R2Integrated

Made it to Vegas for DNN OpenForce 08. R2i has an exhibit and two speakers this year. Big difference from last year is the number of DNN vendors exhibiting (AppTheory, Data Springs, Active Modules, IowaDeveloperGroup, SeaBlink, Engage, and PowerDNN) plus DNN Corp. had a large booth. The first day started off with the DNN keynote from Shaun Walker. He had several major announcements:

Two of the giants in RIA, Microsoft and Adobe, had major releases over the past 2 weeks: Adobe Flash Player 10 and Microsoft Silverlight 2.  Microsoft is promoting some recent worldwide usage results stating that one in four consumers have installed Silverlight. Compare this to over 95% adoption of Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft still has a way to go.

A hot topic in web development today is technology and how it is being implemented into websites. Long gone are the days of the simple HTML-based site. Today's online properties need to integrate, syndicate and be much smarter than those of the past.

More and more organizations are utilizing multiple tech platforms "mashed" into a single site. It can begin with a core CMS platform (either a Microsoft-based solution or a LAMP-based system) and utilize CRM integration, such as SalesForce forms that feed directly from the site to a client's sales CRM.  Or, a site could use an association- based system, such as Avectra, to build all the registration and dynamic calendars for a corporate event. The site may pull an API or web services from other home-grown, 3rd party systems. Add to that the syndication of content and usage of data feeds.

The Darker Ages

The root of all social networking behavior is to reduce risk when making decisions that affect our lives.   We reduce this risk by reaching out to like-minded peers for advice, insight, or a record of their past experience.   Everyone has their own personal and professional network.  At times, we try to extend this network to others by first going to our original network and then asking if they can point us in the direction of someone that can help.  This advice-seeking behavior has been around for quite some time, before the telegraph, telephone, or internet for that matter.  Humans do not like to make decisions in isolation; we always want to know if someone that came before us had a successful approach that we can use.  After all, why “reinvent the wheel”, right?

In today’s budding digital universe the critical question is this:
Are you ever really finished developing your corporate website? 

Are you ever truly done designing? Adding and updating content? Maintenance? The day you re-launch your site is also the day you continue to improve it, to monitor it and to enhance it. Designing or redesigning your website is only one component in the process. When your website goes live, you must ask yourself this:  What am I going to do next?

Everyone is a now a photographer right? Between inexpensive digital cameras and mobile devices with GPS, your ability to take pictures anytime from anywhere has never been more prevalent. We are now able to annotate, crop, print and publish these with tools so they look highly professional. So what else do you need? Microsoft Live Labs has the answer: Photosynth.  Photosynth combines your images into a 3-D perspective, giving you impressive multi-dimensional and deep zoom views that will revolutionize the industry. Released as a BETA to high acclaim over a year ago for viewing, Photosynth was released...

Who is not watching the Olympics? Want to see real time videos and playback some great moments? NBC Olympics is the central media hub for all of the latest news, schedule, scores, images and video. The site is also a great way to see Adobe and Microsoft RIA technologies playing together in the sandbox!  

 (Part One of a series)
 
One of the things that I like do when analyzing a Web service is looking at its architecture. Not so much how the engineers have designed the databases or chose a programming framework, but the architecture of the published information.

For example, I know that blogs are unique in how they organize content.  Posts are published in reverse chronological order and sorted by categories.  Readers can leave comments and trackbacks signal that someone else found the post interesting enough to write about it.

Not certain if it was the great lunch or the topic but the Digital Publishing Conference presentation was very well attended by over half the participants of the entire conference.  Judging by the feedback after the conference it was the topic that had people excited. Less than 10% of the audience knew about RIA and 5% were actually using the technology. 

During the presentation we threw out the old school PowerPoint method and introduced a Flex based RIA that gives the History, What is RIA, Uses and Considerations. Think of it as RIA 101.  Click here to view and play the presentation!