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Nexus One and Android 2.1: Apple Better Watch Out

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:30:40 +0000

Less than a week ago, Google introduced its own Android phone, the Nexus One . Over the weekend, we got a chance to take the phone through its paces and while we aren't quite ready to give up our iPhone yet, the Nexus One is a formidable challenger. Apple will clearly have to step up its game with the next iPhone if it wants to hold off Android's momentum. In terms of features, the Nexus One is already on par with the iPhone platform and beats it in many areas. When it comes to the overall user experience, the iPhone is still a step ahead of the Android platform, but that could easily change in the near future. Sponsor Hardware For the sake of this review, we won't look at the Nexus One hardware in great detail. Suffice to say, the 1GHz Snapdragon processor makes the phone extremely fast and the 3.7 inch AMOLED screen simply looks gorgeous. While it isn't much bigger than the iPhone's screen, the difference in resolution (800x400) is quite noticeable. We didn't get a chance to formally test the phone's battery life, but unless we made extensive use of the GPS, it easily got through a day's use without needing a recharge. The phone's five megapixel camera works just as advertised - though the camera app isn't the prettiest app on the phone. Picture quality was generally on par with pictures from the iPhone 3GS, though the built-in LED flash gives the phone an important additional feature that Apple doesn't currently offer. In the long run, the big difference between the two platforms isn't the hardware but the operating system. After all, the iPhone 3GS is also quite fast and we haven't heard a lot of complaints about the iPhone's screen. Android 2.1 isn't a major step up from version 2.0, but it does introduce some notable new features, including the ability to use voice in every application that brings up the built-in virtual keyboard. Android 2.1 While the Nexus One isn't an iPhone killer, it's already on par with Apple's phone in many regards. As Google and the developer community that has grown around Android continues to improve the OS, it is only a matter of time before Apple will have to react with an updated version of its iPhone OS. Here are some of the features that make the Nexus One and Android 2.1 a winner in our opinion. We should note there are some unresolved customer service and hardware issues that have made headlines over the last few days. We didn't experience any of these problems ourselves, but your mileage may vary. Nexus One and Android 2.1 vs. the iPhone Google Navigation : When it was released for Android 2.0, we described Google's own GPS application as the first "killer feature" for Android. Google hasn't really updated this app in 2.1, but it remains one of the signature features for Android. This is also one of the many apps that showcases Android's ability to multitask. On the iPhone, for example, you have to exit the GPS app while you check your email. On an Android phone, the app simply continues to run in the background and continues to give you voice prompts. Voice Recognition : We were quite skeptical about this feature at first. Every time Android 2.1 brings up the keyboard, you now have the option to dictate text into the phone. This works surprisingly well and makes writing a quick email or tweet very easy. Some apps, including Google Navigation, can also handle more complex voice commands. On the iPhone, the newly updated Dragon Natural Speaking app works similarly well, but suffers from the fact that it isn't integrated into every application on the phone. Multitasking : Other smartphones like the Palm Pre also feature multitasking for third-party apps and handle switching between these apps better than Android. At the same time, though, one of the iPhone Achilles' heels is its inability to run more than one non-Apple app at a time. No such problem with Android, though running a lot of apps in the background can put a lot of strain on the battery. Back Button : Besides the volume controls, the iPhone only features one button. The Nexus features quite a few more (back, menu, home, and search, plus a trackball). The back button is likely the most useful of these and works just like your browser's back button. On the iPhone, whenever an app takes you to a browser, the app quits and opens up the browser, leaving you no easy way to get back to the app. On Android phones, you simply click the back button and you're back to where you started. Google Voice : If you use Google Voice, you are surely aware of the controversy around getting the Google Voice app on the iPhone. On Android, it's simply a built-in feature and works perfectly. You can even set up the phone to route international calls through Google Voice by default. Photo Gallery : Google worked with CoolIris to integrate the company's signature 3D-view of your photos into the Android photo gallery app. This is easily the prettiest and most useful default gallery app we have seen on any phone to date. Google Integration : If you are heavily invested in the Google universe, then setting up Android is as easy as it gets. When you first start up the Nexus One (or any other Android phone for that matter), the phone will ask you for your Google Account credentials. Once you enter these, the phone will set up all the Google apps on the phone for you. The phone sets up your email accounts and downloads contacts from Google Contacts. The gallery app connects to Picasa and the calendar connects to Google Calendar. Areas for Improvement But there are also some areas where the iPhone is still a clear winner: Music : For now, Android's music app doesn't come close to the iPhone's native iPod app. While it's not woefully bad, it also doesn't come close to the design and functionality of the iPhone. User Interface : While Android 2.1 looks pretty nice and offers some cool new eye candy like animated wallpapers, Apple is still one step ahead of Google when it comes to the fit and finish of the built-in apps. Also, while we love the back button on the Nexus One, using the menu button isn't very intuitive and quite a few people we showed the phone to struggled to understand its functions. App Store : No doubt, Apple's App Store features far more applications than the Android Market. Especially when it comes to games, Apple beats Google hands down. OS Updates for Everybody : You can reasonably assume that the iPhone you buy today will be supported with OS updates for the two years of your contract. With Android, you can't be so sure about that. It's still a moving target and quite a few early adopters are still stuck with Android 1.5 because their vendors never updated the phone or because their phones don't feature the necessary hardware to run later versions of the OS. As we pointed out last week, the Nexus One and Android 2.1 aren't quite ready for the enterprise yet, and Google has to work on the security features of the phone and software before it can become a major player in this market. Google, however, is aware of this and is already working on an enterprise version of the phone. Verdict Overall, we were very impressed with the phone's hardware and software. Android 2.1 could still benefit from some design work, but in terms of features and functionality, Android can now easily compete with the iPhone. Disclaimer : Google provided us with a loaner unit and a working SIM card free of charge. Discuss

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Nexus One and Android 2.1: Apple Better Watch Out

New Firefox Release…One Last Time?

cgseo — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:30:00 +0000

As we reported last week , Firefox's latest version of 3.6, release candidate 1, has been released to the general public . This time around, however, Mozilla has issued a more general release, as the new version will not only be available for download but also part of an automatic update for those already running Firefox. The release is one more sign that we're getting closer by the day to a full-on sparkly new version of Firefox. For those of you worried about updating, Mozilla has assured us that "over 75% of the thousands of Firefox Add-ons have now been upgraded by their authors to be compatible with Firefox 3.6," so go ahead and take that leap. But what will you find on the other side? Sponsor Firefox 3.6 RC1 Features In addition with offering this release as an automatic update, Mozilla has offered a synopsis of what it sees as the most important new features to be found in what the company hopes to be a near final version. Users can change the browser's appearance with a single click using Personas . Firefox 3.6 alerts users about out of date plugins to keep them safe. Changes to how third-party software integrates with Firefox to increase stability. Improved automatic form fill provides better options from your form history. Open, native video can now be displayed full screen , and supports poster frames . Support for the WOFF font format. Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time. The ability to run scripts asynchronously to speed up page load times. Support for the HTML5 File API Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies. While wallpapering Firefox with the latest blockbuster movie may be an attractive addition, we are looking forward to a faster and more stable Firefox. Loading scripts asynchronously should speed up some page load-times dramatically by letting faster scripts run while slower ones continue to do their work in the background - something our computers have been doing for a long time now. And the changes to third-party software integration should offer a huge boost to the browser's stability by keeping the core components of the browser safe from being modified. For the web developers out there, increased support for CSS, DOM and HTML5 is always a welcome addition, and the addition of the WOFF font format may further help page load-times and give web designers a greater range of choice. Discuss

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New Firefox Release...One Last Time?

Google’s Near Me Now is Live & Good Enough to Replace Yelp

cgseo — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:39:43 +0000

One month ago Google unveiled five big new technologies in one day - and then launched real-time search that afternoon. One of those five was something called Near Me Now, and it just went live moments ago . The feature lets Google grab your geographic location and display restaurants, coffee shops, bars, ATM machines and more in your immediate vicinity. It's available today for both iPhone and Android users. It's enough to make a person bookmark Google.com, instead of just Googling through the browser search bar. Sponsor This feature is much more useful than Google Latitude and it's more lightweight than launching Google Maps. It probably doesn't bode well for established local mobile search apps like Yelp or for innovative new ones like NextStop . Those are a lot of fun, but Google's Near Me Now is good enough, it's fast enough and gosh darn it, I think people are going to like it. Next: See four more awesome new technologies Google unveiled along with Near Me Now. Discuss

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Google's Near Me Now is Live & Good Enough to Replace Yelp

I Run 13 Browsers At Once; 11 of Them Just Went Open Source

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:06:01 +0000

FluidApp is what's called a Single Site Browser and is a great way to pull key websites you use throughout the day out of your primary browser and onto your Mac dashboard as standalone applications. It's super easy for anyone to use. The service has a thriving community of users - I have 10 Fluid browsers running on my computer right now and wouldn't want to work without them. In fact, I'm writing this blog post from Movable Type inside a Fluid Browser. In a quiet mid-December move, FluidApp developer Todd Ditchendorf put "most of the code behind Fluid" up on Github under an open source license. That's very good news - new developments are already coming fast and furious. If you haven't checked out Fluid before, now is a great time. Sponsor There's something magical about the way single site browsers let you use different web apps. They don't get lost in tabs. They don't fall prey to browser crashes. You can put a handsome icon in your doc to jump over to them. Windows users looking for a similar experience should check out Bubbles or Mozilla's Prism . Now that Fluid for the Mac is open source though, it will be very exciting to see what features are added next. Creator Ditchendorf says he has some more exciting plans under his hat but nothing to show off yet. Watch this space. What's your favorite Fluid App? One of my favorites is LazyFeed . Next: 15 Fluid Apps You Can Build For Your Business . Discuss

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I Run 13 Browsers At Once; 11 of Them Just Went Open Source

Consumer Electronics 2.0: MIT’s Henry Holtzman on The Internet of Things

admin — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 16:00:00 +0000

During my visit to MIT earlier this year I met up with Henry Holtzman , Chief Knowledge Officer of the MIT Media Lab. We discussed the Internet of Things, which Holtzman has been actively involved in since the 90s. Holtzman said that consumer apps for Web-connected objects are becoming more common; he refers to this as an emerging "ecology of devices." There are many real world objects being connected to the Internet nowadays, he said, and they are beginning to act in concert. Read on to find out which Internet of Things products have most impressed Henry Holtzman lately, plus we explore some of his own projects. Sponsor Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb! I started off by remarking that the Internet of Things is ramping up in 2009. Holtzman replied that it's been many years in the making - for example he did a project back in 1997 involving putting RFID tags onto Pokemon figures. Indeed Holtzman created a commercial company in 1998 to output Internet of Things products. Consumer Electronics 2.0 A Wired article from February 2000 outlines how Holtzman founded Presto Technologies in 1998, with fellow MIT Lab professors Andrew Lippman (see our recent post featuring Lippman ) and Michael Hawley. The Presto network embedded RFID tags in objects. It was an early version of Internet of Things. The vision for Presto was to make it an e-commerce tool - "products become roving portals for the companies that make them," according to the 2000 Wired article. While it was too early for that vision to transpire fully, Presto is still operating. One of its current products, PrestoPass, allows consumers to make purchases "by simply waving a card, key tag, or even a wristwatch." Nowadays Holtzman refers to this trend as "consumer electronics 2.0." He cites an MIT spin-off company, Ambient Devices , as one to watch in this area. One of their products is the Ambient Clock , which can hook up to your Google Calendar. Henry Holtzman's Favorite 2009 Products As we've been reporting here on ReadWriteWeb this year, there are plenty of Internet of Things products making their presence felt in 2009. I asked Holtzman which products from the current era have particularly impressed him? He replied that he really likes Violet , the company behind the Nabaztag (a cute robot rabbit that can deliver anything from ambient information, through lights and sounds, to verbal information). We reviewed Violet back in May. Touchatag (formally known as Tikitag) is another company to have impressed Holtzman. As we wrote in February , Touchatag allows you to program your own RFID tags so that they can do anything you want. Holtzman said that he's been very impressed by the decisions the company has made, for example using adhesives. He also likes their 'web 2.0 savvy' - they host everything, but let the users create the content. Internet of Things Concepts & Issues I asked Henry Holtzman what other concepts are interesting him currently, as well as what issues are still to be overcome in the emerging Internet of Things. He talked about using sensors as an "additional sense," by putting a tag reader on people. Not dissimilar to another Media Lab project we wrote about recently, a wearable internet system which aims to become a "sixth sense." Holtzman said that possible uses for sensors on people include: finding objects (for example your keys), raising an alert (e.g. a safety warning), a memory assist device, being a bridge between what you do in the real world and what gets recorded on your social network (e.g. Facebook updating when you're in certain locations; which we mentioned here ). As for issues: while currently light and temperature sensors are popular, Holtzman thinks that we need to do better job with location. But this is where RFID comes in. One big issue that Holtzman is concerned about is identity. He told me that mobile phones that interact with objects using NFC ( Near Field Communication ) will need to work out how to federate around the same ID for a user. This is perhaps similar to the identity issues that the browser-based Web has. Privacy and security are two other important issues that Holtzman has been focusing on of late. It was great to speak with Henry Holtzman - someone with extensive experience, both theoretical and practical, in the Internet of Things. Let us know your own thoughts in the comments. Discuss

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Consumer Electronics 2.0: MIT's Henry Holtzman on The Internet of Things

Meet the 12 Lucky Browsers European IE Users Will Be Shown Next Year

admin — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:02:22 +0000

As part of the European Union's antitrust agreement with Microsoft , the company will be required next year to show a list of alternatives to Internet Explorer to any Windows user with IE installed as their default browser. Love or hate the government intervention, it's notable to see which browsers are about to get a big boost in user numbers. The EU says increased viability in the browser market will lead to more competition and more innovation. Here are the companies that will get a first crack at new levels of market viability in Europe. Sponsor On the Front Page - The Best Known 5 The first page of the Choice Screen, which users will be presented with when they first turn on their computers or when they click a link for it later, will feature whichever five browsers have the largest market share over the previous 6 months. Microsoft will begin showing the page to users in March, 2010. Right now the top 5 will include, in the order listed on an EU page about the program: Apple Safari - that's right, even for Windows! Google Chrome - so soon. If Chrome can grow so fast, it makes you wonder if government intervention is really needed. Of course, Chrome has been promoted prominently on Google pages. That could become part of the next antitrust issue. Microsoft Internet Explorer - gets better all the time, even with dominant market share. Couldn't the EU just require people to stop using IE 6? Mozilla Firefox - the classic that's most effectively challenged IE. In fact, it's done so pretty effectively. Too bad Chrome now runs circles around its performance. Opera - loved by mobile users, loved by Europeans. Below the Fold - The Smaller Challengers Users will be able to scroll the Choice Screen horizontally and see the next 7 most popular browsers at the time. Here's who the EU lists as those browsers today. AOL - chuckle if you will, but AOL is doing a lot of innovative work with social networks and lifestreaming these days. Maxthon - is a popular browser in China and has its sights set on topping Opera in Europe. K-Meleon - says its a super-fast Windows browser built on Gecko, the same layout engine Firefox uses. Flock - is a Mozilla-powered browser that integrates a whole lot of social features. It's got such a great feature set that we recently asked Why don't you love Flock? Avant Browser - says that it, in fact, is the browser that's the fastest. It includes an inline RSS reader and a number of other interesting features. Sleipnir - is a highly-customizable browser that says it's big in Japan. Slim Browser - a Windows browser focused on automating processes. That's the field, so far! Do you think this move will foster increased innovation? Do you think it's needed? Discuss

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Meet the 12 Lucky Browsers European IE Users Will Be Shown Next Year

Firefox 3.5 Takes the Top Spot Worldwide

cgseo — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:29:00 +0000

Firefox hit a new milestone today, as version 3.5 overtook Internet Explorer 7.0 with nearly 22% of the browser market, according to statistics from web analytics service StatCounter . This comes on the heels of statistics we saw earlier this month , which showed Firefox overtaking IE for overall usage in Germany. Sponsor While IE still dominates the browser market - with 55% of people using some version - all combined versions of Firefox occupy 32% and have been steadily gaining ground. Released at the end of June, version 3.5 of Firefox has quickly climbed the charts. IE 8, on the other hand - which was first released in beta more than a year earlier, with a full release in March 2009 - now holds a similar 20% of the market to that of Firefox 3.5's 22%. It would seem that a majority of Firefox 3.5 users were already using 3.0 and upgraded, as the 20% drop in 3.0 use almost directly correlates to the 22% increase in 3.5. Discuss

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Firefox 3.5 Takes the Top Spot Worldwide

RSS Reader Market in Disarray, Continues to Decline

admin — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:04:35 +0000

One of the interesting trends of 2009 has been the gradual decline of RSS Readers as a way for people to keep up with news and niche topics. Many of us still use them, but less than we used to. I for one still maintain a Google Reader account, however I don't check it on a daily basis. I check Twitter for news and information multiple times a day, I monitor Twitter lists, and I read a number of blogs across a set of topics of most interest to me. Frankly I'm more likely to use Google Reader to search for specific information nowadays, than to scan my subscribed feeds for their latest posts [I should note however that our news writers use a variety of RSS Readers daily]. So what's happened to RSS Readers. Do people still use them and is there still a viable market for them? Sponsor In February 2007 we reported on the state of the RSS Reader market, based on statistics from Feedburner and Pheedo. At that point Google had 59% market share amongst web-based RSS Readers, followed by Bloglines with 33%, then Newsgator and Netvibes with 3% (note: this didn't count Newsgator's desktop apps, like FeedDemon). Pheedo's stats in February 2007 were somewhat different: Newsgator Online had 27% share, followed by MyYahoo! with 20%, Blogines 19% and Google Reader 13%. The first time ReadWriteWeb looked into market share for RSS Readers was 5 years ago, in December 2004 . At that point, very early in the web 2.0 era, Bloglines was the clear leader and Google Reader wasn't even a glint in the milkman's eye. 2009 Update on RSS Reader Market Well, unfortunately Feedburner no longer publishes any useful data about RSS Readers. The product has been infrequently updated since Google acquired it in June 2007 and it no longer even has a proper blog (a Google blog called Adsense For Feeds was the closest I could find). Pheedo also has gone quiet from a blogging perspective - its last blog post was January 2009. Tellingly though, it has an active Twitter account . The best data we have then is ReadWriteWeb's own Feedburner account. Here is the top 10 for Dec 09: 1. Google Feedfetcher 85665 (includes both Google Reader and its start page iGoogle) 2. Bloglines 38797 3. Netvibes 34894 4. FriendFeed 16269 5. NewsGator Online 6753 6. Firefox Live Bookmarks 2999 7. PostRank 2454 8. Windows RSS Platform 1587 9. Mac OS X RSS Reader 1307 10. Zhuaxia 1127 (a Chinese RSS Reader) Feedburner's numbers always need to be taken with a large grain of salt, nevertheless we can see that Google is now over twice the number of Bloglines. There's little sign of life on Bloglines' blog either and its Compete.com traffic numbers show a decline since June 2009 . Netvibes, FriendFeed, Newsgator and PostRank are the only other english language competitors showing in our Feedburner numbers. The others are either browser (Firefox) or operating system readers. Also note that Newsgator shut down its online RSS Reader at the end of July this year. Conclusion: Google Dominates, RSS Readers Less Relevant These statistics are by no means the definitive RSS Reader market numbers. They do clearly show two things though: 1) Google now dominates what's left of the RSS Reader market. Bloglines is hanging in there, but it seems like it's given up the fight judging by lack of activity in its blog and traffic dips. 2) RSS reading is a very fragmented experience circa 2009. People can monitor news and information via Twitter, Facebook, start pages like Netvibes, their Firefox bookmarks, their OS, aggregators like Techmeme, and so on. Tell us in the comments how you currently read your RSS feeds and how often you check them in an RSS Reader - if indeed you still use one... Discuss

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RSS Reader Market in Disarray, Continues to Decline

Server-Side Javascript: Back With a Vengeance

admin — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:25:44 +0000

Last month was Javascript season in Europe, with two conferences dedicated to the language that powers interactive web applications, and a third , which featured it heavily. If a common theme emerged, it was the buzz about Javascript leaping out of the browser to serve other domains, and the noise has only become louder in the aftermath. Of all the applications outside the browser, server-side Javascript is the most alluring for reasons described in this post. An idea that would have had you laughed out of the room a few years ago is edging towards reality. Sponsor Javascript outside the browser? Some of the applications are graphical user-interface platforms similar to the browser, e.g. Adobe Air, television sets. With other applications, there's not even a graphical user interface. For example, some have suggested using it as a general-purpose Unix scripting language. This guest post was written by Michael Mahemoff , who works at Osmosoft as lead web developer and blogs regularly for Ajaxian and on his his personal blog, Software As She's Developed . You can follow him on Twitter . The Perfect Storm Server-side Javascript isn't a new phenomenon; Netscape stuck Javascript in the server way back in 1996, right after they introduced it to the world as a browser technology. Interest soon waned, and the language was confined to the browser for the most part. Even there, it didn't get a whole lot of respect and was frequently dismissed as a hack language capable of no more than annoying alert boxes and gratuitous ticker tape animations. But suddenly, serious web-based applications started sprouting up. GMail, Google Maps, and JotSpot (kind of a Google Docs predecessor) were all running inside the browser. They weren't supported by Flash, nor ActiveX, but Javascript manipulating the browser's Document Object Model (DOM). The term "Ajax" was coined to describe these applications, and a community flourished. A few years on, Javascript has become the world's most popular programming language by some accounts. Not so surprising when you consider its special status as the standard language shipped with all major browsers. It's the web's lingua franca. While most web developers have a favourite, primary, language for server-side work, they converge on Javascript when it comes to the browser. Javascript today can be compared to the English language: it's arguably the most popular language as long as you count basic competency, not just outright fluency. Given that you're already using it in the browser, why not stick it in the server too? One language all the way down makes it easier for a single programmer to work on either side of the wire; there's less of a mental shift. For project managers, the trend would make it easier to move developer resources between the front end and the back end if a common language is used on both. Many in the developer community now recognize Javascript as a respectable language, with understood patterns for effective use. In fact, many of Javascript's negatives were a case of misdiagnosis: the problem was really the browsers' DOM (Document Object Model) APIs, not the language itself. Take those out of the equation and you're left with a solid language capable of tackling diverse problems. There's also a promising reuse story for this "dual-side Javascript" scenario. Take form validation for example. Right now, it's common to write the same logic in two different languages. In Javascript, you write a validator to give the user immediate feedback inside the browser, and in a language like PHP, you write a validator to ensure data integrity once the form data has been uploaded to the server. But once you switch to Javascript on the server, you just need to write a single validation routine at both ends. Under some styles of development, you can also arrange for a function in the browser to directly call another function inside the server; the code is smaller and simpler to write, not being bogged down in the technical details of transferring data across the network. Javascript performance has also moved forward in leaps and bounds, thanks to browser competition. Firefox's Javascript engine, Spidermonkey, increased in speed by a factor of 20-40x . Safari's underlying engine - Squirrelfish, aka Nitro - posted similarly impressive gains (see chart below), and Google Chrome came on the scene last year along with its highly optimized V8 Javascript engine, a very real contender in the "fastest Javasript engine" stakes. Server-side Javascript also dovetails nicely the new breed of NOSQL databases . Being web-native, these databases tend to communicate in HTTP, and in some cases JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is the message format. Javascript libraries already include support for exactly that kind of interaction and programmers are familiar with them. Some of these NOSQL systems go beyond data persistence and into the zone of full-fledged Javascript application environments. Next page: Towards A Mature Server-Side Ecology Towards A Mature Server-Side Ecology In the simplest case, all you need to run server-side Javascript is a Javascript engine to plug a web server into. There are plenty of open source options here; the choice will come down to the language its implemented in, which affects the kind of environments it can run in, in addition to the usual factors like performance and level of support. Many Javascript platforms run on the Rhino engine for example, and Rhino is built in Java; this means that they can easily integrate with Java components. Thus, you can build the entire user-interface in Javascript - including a thin UI layer on the server - and still have it backed by a conventional enterprise Java stack. Helma is one prominent example of this architecture. Once equipped with a Javascript engine, you can write simple CGI scripts as you would with any other language - read the request, write the response. In practice, you'll also want good library support to get anything useful done. Some environments do come with libraries, and you can also make use of existing libraries developed for browser-based Javascript. What will really make the biggest impact, though, is industry-wide standardisation. To that end, there's a strong grassroots movement underway to converge on a complete API: CommonJS is defining an API for file access, networking, unit testing, and so on, as well as declaring how these components should be packaged for easy import. Multiple efforts are implementing the nascent spec in several major Javascript engines (Rhino, Spidermonkey, V8, EjScript). One open-source platform complying with CommonJS is Narwhal . It has considerable momentum and runs on several of the Javascript engines. CommonJS is raising the level of abstraction for server-side Javascript and allowing developers to use patterns familiar from high-level servers in other environments. Writing a web server no longer means hand-coding the lower-level cruft. Thus, you get a framework like Jack , which is similar to Python's WSGI and Ruby's Rack . Jack's based on the idea of fine-grained "middleware" libraries, able to be composed and reused, and there's a separate project, Nitro , to build such components for Jack. So Nitro builds on Jack, and Jack builds on CommonJS. This is an example of the ecosystem beginning to emerge in server-side Javascript. Use the Force! Building on Javascript's Strengths In the previous section, I treated Javascript as just another language with all the usual server-side abstractions and the well-trodden path towards modularity and reuse. That's not a bad thing at all, since we also benefit from the synergies of running the same language in the browser and the server mentioned earlier. Where things get really interesting, though, is with frameworks that exploit Javascript's unique characteristics. It's easy to get carried away with Javascript's efficacy as a regular scripting language, so let's remind ourselves that its roots are inside the browser. What the browser has, that a generic web framework doesn't, is the Document Object Model (DOM). This is the browser's model of the web page's contents. What if we gave Javascript access to a DOM? DOM access is a key feature of the Jaxer environment. It gives scripts access to an entire server-side Firefox instance. Developers can therefore manipulate content as they would in a client-side application, and output the resulting page. This overcomes one of the objections with Ajax apps, which is "what if the user has turned off Javascript?". The page still comes out as plain old HTML. That's a lot of power, and the patterns for using this kind of thing are not yet fully understood, but it has plenty of potential for exploration. There are also potentially great benefits for testing client-side applications if you can simulate an entire browser instance. jQuery founder has been working on a product called env.js . Where Jaxer is essentially an entire Firefox instance, env.js is an attempt to build a simulation of the browser environment from scratch, under active development. It's too early to say if its scope will stretch beyond testing and into the realm of server-side Javascript. DOM manipulation may be one characteristic thing about Javascript we can exploit, but there is also another (related) thing: event-handling. The language was more or less designed to respond to user events, so it has a great model for handling them that is familiar to any Javascript programmer worth their salt. For most server-side programmers, event-handling capability will yield a big fat "who gives a damn?". Server-side scripts don't sit around waiting for events to come in. They usually just look at an incoming request, deal with it, and send out a response. Then they exit as soon as they can. All good stuff, but there's a completely different paradigm possible. It's part of the trend towards the real-time web and the design pattern known as Comet. With Comet, the server holds on to the connection for a while, and continues to stream out information intermittently to the browser. The typical example is a two-way chat - as soon as one guy says something, the Comet server sends the message to the other guy. This is event-driven programming all over again, and compared to the usual suspects on the server, Javascript is well-placed to support this paradigm. A framework that's taking advantage of all this is node.js , or just "Node" to its friends. Node is interesting because it requires scripts to explicitly close the connection; if they don't close it, the connection just stays open and the script can handle events as they come in, usually by sending more information down to the browser. Less than a year old, the project already has a strong community and numerous derivative frameworks and applications . A similar model has been used in other frameworks, like Python's twisted, but Javascript may turn out to offer a neater syntax for this kind of thing. By daring to be different and using javascript for what it's best at, Node is shaping up as a framework to watch. The speed of Node apps is likely to give Javascript serious cred among server-side developers. Next page: The Cloud. Of Course, the Cloud! The Cloud. Of Course, the Cloud! No article on server trends could ignore the famous cloud. How does javascript work in virtualised computing environments? With a suitable engine, you can certainly set up an environment manually using amazon EC2, google app engine, or similar cloud hosts. However, you can do it easier than that with some of the other solutions around. Joyent took a big bet on Javascript when it acquired Reasonably Smart earlier this year; the host now offers a dead-simple runway to host Javascript scaleably. Aptana, the company behind the Jaxer platform described above, does likewise. Something's Going on Here Before we get too excited about this trend, I should make one thing clear. Conspicuous by their absence are the real-world server-side Javascript apps. There don't appear to be many sites running Javascript in the server at this time. Probably the most popular site powered by Javascript is EtherPad , the real-time collaborative notepad from AppJet, the company acquired by Google last week. This is a cautionary example, because AppJet launched as a cloud-based server-side Javascript framework before dropping it to concentrate on Etherpad. Aptana has also announced they are pulling back on Jaxer due to difficulties monetising it. Maybe this is more of a statement about cloud hosting revenue models than server-side Javascript, but it's worth asking how other attempts to propagate server-side Javascript will fare. One of the critical success factors will be a comprehensive standard API; it's a prerequisite to a vibrant ecosystem of interoperable components, and with a range of engines to run on. We now have the seeds of that with commonJS. Another factor is best practices for using the language; again, we've already discovered much of that as a side benefit of the Ajax revolution. Frameworks like Node, which build on Javascript's unique characteristics, are building on those to establish best practices for server-side Javascript. Reuse of both knowledge and practices will give Javascript its best chance yet to stand up as a viable alternative to the usual server-side suspects. Although Javascript is a far better language than was previously assumed, its syntax still has plenty of quirks. If we restrict ourselves to the subset of Javascript found in all the major browsers today - and arguably it makes sense to do so - it's arguably lacking certain features of other server-side languages. Those other languages are free to evolve autonomously; in contrast, Javascript's fate is heavily determined by standards bodies, browser manufacturers, and the patterns around how users upgrade their browser. In this sense, the language's strength - shipping with every browser - is also an Achilles' Heel. That said, the language may well prove "good enough". The benefits of "one language all the way down" may outweigh the cost in many cases. The will is stronger than ever to make server-side Javascript a reality, and it's translating into a visible surge of activity in the web community. There's the promise of code reuse and the possibility of cutting in half the number of programming languages involved in building a typical web application. Many smart developers have gravitated towards Javascript in recent years, as a means of producing world-class front-end apps. The attention has progressed our understanding of the language. Should server-side Javascript go mainstream, a third wave of Javascript developers will be joining the community and enriching the ecosystem. Photo by Dmitry Baranovskiy Discuss

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Server-Side Javascript: Back With a Vengeance

IBM Gets Webtop From eyeOS, Eyes Google Chrome OS

cgseo — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:45:21 +0000

IBM is teaming up with eyeOS , the maker of an open-source, web-based operating system. We've had our (ahem) eye on eyeOS for quite some time . It's receiving renewed interest in the wake of the much anticipated launch of Google Chrome OS . IBM will offer eyeOS 2.0, available in January, to all customers who buy IBM's System Z mainframe servers. SystemZ servers are used mainly by large organizations for data processing purposes. So eyeOS will be used as a desktop in the cloud for potentially thousands of enterprise users. Sponsor This is a huge win for eyeOS, making it one of Google's biggest competitors in the web OS or " webtop ," space. IBM has a huge channel for distributing eyeOS, which will better position the Barcelona-based company in the enterprise market. Questions still remain about the eyeOS platform. IBM is adopting the software for availability on its servers, which raises questions about eyeOS as a true cloud offering. The beauty of cloud computing is its ease of use, with the Web as its backbone. As our own Sarah Perez wrote in September about eyeOS : "Besides, offering the host-your-own solution almost misses the point of being a web OS. The promise of cloud computing is that it's supposed to make our lives easier - our data lives on the web now and not on our fallible hard disks and CDs. We don't have to backup, because Google (or any other cloud vendor) does that for you. We don't have to worry with hard drive space either - we use the cloud, sometimes even for a fee, and we can get to our data from anywhere using any device. And all this is provided to you within your browser." Nonetheless, this is a big step forward for eyeOS and validation that this kind of "webtop" solution may have legs after all. Discuss

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IBM Gets Webtop From eyeOS, Eyes Google Chrome OS