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Google Calendar: Finally, a search box that makes sense
I've been complaining for months about a usability problem with Google Calendar's default search behavior, so I figure I should document that it's finally been fixed. Ever since gCal introduced the concept of public calendars, hitting "enter" in the global search box has kicked off a trawl through the public-calendar database. Instead of searching MY OWN calendar for, say, my Aunt Donna's birthday, gCal instead searches public calendars of, like, sports schedules and Kazakhstanian bank holidays. Smart.
Now, though, that behavior seems to have been flipped. "Search My Calendars" is now the default action, while "Search Public Calendars" has become the secondary action. Bravo!
Topics: Google, Google calendar, Usability, user experience design
Google learns to crawl Flash
For a technology used to publish content on the internet, not being able to be properly indexed by search engines is a big snag. That is one of the first questions that is raised about Flash in any IT environment. The second one is how do you get around it. That might be about to change... Continue reading »
Google Health and the Changing Landscape of Healthcare Analytics
Google is at it again. Entire industries have sprung up around their search engine, adwords/adsense universe, and now they are set to do the same thing with healthcare data.
One of the major barriers to entry for companies offering services around processing healthcare data has been access to data. Who has the data? Typically the insurance companies. At least they have it in the kind of quantities that makes doing serious data analysis worthwhile. Managed care organizations are in second place, but from there you get to piddling amounts quickly. As you move from the heavily consolidated payer end of the industry to the heavily fragmented provider end, the comprehensive data view of the patient is balkanized to the point of uselessness.
This data problem even effects the valuation of companies. I've seen healthcare analytics companies that provide services to hospitals and clinics valued at less than $10 million, while another company that provides the exact same services to insurance firms is valued at ten times that price. Here, as in all things, follow the money.
Continue reading »
Topics: Google, Healthcare, Web 2.0
Recent Ajax Framework Releases/Developments
Some noteworthy Ajax Framework releases have come out in the last few weeks, along with some other news of interest:
- Ext JS 2.1 and Ext GWT 1.0 Beta - Better performance, new Slider, StatusBar components. REST support (support for other HTTP methods beyond POST and GET). The Ext GWT 1.0 Beta consummates the love affair between GWT (Google Web Toolkit) and Ext that was started by gwt-ext and MyGWT, but provides the comfort of knowing that it is supported by the Ext JS folks. Note: Ext GWT is pure GWT, not an Ext JS wrapper.
- Dojo 1.1 - First off, API compatibility between 1.0 and 1.1. Unified timing loop (ala Scriptaculous) for animation effects, with increased performance. Syntactic improvements to dojo.query. Unification of XHR functionality into dojo.xhr() function.
- Backbase Enterprise Ajax 4.2 - Backbase has been in the commercial framework game longer than almost anyone. Among the new features: hierarchical data bindings and improved performance. If you've wanted data binding for tree widgets, have a look.
- Google Search, Feed and Translation API - I opined a while back that Google discontinued their SOAP search API because they didn't want people reordering or otherwise manipulating their search results. Looking at the terms of use of the new REST service, you can see that this continues to be a concern: You agree that you will not, and you will not permit your users or other third parties to: (a) modify or replace the text, images, or other content of the Google Search Results, including by (i) changing the order in which the Google Search Results appear...
- Google App Engine - it only runs Python apps right now, and it's a preview release available to a select few, but you can already see that this is Google's challenge to Amazon's EC2 compute cloud. In at most a year, unless you are security sensitive -- health care, financial services -- or running on Windows, you won't be building and maintaining data centers. The capital requirements for launching sophisticated and scalable online services is about to change.
- Echo3 (beta) - it's getting close. Superior performance to Echo2. Easier development of new components. Automatic serialization of objects between client and server. All HTML rendering now done on client. Overall the JavaScript client code is now of a design quality on par with the server code.
Lots of exciting developments for Ajax developers and Web 2.0 entrepreneurs. I, for one, can't wait to see how the Google App Engine compares to EC2 for deploying and scaling Facebook applications.
Technorati Tags: ajax, dojo, google app engine, gwt, ext js, backbase, echo3, google search
Topics: Ajax Frameworks, Dojo, Echo2, Echo3, Ext JS, Facebook, Google, GWT, Javascript Libraries
Google Summer of Code 2008
Got an Open Source or Free software project? Want some young, eager college developers to give you a boost? Then you should check out the Google Summer of Code. The details:
Over the coming months we'll be working with open source and free software groups to select hundreds of student projects from thousands of applications. Then, during the summer, we'll distribute millions of dollars in stipends to the students cranking out the code. Our goal is to increase the world's supply of open source software while providing young programmers inspiring, meaningful summer jobs.
Since the first Google Summer of Code in 2005, the program has had remarkable success. Last year we connected 900 students with more than 130 open source mentoring groups, including such prominent organizations as Dojo, Python, Samba and Ubuntu. Several past students are still contributing to their projects and many are serving as mentors in this year's program. Meanwhile, similar programs are springing up all over, including the Finnish Summer Code Program, the GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program, the Season of Usability, and game publisher NCSoft's Winter of Code.
This year's Google Summer of Code promises to be the most successful we've ever held. We've extended the program timeline to allow students and mentors to discuss applications before settling in to write them, and we're continuing last year's tradition of announcing accepted applicants early to allow students more time to bond with their project communities.
We look forward to applications from organizations and students eager to participate. Applications for organizations open March 3 and close March 12; for students, applications open March 24 and close March 31. Coding will run from May 26 through August 18.
Note the appropriate use of the semicolon in the second-to-last sentence. 
We're thinking of gettin us one of them thar summer of code students for one of our own Open Source projects: RSH.
Technorati Tags: announcement, google, summer of code
Topics: Announcement, Google, Open Source
GWT Rolodex now at Google Code
Chris Jones was kind enough to move his GWT Rolodex widget over to Google Code. Looks like you no longer have to resize your own images.
Grab your stack of images (you'll get the best results from images that are roughly the same medium size) and place them in the same package space as your RolodexCardBundle.
That's it. Just drop them in a directory. Check out the RolodexImageBundleBuilder.java for the code that does the magic at compile time.
One enhancement planned already is to do a real perspective transform to "get rid of the jaggies."
Technorati Tags: ajax, gwt, rolodex
Topics: Ajax Frameworks, Ajax Widgets, Google, GWT
Gmail, agile development and user experience design
Ionut Alex Chitu of Google Operating System posted yesterday about Gmail's evolution from internal beta to public beta to today's constantly-evolving-but-still-beta version. Gmail's Humble Beginning never uses the phrases "agile software development" or "user experience design." (Nor, for that matter, does the original post, by Gmailer-turned-FriendFeeder Paul Buchheit, from which Chitu liberally quotes.) Regardless, the evolution of Gmail provides a case study in the combination of agility and UxD.
Sample quote from Chitu's post:
Gmail got a delete button after many months of requests from users, even if Gmail's philosophy was "archive, don't delete". Gmail will also add some functionality from folders to its labels, most likely drag and drop.
The key step is to build a product that's interesting enough to a attract an audience and learn from people who use the product. "The sooner you can start testing your ideas, the sooner you can start fixing them," explains Paul.
Topics: Agile Development, Google, User Experience
ZK on Android
I'm glad that my Comp Sci classes were taught differently from my Art History courses, otherwise all I would remember is the hum of the slide projector and the taste of sleep in my mouth. Instead I remember the Bridge Pattern and the wonderful things it can do for you. Specifically, you can decouple an abstract component GUI from it's concrete implementation (see AWT). This makes the task of retargeting the GUI framework to a new platform comparatively quick and easy.
Now server-side Ajax frameworks (Echo2, ZK, etc.) have been using the Bridge Pattern for a while, but with the exception of OpenLaszlo (Flash and Ajax) and WidgetServer (Ajax, Swing Applet, Swing Desktop), they only target the browser, i.e. one platform.
Now ZK Mobile, an extension of the ZK Framework for mobile devices, is showing the power of the Bridge Pattern in the mobile world. On 11/12/2007 Google released the Andriod SDK and two days later, on 11/14/2007, the ZK team released an extension to ZK Mobile that allows you to run your ZK apps on Android. How is that for quick turnaround? Good design can be good for you and good to you.
The ZK "smalltalk" demos a simple Twitter application for the Android SDK.
Amazing how little work is necessary to get this app on a mobile phone.
Technorati Tags: ajax, android, mobile, zk
Topics: Ajax Development, Google, Mobile, ZK
More on Safari and the new Gmail upgrade
Over the weekend my Gmail finally got upgraded to the new version. (I know, I know, a week is hardly a long time to wait for a slow-rollout Google feature. But I'm impatient.) I have to say, the history and back-button support is AWESOME. It's funny that Gmail warns you in a huge red banner to disable Firebug. I, of course, kept it enabled and immediately began digging through the DOM of the new UI. As usual, most of the JavaScript is so obfusticated that it's hard to tell what's going on. Still, it's interesting to dig through layers and layers of iframes and nested divs and see how much DOM hackery is involved. Looking behind the scenes at any commercial-grade webapp is like taking a tour of a sausage factory.
Luckily, I have a strong stomach. I'm going to make it a weekend project to really dig in and learn how they're handling their history support. In a previous post, I wondered why the new Gmail is only available for Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7. Given my own experiences with Safari's history object, I shouldn't be surprised. With bookmarkable URLs and history management so central to the new Gmail UI, no wonder Safari has been left in the cold; it's simply too buggy in this regard to receive A-grade support. Safari users have been complaining to Google that it should fix Gmail for Safari even with the old UI. I think those complaints should be lodged at Apple, not Google.
P.S. Sure enough, leave Firebug open in Gmail for any length of time and your Firefox will slow to a crawl. My FF has been crashing a bunch this week, but I'm not sure whether it's Gmail or Firefox's own latest updates. Commenters, am I the only one seeing this?
Topics: Browsers, Firefox, Firefox Extensions, Google, Safari
Dying to see the new Gmail’s back-button support in action
Even though it's on a slow rollout and has reached only a handful of users, Gmail's new UI has already earned tons of coverage. The new Gmail boasts a fast new JavaScript architecture, an improved contact manager and a host of interface tweaks, all of which I'm dying to see and use. But the feature that excites me the most is back-button support.
From the Google Operating System blog (emphasis mine):
Gmail has a new architecture that improves the performance and the usability. Now you can use the back button in your browser and bookmark URLs from different Gmail views because the URLs change when you go to a different section. The messages are prefetched when Gmail loads so you don't have to wait too much until a message is displayed.
With all the work I'm doing on Really Simple History, I'm excited to see exactly what kind of back-button support the new Gmail offers. If I use the "newer" and "older" links to navigate through 10 messages, will I be able to use the back button to cycle back through them? Or will only the major views of the page (Inbox, Starred, All Mail, etc.) get stored in the browser's history? I'm also interested as to why only IE7 and Firefox users will see the new interface. What's holding up Safari support? (For that matter, what's been holding up official Opera support all these years?)
If you're one of the lucky few who's already gotten to see the upgrade, please tell us all about it in the comments - especially your experience with the back button.
In the meantime, here's a round-up of posts about the upgrade:
Technorati Tags
Topics: Google, Javascript, Really Simple History
Pimp my Webapp: Turning Web 1.0 into Web 2.0, Part 1
Everyone wants the Web 2.0. But how to get there, especially if you have a dowdy old Web 1.0 application? Will I have to spend the annual GDP of a smallish Central American nation on the rewrite? There are three general approaches that evolved over the last year:
- The Christmas Tree Approach - decorate your Web 1.0 app with Ajax widgets and simple backend JSON or XML services. Pro: doesn't require major investment. Con: app still mostly suffers from the Web 1.0 downsides -- postbacks, CRUD, etc.
- The Refrosting the Cake Approach - transform all of your views from HTML to JSON or XML. Develop a client side GUI that calls your applications controllers and views. Pro: doesn't require full rewrite. Con: control flow moves from server side to client side; won't take full advantage of RIA opportunities, such as direct manipulation or document-centric interfaces; really just a nice face on CRUD.
- The From Scratch Approach - take the opportunity to rethink your application as something other than the web equivalent of a green screen. Imagine Photoshop or Word as a traditional webapp. Pro: unencumbered by the old system. Con: costly; you may lose your way in reinventing your app.
I think approach #2, Refrosting the Cake, is actually quite appealing. You can make using that dowdy old webapp quite a bit more pleasant with a quick coat of Ajax. There was a really interesting article on this written by Brian Walsh back in July of 2006. It sort of got lost as a pure Tibco GI article, but it has much wider applicability. In it, Brian uses XStream to convert the views of a SpringMVC sample application from HTML to XML. He then uses Tibco GI to build a UI that talks to the controllers and views on the back end.
I used a similar approach to convert a dowdy old application -- mwhois -- to Web 2.0. Instead of Tibco GI, I used GWT. And instead of XML, I used JSON.
The old application looked somewhat homely...
...and suffered from the kludgey flow and heavy postbacks typical of Web 1.0. I proceded to identify the different views and converted them (via mwhois' templates) into JSON.
simple search: domain=agiledev&ext=com
{ "isAvail" : false, "domain" : "agiledev", "ext" : "com", "whoisServer" : "whois.crsnic.net" }
raw record: domain=french&ext=biz&show_raw=1
{ "domain" : "french", "ext" : "biz", "raw" : "Domain Name: FRENCH.BIZ\nDomain ID: D2708502-BIZ\nSponsoring Registrar: COMMUNI GAL COMMUNICATIONS LTD.\nSponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 418\nDomain Status: clientTransferProhibited\nRegistrant ID: GC683CO965021\nRegistrant Name: jamil akhtar\nRegistrant Address1: Regent House\nRegistrant Address2: 24-25 Nutford Place\nRegistrant City: London\nRegistrant Postal Code: W1H 5YN\nRegistrant Country: Great Britain (UK)\nRegistrant Country Code: GB\nRegistrant Phone Number: +44.7729391052\nRegistrant Facsimile Number: +44.2075693152\nRegistrant Email: jamil@cityfinancialcorp.co.uk\nAdministrative Contact ID: GC683CO965021\nAdministrative Contact Name: jamil akhtar\nAdministrative Contact Address1: Regent House\nAdministrative Contact Address2: 24-25 Nutford Place\nAdministrative Contact City: London\nAdministrative Contact Postal Code: W1H 5YN\nAdministrative Contact Country: Great Britain (UK)\nAdministrative Contact Country Code: GB\nAdministrative Contact Phone Number: +44.7729391052\nAdministrative Contact Facsimile Number: +44.2075693152\nAdministrative Contact Email: jamil@cityfinancialcorp.co.uk\nBilling Contact ID: GC683CO965021\nBilling Contact Name: jamil akhtar\nBilling Contact Address1: Regent House\nBilling Contact Address2: 24-25 Nutford Place\nBilling Contact City: London\nBilling Contact Postal Code: W1H 5YN\nBilling Contact Country: Great Britain (UK)\nBilling Contact Country Code: GB\nBilling Contact Phone Number: +44.7729391052\nBilling Contact Facsimile Number: +44.2075693152\nBilling Contact Email: jamil@cityfinancialcorp.co.uk\nTechnical Contact ID: GC683CO965021\nTechnical Contact Name: jamil akhtar\nTechnical Contact Address1: Regent House\nTechnical Contact Address2: 24-25 Nutford Place\nTechnical Contact City: London\nTechnical Contact Postal Code: W1H 5YN\nTechnical Contact Country: Great Britain (UK)\nTechnical Contact Country Code: GB\nTechnical Contact Phone Number: +44.7729391052\nTechnical Contact Facsimile Number: +44.2075693152\nTechnical Contact Email: jamil@cityfinancialcorp.co.uk\nName Server: DNS.INTER.NET.IL\nName Server: NS.COMMUNIGAL.NET\nCreated by Registrar: COMMUNI GAL COMMUNICATIONS LTD.\nLast Updated by Registrar: COMMUNI GAL COMMUNICATIONS LTD.\nDomain Registration Date: Wed Mar 27 00:01:00 GMT 2002\nDomain Expiration Date: Wed Mar 26 23:59:59 GMT 2008\nDomain Last Updated Date: Mon Mar 12 16:25:34 GMT 2007\n\n>>>> Whois database was last updated on: Sun Oct 14 17:51:14 GMT 2007 <<<<\n\nNeuLevel, Inc., the Registry Operator for .BIZ, has collected this information\nfor the WHOIS database through an ICANN-Accredited Registrar. This information\nis provided to you for informational purposes only and is designed to assist\npersons in determining contents of a domain name registration record in the\nNeuLevel registry database. NeuLevel makes this information available to you\n\"as is\" and does not guarantee its accuracy. By submitting a WHOIS query, you\nagree that you will use this data only for lawful purposes and that, under no\ncircumstances will you use this data: (1) to allow, enable, or otherwise\nsupport the transmission of mass unsolicited, commercial advertising or\nsolicitations via direct mail, electronic mail, or by telephone; (2) in\ncontravention of any applicable data and privacy protection acts; or (3) to\nenable high volume, automated, electronic processes that apply to the registry\n(or its systems). Compilation, repackaging, dissemination, or other use of the\nWHOIS database in its entirety, or of a substantial portion thereof, is not\nallowed without NeuLevel's prior written permission. NeuLevel reserves the\nright to modify or change these conditions at any time without prior or\nsubsequent notification of any kind. By executing this query, in any manner\nwhatsoever, you agree to abide by these terms.\n\nNOTE: FAILURE TO LOCATE A RECORD IN THE WHOIS DATABASE IS NOT INDICATIVE\nOF THE AVAILABILITY OF A DOMAIN NAME.\n" }
global search: domain=agilesoftware&do_global=1
{ "domain" : "agilesoftware", "avail" : [{ "domain":"agilesoftware","ext":"biz" },{ "domain":"agilesoftware","ext":"be" }], "unavail" : [{ "domain":"agilesoftware","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"agilesoftware","ext":"net" },{ "domain":"agilesoftware","ext":"org" },{ "domain":"agilesoftware","ext":"co.uk" },{ "domain":"agilesoftware","ext":"info" }] }
wizard search: do_wizard=1&company=pathfinder&keyword1=uxd&keyword2=agile&ext=com
{ "whoisServer" : "whois.crsnic.net", "avail" : [{ "domain":"pathfinderuxd","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"pathfinder-uxd","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"uxdpathfinder","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"uxd-pathfinder","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"pathfinder-agile","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"agilepathfinder","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"agile-pathfinder","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"uxdagile","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"agileuxd","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"uxd-agile","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"agile-uxd","ext":"com" }], "unavail" : [{ "domain":"pathfinder","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"pathfinderagile","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"uxd","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"agile","ext":"com" }] }
Then I wrote a simple, tabbed interface using GWT and the MyGWT widgets and slapped the two together.
I'll have more details on the code details in part 2 of this article. For now, you can look at the old and new interfaces.
Technorati Tags: ajax, gwt, mygwt, tibco gi, JSON, XML, web20
Topics: Ajax Development, Best Practices, Design Patterns, Google, GWT, JSON, Tutorials
.Mac improvements: That’s it?
Amidst all the hardware news at Apple's Mac-focused media event last week, it was easy to overlook the announcement of some tweaks to the widely reviled .Mac web-services suite. Easy to overlook not because the announcement got no play, but because the improvements were so underwhelming. Even with 10 times the online storage space (10 gigs, up from 1 gig) and a slick new Ajax-backed photo service, the upgraded .Mac suite still costs $100 a year. Meanwhile, most of its individual features continue to lag behind the functionality and performance of free services from a host of other providers.
Commentators here, there and everywhere have predicted - and in many cases advocated - the death of .Mac for a long time now. I wonder if Mac newbies' continuing propensity to pony up for the service has something to do with Google's inability to parse the period in ".Mac" and return some relevant search results for such phrases as ".Mac user reviews." [Here's a hint: search for "dot-mac sucks" instead.] There's no shortage of users who find the service disappointing, and the latest tweaks aren't likely to change that.
Based on the demo I've seen of the new .Mac Web Gallery, I can see why an iPhoto junkie might be persuaded to dump Flickr and give it a whirl. But why settle for syncing Safari bookmarks when you can use a social bookmarking service or a bookmark-syncing plug-in for your browser of choice? Why settle for viewing your Address Book entries from a primitive web interface when a service like Plaxo lets you edit them online, too? Why merely view iCal entries online when you can actually edit your Google or Yahoo calendar from any browser? Why use .Mac's painfully slow, frequently buggy online backup service when you can switch to Amazon's S3? Why use the old-school .Mac webmail client when all the major free webmail vendors offer snappy Ajax interfaces? Why host your personal site with iWeb when so many other free or low-cost solutions offer more flexibility and power?
No webapp is perfect, and no single provider offers the breadth of .Mac in a single suite. But cheap or free a la carte services from best-of-breed providers work better for all but the most dedicated (or lazy) Mac users.
Leander Kahney over at Wired stayed up late the night before Apple's presentation to say a prayer that Jobs & Co. would radically overhaul the service. But the best that can be said about the "new" .Mac is that its developers finally seem to be dimly aware that there's this whole Web 2.0 thing happening out there. The future promises some upcoming, though as-yet-undefined, .Mac webmail improvements that could help modernize the service. But the suite's most compelling features are the ones that link one Mac to another, such as Leopard's forthcoming Back to My Mac application. True Apple fanboys may get a lot from such utilities, but they're useless for people in the real world - the ones who log onto Windows boxes at work every day and still want access to the data from their personal MacBook Pros.
My real problem with .Mac isn't that its webapps are sub-par. It's that Apple's overall strategy in the PC marketplace is still so focused on a single, unified desktop experience geared toward the mythical "average user." (Thanks, Walt Mossberg, for making that the most overused phrase in technology writing.) It's such a Microsoftian strategy: continually cramming all the the things a typical customer might need into a suite of pretty-good apps and services whose only real advantage is their supposed integration.
Given that Safari is being positioned as the platform for iPhone software development, it seems likely that core pieces of the OS X desktop experience will eventually get better browser-based simulations. But as a Mac user, I want the data on my machine to play well with third-party webapps, too, in my user-agent of choice. The whole advantage of the web desktop model is that all of my data lives in the cloud and, thanks to public APIs, I can interact with it through a broad range of providers. I can use the out-of-the-box UI or create my own. I can aggregate Remember the Milk into my gCal with a widget instead of waiting for Google to come up with a first-rate to-do list manager. I'm not locked into a single piece of hardware, operating system or software vendor. But locking me into a monolithic suite seems to be the whole point of Apple's desktop strategy, .Mac included.
Right now, all .Mac does is sync data between Macs and allow me to access a subset of that data, in read-only mode, through the browser. That's simply not good enough, and it hasn't been for a couple of years now. Apple should be integrating each of its elegant, easy-to-use but fairly vanilla desktop apps into a web-services architecture. That way, I can use my Mac as an oasis of no-fuss desktop computing at home, but still have the power and the flexibility to do what I need to do from any other machine or physical location.
I get why Apple's user interfaces are geared toward somebody with my grandmother's level of technical proficiency. But why not set up .Mac so that third parties can create more powerful and varied UIs on top of the underlying services? That might actually be worth $100 a year. In the meantime, .Mac and the Macintosh platform are positioned as one-size-fits-all, all-or-nothing propositions. And there's nothing new about that, media event or no.
Topics: Ajax Applications, Business Reasons for Ajax, Google, Mashups, Safari, Web 2.0, Web Services, Widgets
Mash note: Remember the Milk
You've got to love a Web 2.0 startup manned by a dev team of 2 that manages to add every feature on your wish list just before said feature's omission really starts to bug you. That's the case with me and Remember the Milk, a to-do-list webapp developed by an Australian company and supplemented by awesome new features with astonishing regularity.
Although they're a commercial entity, they've got a beta API that's allowed the development of a handful of really cool mash-ups. They've had iCal integration and a gCal plug-in for ages. They got on the Twitter bandwagon really early. They were one of the first non-Google companies to port their application offline with Gears. Last but not least, they've got a powerful (though still not perfect) user interface. (More on that later.)
A little background: I've been an obsessive to-do-lister since high school. GTD is my mantra. During my years at Microsoft-centric companies, I used Outlook to manage my entire life. But these days I find myself on Windows, 'nix and OS X machines in disparate locations for hours or days at a time. A webapp is clearly the only way to go for my to-do needs. But after years as an Outlook power user, I need something that will slice and dice my many lists (work, play, home, shopping, whatever) with exacting precision.
I gave Apple's iCal a shot, but its list functionality was way too primitive. I need multiple lists, categories, tags, flexible sort criteria - you get the picture. Ta-Da Lists from 37signals was even more stripped-down than iCal - plus I found its interface surprisingly clunky for something developed by a well-regarded Ajax shop. I thought about todo.txt, but I'm not enough of a command-line purist to completely abandon the GUI - even after years of suffering through Outlook's hideous hidden menus. Then, about a year ago, I stumbled on Frank Gruber's Do More: Online To Do Lists Compared. I didn't agree with his conclusions, but at least he gave me several more options to explore. Luckily for me, Remember the Milk was the first one I tried.
There's a lot to love about RTM, especially its UI, so just let me gush for a minute.
- Flexible organization: You can create multiple tabbed lists, apply arbitrary tags to your tasks, and create saved searches based on any criteria.
- Keyboard navigation: Except for a few advanced functions, such as moving items from one list to another, you can do almost anything from the keyboard. Create tasks, set priorities and due dates, apply tags, edit multiple items ... most functions take only a single keystroke.
- Natural language entry: You can set due dates and repeat intervals using some pretty flexible natural language. It ain't perfect, but with a little training the syntax becomes second nature.
- SMS, IM and email reminders: The service can nag you quite effectively via a wide range of communication protocols.
- Email, gCal, Atom and Twitter integration: You can create tasks or lists of tasks using a special email address; add or edit tasks directly from gCal and Yahoo plug-ins; and use Twitter or Atom as syndication services. The public API means that mash-ups and cross-pollination will only proliferate.
- Built-in collaboration capabilities: There are a host of features dedicated to assigning, sharing and collaborating on tasks.
- Serious accessibility: The main app is fast, powerful Ajax all the way, but the mobile version works just as well in a variety of more specialized user-agents.
There are a few things to hate:
- Poor multi-list view: The main Overview page list all of your tasks that are due, overdue or due tomorrow regardless of which list they're on. But it separates the Today, Tomorrow and Overdue tasks into separate tabs. The gCal plug-in does a much better job of showing all of your most important uncompleted tasks in a single, unified view.
- Recurring task weirdness: Delete a completed instance of a recurring task, and you've just deleted the master version of that task. After any previously spawned instances are completed, the task will no longer recur. This is a very strange user experience, especially for folks who like to purge their completed tasks every once in a while.
- Poor sortability:
Tasks are sorted by their priority. Period. This shortcoming doesn't account for the fact that a low-priority task that's a week overdue is probably a high-priority task by now.
See the strikethrough text above to see exactly what I meant about the RTM team rolling out your must-have features before the lack thereof becomes too annoying. I've been dying for flexible sortability on RTM since I started using it. But no sooner did I start this post than I noticed an RTM blog post announcing just such a feature. It would be nice if you could set your sort preference globally as well as one list at a time, but that's a minor quibble.
So what can we learn from my ramblings, besides the fact that I really, really love this platform? I think there are a few powerful lessons for developers of any RIA:
- You don't have to sacrifice brawn for the sake of simplicity: Pleasing power users doesn't mean hopelessly confusing everybody else - at least not with smart UxD. (Apple could stand to learn that lesson, but I digress.)
- You don't have to sacrifice accessibility in the name of Ajax: Let your mobile app function as your accessible app, too.
- You don't have to fear Web 2.0 trendiness: Rapid adoption of emerging protocols such as Twitter can only help you differentiate your product and find new users.
- You don't have to lock your app down, even if you're a commercial enterprise: Public APIs - and the cross-pollination they enable - can only strengthen your foothold in the marketplace. In our Googlized world, this one's kind of a *duh*, but it bears repeating.
- You don't have to hide from your users: An active blog and well-maintained user forums are far more powerful marketing tools than terse release notes on Google Code.
I can only speculate as to the future of GTD's business model or exit strategy. Their logo carries the ubiquitous "Beta" tag, and their pages carry no ads. Where's the funding? It seems like somebody's waiting to get snapped up by a big player....
Lord knows it would be nice to have the old Outlook/Palm OS quintet of email, calendar, contacts, notes and to-do lists available on a single web-based platform; personally, I would prefer that platform to be Google, though I can't really see them acquiring a start-up just for this one capability. Still, it would be a shame if a product as solid as Remember the Milk got lost in the shuffle or edged out by inferior offerings from bigger players. Only time will tell....
Google Maps Component for Echo2
Just stumbled across this not quite ready Google Maps component for Echo2 over at Sourceforge. Hacim Bengalis over at his blog has taken this work and presents the code changes necessary to getting it to work with Echo2. Basically, he registers his own service (i.e. the stuff that gets run at start time for an Echo2 session, as I recall) that injects the Google Maps Javascript include into the page.
/* add google maps api */ baseDoc.addJavaScriptInclude("js/googleload.js");
If you read French, then this fellow claims to have done it without having to register his own services, i.e. with a stock Echo2.
The solution use the component HttpPaneEx from EchoPointNG (I guess this is standard library for most Echo2 users). This component creates an HTML Iframe in which you can display any HTML pages : even one using GoogleMaps. Next, you need to interact with it. The trick is to use method enqueueCommand and JavaScriptInclude and JavaScriptEval object from Echo2 to trigger javascript from Echo2.
I recall that when I tried this with Echo2 2.0.x, I had issues with the Echo2 client engine capturing events and making the Google maps component do weird things. His tutorial looks extensive; anybody feel up to translating some French?
Technorati Tags: ajax, echo2, google maps
36 GWT Tutorials
While the excellent GWT in Action was released last month, there are lots of people that want to get their feet wet before plunking down $50 for a book. To that end, I've pulled together all of the GWT tutorials I'm aware of. There's a little bit of everything here: simple getting started guides; "Hello, World!" apps in all flavors; tutorials that focus on a specific aspect of GWT, such as history management and JSON; extensive examples that are still valuable even if you have the aforementioned book; guides for integrating GWT with a non-Java backend. Hopefully, you will find something to your liking here.
- Getting Started Guide - From the GWT site itself, their basic kickstart.
- Kickstarting Google Web Toolkit on the Client Side - Early "Hello, World!" tutorial with a second, animation example. This quick-start tutorial aims to translate some of the knowledge gained from my monkeying about with GWT into a useful text which will get other developers up and running quickly. To keep things nice and simple, we'll focus on only client-side matters.
- Google Web Toolkit Tutorial: The Break Down - Very short tutorial from early on. Demonstrates a simple rollover with GWT.
- Working with the Google Web Toolkit - Extensive tutorial with lots of screenshots that demonstrates everything from the basic getting started to some of the more interesting features, such as history support (i.e. the back button.). Article includes a Maven module for GWT.
- Introduction to the Google Web Toolkit - another extensive tutorial, this one from Oracle, so if you want to see how to GWT with JDeveloper, this one is for you.
- GWT Tutorial with Googlipse - yes, Googlipse is no more, but Cypal Studio has taken it's place. This demonstrates one way of doing GWT with Eclipse.
- Exporting WAR in GWT - Tutorial to create a WAR file in command line (works only with WTP 2.0).
- GWT Small Guide - I wrote this guide thinking in the user's who want's develope dynamic application's with the GWT (Google Web Toolkit) in an AMP(Apache,MySQL,PHP) environment's. The basic idea is write a small and very simple application using MySQL and PHP at the server side, and GWT for the client interfaze, using JSON for the communication between the client and the server.
- Ajax for Java developers: Exploring the Google Web Toolkit - One of several GWT tutorials from IBM's developerworks. In this article, I'll run through creating a simple GWT application to fetch a weather report from a remote Web API and display it in the browser. On the way, I'll briefly cover as many of GWT's capabilities as possible, and I'll mention some of the potential problems you'll come across.
- Trivial GWT Example - from Robert Hanson, who went on to write an excellent book on GWT, a simple GWT-RPC example.
- Build an Ajax-enabled application using the Google Web Toolkit and Apache Geronimo - recent (May 2007) two part series (part two is here) with source code, flash demos, etc.. Requires registration.
- Google Web Toolkit - This article describes the development of a simple Ajax application on Mac OS X using GWT and familiar Java tools, such as Apache Ant, the Tomcat 5.0 servlet container, and the IntelliJ IDEA integrated development environment (the latter is a commercial IDE). The article assumes some knowledge of Java and Ant.
- GWT Tutorial - focuses on producing a web site, rather than a webapp.
- Getting Started - the first of Paval JBanov's planned five GWT tutorials. The others are First Application, Core widgets and panels, Custom widgets and RPC (not yet written).
- GWT Plugin Tutorial - oddly enough, this tutorial demonstrates how to integrate GWT with Struts 2 WITHOUT the GWT plugin. Hmmmm.
- Getting Started with Google Web Toolkit (GWT) - Very basic, getting started instructions.
- Tutorial: Creating a Login application - demonstrates the use of Instantiations' GWT Designer tool (WYSIWYG UI design for GWT).
- Basic GWT / PHP Communication - Part 1: Java and Part 2: PHP. All the GWT documentation is about hooking up Java on the front and back ends. What about PHP? This shows how.
- String-based RPC between GWT and PHP - forget about serializing Java objects via XML and JSON; this is the dead simple approach.
- Using cURL to Interface GWT with an Existing Site - this one is kind of hard to explain. If you know about curl and PHP, this article is worth reading.
- Creating GWT RPC Services Tutorial - short guide to using gwt4nb, the Netbeans plugin for GWT, to create GWT-RPC services.
- Creating a simple app with GWT4NB - flash based tutorial on creating an anagram application with GWT and Netbeans.
- Googled by GWT - Part 1 and Part 2. Extensive getting started tutorial with lots of screenshots.
- Google Web Toolkit Tutorial - short example demonstrates use of the keyboard listener.
- Step by Step: A Mortgage Calculator using GWT - as it says, a mortgage calculator demo using GWT.
- IntelliJ IDEA: Google Web Toolkit as 1-2-3 - Animated demo walks through the configuration of IntelliJ Idea for the
Google Web Toolkit and shows how to write a GWT image viewer
application. - IntelliJ IDEA: Creating GWT Application from a Web Module - Animated demo of using GWT in a web module (IDEA's project/module type for Java webapps).
- Ajax for Java developers: Exploring the Google Web Toolkit - extensive tutorial from IBM developerworks that builds all the way to a weather reporter widget.
- Integrating the Google Web Toolkit with JSF using G4jsf - I can't say that I really love JSF, but if you bend that way, this will teach you how to marry the two. Extensive with lots of code snippets and screenshots.
- Asynchronous Google (Web Toolkit) and Django - Integrating GWT and Django using JSON.
- Using VistaFei IDE 1.0 for GWT: A Tutorial - VistFei is an IDE. The last time I looked at it, this tutorial had somehow lost it's screenshots and the CSS had been jacked up.
- Using Google Web Toolkit - video HOWTO by Bruce Johnson, the tech lead of GWT.
- GWT-Spring Integration Demystified - any time a new technology comes along, it just has to be integrated into Spring. Here you go.
- Build an Ajax application using Google Web Toolkit, Apache Derby, and Eclipse - Part 1 and Part 2. Extensive tutorial in two parts, the first of which deals with the front end, the second of which deals with the back end.
- Ease AJAX development with the Google Web Toolkit - develops a book search application as part of a getting started tutorial.
- Roughian Examples - combination demo/tutorial of GWT. Version 2 is under development.
If I've missed any, please add them to the comments.
Update: See Yet Another 17 GWT Tutorials
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