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bdg Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction The Social Collective

The Social Collective Debuts at RubyNation

We’re very pleased to announce that, together with the organizers of RubyNation, we debuted our social application “The Social Collective” today as a means for RubyNation conference attendees and other Rubyists to meet and interact with their peers.

This is a very similar codebase to what we deployed at BEA Participate in May, but without ALI or ALBPM. These BEA (now Oracle) products provided a great, scalable and flexible architecture, but we didn’t feel it was a good use of our resources (i.e. $$$s) to continue to use these products and we didn’t want to pass this cost on to RubyNation, which, BTW, is only charging $175 for two jam-packed days of Ruby awesomeness.

So, for those of you who have been following all this social goodness coming from bdg, there are now two distinct versions of The Social Collective: one that uses BEA/Oracle products and one that does not. This affects pricing (obviously), so if you’re interested in either, please contact us to find out more.

And in the meantime, if you’re as gung ho about Ruby as we are, sign up for an account and help us grow the Ruby community here in DC and beyond!

Categories
bdg dev2dev Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction

Announcing the Ruby IDK

Check it out at https://rubyidk.projects.dev2dev.bea.com.

Let’s have a virtual round of applause for Andrew Bays, bdg’s hotshot developer responsible for the latest innovation to come from our open source factory, the Ruby IDK.

Comments

Comments are listed in date ascending order (oldest first)

  • It’s a little unclear from this, and from the project description, just what the Ruby IDK is – unless of course you know what “all methods in com.plumtree.remote.portlet.*” are. Can you blog a few examples of what you can do with this?

    Posted by: jonmountjoy on October 13, 2006 at 2:15 AM

  • Here are a few examples of how one might use the Ruby IDK for portlet development. These snippets are utilized in your Ruby on Rails server’s View files (.rhtml files). The instance variables that they employ are declared and instantiated in your Application Controller(s).
    <!-- This example sets the portlet's title bar -->
    <% @portletResponse.setTitle("My Awesome Portlet") %>
    
    <!-- This example greets the user -->
    Hello, <%= @portletUser.getUserName() %>!
    
    <!-- This example redirects the browser to the portal home page -->
    <% @portletResponse.returnToPortal() %>
    
    <!-- This example creates a link back to the portal home page -->
    <a href=">%= @portletRequest.getReturnURI() %>">%= @portletRequest.getReturnURI() %>"</a>
    
    !-- This example shows how to force a portlet displayed outside of a portal page to use the ALUI header and footer -->
    <% @portletResponse.setHostedDisplayMode(HostedDisplayMode.Hosted) %>
    

    I hope you find this useful and at least somewhat informative. I would stress that you examine the sample portlets provided in CodeShare’s rubyidk.zip for a more thorough presentation of the IDK’s potential.

    Regards,
    Andrew Bays | bdg | 607 316 3090
    [email protected] | http://www.bdg-online.com

    Posted by: andrew.bays on October 20, 2006 at 11:50 AM

Categories
Software Development

Fedora Core 5 Support for Intel Pro Wireless (Centrino)

I bought a new Gateway MP6954 Laptop yesterday and decided to give Linux another go. This time I told myself: I’m not even going to attempt to run any Windows applications using Crossover Office or anything else. I’m just going to go with what works best: httpd, Tomcat, Java, PHP, Perl, Ruby, Oracle, MySQL, etc.

I installed Fedora Core 5 again (kernel build 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp) from the same CDs I used last time and it installed and came up cleanly, but with no wireless support. There is very little documentation about running Linux on my particular laptop model, but the wireless hardware (Intel Centrino/Pro Wireless ipw3945) is fairly commonplace and, according to the many sources I referenced, it’s “well supported” by Linux. Intel even offers a driver for it, but it’s a source-only distribution.

According to the install guide for the driver, I first needed to download and compile the IEEE 80211 subsystem. I later found out that in most cases, doing so is a bad idea. Compiling the subsystem (version 1.1.14) and then the driver (version 1.1.0) led to runtime incompatibilities — “Invalid Module Format” was the exact error. However, against the 80211 module included with the 2.6.15 kernel source, the driver wouldn’t even compile. So I was in a bind.

I needed to find an IEEE 80211 subsystem that was compatible with the 1.1.0 version of the driver. The answer was actually more simple than I thought. All I needed to do was upgrade to the latest FC5 kernel 2.6.17, install the latest kernel sources (yum install kernel-devel) and then build the driver from there. These are the instructions I followed.

And just like that, I had wireless support for my new laptop under FC5. Now only if I could get the sound card working . . . .

Categories
bdg Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction

Mingle posted on the BEA/Plumtree Code Share

I’m very pleased to announce that Mingle, a prototype of a BEA/Plumtree Web 2.0 social networking application, has been posted on the BEA/Plumtree Code Share!

Mingle was bdg’s winning entry in Odyssey 2005’s Booth of Pain competition.

Mingle features a set of adaptive portlets that work together to help people find one another and form social networks based on personal interests, physical proximity, etc. The portlets consist of:

Adaptive User Search (JSP): each keystroke issues an EDK/PRC search API call to help people find other people quickly and easily. Clicking on a person re-focuses the Network Browser, causing the browser to center on that person’s network.

Network Browser (Java/JSP): built as a Java applet leveraging an opensource hyperbolic graphing project (HyperGraph), this portlet shows the physical connections between people and allows you to browse the network.

Featured Person Profile (JSP): when a person double-clicks on another person in the Network Browser, this portlet shows that person’s complete user profile, include all the EOD attached to that user (Name, Address, Hobbies, etc.).

Del.icio.us Hobby Links (C#.NET): when a person clicks on the featured person’s hobby of choice, this portlet makes an adaptive request to del.icio.us to download social bookmarks relevant to the hobby.

Google Map Locator (HTML/Javascript): when a person clicks on the feature person’s address, this portlet makes an adaptive request to a free geocoder and then to Google Maps to display an interactive map of the person’s address in the portal.

Mingle is bdg’s second open source offering to the BEA/Plumtree community. You can download the source and install it on your own BEA/Plumtree deployment.

Have fun, and if you run into problems, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Categories
bdg Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction

Podcast Episode 3: Plumtree Washed Away by AquaLogic

bdg-podcastI just cut the third episode of the bdg Plumtree Podcast. I’m very happy to say that I’ve worked out a glitch in the connection between the mixer and my laptop which eliminates that awful high-pitched hum you hear in the first two episodes.

In Episode 3, I talk about the name changes that resulted from the merger between Plumtree and BEA Systems and the impact of these changes on the portal market.

I also talk about a thought-provoking podcast I heard yesterday given by Medsphere Systems Corporation’s CEO Larry Augustine. You can read more about the podcast or check it out on iTunes.

As always, we end with a trivia question.

I’m interested to hear your feedback — please send your comments to [email protected].

Categories
bdg Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction

Benefits of an open source model

I rode public transit today (always good for the soul) and had a chance to listen to some of the many podcasts that I’ve downloaded to my iPod. One I found particularly interesting was a recording of Larry Augustine’s talk at the Open Source Business Conference held in San Francisco in April of 2005.

If you want to hear the podcast yourself, you can check it out in iTunes — it’s Episode 12.

Basically, Larry argued two things — one is that large applications (CRM, ERP, etc.) are the “next wave” of open source development and the other is that the open source business model can actually lead to more profits than the traditional “broken” model of selling enterprise software for large license fees.

bdg already offers one product as open source — the PHP EDK, but this podcast made me start to rethink our model. Perhaps all of our products should be free and we should continue to make our money off services, maintenance and support.

bdg-podcastI ruminate (publicly) on this topic in the third episode of the bdg Plumtree Podcast, which also covers the Plumtree->AquaLogic name changes.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts as well.

Categories
bdg

bdg’s new hires and site changes

All of us at bdg are very pleased to welcome the newest members of our team: Rich Weinhold and Eric Bucchere.

Rich, our resident PHP and Plumtree guru, has made his claim to fame by developing the PHP EDK, which is now available for download on the Plumtree Code Share (requires a login and password) or by contacting bdg.

Eric, bdg’s Account Manager, serves as the main POC for all of our implementations, helping customers get their issues resolved quickly and efficiently.

We’ve updated the Web site to reflect these new additions and also made a few other changes, including adding a page about our committment to open source development, which has come to fruition with the release of the Plumtree PHP EDK 5.1.