Author Archives: Karl

What is ECM-SOA?

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EdLovesJava: ECM-SOA With Agile Attitude:

The first challenge is to think of our tooling as not a custom application, but more as a set of adaptable services, applications and integrations. This requires a change of thought.

Our previous efforts were to drop a monolithic application called a Content Manager into the middle of things, and then propose to change the business process around this application, ostensibly obsoleting the existing applications and ad-hoc processing to customizations within this new application.

During our previous attempt, we underwent a lengthy analysis phase and generated a 500 page requirements document detailing taxonomies, content types, work flows and templates that would solve our content management (web content management) needs. We then spent lots of time and treasure implementing these requirements. In the end, we built some of the requirements taking far longer and far more resources than anticipated, and we found that most the requirements and subsequently most of the customizations we built were wrong. The heroic content managers and brand managers made it work anyway, developing more ad-hoc, complicated and time consuming steps around yet another application that was supposed to help them. This story is not unique.

We must shift our processes as much as our technology. We are focusing on smaller efforts, more agility and more feedback and move away from 500 page requirements documents. To do this successfully, our architecture also needs to be agile and amenable to change. Our architecture must be a framework to grow on: to grow useful services, and to grow and integrate with useful applications. It must follow user demand that learns from using and refining our processes and tools.

Javascript links for September 8, 2009

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Ian J Cottee: Rhino on OS X Leopard

peter.michaux.ca: Server-Side JavaScript with Rhino and Jetty

gorilla3d.com: Programming Java With JavaScript

Steve Yegge: Code’s Worst Enemy

John Resig: Bringing the Browser to the Server (hmmm, jQuery on Rhino?)

YouTube: Google I/O 2008: Steve Yegge on Server Side JavaScript (transcript and slide links):

benne: On-the-fly JavaScript syntax checking in Emacs

Patrick Hunlock: Essential Javascript (nice tutorial)

The UNIX Way

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Kas Thomas of CMS Watch riffs on “The UNIX Way”, principals summarized by Mike Gancarz:

1. Small is beautiful.
2. Make each program do one thing well.
3. Build a prototype as soon as possible.
4. Choose portability over efficiency.
5. Store data in flat text files.
6. Use software leverage to your advantage.
7. Use shell scripts to increase leverage and portability.
8. Avoid captive user interfaces.
9. Make every program a filter

Read the whole piece.

Labor Day links

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Salon.com: Who are the wealth creators?:

Material production is only one of many activities that enrich a society. Public goods like safety and utilities and infrastructure and parks are part of the wealth that we share in common. So are many private goods that sometimes are best provided by the public, like public education and inexpensive healthcare.

By all means, then, let us celebrate virtuous capital owners and visionary investors as “wealth creators” on Labor Day. And let us celebrate as well as the other creators of private wealth, on the assembly line and in the office cubicle and in the janitorial closet, and the creators of public wealth in the form of roads and subways and parks, and the police officers and soldiers without whom a high level of public and private wealth could neither be created nor preserved. There are criminals and parasites among all classes of society, but most of us are wealth creators, and we deserve to be recognized as such.

FT.com: US families turn to food stamps as wages drop

NYTimes: Surge in Homeless Pupils Strains Schools

Change.org: 5 Things You Absolutely Must Know About Homelessness

True Homeless Stories: HearMyStory.org

(via Susie Madrak)

Hope you had a good Labor Day!

Questions regarding Inquirer and Daily News plans to charge readers of their websites

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I was contacted by someone who teaches journalism for my thoughts on Daily News and Inquirer plans to charge readers – how they might affect local bloggers who often link, comment, or refer to the news from those online publications. He asked three difficult questions.

  • Q: Do you plan to pay for your local Philadelphia online news?
    A: It counts upon how much it costs and what if offers. I hope they pursue a NPR-like membership model instead of putting up a paywall. In the end, it counts upon the value offered.
  • Q: Will you link to articles that your readers will have to pay to read?
    A: Not if behind a paywall. I will find free alternatives to link to (KYW1060, TV station websites,
    national news sources, and especially local independent sources).
  • Q: Any general reactions to how you think this will affect what you do and what other local bloggers do?
    A: Local blogging will not be effected all that much believe it or not. There are many free alternatives. What is of concern is that we are becoming less and less informed as a people. At a time when we need *more* exposure to the work of the the Inquirer and Daily News, there will be less. That’s tragic.

I have to add that my hopes are that the papers remain local and that the bankruptcy proceedings are favorable to the local ownership. While I may disagree on paywalls, I feel that the news organizations within the papers stand the best chance at survival that way.

Thank you Les Paul (and Les Paul’s mom)

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Les Paul passed away last week, and I just wanted to post this little piece of thanks and to share something about his story that I had heard before, but seems extra relevant to my personal exploration into education and how we learn – his childhood music teacher told his mom, “Your boy, Lester, will never learn music.” (NYTimes).

Yep. You read that right.

It sounds like his mom enabled him to keep at it. Read the entire NYTimes story. Not only did she enable him to continue to pursue music, it sounds like she empowered him to look at his entire house as a creative pallet. And he did. Minnesota Public Radio’s blog, “Trial Balloon” went so far as to say that “Les Paul’s Mom Invented Rock & Roll”. It’s hard to argue that.

Beyond empowering him, enabling him to continue when some indicated he had no talent was huge. Perseverance clearly became a core part of his story going forward, dealing with a car crash that would have eliminated his capability to play (he had his arm fused in position to be able to still do so), dealing with painful arthritis in his hands (he adjusted his playing style). He would cope with a myriad of life’s ups and downs and in doing so left so many gifts for the world.

Think about it. And think about how the world was changed because Les Paul believed in trying and trying again.

Psychology Today, “Les Paul, Skills, and Abilities”.

NPR: Guitar Legend And Innovator Les Paul Dies

NYTimes: “Les Paul, Guitar Innovator, Dies at 94”

The Wrap: Obit: Guitar Hero Les Paul.

Gibson: The World Has Lost a Remarkable Innovator and Musician: Les Paul Passes Away at 94