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CLOUD COMPUTING: The Next Big Thing

by on Nov 13, 2008 (0) Comments

Cloud computing or computing in the cloud is now one of the latest happening trends in the business world and the “next big thing” after Web 2.0. According to a 2008 paper published by IEEE Internet Computing “Cloud Computing is a paradigm in which information is permanently stored in servers on the Internet and cached temporarily on clients that include desktops, entertainment centers, table computers, notebooks, wall computers, handhelds, sensors, monitors, etc.” In other words, we can say that this is about increasing an organization’s or user’s capability by using different applications from some external servers without investing much on its own infrastructure and maintenance of local servers. Rather the organization/user pays for raw computing power. Here the word “cloud” is used as a metaphor for internet.

The basic architecture of this cloud computing is a massive network of interconnected servers where the web applications reside. The user accessing these applications need not be aware of the physical location of the application’s computer. This not only reduces the cost of installing licensed software at the end user’s computer but also saves the cost associated with deploying, maintaining and upgrading of different business technologies.

Web 2.0 Gets Big – and Corporate

by on Nov 07, 2008 (0) Comments

As the economy totters, it’s easy to make fun of the concept of “Web 2.0” — the rallying cry of a generation of chipper start-ups spawned over the last few years with an unusual aversion to vowels.

Certainly, most of the venture capitalists I’ve talked to at the Web 2.0 Summit have said they are shying away from companies that are based on the idea of growing an audience now and figuring out how to make money later. However, after listening to the presentations here over the past three days, it is clear that some of the key concepts of the Web 2.0 movement are, in fact, taking root in deep ways.

One of the most significant trends is how the big companies that make very complicated systems are reworking them using the principles of Web 2.0 companies, particularly the notion of programs that talk to other programs. They are breaking up their technologies into discrete modules that can work alongside data and applications from others.

Facebook can be credited with taking the first step to open up large parts of its service to third parties. Last year, it let their applications on its site. Now, through its upcoming Facebook Connect service, it will let other companies build applications that use its list of people and who their friends are to deliver new services.

Intro to DotNetNuke

by on Nov 07, 2008 (0) Comments

DotNetNuke – another powerful content management system to add to the existing list. With so many CMS’s around and each one of them offering you a vast set of features, you feel pampered. A few years back, building your dream website for your organization and managing its content simultaneously, seemed such a daunting task. However after Content Management Systems have come into existence, publishing dynamic content in a consistently structured and customized manner has been astonishingly simplified.

With over 500,000 registered users and 5.0 million downloads in late 2007 (as per official sources), DotNetNuke has become one of today’s largest and effective open source CMS. It has been written in Microsoft’s VB.NET for the ASP.NET (also by Microsoft) framework. With an extensible core and a set of additional customization features that include modules and skins, DotNetNuke can be used to develop, deploy and efficiently manage websites, including extranets and intranets.

Intro to Umbraco

by on Oct 28, 2008 (1) Comments

With a plethora of Content Management Systems available today, it becomes very difficult to choose form one of them. As a matter of fact, the CMS that you would choose would also depend on the architecture or the platform where you would deploy your project. Having discussed on the Joomla CMS which is based on PHP and MySql, it is now time to review the Umbraco CMS that is based on Microsoft’s ASP.NET technology. Well, this one is for the .NET fans. The entire source of the CMS has been written in C# and is available for the developers to download and modify for free. Yes, Umbraco is open source.

You do not require beforehand knowledge of Microsoft’s .NET framework or C# in particular, to get started with the Umbraco CMS. All you would need is Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) server, where you would host and deploy your website.

The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)

by on Oct 21, 2008 (0) Comments

On the information superhighway or what is most commonly known as the “internet”, there is a superfluity of data that is constantly being produced or consumed. Information exchange seems to be the buzzword of most modern web services under development and your service should be able to “talk” to other services in order to produce desired results. Architecture is no more standalone with respect to the fact that a particular web service may require data that is produced by another web service and this idea may be extended across web services.

The moment you talk about information exchange across different web services, the first thought that probably strikes you is compatibility. For example, consider two web services, where one web service is running on a Microsoft IIS Server and the other on an Apache Tomcat Server with ASP.NET and JSP scripting respectively. How do these services communicate with each other?

Earlier, before the advent of the use of SOAP, such mechanisms were achieved by the XML-RPC, which was not a very safe and secure mode of communication. SOAP provides an optimal solution to this problem.

jQuery vs. MooTools

by on Oct 15, 2008 (2) Comments

JQuery was developed by John Resig at BarCamp NYC and was released on January 2006. It is a lightweight JavaScript library that assists in the rapid development of powerful client side scripts. Interaction of JavaScript with the underlying DOM (HTML) of the web page and its associated CSS in a more procedural manner is basically what JQuery has to offer.

JQuery is dual licensed under the GNU General Public License and the MIT License and is hence, free and open source. This allows you to either manipulate the source or implement its range of functions in your scripts for free.

What is Microsoft Thinking? Some Thoughts on the Microsoft Commercials

by on Sep 19, 2008 (0) Comments

Reader DjCarbon pinged me this morning with an interesting bit of news. Above you see the first two entries for the search “i’m a PC” in Google – Apple has essentially hijacked the dialogue about personal computers, forcing Microsoft to take a stand through their new commercials. The “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” commercials are odd and insidious but, as we see here, Apple has distanced itself from the profit-averse desktop PC market and created a new category. It’s not a PC you’re buying, fanboi, it’s not a beige box with a keyboard and a crappy LCD. No, you’ll never have to open the case, Mac-lover. You’ll never have to upgrade the operating system. When you walk into the Apple store you aren’t shopping for a PC – a personal computer, to reengage that acronym’s original meaning. You’re buying something much cooler, right?