I have been digging into the various “cloud” offerings on the net and trying to see if there is a common ground in this space and as usual it appears the usual players are making bets on their “cloud” offerings. When you start seeing sites like SalesForce.com, LinkedIn, Facebook, or API’s like Microsofts Azure, all using different technologies to provide applications within “their cloud” it quickly shows people are off in their own camps. I have been reading up on the DeltaCloud (Many clouds. One API. No problem) which is attempting to solve this disparity with a wrapper approach. As long as you have a particular clouds “module” installed on the server, your code can connect to and participate in that cloud. The API’s seem to be very basic out of the gate but I think the direction is worth watching. Amazon has a huge web presence and companies like Eucalyptus have even standardized on its API’s for their own back-end so it makes me wonder if there will be camps but not many camps in the end.
Using the same application programming interfaces (APIs) that Amazon deploys for its Amazon Web Services (AWS), Eucalyptus allows users to set up their own private clouds and move workloads among internal servers, or to and from AWS. The software is available both as free, open-source code and as a paid version. – PC World
Do we need the same for collaboration? Open Social (Many sites, one API - sound familiar?) is suppose to fix that but it isn’t totally adopted by all players either.
A common API means you have less to learn to build for multiple websites. OpenSocial is currently being developed by a broad set of members of the web community. The ultimate goal is for any social website to be able to implement the API and host 3rd party social applications. – OpenSocial
If we really want a true cloud then there is going to have to be some level of common API, data model, and interfaces across the players otherwise developers and IT will be needed for the integration points. As more and more stuff moves to the cloud you may see more and more job openings for “SalesForce.com developer” or “OpenSocial developer” or “AWS experience a plus”.
I think this is a frontier of opportunity for any IT person or developer – which is one of the reasons I love this industry. It is forever changing and challenging.
FourSquare check-ins versus native applications
Fri, Jan 27th 2012 9:30a Bob Balfe I have been playing with FourSquare for about four weeks now as many of my friends have probably seen the check-ins on Facebook and Twitter. I have even gone to the extent to checking out the API behind the scenes and it looks very clean and easy. The basis of the API is REST (REpresentational State Transfer). So integrating other commerce based products, tools, and sites should be a snap.
Not many people in my area are using FourSquare but on a positive note there seem to be more and more peopl [read] Keywords: application
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Blog and video stats for 2011
Tue, Jan 3rd 2012 7:20a Bob Balfe I started keeping stats in 2010 and it looks like 2010 was a “better” year for hits and posts, most likely because I blogged a lot about Lotus and Eclipse stuff more (about twice as many posts) that year than 2011. This site generated 88,815 hits for the year in 2011 and 68,443 in 2010 (minus three months of logging statistics).
The home page is by far the most active hit, probably because of my blog URL on all of my social site profiles (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc).
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2011 – A year of change
Sat, Dec 31st 2011 8:30a Bob Balfe 2011 was an amazing year for me. Full of struggles, change, and excitement. Here are few of the highlights I had for the year (minus a few struggles):
First year of be married to my wonderful wife, we now collectively have five kids in the house!
I turned 40 this year, really starting to feel old in the mornings
I changed career direction – moved out of Lotus and into Industry Solutions – having a great time, love the new job!
Kim (my beautiful wife) got me a Harley for my 40th
My d [read] Keywords: lotus
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12 Days of commerce: Flash Sales
Thu, Dec 22nd 2011 6:50a Bob Balfe In this demo I show how you can set up a flash sale in WebSphere Commerce. This mixes date and time driven promotions and web activities. The setup is a sale for a new Nike shirt will happen on Friday from noon to five where the shirt will be 20% off. The advertisement helps on the home page but you could also use remote widgets to advertise on other sites like Facebook and blogs. [read] Keywords: facebook
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12 Days of commerce: Replace Logo in an extended Site
Tue, Dec 20th 2011 7:31a Bob Balfe In this video I show how you can replace the default content for an eMarketing Spot in WebSphere Commerce. You can optionally use a web activity and change the logo based on rules but this approach shows how you can achieve a new logo by utilizing the default content field on the eSpot itself. [read] Keywords: websphere
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Solr synonym file for different segments and industries
Mon, Dec 19th 2011 3:01a Bob Balfe I have gotten asked in previous conversations if there are standard synonym files for different product sets and industries for the Solr search engine. Interestingly enough I could not find anything out there so I decided to create an online repository on GitHub for such files. I envision files for all kinds of industries and product sets. I put some ideas out there and if anyone else has more please share with the community. If you happen to have a large set of synonyms today also share those [read] Keywords: community
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WebSphere Commerce welcomes iOS to its arsenal!
Fri, Dec 16th 2011 11:10a Bob Balfe This isn’t part of the originally planned “Twelve Days of Commerce” but it fits in well!
A few weeks ago IBM announced a native application for Android based devices. Being an Apple guy myself I have been waiting to announce this. WebSphere Commerce now has a native iOS application that uses the same REST base services the Android version uses. Even better, this solution is published as Open Source – talk about a great way to learn the WebSphere Commerce API’s!
You [read] Keywords: ibm
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12 Days of commerce: Proximity Alerts
Fri, Dec 16th 2011 9:01a Bob Balfe In this video I show how you can create basic proximity alerts in WebSphere Commerce. An example is, you can show an alert when the shopper is close to a promotion. Example, say you have a proximity alert set for a minimum order of $120 and a discount of $30 when the cart contents reach $200. This alert will show to the shopper if they have a total cart value between $120 and $199.99. [read] Keywords: websphere
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Pissed off Penguins
Fri, Dec 16th 2011 5:50a Bob Balfe I have been a user and fan of the Blender tool for quite some time. There is a KickStarter project looking for less than $250 to complete the bidding process for the project. If you believe in Open Source and education for the masses then help Kris complete this project. Whether you are a low level developer, artist or just someone who like doing this stuff for a hobby (like me) then this is a great project to learn from.
Donate a $1 or $5 today! [read] Keywords: widget
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12 Days of commerce: Generating SKU’s
Thu, Dec 15th 2011 12:30p Bob Balfe In this video I show the cool tool “Generating SKU’s” in the WebSphere Commerce Management Center. A business user can use Management Center to enter products and SKU’s very easily and in this video I show how easy it is. [read] Keywords: websphere
