What Makes a Successful Project?
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Charlie Bailey
Sep 29, 2009, 8:26:42 PM9/29/09
to iR Developer Community
I've been reading more about Google Wave this evening since Google is
supposed to be sending out their first round of 100k invites tomorrow.
I've been reading an article by Anil Dash (http://lifehacker.com/
5332540/what-works-the-web-way-vs-the-wave-way) where he talks about
the success/failure curve for Google Wave. One of his criteria for a
successful launch of a new technology seems amazingly pertinent to the
scope of the projects that we'll be tackling next week at DevCamp.
*Understanding new tech needs to be a weekend-sized problem*
"For a lot of web developers, long before they start integrating a new
protocol or platform into their work, they hack together a rough demo
over a long weekend to make sure they truly grasp how it works. And a
weekend-scale implementation on a personal site usually translates
roughly into a 90-day implementation cycle in a business context,
which is a reasonably approachable project size. (In tech, three days
in personal effort often translates to three months of corporate
effort.)"
So what weekend-sized problems do you have in mind?
Liz O'Hara (Stevenson School) mentioned that she'd like to refine a
StudentAccess application that she's been working on for a while.
Marti MacNeil (inRESONANCE) has some FileMaker/iPhone integration in
mind. I'd like to pick up where we left off last time with the
FileMaker based scheduling application (though I think that we'll need
to limit the scope of that project to have any hope of "finishing" it
in three days).
What are your thoughts? Even if you don't plan on attending next week,
your opinions matter. As at the last DevCamp, we'll be beginning our
three days with a short (5 minutes only!) review of each idea before
we vote with our feet and join a project to work on. We'll also be
looking for domain experts (both remote, and local at iRU) to assist
with our projects. We'll be posting our project ideas here in the iR
Developer Community on Monday morning. We'll send an update out to the
masses at lunchtime on Monday so that those in the virtual community
can choose to participate if they see something of interest.
So let's hear the ideas!
--
Charlie Bailey
http://twitter.com/charliebailey
supposed to be sending out their first round of 100k invites tomorrow.
I've been reading an article by Anil Dash (http://lifehacker.com/
5332540/what-works-the-web-way-vs-the-wave-way) where he talks about
the success/failure curve for Google Wave. One of his criteria for a
successful launch of a new technology seems amazingly pertinent to the
scope of the projects that we'll be tackling next week at DevCamp.
*Understanding new tech needs to be a weekend-sized problem*
"For a lot of web developers, long before they start integrating a new
protocol or platform into their work, they hack together a rough demo
over a long weekend to make sure they truly grasp how it works. And a
weekend-scale implementation on a personal site usually translates
roughly into a 90-day implementation cycle in a business context,
which is a reasonably approachable project size. (In tech, three days
in personal effort often translates to three months of corporate
effort.)"
So what weekend-sized problems do you have in mind?
Liz O'Hara (Stevenson School) mentioned that she'd like to refine a
StudentAccess application that she's been working on for a while.
Marti MacNeil (inRESONANCE) has some FileMaker/iPhone integration in
mind. I'd like to pick up where we left off last time with the
FileMaker based scheduling application (though I think that we'll need
to limit the scope of that project to have any hope of "finishing" it
in three days).
What are your thoughts? Even if you don't plan on attending next week,
your opinions matter. As at the last DevCamp, we'll be beginning our
three days with a short (5 minutes only!) review of each idea before
we vote with our feet and join a project to work on. We'll also be
looking for domain experts (both remote, and local at iRU) to assist
with our projects. We'll be posting our project ideas here in the iR
Developer Community on Monday morning. We'll send an update out to the
masses at lunchtime on Monday so that those in the virtual community
can choose to participate if they see something of interest.
So let's hear the ideas!
--
Charlie Bailey
http://twitter.com/charliebailey
ZIE
Oct 2, 2009, 8:46:29 PM10/2/09
to iR Developer Community
This is Zie/Lassina (For those who have not met me yet, I’m with Flat
Toads Inc. was recently with Ross)
Charlie, long time no talk...
This was indeed a good read.
As a developer that has been part of the sandbox since July, I think
wave will steadily succeed. The article makes some great points
however, Google has already taken care of those alleged setback noted
or they are simply not factors that will impact the success of wave.
(of course this is just my point of view)
The only one thing I can see wrong with wave is the FriendFeeds-like
roll out. Although it is a good strategy on paper, it has proven not
to be so great in reality. In Friendfeeds' case developers were not
presented with true incentive unlike for example; the iPhone. I don’t
see millions of developers jumping on the wagon either or company
adopting the service because they hope to make a “large junk of cake”,
that has proven to be an important factor on the iPhone technology.
However, because we are talking about the Big G this will be a success
even without advertisement.
The article argues-
Federation (XMPP)
The robot protocol (JSONRPC)
The gadget API (OpenSocial)
The wave embed API (Javascript)
The client-server protocol (As defined by GWT)
Xmpp/jsonrpc,
The article argues that XMPP alone is a bear to implement, let alone
to deploy at large scale. I can relate, however Google has released an
api that takes all the work away from the developer. Robots can now be
builds on a on top of Google’s ready-to-use tools. I have implemented
this for a high school and deployed it in about an hour. (it could
have taken me 25 min, if not for my failure to notice some simple
syntax.) This is just to say that the documentation is good and so it
was helpful. This is most of the article’s arguments. Scaling is no
concern either because the application is hosted on Google’s
infrastructure.
Pushbutton VS xmpp
The pushbutton technology reference was also rich. As we all know web
2.0 today, websites aren’t simply web pages anymore they are
applications. Browsers like chrome and Firefox are become standards on
every machine while HTML5 takes over. For the next 5 years, I’m
expecting rich stuff, browsers like chrome (itself being open source)
will be able to load pages like I was turning the page of a book. With
that being said as a developer, I’m looking for the best technology I
can get my hands on since it is only getting more innovative. If I can
use xmpp (a clearly better technology) as a protocol, heck I will.
This new protocol
Federation
Google has put massive amount of resources in federation RnD’s
(research and development); We have all seen and benefit from their
federated authentication standards. With so much documentation and
api’s available for devs to use, federated logins is nothing for the
overage web designer these days. You want your app to play with wave?
You don’t have to do anything but use the search engine. I’m part of a
10-year+ google/ibm cloud initiative RandD and grant, one must give
props to those guys.
As you guys remember Anil Dash’s article when you discuss “What Makes
a Successful Project?” here is a link to this same article by George
Pór. ttp://tinyurl.com/wavewillsucceed. You can take away points from
both and sum up your own conclusion. Again, those are just their
personal opinions and so is mine.
Thinking out loud though…
Will this new protocol play with Filemaker? A reason and a purpose.
Toads Inc. was recently with Ross)
Charlie, long time no talk...
This was indeed a good read.
As a developer that has been part of the sandbox since July, I think
wave will steadily succeed. The article makes some great points
however, Google has already taken care of those alleged setback noted
or they are simply not factors that will impact the success of wave.
(of course this is just my point of view)
The only one thing I can see wrong with wave is the FriendFeeds-like
roll out. Although it is a good strategy on paper, it has proven not
to be so great in reality. In Friendfeeds' case developers were not
presented with true incentive unlike for example; the iPhone. I don’t
see millions of developers jumping on the wagon either or company
adopting the service because they hope to make a “large junk of cake”,
that has proven to be an important factor on the iPhone technology.
However, because we are talking about the Big G this will be a success
even without advertisement.
The article argues-
Federation (XMPP)
The robot protocol (JSONRPC)
The gadget API (OpenSocial)
The wave embed API (Javascript)
The client-server protocol (As defined by GWT)
Xmpp/jsonrpc,
The article argues that XMPP alone is a bear to implement, let alone
to deploy at large scale. I can relate, however Google has released an
api that takes all the work away from the developer. Robots can now be
builds on a on top of Google’s ready-to-use tools. I have implemented
this for a high school and deployed it in about an hour. (it could
have taken me 25 min, if not for my failure to notice some simple
syntax.) This is just to say that the documentation is good and so it
was helpful. This is most of the article’s arguments. Scaling is no
concern either because the application is hosted on Google’s
infrastructure.
Pushbutton VS xmpp
The pushbutton technology reference was also rich. As we all know web
2.0 today, websites aren’t simply web pages anymore they are
applications. Browsers like chrome and Firefox are become standards on
every machine while HTML5 takes over. For the next 5 years, I’m
expecting rich stuff, browsers like chrome (itself being open source)
will be able to load pages like I was turning the page of a book. With
that being said as a developer, I’m looking for the best technology I
can get my hands on since it is only getting more innovative. If I can
use xmpp (a clearly better technology) as a protocol, heck I will.
This new protocol
Federation
Google has put massive amount of resources in federation RnD’s
(research and development); We have all seen and benefit from their
federated authentication standards. With so much documentation and
api’s available for devs to use, federated logins is nothing for the
overage web designer these days. You want your app to play with wave?
You don’t have to do anything but use the search engine. I’m part of a
10-year+ google/ibm cloud initiative RandD and grant, one must give
props to those guys.
As you guys remember Anil Dash’s article when you discuss “What Makes
a Successful Project?” here is a link to this same article by George
Pór. ttp://tinyurl.com/wavewillsucceed. You can take away points from
both and sum up your own conclusion. Again, those are just their
personal opinions and so is mine.
Thinking out loud though…
Will this new protocol play with Filemaker? A reason and a purpose.
Steven Jay Cohen
Oct 3, 2009, 9:11:18 AM10/3/09
to irdevco...@googlegroups.com
Being involved with the Google Technology User Group (GTUG) here in Massachusetts, I am seeing an incredible amount of traffic worldwide on Wave and have been since the closed beta test that preceded this roll-out.
-----
What seems more the issue among the people developing Waves right now is understanding the paradigm of their end users. Waves being both synchronous and asynchronous at the same time seems to be confusing UI development so far.
And, as far as FileMaker integration is concerned, that is part of the reason I got involved with GTUG. Anyone who would like to talk about Wave or GWT (Google Web Toolkit) next week, please let me know.
-----
Steven Jay Cohen | Web Developer
inRESONANCE ... Solutions that resonate
Z. Lassina Ouattara
Oct 3, 2009, 12:48:33 PM10/3/09
to irdevco...@googlegroups.com
Hi Steven,
You are right! synchronous and asynchronous in the same conversation, playback, and the inline reply problem solver were three things that personally broke the deal for me. This is when I said, "wow, i want to use this asap" but then naturally as a dev, I questioned myself whether or not they will be enough documentation for this obviously ground-breaking technology. With this fast growing wave community, I'm sure google has already realize that as well. By some of the questions that have been answered by the wave team at the IRC channel or even in the sandbox, I can tell that is not an issue. We can expect Wave to play nice. GWT, GAE to play nice with other mediums of communication. Additionally, google isn't the first to do that, for example we have seen this in higher education internet learning system, and some other projects as well, obviously not as massive as google. I'm sure devs will adapt.
"What Makes a Successful Project? Will this play with Filemaker?" I would love to be a part of that conversation next week but I won't be there.
Steven Jay Cohen
Oct 3, 2009, 3:08:04 PM10/3/09
to irdevco...@googlegroups.com
Here at inRESONANCE, we have already done one project that integrates GWT with FileMaker. We used PHP as a conduit between them. We have some other projects coming up where GWT and FileMaker might be working together more directly. GWT allows us to build more full-functional desktop-ish GUIs for web applications. And, since GWT is the core of Wave, I am pretty sure that at some point we will be doing a Wave Integration.
On Oct 3, 2009, at 12:48 PM, Z. Lassina Ouattara wrote:
"What Makes a Successful Project? Will this play with Filemaker?" I would love to be a part of that conversation next week but I won't be there.
We can continue the conversation here, online.
ZIE
Oct 3, 2009, 8:08:29 PM10/3/09
to iR Developer Community
Steve,
Nice, we do not specifically have a project dedicated to that but I
have personally played with this idea for a while now.
Mostly proof of concepts with no disappointing results (BTW I'm a
python guy).
For example, I have used eclipse GWT plugin and created a simple web
app that connects with filemaker, improving a script from Christoph
Gohlke http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/code/fmkr.py.html I then built
and hosted it on google's infrastructure. It worked.
Reciprocally, I have used filemaker in front and syncing the data with
BigTable! it wasn't possible without this New BSD project
http://code.google.com/p/pyfilemaker/
So do I think filemaker plays with GWT, GAE? Yes. Will it play with
the 3 protocols that wave uses though? That's something to think
about. wave uses xmpp, that client-sever protocol (don't know the
actual name), and the robot protocol (jsonrpc, being http itself).
Where does Filemaker come in? and what is it's reason and purpose? How
does it talk directly or indirectly to wave server, webserver, robots
server, wave GWTclient (browser) or an embeded wave in web browser?.
Obviously it has to talk to one of them. Maybe I am overlooking
something but will it be as straight forward as returning an xml query
on a web browser using filemaker built-in xml?
Also something to think about is how will a filemaker database exactly
benefit from interacting with a wave. What is the reason? This is
project inspiration time.
BTW Kudos for messing with PHP, I have grown an intense dislike for it
lately.
-
loua...@flattoads.com
Nice, we do not specifically have a project dedicated to that but I
have personally played with this idea for a while now.
Mostly proof of concepts with no disappointing results (BTW I'm a
python guy).
For example, I have used eclipse GWT plugin and created a simple web
app that connects with filemaker, improving a script from Christoph
Gohlke http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/code/fmkr.py.html I then built
and hosted it on google's infrastructure. It worked.
Reciprocally, I have used filemaker in front and syncing the data with
BigTable! it wasn't possible without this New BSD project
http://code.google.com/p/pyfilemaker/
So do I think filemaker plays with GWT, GAE? Yes. Will it play with
the 3 protocols that wave uses though? That's something to think
about. wave uses xmpp, that client-sever protocol (don't know the
actual name), and the robot protocol (jsonrpc, being http itself).
Where does Filemaker come in? and what is it's reason and purpose? How
does it talk directly or indirectly to wave server, webserver, robots
server, wave GWTclient (browser) or an embeded wave in web browser?.
Obviously it has to talk to one of them. Maybe I am overlooking
something but will it be as straight forward as returning an xml query
on a web browser using filemaker built-in xml?
Also something to think about is how will a filemaker database exactly
benefit from interacting with a wave. What is the reason? This is
project inspiration time.
BTW Kudos for messing with PHP, I have grown an intense dislike for it
lately.
-
loua...@flattoads.com
Z. L. Ouattara
Oct 30, 2009, 1:23:32 AM10/30/09
to iR Developer Community
Hi Steven and all,
Here are pics from a couple of waves, basically forcing wave to talk to filemaker via xml. I ran into quite a few bugs that I had not seen before. The same question from a few weeks ago is back . What could be a good reason to make those two play together?
The main question is why wave? how does it benefit or innovate filmmaker in integration? I have tried and written a couple of gadgets but if you ask me, they are pretty useless. Wave is all about live collaboration and making communication easy. Not really sure which FileMaker solution would truly benefit from this. why not email? why wave. why do you want access to all these chat-like email?
Making embedded waves in FileMaker is simply using thewebviewer, there is practically no real reason to try and fetch wave contents IMO. You might as well ask users to use a browser :) Going the other way around though can be approached via a number of solutions including xml and python and even php with a some haxoring.
Boy, you gotta love that html5 speed , PlayBack and all those nice things Wave brings to the web but I can't think of it being useful in terms of FileMaker. It's probably just me but come on with your ideas. For those that have been living under the rock, I inserted some pics of a FileMaker on wave and and couple bugs too! mostly happened in multiple wave copies.
-
zloua...@gmail.com
Here are pics from a couple of waves, basically forcing wave to talk to filemaker via xml. I ran into quite a few bugs that I had not seen before. The same question from a few weeks ago is back . What could be a good reason to make those two play together?
The main question is why wave? how does it benefit or innovate filmmaker in integration? I have tried and written a couple of gadgets but if you ask me, they are pretty useless. Wave is all about live collaboration and making communication easy. Not really sure which FileMaker solution would truly benefit from this. why not email? why wave. why do you want access to all these chat-like email?
Making embedded waves in FileMaker is simply using thewebviewer, there is practically no real reason to try and fetch wave contents IMO. You might as well ask users to use a browser :) Going the other way around though can be approached via a number of solutions including xml and python and even php with a some haxoring.
Boy, you gotta love that html5 speed , PlayBack and all those nice things Wave brings to the web but I can't think of it being useful in terms of FileMaker. It's probably just me but come on with your ideas. For those that have been living under the rock, I inserted some pics of a FileMaker on wave and and couple bugs too! mostly happened in multiple wave copies.
-
zloua...@gmail.com
Steven Jay Cohen
Oct 30, 2009, 5:57:06 AM10/30/09
to irdevco...@googlegroups.com
I am looking into using wave to configure a remote SQL database to be ready to receive data from FileMaker. So, then end user would use a webviewer to interact with a wave robot who would configure the web database.
If I can come up with a way to do this so that a generic fm solution could configure its export to the web automatically, I will have saved a lot of wo/manhours here at iR.
-----
Steven Jay Cohen | Web Developer
inRESONANCE ... Solutions that resonate
Cathy Katz
Oct 30, 2009, 8:04:01 AM10/30/09
to irdevco...@googlegroups.com
I love this term
> wo/manhours
zie
Oct 30, 2009, 11:21:07 AM10/30/09
to iR Developer Community
To be clear, you are exploring the use of a wave robot to configure a
web database of some sql language database that's actually receiving
it's data from FileMaker? And users interact with that robot via wave
in a FileMaker web viewer? hummn yeah, that's a lot of wo/
manhours :) . Why not think simpler? I most likely read this wrong,
but what is the expected goal? and what is the role of each component.
FileMaker, Wave Robot, Web Viewer, SQL (I will guess SQLite), Web
Database, and what is the end user trying to accomplish?
-
zloua...@gmail.com
On Oct 30, 5:57 am, Steven Jay Cohen
> > zlouatt...@gmail.com
web database of some sql language database that's actually receiving
it's data from FileMaker? And users interact with that robot via wave
in a FileMaker web viewer? hummn yeah, that's a lot of wo/
manhours :) . Why not think simpler? I most likely read this wrong,
but what is the expected goal? and what is the role of each component.
FileMaker, Wave Robot, Web Viewer, SQL (I will guess SQLite), Web
Database, and what is the end user trying to accomplish?
-
zloua...@gmail.com
On Oct 30, 5:57 am, Steven Jay Cohen
<steven.jay.co...@inresonance.com> wrote:
> I am looking into using wave to configure a remote SQL database to be
> ready to receive data from FileMaker. So, then end user would use a
> webviewer to interact with a wave robot who would configure the web
> database.
>
> If I can come up with a way to do this so that a generic fm solution
> could configure its export to the web automatically, I will have saved
> a lot of wo/manhours here at iR.
>
> -----
> Steven Jay Cohen | Web Developer
> inRESONANCE ... Solutions that resonate
>
> steven.jay.co...@inresonance.com |413.587.0236x22 |www.inresonance.com
> I am looking into using wave to configure a remote SQL database to be
> ready to receive data from FileMaker. So, then end user would use a
> webviewer to interact with a wave robot who would configure the web
> database.
>
> If I can come up with a way to do this so that a generic fm solution
> could configure its export to the web automatically, I will have saved
> a lot of wo/manhours here at iR.
>
> -----
> Steven Jay Cohen | Web Developer
> inRESONANCE ... Solutions that resonate
>
>
> On Oct 30, 2009, at 1:23 AM, Z. L. Ouattara wrote:
>
> > Hi Steven and all,
>
> > Here are pics from a couple of waves, basically forcing wave to talk
> > to filemaker via xml. I ran into quite a few bugs that I had not
> > seen before. The same question from a few weeks ago is back . What
> > could be a good reason to make those two play together?
>
> > The main question is why wave? how does it benefit or innovate
> > filmmaker in integration? I have tried and written a couple of
> > gadgets but if you ask me, they are pretty useless. Wave is all
> > about live collaboration and making communication easy. Not really
> > sure which FileMaker solution would truly benefit from this. why not
> > email? why wave. why do you want access to all these chat-like email?
>
> > Making embedded waves in FileMaker is simply using thewebviewer,
> > there is practically no real reason to try and fetch wave contents
> > IMO. You might as well ask users to use a browser :) Going the other
> > way around though can be approached via a number of solutions
> > including xml and python and even php with a some haxoring.
>
> > Boy, you gotta love that html5 speed , PlayBack and all those nice
> > things Wave brings to the web but I can't think of it being useful
> > in terms of FileMaker. It's probably just me but come on with your
> > ideas. For those that have been living under the rock, I inserted
> > some pics of a FileMaker on wave and and couple bugs too! mostly
> > happened in multiple wave copies.
>
> > -
> On Oct 30, 2009, at 1:23 AM, Z. L. Ouattara wrote:
>
> > Hi Steven and all,
>
> > Here are pics from a couple of waves, basically forcing wave to talk
> > to filemaker via xml. I ran into quite a few bugs that I had not
> > seen before. The same question from a few weeks ago is back . What
> > could be a good reason to make those two play together?
>
> > The main question is why wave? how does it benefit or innovate
> > filmmaker in integration? I have tried and written a couple of
> > gadgets but if you ask me, they are pretty useless. Wave is all
> > about live collaboration and making communication easy. Not really
> > sure which FileMaker solution would truly benefit from this. why not
> > email? why wave. why do you want access to all these chat-like email?
>
> > Making embedded waves in FileMaker is simply using thewebviewer,
> > there is practically no real reason to try and fetch wave contents
> > IMO. You might as well ask users to use a browser :) Going the other
> > way around though can be approached via a number of solutions
> > including xml and python and even php with a some haxoring.
>
> > Boy, you gotta love that html5 speed , PlayBack and all those nice
> > things Wave brings to the web but I can't think of it being useful
> > in terms of FileMaker. It's probably just me but come on with your
> > ideas. For those that have been living under the rock, I inserted
> > some pics of a FileMaker on wave and and couple bugs too! mostly
> > happened in multiple wave copies.
>
> > zlouatt...@gmail.com
Steven Jay Cohen
Oct 30, 2009, 11:40:29 AM10/30/09
to irdevco...@googlegroups.com
We move data between Fm and mySQL all the time. And, the idea of using a robot for automated schema creation/updates/changes in mySQL beats the pants off phpMyAdmin. This is a developer tool, not a typical end user.
By using native calls on a locally hosted Wave server, one could execute all the SQL commands from a FM webviewer. At first, it would just be a command shell, but over time, many features could be automated as input to the robot, getting more and more useful as it matured.
On a different note, this is the best use I have seen for the generic Wave so far, and it is a far cry from what we are discussing here:
Steven Jay Cohen | Web Developer
inRESONANCE ... Solutions that resonate
Z. L. Ouattara
Oct 30, 2009, 2:53:56 PM10/30/09
to irdevco...@googlegroups.com
haha I know, there are quiet a few interesting public waves out there. btw, you can search for me in the sandbox!
It wasn't clear in the other post, I didn't realize that you were referring to a MySQL admin interface queried via a wave. ahh I see, that could be useful. There is plenty to learn about the wave protocol anyway, things are just made easy for us python people :)
I think you should look closely at other things rather than the robot itself. making the commands interpreted for instance, then the robot work can come later. Wave api protocol is opensource, some guys already did an implementation on github http://pygowave.net/, even though google didn't release the server references yet. You could fork and deploy on your own server and test around. you WILL get ideas.
-
zloua...@gmail.com
It wasn't clear in the other post, I didn't realize that you were referring to a MySQL admin interface queried via a wave. ahh I see, that could be useful. There is plenty to learn about the wave protocol anyway, things are just made easy for us python people :)
I think you should look closely at other things rather than the robot itself. making the commands interpreted for instance, then the robot work can come later. Wave api protocol is opensource, some guys already did an implementation on github http://pygowave.net/, even though google didn't release the server references yet. You could fork and deploy on your own server and test around. you WILL get ideas.
-
zloua...@gmail.com
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