Trends « PCMSpace

Archive for the ‘Trends’ Category

Is Ajax making sites less reachable?

Thursday, May 17th, 2007

We have been talking about Ajax and Web 2.0 technologies for sometime now. At one end Ajax becoming an asset from usability point of view but on the other hand it is making sites less search engine friendly. Search engines for now are not intelligent enough to make a server side request and retrieve the information to index. So it boils down to Usability Vs Search-ability? Which one to achieve?

What is the best way to achieve a balance between the two – making my site usable as well as search-able.

Here is one of the possible approach:

Step 1: To design your site without any Ajax. Javascript
Step 2: Then modify your website to include small Ajax, Java scripts components making sure that the content that gets hidden is available else where in the site which does not deploy Ajax

Posted in Ajax, SEO, Trends, Usability, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Search Engine: Is Content Separation a new SEO?

Thursday, May 3rd, 2007

We are very familiar with the concept of separation of code from content. Yahoo recently tried to separate content itself into actual content and common content. What I mean is separating parts of a page that do not relate to the main content, such as navigation, menus repeated across the entire site, boilerplate text, or even advertising. Interesting!!!

Yahoo introduces a ‘robots-nocontent’ class which can be included with any HTML tag. By introducing this class within tag, the idea is to

• Focus on the main content
• Not to use those sections of the page marked for finding the page
• Improving abstract for the searched page by omitting unrelated info

How to use it?
<div class=”robots-nocontent”>Header of the site</div>
<span class=”robots-nocontent”>Navigation of the site</span>
<p class=”robots-nocontent”>Footer of the site </p>

My thoughts:
+ve
• Good way to segregate main/relevant content from general content
• More focus content

-ve
• Why “robots-nocontent”, why not “robot-content”?
• Is defining class a right approach? Most of the sites does not have well formed HTML, so think of a situation where you applied this class which covers the whole page content
• Currently keyword density as well as its location is one of the prime SEO techniques. What will happen if websites start using this tagging?
• Is it not raising concerns with content security? Someone can define not viewable content within these tags and search engine will happily ignore this and show your site even in top sites
• Need to be standardized before people start working towards it

What are your thoughts?

Posted in SEO, Trends | 1 Comment »

Another Collaboration Feature: Google’s Gadget

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

Here is another Collaboration Feature from Google. Google has introduced a new Gadget maker product for iGoogle (new name for Google Personalized Homepage). The users without having any programming or web design experience can create Gadgets and share with community or other iGoogle user. The Gadgets are as simple as filling out the form in the predefined 7 templates:

• A Photo gadget which is designed to share a series of photos
• GoogleGram gadget that display a new greeting message for every day of the week
• Daily Me gadget which will show what you’re currently doing, as well as quotes, what’s on your mind etc.
• Free Form gadget that as the name suggest will allow free flow of information, image text layout background colour
• YouTube Channel gadget to share good videos on YouTube
• Personalized List Gadget to basically present your list of items. It could be list of your favorite songs, a list of items to buy today etc.
• Personalized Countdown gadget is more like a reminder to any event, happening with a countdown

Apart from this, it provides option to update the Gadget and re-publish so that it gets updated at the other end.

Pretty neat way to bring people togather !!!!

But few things to watch out for:

• Updation at receiving end took a pretty long time to get refreshed with updated information
• No intimation whether the iGoogle user has added your Gadget or not
• If the Gadget creator deletes the Gadget, will it get deleted at the other end?
• A way to establish two way communication rather then just one way for now

Posted in Collaboration, Trends, Usability, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Web Applications to be available offline

Friday, April 13th, 2007

Off late there has been lot of web sites that I came across which are trying to provide offline access for their Web applications. The basic idea is that the application can be worked with in a browser offline and automatically sync up whenever you get online.

Scrybe is one such online/offline calender and organizer service that provides offline web application service.
(more…)

Posted in Ajax, Collaboration, Trends, Usability, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Catchup with Open Ajax Project

Thursday, March 22nd, 2007

Open Ajax Project or better known as Open Ajax Alliance has added many more members to their alliance. The biggest name to add to the list is Microsoft. This makes a total count of 73 members working towards Ajax Globalization.

Alliance has come up with the term called “OpenAjax Conformance” which defines a set of conformance requirements on Ajax technologies, products and applications to promote Ajax interoperability.
An Ajax library will be with Open Ajax Conformance only when:

1) Supports OpenAjax Hub Specifications (OpenSource project)
2) Javascript objects with OpenAjax Registry
3) Support best practices defined within Open Ajax Conformance

These developments clearly indicates where the http domain moving on. This is also one of the talking points with Web 2.0

Posted in Ajax, Open Source, Trends, Usability, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Changing Trends – CMS Migration with Intermediate Solution

Saturday, May 20th, 2006

In recent times, I came across few situations where client need to move from their hosted CMS environment to another CMS environment due to issues like scalability, performance, global strategy etc. What has been amazing is clients are looking for intermediate solutions before migrating to new CMS environments. They look for migrating existing solution to either an open source environment, or changing to static site for few months. How does it help them? Is it a good approach? Here is my thoughts on it:
(more…)

Posted in Content Management, Trends | No Comments »

Sun Portal is now Open Source

Wednesday, May 17th, 2006

As mentioned by Navneeth in his post, Sun Portal has been open sourced. The news came in after Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz promised to make Java open-source code at JavaOne. Check out the press release Sun Advances Open Source Strategy at JavaOne.

Sun has launched Portal Open Source Project under which it will be releasing all components and technologies in Sun Java System Portal Server 7. The beginning is done by creating an open source portlet repository which list down portlets like RSS, Bookmark, notepad, showtime.
(more…)

Posted in Open Source, Portals, Trends | No Comments »

Changing nature of RFP/RFI

Monday, May 8th, 2006

RFP (Request for Proposal) has been a traditional way for clients to evaluate, compare and select any kind of products and services. Recently came across an interesting scenario where the client raised an RFI (Request for Information) and requested service providers to provide solution approach (a usual stuff) plus demonstration. Demo need to consist of the various areas identified by client in its RFI. What this really means:
(more…)

Posted in Trends | No Comments »

Dev2Dev Days – Bangalore’06: BEA’s Blended Strategy

Thursday, April 20th, 2006

Recently I attended BEA’s Dev2DevDay 2006 held at Bangalore. It focused on BEA’s blended strategy along with sharing information about the latest in enterprise development. The session was well thought covering presentation tier (Struts, Ajax), business layer (Spring framework, POJOs) and persistence layer (Kodos, Hibernate, JDOs) along with demonstrations.

Here are few highlights from the session:

Blending strategy to meet OSS challenges like integration testing, enterprise production deployment etc. Gel together best of open source with commercial product.
Demonstration of BEA workshop Studio 3.0 with focus on

AppXRay – Application scanning and dependency checking
Support for standard/ open source technologies like JSP, JSF, Struts, Spring, Kodo, Hibernate
Forms the part of blended development tools built over eclipse.

Blended strategy in deployment platform by providing weblogic console for Tomcat Server Management, widely used open source server.
Blended strategy in data tier layer by integrating with JDOs, Hibernate.
BEA open sourcing a version of Kodo, the best persistence engine in market today.

Here is my take on Blended strategy:

BEA talks of making things simpler by blending with the best of open source technologies/framework in market. Weblogic’s latest server uses spring framework, hibernate etc. to ease the use. But the bigger question is how BEA is contributing to open source community in return? BEA thinks that just by using best of breeds and integrating in their products to make life simple will help community. But is BEA ready to open source its Application server which is using most of the open source technologies/frameworks? -NO is the answer.

Just open sourcing a version of Kodo is not the contribution that one looks from a company like BEA. What I think Kodo is open sourced is to make people aware of Kodo, get the best out of community and take latest version to make it a part of their Kodo productline. So the bottom line is that OSS community did free work for BEA who is then earning money over it.

Posted in Trends | 1 Comment »

Are open source acquisitions good in long run?

Tuesday, March 14th, 2006

Recently, we have seen lot of open source acquisitions by players like IBM, Oracle, Sun etc. These acquisitions has raised questions about the future of open source industry.
Open Thinking Here is my take on it: Any acquisition happens with motive of either reward or out of fear. Reward, when acquiring company thinks that the product can gel well with their existing suit and will bring them long term benefits. And fear, that the product is open source and doing pretty well in market which hinders their own sales and adds insecurity to company.

(more…)

Posted in Open Source, Trends | 1 Comment »

PCMSpace