Tributes flooding in on Hacker News provide an excellent insight into his impact on the world around us:

There are several billion people using many billions of devices every day. From the code in your microwave to massive computing clusters, virtually all of our software can trace its ancestry back to this man’s intellectual output. I’m eternally grateful for his life and contributions to humanity. – steveb

One commenter summed it up for all those programmers out there:

 #include <stdio.h> main() {  
 printf("goodbye, world\n"); 
} - bootload

It is worth remembering that while there are many individuals who have made high profile contributions to the industry, there are scores more who either due to personal preference to lead more private lives or the nature of their work never get much recognition the public domain. So not only would I like to pay tribute to this great man, but also to all those out there without whom the world would be a very different place. So a warm thank you goes out to all those people, their families have every right to be proud.

That said the uptake of new users has still been slow, and we are working to spread the word about meetingShed further. Refining the application is still an important aim but the response to feedback obviously has to be scaled depending upon the interest received.

A sustainable and long term approach is being taken to this project and we hope to create something lasting that becomes important enough to users so that they keep coming back. We hope to please users of calendar and scheduling software with the simplicity of meetingShed and its integration with Google Calendar. Do not hesitate to shoot any questions or criticism to:

support[at]meetingshed.com

Some of the features include:

The app is now live and can be tried out at www.meetingshed.com

The scheduling functionality uses the KMS-dev development platform for logic programming.

I urge anyone reading to please give it a go and any feedback you can provide would be gratefully received!

The platform uses a Java based web service interface to allow communication with an SWI-Prolog instance.

Logic programming is a powerful programming paradigm, offering benefits of decreased development time and increased code readability and modifiability. It is particularly effective for software involving decision making and constraint satisfaction.

We hope the platform will benefit from contribution by the Open Source and Prolog community and we welcome developers to try it out.

A quick start guide, further information and the KMS-dev platform download are available at:

kms.intelligent-architectures.co.uk

Lately I have been using Vaadin which provides an excellent environment for rapid web UI development for Java developers. Vaadin is actually built on top of GWT, the principle advantage of which was that it required no hand-coding of javascript which is notoriously fiddly. GWT works by compiling Java code into javascript. Vaadin takes this concept a step further and renders javascript on the fly, essentially pushing everything the developer writes server side. This eliminates the need for RPC calls to deal with more complex features (not appropriate to be running on the client’s browser) such as object relational mapping with EJBs.

Essentially Vaadin allows Java developers to work solely in Java with whichever APIs and libraries they wish without thinking about what’s happening in the client and what’s happening on the server. In addition Vaadin provides some very slick, open source visual components to use in one’s application which certainly speeds up development time.

This approach is very similar to that taken in the ThinWire AJAX platform, however ThinWire unfortunately hit a lack of community support and current development has slowed right down. In contrast Vaadin, created by a Finnish company (previously called The IT Mill, now simply Vaadin Ltd), has a commercial backing from consultancy and support as well as a vibrant open source community.

For now, I think that suffices as a good introduction to the framework. Now I’ve worked with such visually and programmatically appealing platforms as this, I find it quite surprising there are not more development companies using these kinds of technology particularly if they are develping web apps and hand coding large amounts of javascript. A good starting point is the Vaadin component sampler which can be found here.

There were several important things I learned while at the Expo:

• While I’m not qualified to talk at length about it myself, it is abundantly clear that cloud computing confuses people. All of these people seemed plenty well equipped with the knowledge to understand technical concepts. The problem has to do with the blurred definition of what the cloud really is. I suppose in that sense it’s very fitting that much like the physical entities in the atmosphere that the word cloud represents, the meaning of cloud computing is similarly amorphous.
• Software development in the UK needs to grow as an industry. Plenty of people talking to me were bemoaning the lack of quality developers and development companies that are based in the UK. Outsourcing happens a lot in the current economic climate, and while some developers abroad are genuinely offering value for money, many offer a false economy. There are many capable software developers young and old in the UK that have all the expertise and experience to deliver the absolute highest quality software. I think our industry needs investment and I also think the manner in which software is typically commissioned, developed and sold may need to change in order for the industry to grow.
• The project needs a few things:

Knowledge Management Services becomes KMS-dev and KMS-apps

The experience of the Expo has made me realise that just offering consultancy or marketing a particular product to the target market is not necessarily the best way to get noticed.

To demonstrate the project further I now aim to have some more material online by the time the major development is finished. Its clear that some people are interested in the development platform itself, and some are interested in the applications possible to develop using the platform. Unfortunately the two sets of interested parties seem to be in most cases mutually exclusive. Therefore I’m going to split the online information into two distinct sections: KMS-dev where one can learn a bit more about the development platform itself and KMS-apps which will showcase the sample applications and as well as generating interest I hope to launch at least one of the applications as a subscription service.

Another problem I’m hoping to tackle by setting the target of making demo material available online is that articulating the project is not easy, as it doesn’t lend itself to a quick hard-sell. This links in with the second point I made above: Some people really don’t seem comfortable discussing the development of bespoke software to solve particular business problems. In my experience though, discussion of business problems is the only way to make progress and provide someone with something they really need. I could speculate endlessly on the reasons for this reluctance, but there is one important possible reason I can do something about:

People want to digest something in their own time that will provide a concise way of assessing whether a product or service can offer them some value. With this in mind over the next few months I hope to have to have the KMS website live. It will represent a new approach to marketing the development platform and the software derived from it, which I hope may resonate with interested individuals and businesses.

Intelligent Architectures' stand at the expo

The Expo itself was a good experience and it was interesting to see the range of vendors and organisations that attend such an event. It has to be said that this event was the only affordable option for a small organisation to attend in comparison to astronomical charges made by most other computing event organisers, and there wasn’t any real compromise on the quality of the event either.

Presence at the Expo represents another step towards taking what started out as a simple idea and turning it into a desirable product to bring to market.

I hope in the near future to bring exciting news about further developments in my project work

Well next week (2-3rd February) I’ll be exhibiting my software project  as Intelligent Architectures’ founder and chief developer. Find out more information about the expo here. This will provide a much needed opportunity for my project to get some exposure and hopefully develop links with interested businesses.

It was a rather last minute decision so I’m currently in the throes of organising things for the expo, but I am looking forward to the opportunity it provides.

The event is free if you pre-register so please do come along and say hello!

As such I thought I’d blog about it again with a bit more info and a few new screenshots for you.

Color Scheme Magic can help you find matching colours on your mobile device so you can choose appropriate colours for things when you’re out and about. Potential applications include:

• Graphic / visual design – swift colour matching and prototyping
• Decorating –  finding matching paint colours for paint and furniture
• Fashion – choosing clothes to wear to make a matching outfit
• Web design – creating colour schemes for web sites
• etc…

The algorithm in the app suggests matching colours for you which should go well. I’d like to also add features in the future to randomize the colour schemes slightly so you can create unique schemes, and add a web based user colour scheme database and user feedback on other’s saved schemes.

Here’s the app running:

And here’s a sample email that you can send containing your colour scheme by pressing Menu –> Email colour scheme:

Doesn’t that look nice if I may say so myself?

Without getting into analysing the gory details of some of the statements made (I think this article at The Register sums up the pertinent points), I would propose a headline for the story as a whole as:

Polarising hard sell misrepresents and obscures the true merits (and foibles) of both Android and iPhone as mobile platforms

You are all very welcome to the following seminar if you are interested to multivariate
probability models based on copulas for analyzing dependent data such as clustered and
longitudinal overdispersed counts. Our method can also be regarded as a generalization
of the GEE method that is popular in biostatistics

I reviewed the more detailed seminar description, and I am none the wiser about the nature of this seminar. In fact I’m just further confused by it.

Now, not being big headed, I consider myself a relatively smart guy and I have fairly extensive computing knowledge but I really can’t engage with something like that. And the problem is if academic computing  research is to be usefully applied to the world outside of academia, those doing the research need to be able to explain it to less technical individuals so they have at least a surface level understanding of what they have / are trying to achieve.

I realise those giving the seminar may experts in their field and this could be a fantastic piece of research, the problem is the likes of me wouldn’t have a clue.