Tag Archives: Facebook

Zimki – the spirt lives on …

Posted on December 13, 2007 | 2 Comments

Although Zimki is to shut down on Christmas Eve, the ideas behind the service live on. Two new offerings, Horuku and AppJet, offer variations on the idea of hosted application development/deployment.

AppJet, funded by Paul Graham‘s Y-Combinator, is very similar to Zimki, being a server-side JavaScript platform. No details yet as to what sort of paid options will be offered (all accounts are free at the moment). Unlike Zimki there’s no plans to create an open-source version. I like the easy “build a Facebook app” feature; and I guess this is the sort of light-weight applications that they hope to attract.

Although Heroku uses Ruby-on-Rails technology, rather than JavaScript, it is closer to the original Zimki idea; but rather than take the hard (and ultimately unsuccessful in Zimki’s case) road of building an open-source platform from scratch, Heroku takes an already popular open-source project and offers it wrapped in a full on-line development and deployment environment. Again, being in beta, there’s no indication as to what pricing model it will operate under, but I would think that it will attract more “serious” projects than AppJet since anything developed under Heroku is pure Rails which means it can be migrated to any other Rails hosting environment; so no lock-in. The online editor is excellent and whatever about its merits as a hosting service it’s by far the easiest way to learn and explore Ruby and Rails, even easier than this…

If Facebook apps are your goal but you wish to use Ruby rather than AppJet’s JavaScript then not to panic, as being Ruby some bright young spark (no, not me I’m afraid) will already have done a lot of the hard graft for you…

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Posted in JavaScript, news, programming, Ruby, Web2.0

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Google Reader – KM killer app

Posted on September 10, 2007 | 1 Comment

I’ve mentioned before my delight at the new search facility within Google Reader, while regretting that del.icio.us didn’t offer the same facility. Now I find, through Google Reader Search, I already have something more useful, a personalised search engine that searches not just my blog subscriptions’ contents but my also my del.icio.us bookmarks’ meta data.

While reading Nick Carr’s post on the CapGemini’s partnership with Google to push Google Apps I recalled that another sign of Web2.0 adoption within the enterprise was Siemens use of Facebook as an intranet. To obtain a reference link I opened Google Reader and searched on “Facebook Siemens” as I figured I must have read it on a blog post. Up comes an entry in my del.icio.us account with a link to a Robert Scoble comment on a Techcrunch post. Google Reader Search included my del.icio.us account in the search because I’ve subscribed to its feed. (Before you ask, I subscribe to my own feed as a “second chance” reminder to re-read the stuff I’ve tagged as sometimes I only glance at articles to see if they are of interest, tag them if they appear to be and return when I have more time to fully digest them).

I now can search both my “knowledge stores” using the same interface. Admittedly my del.icio.us searches are restricted to meta data i.e. the tags/descriptions I’ve assigned to the link (and the link’s own heading text), but as I tend to over-egg the pudding when it comes to tags I can live with that restriction.

This opens up all sorts of easy to implement knowledge management (KM) scenarios for both individuals and organisations (previous attempts at corporate KM have been, to say the least, a disaster), possible examples:

  • Students and teachers recording notes and lectures using Google Docs , which can then be subscribed to via RSS and subsequently searched using Google Reader Search.
  • Same as above but using blog posts as the recording mechanism.
  • Short notes and records (time sheets?) could be recorded using Twitter, again subscribed to via feeds and thus enabled for inclusion in a searchable knowledge store.

This type of knowledge sharing is not suitable for highly sensitive data but is ideal for community data and for non-sensitive/semi-private data (such as my del.icio.us bookmarks). Search enabled Google Reader may prove to be the killer app that RSS and KM have been waiting for.

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Posted in education, GoogleApps, KM

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Facebook calling WordPress

Posted on July 19, 2007 | Leave a comment

I’ve given in. Had to see what all the fuss about Facebook Applications is about. I’ve signed up for a Facebook account.

Just installed the WordPress FB app, using it to write and post this from within Facebook.

The thing that impresses me most (even more than the development API) is the ease of adding applications. What makes it easy is the single sign-on experience offered by Facebook (including sharing profile, contacts and “events” if I so wish). MS .NET Passport must be spinning in its grave and OpenId likewise in its cradle.

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Posted in Web2.0

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Facebook Apps using Ruby on Rails

Posted on July 19, 2007 | 2 Comments

This is what I love about Ruby and Ruby on Rails, once you learn the basics of Ruby and how a RoR app is put together you can use this knowledge to learn about other technologies, in this case Facebook Applications. The reason for this is, as soon as a new technology hits the street somebody is bound to either build a Ruby library or a RoR plugin targeting the new (and presumably cool) platform. In two excellent articles Stuart Eccles shows how to build a Facebook app using the rFacebook Rails extension. I guess I could have looked at a PHP or Java example but I chose (as I nearly always do) the Rails route as the layers of abstraction and the standard infrastructure of RoR apps allow me to quickly get an overview of the new technology in action but also, if I so desire, allow me to easily deep dive into anything that requires more detailed investigation.

In the late nineties I learned Java (and later .NET) for a similar purpose not as a primary development tool but because of its role as the “language of account” of most new technologies at the time. And although I still come across environments where the only examples are in a Java (or .Net or PHP) I know if I wait a few weeks some bright Rubyist will eventually “document” it in either Ruby or Rails.

Using the sample application built by Stuart I’ve added one of my favourite salad recipes,
Banana & Tomato in a Mustard Dressing
..enjoy.

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Posted in Java, Ruby, Web2.0

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