Web Development Live

The future of application development might be becoming a little more social. Sun certainly hopes so, and has launched zembly, a new collaboration platform for writing small, and lightweight web applications. It’s a promising start, squarely aimed at small, long-tail developers, and a new approach to collaborative development over the web. Challenges remain, such as the long-term reliability of third-party application hosting and the findability of small long-tail applications on large platforms.
 
I was able to demo zembly, which attempts to lower the barrier of entry to writing applications for social platforms such as Facebook, Meebo, OpenSocial and the iPhone by sharing services and widgets and came away impressed with its focus on ease of use and belief in a new development process.  zembly is working to create a social setting for developers to share components between applications a “wiki for live, editable code that is more than just about trivial widgets, but rather about full-fledged social applications that can tap into the social graph and reach millions of users”.
 
Applications are written in javascript, rely on a widget / web service development model, and have an extensive architecture for securely managing developer credentials so that you can share outbound service calls without sharing your credentials.  These widgets and services can be shared, or cloned (forked) from other developers and carry a full change log with them, so you can freeze your dependencies to a given version.  The system makes source control and component sharing simpler for the uninitiated than tools like Git and Subversion that can be difficult to learn.
 
zembly hopes that network effects will kick in, as the service will be most successful if users trust others on the system, and share components freely - something that has been hard to accomplish even in large corporate development teams.  If successful, it will be this feature that distinguishes zembly from Google App Engine and other competitors.

Despite these concerns, as someone who sometimes needs a little peer pressure and social support to get started on development projects, I’ll be following zembly as they build out their community-oriented features and work to deliver on their promise to wiki-fy web development, and I’ll be looking forward to sharing code with friends online.

Provider of the leading enterprise open source portal, today announced that Sun Microsystems will formally be joining the Liferay open source community and will continue to contribute to the development of Liferay Portal.

Sun’s participation in Liferay’s community will result in enhanced development of enterprise Web 2.0 features and optimized performance for Liferay Portal in combination with Sun’s family of products.

Sun and Liferay plan to separately market and sell products and services based on their collaboration. Sun plans to use core elements of Liferay Portal 5.0 as the foundation for Sun’s next generation web development and collaboration platform.

In addition, Liferay will continue to offer the full suite of professional services and support for all platforms it already offers its customers.

“Sun’s participation in Liferay’s community is an indication of our community’s strength and the quality of the software we’ve produced,” said Bryan Cheung, Liferay’s CEO. “Our commitment to open standards means Liferay easily integrates with the Sun family of products. We are pleased that Sun has chosen to participate with us in building great software to serve our communities.”

“Collaborating and innovating with the Liferay community is an exciting project as we develop the right Web 2.0 tools and technologies for participants in the Network Economy,” said Karen Tegan Padir, Vice President of engineering, Software Infrastructure, Sun Microsystems.

“It’s clear that open source is the right approach and the communities that create them are increasingly interconnected and play a role in next generation platforms.”

The Malaysian government may appear to favour the use of the ODF (OpenDocument Format), with plans to adopt the standard in its ICT deployment, but Microsoft has been able to convince a growing number of Malaysian IT companies and independent software vendors (ISVs) to incorporate OOXML (Office Open XML) into their offerings.

Developed by Microsoft, OOXML is a close rival to the ODF, which is championed by open-source vendors and major IT houses such as IBM and Sun.

ODF has a first-mover advantage, having gained certification from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) while OOXML is still seeking approval from the global standards organisation.

Microsoft’s document format, however, had received a much-needed boost when European standards body Ecma International ratified it in December 2006.

Microsoft’s latest success story in Malaysia comes from Tradenex.com, the IT arm of the Federal of Malaysian Manufacturers which represents over 2,000 manufacturing and industrial service companies.

Familiarity breeds adoptionTradenex.com last month launched nexCONNECT, an electronic business collaboration platform that links suppliers, distributors, logistics and financial institutions via the web. The Microsoft .Net-based system will incorporate OOXML as one of its standards.

The platform is targeted at small to medium-sized enterprises with limited budget and IT capabilities to invest in leading-edge technology to support their business.

“This will allow users to interact with nexCONNECT in the familiar Microsoft office environment [encompassing products such as] Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office 2007, that they are so used to, with the aim to simplify its usage and adoption,” said Soon Koi Voon, chief executive of Tradenex.com, at the recent launch of nexCONNECT.

Asked why OOXML was preferred over the ODF, Soon said the decision was based on commercial realities. He estimated that over 90 percent of companies ran their operations using Microsoft Office and the Windows platform.

The Malaysian government may appear to favour the use of the ODF (OpenDocument Format), with plans to adopt the standard in its ICT deployment, but Microsoft has been able to convince a growing number of Malaysian IT companies and independent software vendors (ISVs) to incorporate OOXML (Office Open XML) into their offerings.

Developed by Microsoft, OOXML is a close rival to the ODF, which is championed by open-source vendors and major IT houses such as IBM and Sun.

ODF has a first-mover advantage, having gained certification from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) while OOXML is still seeking approval from the global standards organisation.

Microsoft’s document format, however, had received a much-needed boost when European standards body Ecma International ratified it in December 2006.

Microsoft’s latest success story in Malaysia comes from Tradenex.com, the IT arm of the Federal of Malaysian Manufacturers which represents over 2,000 manufacturing and industrial service companies.

Familiarity breeds adoptionTradenex.com last month launched nexCONNECT, an electronic business collaboration platform that links suppliers, distributors, logistics and financial institutions via the web. The Microsoft .Net-based system will incorporate OOXML as one of its standards.

The platform is targeted at small to medium-sized enterprises with limited budget and IT capabilities to invest in leading-edge technology to support their business.

“This will allow users to interact with nexCONNECT in the familiar Microsoft office environment [encompassing products such as] Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office 2007, that they are so used to, with the aim to simplify its usage and adoption,” said Soon Koi Voon, chief executive of Tradenex.com, at the recent launch of nexCONNECT.

Asked why OOXML was preferred over the ODF, Soon said the decision was based on commercial realities. He estimated that over 90 percent of companies ran their operations using Microsoft Office and the Windows platform.