feeds from the Iona website. The feeds we are going to combine are:

IONA Information, News and Events
Keep on top of the latest IONA news, events, class schedules and more

Debbie Moynihan’s blog
Open thoughts about open source, open standards, and lots of other random stuff.

Eric Newcomer’s blog
SOA, Software Standardization, Web Services, and Transactions

Oisín Hurley’s Weblog
SOA, Eclipse Tools, Open Source and SCA

Publicly Speaking
Rob Morton’s Weblog

IP Babble
William Henry’s Weblog

SOS
Services in OpenSource

Essence is Real
Kiyoshi Egawa’s Weblog

If you want to see the end result (all the Iona Dublin Feeds in one place), click here.
Disclaimer: I have no connection to Iona, but I do want to read all their Bloggers feeds in one place.

Yahoo Pipes in 10 Easy Steps.

1. Open your web browser and Login to Yahoo Pipes at http://pipes.yahoo.com/. You can use a standard Yahoo ID (e.g. from Flickr, or Yahoo IM)

2. Click ‘My Pipes’ on the top left of the page . You should see the following screen

3. Click on ‘Create a New Pipe’. It should be in the middle of the screen towards the top. You should now see something like the following

4. At the top left of the screen is a blue menu option ‘Sources’ , with a couple of different places we can pull information from (e.g. The results of a Yahoo Seach, A Google Base Search, Flickr Photographs). The one we’re interested in is ‘Fetch’ , which can pull information from any Web Address (url).

Drag and drop the ‘Fetch’ box into the ‘grid’ area on the right. The main part of your screen should look something like the following:

5. Now we will add the Web Addresses (URL’s) that we want to pull the information from. We’ll get these from this page on Iona’s web site. Luckily, the blogs / web pages we want to combine also come in the RSS format (the orange buttons on this page). All blogs and many web pages have this ‘RSS’ option, and it makes it easier to combine the information in pipes.

To find the URl, we right-click on the orange button on the IONA site, and select ‘Copy Link Location’.

6. Back in Pipes Again , we paste this RSS link into the ‘url’ field on the Fetch box. We also click the ‘+’ sign at the top left of the box, so that pipe gives us the option to enter a 2nd URL. Our Fetch box now looks like this:

.

7. We repeat step 6, and copy the 8 other RSS feeds into our fetch box.

8. At the bottom of the Fetch box there should be blue circle. Drag this blue circle and drop onto the ‘Pipe Output’ box. Your screen should now look something like this.
.

9. Clicking on ‘Pipe Output’ (grey tab at bottom left of screen) fetches the information that we have just selected. The output from your newly created pipe should be at the bottom of the screen and look something like this :

10. That’s it! We’ve created a Pipe. To allow the world to see your new create, Select ‘Save’ then ‘Publish’ (both grey tabs on the top right of the screen). We’ve published a cleaned up version of the Iona Feed for you to view at: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/KIwiFt282xGelck8mLokhQ

Jakub Korab (him that organises the Dublin Java Meetup) is back blogging.

In another major development, Gavin is open sourcing DotNetKicks. This means that if ever you wanted a Digg / Netscape like platform, Gavin will let you download it and use it on your site.

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while, but am I alone in thinking that the Irish Times has a very schizophrenic attitude to blogging?

On one hand, it’s one of the key players ushering blogging into the mainstream, with writers such as John Collins bringing the read-write web to the attention of a wider audience (not to mention their coverage of the blog awards). I presume John is freelance , a distinction that will become important in the next paragraph.

On the other hand, some time back I asked for a link from their ‘blogs‘ page. I expected more of a ‘who do you think you are, we have 100,000+ daily readers, and you have exactly how many?’

Instead I got this strange reply…

You can place a link from your website to ours, but we request that you
include a credit to ireland.com/The Irish Times and a link to our home
page at: http://www.ireland.com/
Further information on copyright is available at
http://www.ireland.com/about/copyright/

We do not currently provide a page from which we link to other sites.
Thank you for your interest in ireland.com

Fair enough about not linking to me. But telling me exactly how I should link to you is a bit 90’s.

Which is a pity as if they took the same approach as another publisher (O’Reilly books) they could get some great user generated content, and be a real hub for the masses of Irish non-bloggers.

Update: John Collins has just let out the news that Ireland.com now has several bloggers on it. They even let you post comments.

In an ideal world, potential customers would read this blog then decide that they want to do business with me.

In the real world many of my customers haven’t heard of a blog, and are quite happy that way thank you very much.

Given that a lot of ’selling’ to these customers is on a personal level, the fallback is to use the traditional common or garden CV. Which gives rise to the following problems :

• Too Long or Too Short? : How do you get 13 years experience into a document without it looking like a version of ‘war and peace’?
• The curse of the technical buzzword : You need to include the technical buzzwords (Oracle, Java, Agile etc) to show you can do the job (a lot of people just do a 1st scan for words like this). But, put too many in, and you just end up looking silly.
• People or Technical skills: Apparently you can have great technical skills , or great people skills , but not both. How do you stop yourself getting pigeonholed? What about non-traditional experience (e.g. blogging, writting, speaking, training?)
• Customer confidentiality: A lot of the stuff we do is internal to clients. But potential  clients need to know what you’ve done to judge your work. Where’s the balance?

You can judge how successful I’ve been here: Paul Browne’s CV online [pdf].

Yes, I’m slightly more available than normal in the coming months. Yes, I’ll consider proposals slightly outside ‘normal’ contracts, if the projects and upside are interesting. And yes , I may just take some time off that I’ve been promising myself (but I’ve said that one before). Email me at PaulB@firstpartners.net.
Note to recruitment agencies: I’m very happy consulting through FirstPartners. No, I don’t want a permanent job. No, Cork is nowhere near Dublin , but I will consider Belfast. No, I don’t believe that you’re in for anything other than the money - that’s ok , you probably have a family to feed; but let’s not waste time pretending otherwise.

Barcamp team spotted organising in Dublin.

Barcamp team Ellybabes, Joe Drumgoole and Eoghan McCabe (plus Paul Browne behind camera) spotted plotting in a pub in Dublin. Paul Walsh sent his apologies. More to be revealed about Barcamp Dublin shortly.

Thanks to Eoghan, there are going to be some changes around here. He’s just announced that we’re the winner of the 2000 Euro worth of web design work. For a sample of his work , check out the redesign that he has done of the Barcamp Dublin site.

I actually tried to convince Eoghan to pick somebody else with even more readers (in a mercenary get some more exposure kind of way). He’s sticking with the person choosen by his random number omiter.

So the question is, What’s your favourite colour? What part of this website do you think needs an upgrade - this blog, the main FirstPartners.net ‘Corporate site’, or the wiki / knowledgebase? What changes do you think should be made?Or should I save the prize for the forthcoming mad, take over the world attempt part 2 (Red Piranha)?

Further Kudos to Eoghan for carrying out some Charity work as well: tuppenceworth.ie, entered by Simon McGarr, the other is a project by IQ Content for the Red Door School, entered by Laurence Veale

Apologies to the Dublin Java Meetup. I was due to go tonight (event details). They even agreed to talk about Business Rules and Workflow in Java - a subject dear to my heart. And now I can’t go for family reasons (not as dramatic as it sounds, but enough to cancel).

Sorry Guys.

Slightly off topic, but this is for all the bloggers who post pictures of kids on their websites. They may be cute now, but give them a couple of years and this is what you’ll be doing to them. I’d like to add that this is not a picture of any of my offspring!

The original title for this picture was ‘when the naughty corner fails’. Parents will know what I mean.

What you do if you weren’t doing your current job? While we all harbour dreams of running a magically profitable coffeeshop, working only 3 hours a day, what would you really do if you wanted a change of career?

If I wasn’t in IT , I’d be in Finance, on the basis of …

• My original degree is in Business (with French). Somehow I got seduced into IT (you don’t hear that very often).
• Both Finance and IT require their own set of knowledge and expertise. Once you’ve acquired that expertise, the work can be quite profitable, as not everybody can do it.
• Both are quite strong employment areas within Ireland, with the IFSC being one of the easiest parts of Dublin to get to from Drogheda (think Trains).

Sadly (but very sanely), neither Finance nor IT is considered ’sexy’. There again, you can’t have everything. They’re both quite hard to explain to your Mum - as far as she’s concerned , I work ‘in computers’. This is akin to lumping Salesmen , Mechanics, road sweepers and Michael Schumacher in a category ’something to do with cars’.

However , this lead-in does explain the contents of the ‘what’s Paul Reading?’ list. All links are to Amazon. I’d recommend all the books with the exception of the last one - it was written by a newspaper journalist and the slightly jingoistic style reflects this.

1. Economist : The City - a guide to London’s Global Financial Centre
2. Freakonomics
3. Java security
4. How the City Really works

Lost in the hype around Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) is the fact that the idea is really really simple. It’s all based on the idea that most applications (and that includes websites) are built either to be used by people , or used by computers. The pictures below (a free preview from the Enterprise Java Briefing) show what I mean.

In a ‘normal’ application, such as a online banking website, we need to remember what the user did last (are they logged in, what account are they looking at, are they in the middle of making a payment). If we didn’t , the user would get annoyed about having to repeat themselves every step of the way. It would also make for pretty complicated screens, to allow the user to enter all the information in one go. Instead , we allow the user to enter information in several steps, and remember where there are each time.

In an application designed to be used by computers, we don’t have to worry about this. We can force the computer to give us all the information required all in one go - username , password, bank account to take money from , bank account to give money to, date to execute transaction. For a computer , this is actually easier ; we make one call to our banking service and we are told it has succeeded or failed. It’s also easier for us to build our service:

• Each service (transfer money, book flight , execute share trade) only does one thing.
• Because each service ‘forgets’ after each call, we don’t need to worry about trying to remember what we were doing before.
• Because we have no memory, services are very scalable; we can make several copies of the same service and put them in a pool. Any client can talk to any service - no waiting for a particular server to become available.

So that’s Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) : programs that do one thing (a bit like a function call to a method) exposed that other computers can call. So what’s the big deal? Like all good ideas , a simple concept goes a long way.

Take a look at the picture below. It’s like a Visio diagram, but in fact it’s drawn by the Eclipse Based JBoss IDE. It shows a workflow for an online commerce store - pretty easy to understand. This example uses JBoss Java Business Process Managment (jBPM), but companies such  Tibco, Cape clear and Oracle BPEL have similar products.

Here’s the clever bit; each of these steps is executed by one of the services that we talked about earlier. This means that if the business process changes (and it will), then all you have to do is re-arrange the diagram ; little or no coding changes should be required.

This abilility to mix , match, combine and remix services leads us to a lot of other good things (and we’re only scratching the surface here).

• Because our services don’t have to run on the same machine, we can use SOA to create a distributed application. This is the concept behind the BPEL (Business PRocess Engineering Language)
• Services tie well to Ajax and Web 2: Our Ajax web page or portlet can call as many services as it requires to get the job done (it’s one of the reasons Tibcom is sponsoring the open source DWR project)
• We can call many services at once. If these this service calls are xml based ,or we send these calls as a message then we can filter, duplicate, pass and other distribute these calls as we set. These are the ideas behind Apache Synapse, Apache Servicemix and the  Enterprise Service bus (ESB) in general.

What do you think? Is SOA useful , or over hyped?

related posts

I don’t slag people off on this blog. If I’m annoyed enough to talk about people in public, then I should at least talk to them privately first. Up until now, that’s been good enough to resolve most things.

So for Dolan and Company / CMR Accountants to get the honour of being critisied in public, they must have behaved pretty badly. Yes, they’re the ones located at the Steelworks in Foley Street Dublin (near Busaras, Connolly Train station). They’re now our Ex-Accountants, for reasons that will soon become clear.

Dolan and Co were our company accountants from Dec 03 until Mar 06. We’re not the biggest of companies. Our accounts could probably be done using Excel by somebody with a Leaving Certificate qualification. We prefer to subcontract rather than employ people, so that makes our accounts even easier.

So what have Dolan done to annoy us so much?

Overcharging. We had a set monthly fee for their services, paid by direct debit. Easy enough? Even if a mistake was made, it shouldn’t be too hard to sort out. Well no actually. During the last 15 months of our arrangement, I spent more time on the phone to Dolan / CMR about the fees than talking to them about the actual accounting service. While I wasn’t happy at the end, Dolan agreed to refund me a set figure in March last year and I moved to another accountants.

End of story, or so I thought. Not nice, but not enough reason to blog about it.

Ok, so how have they really annoyed you?

The basic reason to have an accountant is to file accounts with the Revenue Commisionars (Government Tax Department). These accounts / reports are (i) How much money you take as Salary from the business and (ii) How much VAT you owe the Government (based on your Sales).

Not surprisingly, the government takes a very dim view if you don’t file these accounts / reports on time. Fortunately , they’re easy enough, so long as you keep on top of them. For example, you can pay your Tax every month by Direct Debit. At the end of the year, you file a final report and pay any (small amount due).

Here’s the problem. For 2005 , Dolan / CMR set up a the Direct Debit but did not make the final report. This is despite assuring me that that the return had been made when we signed off the accounts at the end of the Year. (You know who you are). While I do not owe any tax (because we paid by DD monthly), the Revenue are entitled to fine me several thousand.

My new accountants say it will take them about 5 minutes to complete and post via the web (the ROS.ie website).

I will accept a large part of the blame for this - after all it is me , not the accountants, that they Revenue Commissionars will chase. But if you (a) are paying a professional service company to do work and (b) they tell you that this (basic) work has been carried out, would you not be annoyed to find out that it hadn’t?

I’ve left the comments section open for Dolan / CMR to reply if they see fit.

Thanks to Martin Boylan and Co (Drogheda) , our new Accountants, who are helping tidy up this mess.

Most people building systems run into the following problems again and again:

• How to capture Business rules , in a way that both the Business users and the computer can understand.
• How to capture the flow of actions in a system, in a way that both Business users and the computer can understand. This flow is across multiple users, and may extend over days or weeks.
• How to deliver a system to the user (e.g. Via the Web), but to give the user a rich interface , similar to what they are used to on the desktop.
• How to maintain and enhance older systems , now that Java has been mainstream for more than years.
• How to take advantage of the new Features afforded by Java 5 and EJB 3, and what business problems to the solve.
• How to build components for reuse in all environments (Web , Enterprise, Command Line and Desktop).
• How to map information in a Java System to and from a Database (Persistent Storage or Legacy System).
• How to deliver value to the business at every point in the project.
• How to use the many resources and solutions already available in the Java community.

It’s to address problems like these , that I’ve been asked to put together a Advanced Java training. It’s early days yet, but I’d like to get your input as to what you’d like to see on such a course.

Full details of the Advanced Java course are available on the knowledgebase / Wiki. Leave your comments here.

Update: I posted a similar question on the (technical) O’Reilly Books Java blog. If you’re interested in seeing the responses , click here.

Get yourself over to Eoghans Blog NOW to have a chance of winning 2000 Euro worth of design work.

People we met at the pre-blog meetup

• Eddie from McGarr Solictors; Keep up the good work - yes at least one non-legal reader can follow your blog, and I suspect that there are many more.
• EllyBabes. I’ve volunteered to help organize Barcamp Dublin. I don’t even have the excuse of being drunk. And now I’ve gone and put it in writing , so I’ll really have to help.
• Tom and Damien, and ended up stuffing things into paper bags (I’m sure that wasn’t on the original invitation).
• Antoin from Eire.com , busy handing out fon.com cards (and he has me almost sold on the concept).
• GrannyMar. She’s a lovely lady, and was very graceful about my confusing her with Grandad’s wife.
• Eoin O’Dell - cearta.ie, who wasn’t able to stay for the rest of the evening

At the Awards themselves (mainly beside the bar, take from that what you will)

• Bernie Goldbach. Ungrateful sod that he is , gave away the award that we sponsored. I couldn’t have done it better myself, given that I originally wanted to nominate Damien for the category.
• Keith Bohanna, who looks exactly like his photo on his blog (don’t know if that is good or bad - see next point).
• Krishna De, who told me I should lose the tie in the photo (top right) , and she’s probably right.
• Ann from Allagi, also nominated for ‘Best business blog’ , but lost out to the Ice Cream guys (below).
• Conor from LouderVoice - as funny in the person as he is on his (award winning) blog posts.
• Thomas Holmes (YClickit) and Eoghan McCabe , fellow conspirators competitors in the pint competition. Thomas is living my ideal lifesytle (working remotely , living in Montpellier France. It might also be worthwhile (hint) subscribing to Eogans blog today.
• Richard Hearne, Red Cardinal. Target number 2 for lifestyle Jealously with 6 months a year in Thailand.
• Joe Drumgoole , yet I still don’t understand what ‘ace king - check it out’ means (see the top of is blog page). Maybe if I help organise barcamp dublin he’ll let me in on the secret.
• Roger Galligan , from irishblogs.ie. Yes I do know the difference between you and boards.ie
• Conn Ó Muíneacháin. Giving the (Irish Language) awards away this year, instead of winning them

and pings for the people that we didn’t meet …

• Brian Honan couldn’t make it (he was nominated for best business blog), but lost out in the end to the Ice Cream guys.
• Ken McGuire, who I still owe a pint (unless he can come up with a ‘double or quits’ scheme).
• Kieran from Ice Cream Ireland. He must have been surrounded by frozen food groupies
• Lar from IQ Content - almost got talking a couple of times, but generally one or other of us got sidetracked.

It seems like we’re handing out prizes every day of the week.

We’re (as in FirstPartners.net) sponsoring the Best Contribution to the Irish Blogosphere at the Irish Blog Awards. If this was Rock’n'roll, this award would be given for ‘lifetime achievement’ and Keith Richards, Bono or Burt Bacharach would be accepting it.

So who will we be handing the award to on Saturday night? Who is the blogging equivalent of Keith, Bono or Burt? Will it be ….

• Bernie Goldbach , from Irish Eyes. I want Bernie to win as he was generous with his time 2 years ago at Techcamp to a wet-behind the ears blogger.
• Donncha from Holy Schmoly. I want Donncha to win for his contribution to Wordpress - one of the best pieces of web software there is (and we use a lot of them , so we should know).
• Tom from Tom Raftery IT. I want Tom to win as like Bernie , he’s been very generous with his advice over the years. His new tagline is ‘Highest ranked blog in ireland’ so you can’t argue with that.
• Simon from Irish Election. Simon’s is the only blog that I wasn’t previously aware of. I still want him to win because anything that injects a bit more democracy to the current Irish political system is a good thing.
• Rick from the Breakfast blog. I want Rick to win as he’s one of the better 2FM DJ’s (damning with faint praise), but as one of the first mainstream bloggers, he’s done a lot to raise the profile of blogging in Ireland.

So good luck all , and I’ll be speaking to you on the night.