Category: Archive

This morning, while boarding the train A in Manhattan I noticed a nicely dressed girl. We “ve entered the same car, she took a seat and put her Louis Vuitton bag on her laps. If you “ve been to New York, you “d probably agree that it ‘s very unlikely to see a lady with a several thousand dollar bag during the rush hour in New York subway. They ride cabs. Some of them have never been underground. So I had a suspicion that this bag was a knock off. But the girl was dressed nice, and the bag had a special shiny plate on it confirming that this is LV. The pictures below are real, but they also have poor quality – I “ve taken these shots with my cell phone camera while the train was moving.

Then, I noticed that the poorly dressed girl that was sitting next to her had exactly the same bag.

Both bags were made somewhere in China Town. But this was not the end of it. The third woman that was sitting next to these girls had a shopping bag from one of the LV stores. It became entertaining. I decided to see if I could spot yet another lucky owner of a bag produced by this famous brand. It took me a second. I just looked back, and sure enough, there was another girl with LV.

Now it “s your turn ndash; see if there are people carrying LV around you. If you know this person, ask her to show you the bag ‘s ID (the real LV products come with passports).

One more thought. In the new movie Sex and the City one girl explained that there is bag rental service in Manhattan, and those bags are real. Do you think this is the case?

To get prepared for technical presentations I create some sample live demo programs, and when it ‘s ready, the boring part begins. I need to create slides and submit them to the event organizers prior to the event, and they promise to make them available to the attendees a month after the event. I do this even though my slides without hearing me talking are pretty much useless.

I was getting ready for my yesterday ‘s presentation following the above scenario. A working demo plus a couple of pre-recorded screencasts. Two slides per minute. Not too much text, which I never read from slides anyway.

My talk was scheduled to start at 3PM. I came to the room at 2:55PM. The other speaker was supposed to be done at 2:50PM, but he did not finish yet. At 3:05PM the conference organizers started to send him signals to wrap it up. He asked a naive question, “Do I have five more minutes? rdquo; as if he has no clue that he was already stealing time from me? Did he ever bother to time his speech? The conference organizers answered, “No, you don “t rdquo;. He ignored, and spoke for another five minutes. At 3:10PM he wrapped up with a promise to send his slides to everyone who “d leave him a business card.

I stopped by the podium and politely asked him, rdquo;Could I please hook up my laptop (his laptop was still hooked up to the projector)? rdquo; thinking to myself, “Can you get the fuck out of here asap? rdquo; The guy said “Sure rdquo; and started exchanging his business cards with about ten people who wanted his slides. Another three minutes went by. Finally, hooked up my laptop to their projector just to find out that my laptop does not understand that there is one mo re presentation device. Since it “s 3:15 already, I decided to start the preso anyway asking someone to call the technician.

During the first ten minutes of my presentation two people who call themselves AV technicians came touching my laptop and pressing the video cable firmly into the plug. It did not help. I was giving my speech to the audience anyway. My mistake was that I left my own projector one floor down. I asked the technician to bring it, but he disappeared assuming that the audience could enjoy this preso without the projector. Guess what, he was right.

During 45 minutes I was covering my topic without using any visual aids, and it was one of my best presentations. I did not have to interrupt for watching at the computer screen to change the slides and I was able to keep people awake with less efforts. Afterward, a couple of people stopped by asking me to send them the slides, which I did the same day. A couple of more people asked for the live demo, which I did right after the talk. Someone has invited me to another presentation in NYC in the Oracle JUG event in NYC, which proves that I did well.

And now I “m thinking that this may be the right way to present. Prepare the slides to make the conference organizers happy, and give them away to those who really want them. Of course, showing some hands-on work would still require a projector, but the slides could be skipped. They are useful for people who want something to copy/paste from while creating their own slides or whitepapers.

Have you been to the presentations that have about twenty slides with one sentence on each, that would appear on the screen with some special visual effects? I “ve seen them too. Presenters make them just to show that they were preparing for this talk. But only the audience can tell if this person is ready or not regardless on the number of slides they “ve seen.

I ‘ll try to repeat this experience runnin the next presentations withot slides at the upcoming talks in August on Enterprise Flex.

Added a dozen pages and made minor corrections here and there. The e-book can be downloaded for free at this URL .

This is called The Instinct Java Developer Contest. Actually, the first prize is $20K + up to $5K as free membership (?!) in the developer “s program. Details are here.

This sweet deal was backed by Sprint that “s promotes Samsung “s Instinct phone. I can “t recall AT amp;T offering money to develop programs for iPhone. But that “s fine – iPhone has been closed for developers till this Spring.

Not that I need those bloody $20K + up to $5K as free membership, but it got me interested – I wanted to look at the phone.

Apparently Sprint needs some help not only with Java programming, but they need Flash developers too, and they need them badly.

Sprint “s Web page contains the link to their preview Web page of Samsung Instinct. I clicked on that link, and the process of downloading SWF for Flash Player successfully started. I “ve been watching percentages 43% hellip;44%…45% for about minute(!) to see the main page with the menu. Yes, my Internet connection was slow at that time – 350Kbps for downloads. But there is lot and lots of people who are sitting by the slow wires.

Decided to do a little more research ndash; this site downloads about 2.5MB worth of files just to show the first page. No wonder it “s slow.

Then, I clicked on the menu item About The Phone. This menu Item returned back several thumbnail images, which was yet another menu. This time I was watching the message “Buffering rdquo; for yet another minute.

This is a good example of bad RIA practice. Developing Intranet applications for the users sitting behind the bars within the confines of the enterprise at 20-30Mbps is easy. But this is not an Intranet, this is consumer facing application, which is completely different ball game. People do have slow Internet, and you don “t want to lose them ndash; they can be potential customers of your business.

For comparison, visit the original Samsung Instinct page. It “s blazingly fast, but it “s not RIA. But it “s blazingly fast.

I just got off the project where I was helping with design and development of a large and fancy consumer RIA Web site for a major car manufacturer. This site was created with Adobe Flex with lots of nice effects and animations too. We spent some time to re-factor and fine tune the code and were able to bring the size of the initial Web page from 4MB to 1MB. The speed of the first Web page appearance is crucial for RIA.

One of the chapters of our upcoming book “Enterprise Flex. Best Practices rdquo; is called “Performance Considerations rdquo;. In this chapter we “ll talk about actual vs. perceived performance improvements and various techniques of dividing the project into a set of loosely coupled modules and libraries, which besides minimizing the size of the downloadable code chunks helps in splitting the work between different developers working on the project.

Coming back to that phone Web page hellip; I watched a 30-sec commercial showed Instinct and iPhone side by side. The message on the iPhone reads “Cannot Connect rdquo;, then surprised voice asks, “Cannot connect? rdquo; This video ends with the “Instinct wins! rdquo; screen.

No comment.

I believe that many people will become irritated while trying to learn about Samsung Instinct via this Sprint Web page. This site is a great example of how to damage a product by engaging rookie RIA developers and screenplay writers. If Sprint had some political reasons of sabotaging Samsung Instinct sales, they did a great job.

I ‘ll be speaking at the SOAWorld conference in NYC this Monday on using rich Internet applications as service consumers in SOA architecture.

As a speaker, I can invite a small number of people to attend it for free (Golden Pass). If you ‘d like to use this offer, just use the coupon code speakerguestVIP (it ‘s case sensitive) on the following registration page.

If you have any RIA-related questions, just stop by and let ‘s talk. I ‘ll be wearing jeans and black t-shirt with white lettering FARATA.

See you Monday.

Yakov

Due to multiple requests for public training we “ve announced two more Flex training classes.

One day hands-on “Intro to Adobe Cairngorm rdquo; will take place on June 21 in New York City. Curriculum for this course has been developed by Adobe, but we “ve added one more unit to it ndash; “Comparison of Flex Frameworks rdquo;.

Adobe Certified Flex 3 public training will take place in San Francisco on the week of August 3. This is a great way to prepare for the 360Flex conference that will also run in August in San Jose.

Details at faratasystems.com

One more reminder. The early bird discount for the July “s online instructor-led training expires tomorrow.

See you in class.

Yakov Fain

I “ve got an email stating that AOL finally abandoned the ugly Java applet that was used in the ICQ2Go , the Web version of hugely popular (about 30M users) instant messaging system. The person who sent me this email also wrote, “IMO this was the last popular Java applet. Now the king is dead. rdquo;

I don “t think so.

It became a trend to criticize Java for slow starting VM, overly complex syntax, ugly-looking UI, installation problems, lots of boilerplate code and more. Some people just pronounce Java dead.

Not so fast. There is no money for the funeral .

While lots of new applications will be created by polyglot programmers, there is a huge base of Java-based production code that millions of businesses and individuals rely on.

ICQ2Go is an excellent example of a popular consumer facing application. Let “s read a couple of fresh messages from its users ” forum:

“Where has the bloody Java based ICQ2Go gone? That ‘s the only one I can use in my work! Heeeeelp !!! rdquo;

“Bring back Java ICQ2GO! This buggy Flash ICQ with a stupid design and without proper encoding support is a total rubbish! rdquo;

Of course, AOL will fix the bugs at some point, but experience of the ICQ2Go users will be repeated across all applications that will move from Java to Flash-based runtime. Don “t be in a hurry while migrating from Java to Flex/Flash. Take your time. Plan carefully and test thoroughly.

Now let “s talk about success of Adobe Flex. Who do you think would know about Flex if there were no millions of rock-solid enterprise Java applications? Just a small group of enthusiasts creating cool little gadgets for fun.

“Have you seen that cool little video player number 237? rdquo;

“Have you seen that new photo album written in Flex? No, the one that was published this week? rdquo;

“I “ve seen it, but mine, written in pure ActionScript without using Flex framework is five times smaller rdquo;.

It “s because of the enterprise server-side Java very demanding Wall Street, telecommunications, manufacturing applications started to use Flex. It “s because of its fast communication protocols Flex is considered for lots of commercial Java-based business applications. No offence, PHP, Ruby, .Net, Python,SOAP and Coldfusion folks.

Flex has entered the enterprise world, and if you are just considering using it for your next business application, attend this one day technical event called Enterprise Flex Symposium and meet other practitioners who “ve done it already.

Ironically, it “s Sun Microsystems who introduced rich Internet applications back in 1995. But now, after spending more than a decade in the RIA coma, they are doing baby steps into the world of RIA with JavaFX. Even though Sun ‘s moving slow, the need for RIA offering has already positive effect on Java – the new JVM to play JavaFX becomes a lot smaller (Java Kernel) and it will be browser independent (kill the browser, but JVM will keep running).

Today, there is only one API for creating production grade front end for RIA talking to Java. It “s called Adobe Flex. In 2010, JavaFX may become another alternative. But meanwhile, please stop bashing Java. Do not forget that many of these new popular programming languages exist because there is a J2EE application they need to connect to. Do not forget that Java puts bread on the tables of many people (including mine) around the world. Do not spit in the well you drink from.

I always knew that there “s something wrong with checking email and blog aggregators at least 20 times a day. Now it “s official ndash; I am a mental case. Do not be so happy, cause you might belong to one of these well-guarded institutions too.

According to this article published in the American Journal of Psychiatry

“Internet addiction appears to be a common disorder that merits inclusion in DSM-V. Conceptually, the diagnosis is a compulsive-impulsive spectrum disorder that involves online and/or offline computer usage and consists of at least three subtypes: excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations, and e-mail/text messaging. All of the variants share the following four components: 1) excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives, 2) withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible, 3) tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use, and 4) negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation, and fatigue rdquo;

After reading this paragraph I was wondering, what “s DSM-V? So I went straight online and in less than a second Wikipedia returned me this definition:

“The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is an American handbook for mental health professionals that lists different categories of mental disorders and the criteria for diagnosing them, according to the publishing organization the American Psychiatric Association. It is used worldwide by clinicians and researchers as well as insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and policy makers. rdquo;

The good news is that we, Web freaks are not dangerous to the society. Or so it seems to me. I “m not violent regardless of what I read online, I don “t spoil the air with fumes while browsing the Net, I don “t make noises that bother people surrounding me.

My wife has no medical degree, but she “s pretty good at diagnosis. She just listens to her inner voice, and often uses an old reference manual for registered nurses. That “s all she needs. My wife was telling me for years that I was crazy spending so many hours in front of the computer. I was hoping that at least this diagnosis was wrong. Nope. She did it again.

What about you? Should we set up something like an AW Club for Anonymous Webogolics? This can be a place where people can meet and share their experiences in fighting this disease. Suggested topics for monthly meetings are :

“How I reduced checking my emails to 10 times a day rdquo;.

“How to unsubscribe from an RSS feed rdquo;

“How to turn off the Blackberry for an hour rdquo;

“Say lsquo;No ” to iPhone rdquo;

“How to spend more time with your family instead of writing stupid blogs(like this one) rdquo;

Would you join such a club? There is one clear advantage, since it “s a disease included in DSM, we need to come out of the closets to be able to file short term disability claims with our employers. Would you mind having another week of vacation spending it in one of the nice resorts somewhere by the ocean? Just make sure that the hotel you choose offers a wi-fi connection.

P.S. Do not show this blog to your spouse as the only reaction you can expect is “Told ‘ya! “.

While attending a conference in India last month, many people asked me if we offer online Flex training. Answering these and other requests, we “ve scheduled a week of live instructor-led online class. Students can be located anywhere in the world as long as they are connected to the Internet.

During the class, each registered student will be using a screen-sharing tool for visuals and a free phone line for audio (non US-based students will have to use Skype). During the lecture part, students will watch the monitor of the instructor, and during the hands-on part instructor can quickly switch mode to see the screen of the student who needs help. Students can also ask questions using online chat room.

This will be a small class (not more than 10 people). See details at http://www.faratasystems.com

I “ll be teaching a week of Adobe Flex public training in Atlanta, GA in July. Details at faratasystems.com . I “d like to run two more such trainings this year. Go to phorum board Please suggest a city ndash; can be anywhere in the world.