EngBszFi2007's Weblog

Mashup

engbszfi2007 — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:12:18 +0000

At this post I will talk a little bit about what is a mashup and why they are so great. To create a new mashup you need a couple of APIs (application programming interfaces), maybe from providers like Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, YouTube and Google who provids APIs. All of these different companies are putting APIs on the internet which internet-developers can access. So let’s say you are an internet-developer and you access the API for where singles live in your neighborhood and you access the Google-Maps API and put them together, then you get a map that shows you where each of the singles live in your area. That’s a mashup because the developer is taking APIs from multiple websites, mash them together in a way that forms a new innovative application, that was never before on the web.

The ambition is that more APIs are provided on different websites and more of these APIs are taped by new innovative mashups. There are up to 20 new innovative mashups per day.

One of the reasons why they are growing so fast is that they are easy to develop. You don’t have to be a professional programmer to tab your creativity to create something innovative like a map of where all the singles in your place and you want to meet somebody. By the way, this mashup already exists from a company called frozenbear.

We have many of these mashups and a lot of new APIs are coming online all the time. Mashup is the fastest growing application ecosystem in the world today. The APIs are available to all developers. The more mashups are developed, the more users of the internet see them and more developers add new applications in the fast growing application ecosystem.

In a nutshell, this application ecosystem is growing very fast and becoming an important thing for programming new applications. It’s unimaginable to work without Mashups these days.

By Rüdiger Ziemelis

Cloud Computing

engbszfi2007 — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:10:42 +0000

Cloud Computing
Today Cloud Computing enjoys great popularity so I am going to tell you the pros and the cons of using this style of computing. First of all is this service an advantage for your administrator because he does not have to care about new updates and patches. This is the job of the provider so your administrator can save time. Furthermore you can save money using the service of cloud computing. Let me give you an example for using the „pay per use“-method. If you need software three times a year it will be more expensive to buy the full version than pay three times for the service. Another aspect is that you can save local recourses because you use the storages of the provider. Another huge advantage of cloud computing is mobility. You can work everywhere you want because you just need your login data and the internet to use the Cloud Computing offers.

As we can, see there are a lot of pros using Cloud Computing but remember that there are some disadvantages and risks, too. The precondition that you have access to the internet makes you dependent. This could be a problem especially if you do not have a fast connection. In this respect I am of the opinion that the internet is so popular in the whole world that you should not have internet problems to use Cloud Computing. Another problem is the security risk. You and your colleagues store your data on the server of the provider and you do not know what the provider does with your secret data. Maybe he sells them to a third person which would be dramatic for your company. I think the biggest disadvantage of cloud computing is the reliability of the provider. First, you do not know how certain the servers of the provider are. Further more, he could use your data for everything he wants to do without letting know you something about. Finally you should be most concerned about losing all your data!

Christian

The infiltration of the IK11

engbszfi2007 — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 10:51:36 +0000

During your travel to Munich, Kevin and I spent 3 days in the Ik11.

Our presence had quickly caused very suspicions in the class. In contrast to that, the first 2 Teachers didn´t realize that there were two
unusual students in their class.

So Kevin used the three days to work on his network-chat-application and I Improved my C# program skills and thought about interesting points for the java presentation.

Only the ABAB lesson of the Ik11 was quite different, especially because Mr. Kerler explained to me, how Abab works and showed some quite interesting exsamples.

Greetings Fabian

Make a new experience with Expression Blend!

engbszfi2007 — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 13:59:27 +0000

If you are interested in, creating professional web and desktop applications, then you should try Expression Blend from Microsoft.
You can create two types of applications with Expression Blend. XAML-based interfaces and Silverlight applications.

But why should you try Expression Blend?
Maybe you are bored about that many websites looking alike each other, and that functions like playing movies and 3D Designs are very
complicated to integrate. Microsoft has solved these problems and with Expression Web they provide a very mighty program to create very
good looking websites easily.

So if I you want to try Expression Blend you can download it for free with your MSDNAA Account from the Microsoft Server, and test
one of the Expression Bend versions.

o Expression Studio,
o Expression Web
o Expression Design (unfortunately not on the server)
o Expression Media (unfortunately not on the server)

Greetings Fabian

Rockbox – open source jukebox firmware

engbszfi2007 — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:36:52 +0000

Rockbox is an open source firmware for mp3 players from Archos, iRiver, Apple and iAudio. Rockbox is a complete new firmware and don’t use any fragments of the original firmware. AFAIK the original Firmware will not be overwritten. Only the alternate Firmware and a boot loader will be written on the mp3 player. I’m using Rockbox on my iPod Nano G1, other iPod Nano versions aren’t supported. But why should you use Rockbox instead of the original Firmware?
In the case of an Apple iPod Nano G1 with Rockbox, you are able to drag&drop you music, pictures, movies, or other files on the device and don’t need iTunes or an alternate tool. You are also able to use different themes, watching movies, which wasn’t able with the original firmware, and playing much games and even Doom!
With Rockbox nearly everything is possible to do.

Excursion

engbszfi2007 — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:04:36 +0000

In less than a month we will be in Munich for our class excursion. The last two days I’ve been looking for information about sights we could visit. Three of them I want to present you now.

The first possible sight is „Sea Life“, a very big underwaterworld with 10,000 animals of over 120 species (for example: sea turtle, sharks and ray species).
The visitors also learn something about environment protection.

The second possibility is the „Deutsche Museum“. It is one of the most popular and biggest science – technical museums of the world. It has an area of 50,000 qm. The ticket price of 3.00€ per student is very cheap.

The third and last possibility is the „Olympiaturm“. This is a 190 meters height viewing platform. You come upwards with a lift wich moves 7 meters per second. When you are on top of the viewing platform you can enjoy the view, drink something in a cafe (wich is very expensive) or visit the world’s highest rock museum.

These are my suggestions. Tomorow, I will tell you something about them in our English lesson in german.

Bye
Mischa

The role of the software architect

engbszfi2007 — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:11:22 +0000

This person leads the project technically. He should bring in own design decisions and he is responsible for implementing the requirements. He communicates to all stakeholders and coaches them. Furthermore he ensures the information flow and reviews others. He is a role model for the organization and he creates code guidelines. The software architect takes care of professionals inside and outside the company. He minds the community without having disciplinary rights. To become a software architect you should have experience in this job. As a precondition you should have worked for a long time in a software company as a senior developer and should have gained experience. A very important competence is to have a sense of the relevancy of a technology and a broad overview. His mindset is to be able to deal with the existing complexity and structure it.
Christian

Project Manager

engbszfi2007 — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:31:54 +0000

The responsibility of a project manager is high. The leader of the project has many areas of responsibility and should be fit in organizational matters. The skills and competencies must be very good to have the whole control from the beginning to the end.
The project manager has the task to keep an eye on the time schedule. The manager should always have in focus the project cost, the beginning and the end of the project.
There are some skills which are very important to be a project manager. It would be better that he was a developer so he can understand the process of software engineering. A good project manager should have some soft skills and some other important skills such as the knowledge of the software development process. You can learn these skills by having been a developer before. Also assertiveness and strictness counts to your strengths. Assertiveness is good to stay by your decisions and not to allow to be talked over. It’s important to find weak spots fast in the time period of the project, so the problem can be solved and the software can be improved. Additional a project manager should rely on his network without disciplinary rights on his colleagues, better you’d have communication skills. For a successful project it’s important to select the right process. Also it is advantageous to know how to improve the process itself constantly.

Kevin M.

The Software Architect

engbszfi2007 — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:13:50 +0000

Today I’m going to write about the role of the Software Architect.
I’m going to write about the responsibilities, skills, competences and the mindset.
A Software Architect is leading the project technically and so he communicates to all stakeholders and ensures the information flow.
He has to watch the consistency, having reviews and also the responsibility for implementing the requirements.
For sure the Software Architect has to bring his own design decisions.
To become a Software Architect you also have to have a lot of communications, analysis, networking and technical leadership skills.
Keep in mind that you’ll be a role model for the organization, so you have to come up with templates and coding guidelines, as head of R&D.
Also you should have different competences and knowledge.
Having experience in working as a Senior Developer and in modelling language design is necessary.
You should have a broad overview and see the big picture. Being good at writing will help you a lot, too.
Having a sense of the relevancy of a technology is elementary.
Be conscious that as a Software Architect you must be able to deal with high amount of complexity, that’s why you should have an urgent need to structure it.

Dmitrij

Senior Developer – The better junior

engbszfi2007 — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:11:35 +0000

The advanced version of a junior developer is the senior developer which needs a huge background and the ability to lead and to deal with complexity.
Three to five years after being a junior you should be able to become a senior.

There are lots of important skills you need when you want to become a senior developer.
At first, you have to lead and to coach other software developers to improve their skills.
Also you have the responsibility of a group of people which means that you need to work hard to get acceptable results.
It’s essential that you have the ability to abstract and to keep the survey of a project and you have to find solutions in larger context.
To be a communication hub is necessary which means that you could explain things according to different backgrounds.
In the end you also need social skills to communicate with other people like the project management or the customers.

It’s fundamental that you know how to do large scale design, also architectural patterns.
Furthermore you need a huge level of process knowledge so you could find improvements and optimize processes. You are the person who keeps a project running.

Finally, I guess, senior developer seems to be a role model for junior developers.

(Tim)