Thursday, July 29, 2010 Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey   To the President of Syria, Mr. and Mrs. Bashar al-Assad Mr. and Mrs. President Bashar al-Assad: At the tender age of 17 months my severely ill daughter Sofia, an American citizen, was abducted by her mother on Monday, July 26, in Istanbul, Turkey, and taken to Syria. Fox News: ▸ video ▸ story I was informed yesterday by Sofia's mother that she will not be coming back to the United States nor will she allow Sofia to return home. Sofia has been diagnosed with a severe medical condition that requires immediate treatment in the United States. It was scheduled to start on July 27, 2010, in New Jersey, the day after her abduction and was supposed to last until she reaches the age of 3. Any delay in the urgently needed treatment will result in a life-long disability for Sofia and make her dependent for the whole of her a... (more)

OpenStack Hits First Milestone

Three months after publicly starting down the road to imprint its NDA on the cloud by establishing a large-scale open source cloud platform called OpenStack free for anybody to use, Rackspace Hosting, its BFF NASA and a reportedly growing OpenStack community made their first official code drop Thursday. The milestone is called Austin - they're doing this alphabetically so presumably they have a ways to go - and it includes the all-important Amazon EC2-challenging OpenStack Compute provisioning engine that's supposed to blend the best of the Rackspace Cloud Servers widgetry that underlies its public cloud offering with NASA's own home-made Nebula cloud platform. OpenStack Compute, which has commanded most of the work these last few months, is the engine that provisions virtual machines complements of either Xen or KVM and basically supplies the glue that holds a clo... (more)

Where Are RIA Technologies Headed in 2008?

I am always being told off by i-technologists for quoting Picasso as having said that computers are useless. But I still love his reasoning? "Because they can only give you answers." Picasso, like AJAXWorld Magazine, liked questions. So we thought we would share with you what some of the world's leading rich Internet application pioneers are thinking may be the next questions that we need to see answered. From that readers can themselves infer where AJAX is headed. What are the top questions to ask next about AJAX? Eric Miraglia of Yahoo! 1.  (From March'08) How do I calculate the ROI of building my RIA on the iPhone SDK vs using AJAX? 2.  How do I assess the performance of my app and decide what to do next to make it faster?  3.  When it comes to accessibility, how do I know what's required of me for my rich web apps?  Beyond what's required, what makes good business se... (more)

Create Free Web Player with Moyea PlayerBox

On October 13, 2009, Moyea Software announced Moyea PlayerBox 2.0 with more advanced settings. You can now present the output player by the free edition of Moyea PlayerBox to your personal site or blog without obvious text watermark. With Moyea PlayerBox 2.0, you can zoom in and out player, place player components automatically and set playlist text settings. It is free to create player with Moyea PlayerBox 2.0 and publish video with the player on your website. Unlike the older version with default hyperlink on the video screen and text watermark on the top-left corner of the player, Moyea PlayerBox 2.0 does not include these obvious limitations on the output player. The free edition allows you to publish your own design player for non-commercial usage. More user-friendly functions are available on Moyea PlayerBox 2.0. There is zoom function to enlarge and reduce pl... (more)

The Darker Sides Of Cloud Computing: Security and Availability

SYS-CON Events announced today that Dr. Guy Bunker of Symantec Corporation will present at the upcoming Cloud Computing Expo Europe (www.cloudexpo-europe.com) May 18-19, 2009, in Prague, Czech Republic, the first industry-leading international Cloud Computing event outside the USA. Dr. Guy Bunker is a Distinguished Engineer at Symantec Corporation. He works in the office of the CTO, responsible for various pieces of technical strategy across the company. Currently an active member of the Enterprise Privacy Group and the Jericho Forum, he holds a PhD in Artificial Neural Networks from King’s College London, several patents, and is a Chartered Engineer with the IET. The Darker Sides Of Cloud Computing: Security and Availability Cloud computing offers a fantastic opportunity to businesses of all sizes. However, there are pitfalls that no-one wants to talk about. This s... (more)

Adobe Flash Media Server on iPhone

Modulation Index, LLC announced  that the Tuner2 Hi-Fi Radio app for Apple iPhone is the first ever iPhone application to natively support the true RTMP protocol for streaming audio via Adobe Flash Media Server. Radio stations can now use a single standard streaming format to serve MPEG-4 HE AAC v2 audio to listeners on Windows, Mac, and Apple iPhone. In addition, Modulation Index announced that this functionality is also available immediately to all station customers taking delivery of customized versions of its iPhone radio app. The Tuner2 Hi-Fi Radio app for Apple iPhone is a custom version of the Modulation Index iPhone radio app. By supporting MPEG-4 HE AAC v2 audio delivered over Adobe Flash Media server protocol, the Tuner2 Hi-Fi Radio app enables a listening experience with more stability and higher audio quality than the more typical MP3 or HE AAC v1 over ... (more)

My Three iPhone Predictions For 2010

iPhone Summit at Cloud Expo Yeah, it's this time of the year. Again. Making predictions is so tempting... This year I'll cover just the iPhone. 1. Apple will let Flash Player on iPhone no later than October ’10. They don’t have a choice, if they want to stay competitive. Enough of a crippled Web browser already. 2. ActionScript won’t kill, but will seriously damage Objective-C as the language of choice for development of iPhone applications. The programs written in ActionScript will be a lot more entertaining and engaging than today's iPhone applications. 3. The next version of the Droid phone will be so cool, that I’ll switch from iPhone / AT&T; to Droid/Verizon. Verizon’s phone service is clearly better. I just need a modern device. Lots of people in the USA will do the same. Should I put the money where my mouth is and purchase some VZ stocks? OK. Two more. Not exa... (more)

Notes of a Traveling Contract Trainer

Over the course of my career, I've been running lots and lots of training classes on software development. I still do. Teaching software takes 15 - 20% of what I do for a living - the rest is work on real-world projects.  These days I mostly teach Java and Adobe Flex courses, but it's like riding a bicycle - if you know how to do it, you can ride any bike, really. The last two months were unusually training-heavy and I've been on the road most of the time. Training is the best way to market the services that you or your company has to offer. other professional services. Usually, I run training for the clients of our company, but once in a while training firms need a contract trainer for a week, and I consider these gigs too - spending a week in the classroom with professional developer may bring you some development work in the future. Hence I usually don't reject a... (more)

Adobe Anticipates Adobe-Macromedia Transaction Will Close in Fall 2005

Adobe announced that the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday declared effective the registration statement on Form S-4 containing the joint proxy statement/prospectus that will be mailed on or about July 22, 2005 to Adobe stockholders of record as of July 19, 2005. All Adobe stockholders of record as of July 19, 2005 are entitled to vote on the transaction. Adobe stockholders are urged to read the joint proxy statement/prospectus as it contains important information regarding the proposed merger. Adobe anticipates that the transaction will close in Fall 2005, subject to approvals by Adobe and Macromedia stockholders, appropriate regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of other closing conditions. Adobe presently describes itself as "the world's leading provider of software solutions to create, manage and deliver high-impact, reliable digital content" a cl... (more)

SYS-CON Launches Chinese, Korean, and French Editions of MXDJ at MAX Conference

SYS-CON Media launched the "flash paper" versions of its popular magazine MXDJ - Macromedia Developer's Journal's "Studio 8 Focus Issue"  today at the MAX Conference in California. MXDJ's special issue was printed and distributed in French, Korean, Traditional Chinese, and Standard Chinese languages, in addition to its original English version. As of today, MXDJ readers around the world can now access this issue in five different languages. SYS-CON is also ofering special subscription options to both MXDJ and CFDJ - ColdFusion Developer's Journal at their booth during the MAX Conference. MXDJ readers can now  access the flash paper version of the magazine in all the languages mentioned above free of charge at MXDJ's Website. Read MXDJ's "Studio 8" focus issue in English Read MXDJ's "Studio 8" focus issue in French Read MXDJ's "Studio 8" focus issue in Korean Read M... (more)

Beyond 'Request-Response' Modes of Web Services

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) services today are going mainstream. Corporate executives and individuals at home are demanding access to many of the same GIS capabilities previously used only by engineers, geologists, and government officials. ESRI's ArcWeb Services are at the forefront of expanding demand for interactive GIS applications. Using subscription-based Web mapping APIs, developers can integrate mapping, GIS functionality, and content into applications delivered online or on desktops, handheld computers, and other devices. Every day, ArcWeb Services serves more than 6 million mapping requests, helping companies manage commercial fleets, analyze demographic data to spot trends, map locations, and execute other requests. As the reach of GIS expands, new approaches are needed to develop Web services that are more intuitive, interactive, and visually en... (more)