So I installed this wordpress app and this my first post using/testing it.it is also supposed to support offline mode which is great for ipod Touch users like me!

I am looking forward to using this to blog during my commute to and from work. Right now I am hoping it works when I tap on publish

We have lately been seeing a few interesting developments in the area of Software-as-a-service (SaaS). Though the concept has been around for a while, what has really brought focus to this area is Amazon’s offering of cloud computing, Hardware-as-a-service and SimpleDB, which is essentially Database-as-a-Service (DaaS), as discussed here.

Recently, LongJump.com, a California based company, announced it’s Database-as-a-Service offering. This has been built using Java layer on top of MySql database that exposes REST and SOAP based APIs to store, access and manipulate data. They also provide a web based administrative console that let’s users model the data and create data access policies and validation.

From users’ point of view, this takes away the complexities associated with having a database infrastructure, DBA, monitoring and so on. This is great news for smaller firms and startups who would rather like to focus on building the core functionality and time to market instead of handling these peripheral issues.

More companies entering this field is a great news. I think once these offerings start to mature, the next big thing in SaaS model will be to create standards (something like Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), for example) that would let users change the providers without having to change code, but these technologies have to go a long way and prove that this model works before this becomes a serious issue. I don’t really think big firms are going to be interested in these products anytime soon, but they sure could be a boon for smaller firms.

What’s your view on the potential of Database-as-a-service offerings? Do you think they are here to stay?

Found a good video on Semantic Web that was worth sharing.

Amazon said that MacBook was the highest selling computer this holiday season. In fact 3 Mac models have made it to the top 10 list this time. This must be a great news for Apple and for the first time today Apple’s stocks crossed $200.

However, as Macs get more and more popular, I think it may possibly cause some sort of problem for Apple in future.

One of the important factors why many buy Macs is their urge to be different, to not follow the crowd and so on… With so many Macs that we see around us, a Mac owner’s sense of having an unique product is going to diminish. So this may be a problem for Apple, though it’s a problem that they would like to have!

What’s your opinion on the impact of Mac’s popularity on future sales? Do you think your Mac buying decision gets affected by the fact that there are many people who own Mac around you?

We recently heard about “w00t” being chosen the word of the year by Merriam-Webster. Now “Facebook” has been added to the Collins English Dictionary.

This has been added both as a noun meaning “a popular social networking web site” and a verb that means to search someone’s profile. In fact the Collins guys are so impresed by Facebook that they have even added another meaning to the word pimp, it says that to “pimp” one’s profile is “to make one’s profile page on a social networking site appear more attractive by adding graphics, video, music, etc”.

So now that it’s part of English dictionary, it’s grammatically correct to “facebook your friend”. In fact since the verb simply means to search someone’s profile, it seems even a sentence like “I was facebooking my friend on MySpace” should also be correct . Similarly, it’s probably no more a taboo for someone to say that he wants to be a pimp, since it may simply mean that he wants to be a good graphic designer?

Given the trend of words like w00t and Facebook making it to the dictionary, I am wondering if MySpace and Orkut are going to be soon added as synonyms of Facebook :).

I often don’t look at the screen of my GPS since voice instructions are more than enough (I made sure the GPS tells the street names before buying it). In fact looking at that small screen while driving can’t be comfortable to anyone in my opinion. But what if you don’t like to listen to the voice either to figure out which turns to take? Sounds impossible? Not anymore…

A New Jersey based company is launching a product called “Virtual Cable”, that uses laser and a set of lenses to project a 3-D line in front of the drive showing which route and turns to take in order to reach the destination! The projected line seems as though it’s really over the road in front of the driver, so all the driver needs to do is to follow the line.

The company tells that it can either be pre-installed for around $400, or can be integrated with existing GPS in the car.

Here is a video showing how it looks. Pretty cool to say the least!

As all of us know, an application comprises broadly of 3 tiers, the presentation, the business tier and the database. The Web 2.0 phenomenon has had a huge impact on the way applications are designed and developed. The most obvious changes are on the presentation layer because that’s what’s visible, but the business tier has also seen major changes, mainly in terms of exposing data as API, RSS feeds etc in order to open-up the closed data and making it ready for reuse.

However, what hasn’t changed so much is the database layer. All the new Web 2.0 features are still built on top of existing relation database, be it Oracle, MySql, Sybase or any other similar product. In fact, even before Web 2.0 phenomenon kicked in, there were huge changes to the way applications are written (use of object oriented languages for example), but database layer has pretty much remained oblivious to all these developments over the last couple of decades. To be precise, companies like Oracle have been working hard to introduce some features that make database programming closer to object oriented paradigm, but I think most would agree that fundamentally RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) hasn’t changed a lot. The object oriented database approach tried to address this, but it wasn’t popular mainly because of mixing objects (which belong to business tier) with data layer, rather immature object query languages and performance issues.

RDBMS offers a lot of rich functionality which are not easy to replace with anything that’s available today. However, there are situations when the complex nature of RDBMS can actually lead to more cost especially if someone does not want to use all the advanced feature it offers. Amazon’s recent launch of SimpleDB is targeting such users and trying to fundamentally change the way data is managed and requested using Database-as-service paradigm.

The SimpleDB let’s you store data in “domains”. The domains can store information about an item as attribute than can have multiple values, so that does not exactly fit into thinking in terms of row/column that we are used to. Also, it let’s you store different set of attributes for different items, which kind of translates to having different number of columns for different rows in the conventional tables - it sure is going to take a while before people get used to it.

Amazon indexes the data behind the scene to make the search faster. The querying supports parameters like =, !=, <, > <=, >=, STARTS-WITH, AND, OR, NOT, INTERSECTION AND UNION.

In its current state, I don’t think any big enterprise will seriously consider this option but it can be quite lucrative for small businesses and startups. It takes away all the pains of acquiring hardware, hosting clustered RDBMS, hiring database administrators and high cost associated with all this. Amazon is offering data storage at $1.50 per GB per month with additional costs for bandwidth and CPU usage, but overall it’s definitely much cheaper than conventional options and it let’s companies to scale up as and when they need it! SimpleDB combined with Amazon S3 (for storing large chunks of un-indexed data) offers a very cost effective and scalable data storage solutions for small firms. This product seems very well planned and integrated with their other Software(and Hardware)-as-service offerings.

As the name suggests, it’s “simple” but I feel it still can have far reaching effect on how people think about managing and accessing data. This will also get many brains thinking about alternatives to conventional RDBMS and I think that’s great news!

What’s your take on this alternative to conventional databases?

Google yesterday has made public it’s intention about ‘knol’ - a word that apparently stands for a ‘unit of knowledge’ (though not sure in which language). It let’s people author articles on any subject and let’s them add the content to internet. Once you author an article (hopefully on a subject that you are expert at), other users can review the article, rate it, comment on it or edit it. Besides this, if you let google add it’s ads next to your article, google also displays those ads on your article page and any revenue that these ads generated will be shared with you - though I’m not sure how much of it will be shared with you

Now, you might ask, how different is this from wikipedia except for the ad based revenue sharing program. The striking difference is that you will be named and displayed as the auothor of the article that you have authored - unlike wikipedia where in the author is unknown. So, if you earn good points from many reviewers people tend to start believing in what you write there - a great credit for all the work you have done

Obviously, this news has made it to each and every tech website that maintains up-to-date information in the industry. It raised a lot of buzz in just a day. Already people are talking about the impending dooms-day for wikipedia. But will that happen - is the next big question. If it were not for google, I’m sure there’d have been a less buzz for something like this. But since it’s google - which is good at keeping things simple - I’m sure people have started showing a lot of interest.

If at all it’s a threat to any website, to me, it appears to be a more threat for about.com than for wikipedia. About.com has almost a similar methodology where in they have experts writing articles on subjects on a wide range of topics. They attribute articles to an author so that one can assess the reliability of the article (though a lot of it depends on how well you know author). They also have a lot of ads displayed next to the article. On the other hand, wikipedia has enmassed a hell lot of stuff. For that matter, this link takes you to a page for ‘knol’ on wikipedia. And I’m sure a lot of people in the near future will keep adding stuff to it before google starts opening up this platform to the public. The biggest question is how will google catch up with all the information that wikipedia has enmassed over a period of time. Another question is - is knol going to be useful for users who can’t read/write in English.

To me it appears to be a decent effort but a little late - because there’s already a lot of information on wikipedia and on many blogging sites available across the world. To assimilate all of this and put it in one single place is an ambitious effort.

Let’s wait and see the future of knol - if it can unitize knowledge in to something - BTW, how are units of knowledge measured? Any take?

In the first part of the series (Choose right tools for your blogging needs), we discussed a few factors that can help you decide which blogging tool is right for you. In this post I am going to share my experiences and views on building a good user interface.

All of us of heard that “Content is the king”. It sure is, but the user interface plays a big role in creating a good first impression and in ensuring the the visitors have a pleasant experience while they stay on your site. In fact, if the UI is annoying then visitors may not come back to your site, no matter how great the content is. So here are some best practices and guidelines that you should consider while designing your web pages.

1. Keep the web page easy to read. Don’t use flashy colors, too much flash content or unreadable fonts. The importance of readability can’t be overstated!
2. Don’t hard code font size so that user can increase/decrease them based on their personal preference (Firefox really makes it easy using Ctrl+/-). Use percentage or “em” to specify font size.
3. See how your page looks like on lower resolution machines (go down to at least 1024×768). Keep the main content area not too wide, or else it will force users to use horizontal scroll bar to read the content.
4. Show as much content as possible with least amount of clicks/screens to go through. Use simple links instead of drop down menus which aren’t visible until someone clicks the link.
5. Don’t get too “smart” with javascript. Don’t open any new window or popups. Don’t do anything that let’s user think he is not in control while visiting your website.
6. Don’t use any fancy browser/CSS features that may not be cross browser compatible - you never know which browser your visitors are using. Looking at the traffic report of my websites I am often surprised to see people using browser version which are more than 3 years old.
7. Don’t put Ads at the cost of readability if you’re in it for long term and if you expect some sort of user loyalty!
8. Have the entire site mobile friendly, or if that’s difficult at least have a mobile friendly landing page for your website. Given the trends, there will be significant percentage of page views originating from mobiles in not so distant future.
9. Separate content from Presentation; get a good grip on CSS. In my experience you’d end up changing the layout, colors etc quite often (at least initially). The more you rely on CSS to control the look and feel, the easier will it be to make these changes without affecting your UI templates and themes.
10. Another good one to keep your user interface flexible: use Widgets where ever possible - most of the blogging tools support this. Both the sidebars on the right on this web page are completely created using widgets so I can, for example, move the Ads in the left sidebar to right by just dragging it to the right sidebar on the widgets control panel of Wordpress. Same is true for “Like this Blog”, Category and anything else that appears on the sidebars (Let me know if you want source code for the widget showing Ads - I wrote this one to randomly show either Google or Chitika ads and wrapped it inside a widget so that it’s easy to move around).

There are many more than come to mind, but I thought these are quite important to consider. I would like to hear what your views are on user interface design and if you like add items to this list.

In the next post in this series, I will cover my experience with promoting your content and website in general. Until then, Happy Blogging!

LinkedIn announced what they call “LinkedIn Intelligent Application Platform” earlier today. The platform will offer 2 ways to integrate with LinkedIn: first by using their APIs to build widgets than can augment the functionality of an existing site and secondly by building the application that gets hosted on LinkedIn website using OpenSocial API.

As of now there aren’t many details available about the platform there isn’t much that developer can start working on. This announcement is just to let their intentions and plans reach wider audience. The only tangible thing I came across was this screen shot showing a BusinessWeek application that identifies those people appearing in the article who are on your contact list.

One striking difference to LinkedIn’s approach to hosting application from that of Facebook (apart from OpenSocial support of course) is that they are going to have complete control over the kind of applications that get hosted on the website. This is quite different from Facebook’s model of registering any kind of application and just letting Facebook know where your application is hosted. So no Vampire bites or Food Fight permitted

This no-so-open platform is actually something they need if they want LinkedIn to be a leader in business and professional networking. Here is what their blog site says for those willing to write applications using this platform:

… to get involved with the Intelligent Application Platform either for APIs, widgets, or hosted applications, send us an e-mail to developers@linkedin.com telling us what you want to build and what you need to build it.

However, using the API in another application in order to get access to user’s contacts, profile etc should be available without any restriction.

Here is a video showing a short interview with Lucian Beebe, Director of Product Management at LinkedIn about this launch.

Over the past few months, I have spent a lot of time setting up this website, choosing softwares to use, customizing the look and feel of site, researching how to publicize (and potentially monetize) the website content and so on. So I am planning to do a small series of posts sharing with all of you things that I discovered/learnt in the process so that it can be put to use by more people, especially those who are new entrants to the blogosphere.

Assuming that you have already decided what area to blog on, the next thing you need to figure out is what are the right tools/platforms for you to choose in order to meet your blogging needs. This is what I am going to cover in this first post of the series.

Before you get started with blogging, you need figure this out first - should you use existing blog websites like blogger.com, wordpress.com or should you have your own website with self/customized installation of blogging software? There are certain advantages/disadvantages of both the approaches:

Option I : Hosting on sites like blogger or wordpress.com

Advantages

• It’s Free
• Get up and running in no time
• No technical expertise needed, no software to install
• No need to worry about security, backups
• The blogs are likely to be optimized for search engines
• The sites like blogger are hosted on robust load balanced infrastructure so it can take very high load

Disadvantages

• Enhancing the functionality of your website beyond what the blog provider offers is difficult
• Though sites like blogger and wordpress.com give you a lot of templates for user interface, there would be occasions when you’d feel you don’t have complete control over it
• Since entire blog setup is taken care of, you don’t get to know how it works behind the scenes

Option II : Self install on your own web host

Advantages

• Complete control over environment, infrastructure and hosting options. (Another positive side-effect of custom hosting is that you can use the website for more than just for blogging, but that’s slightly besides the point)
• Complete control over branding of the website
• If you choose a open source software like wordpress.org, you can modify it the way you like to add a feature that’s unique to your site!
• You can leverage plugins (and there are tons of them) to enhance and add additional functionality to your website
• You can decide when/how to backup your website
• Solutions like wordpress.org have great online community so if you need any advice or face any issue the help is not far away

Disadvantages

• You need to pay for hosting your website
• You need to have some technical experience in order to install the software, schedule backups, keep your site secure etc
• If your blog makes it to the front page of digg, that can generate enough traffic to affect the performance of your website

(Just to make sure that it’s not confusing - wordpress.com is a site that let’s users register and host their blogs - very similar to blogger.com, while wordpress.org is the site where you can download the open source “engine” that runs behind the scenes)
As you can see, there is no one solution that fits all. In a nutshell, the more control you want, more the reasons that you should consider having your own hosting, but only you can make that call.

For this website, I went for the opensource blogging software from wordpress.org, and so far I am really happy with it. Here are some benefits which make custom installation worth it:

• I can use plugins to enhance the features of the sites. There are tons of them available here for things like search engine optimization, generating sitemap, placing Ads on your website, better formatting, performance enhancements, backups, you name it!
• There are many great looking templates available at Wordpress theme directory. The theme that I use however is completely customized as per what I wanted it to look like.
• Since this is an open-source product, I have the option to modify the code as I like it. But the software is designed in such a way that in most cases I can add new features to it by either using existing plugins or writing my own like this one and then optionally sharing it with the community!
• One good side effect of handling things like search engine optimization, backups, customizing UI (i.e the things I would have gotten for free had I used blogger) is that it requires me sharpen some of my technical skills which can be beneficial in long run!

That said, I would again like to emphasize that you only can decide which option is best for you - there are no rights or wrongs here. Hope this post helps you decide which option is right for you.

In the next posts, I will put together my views on best practices for design/UI aspects of the blog, branding your website, publicizing your content and monetization opportunities. Until then, please do let me know your opinions and feedback on this post so that I can make the future posts in this series more informative.

Update: Other posts in this series:

Part II : Tips on Good User Interfae Design

Google yesterday released a chart API that let’s you create great looking charts on the fly using the data/set