I have seen the future of web applications and it is ....

... Jotspot . It's not that it is very much a Web 2.0 company. It's more that it draws together a lot of previous ideas into one easy to use package.

• It's easy to use - if you can use Microsoft Office , you can use JotSpot
• It's easy to develop - 'Power Users' not developers can do it (the sort that come up with fancy Excel Spreadsheets).
  
• It's web based, is available everywhere and uses a very fluid Ajax interface
  
• It can be easily extended , so all the people currently playing around with PHP and websites can get up and running more quickly.
• It's free, with a more powerful commercial version
  

Other 'out of the box' features include being able to import Excel Spreadsheets and have them available as online applications. It also comes with ready build applications such as CRM , Project Management Tools, Colloboration Tools etc

Jotspot is exactly the sort of 'Component based Architcture' that Java Developers have been aiming towards. It ties the portability of Java, the ease of development of Visual Basic and the promise of Lotus Notes. It also has a full set of easy to use XML API's , so a wave a client applications tied into a Jotspot server is not far off.

Software Patents and You

The Economist is running one of it's in depth Surveys on Software Patents and the Market for idea's. Some of the content is available online but here is the 10 second version:

• The market for idea's is one of the key drivers of Economic Growth.
• Large Companies are gathering Patents as a means of defense against other people enforcing patent claims on them.
• Patents , if used unwisely, can be a bit like the tolls that used to be charged travellers - good for the local warlords but bad for everybody else.
• Many large companies , including IBM and Novell are donating Patents to Open source as a means of helping the open software , and hence their own , interests.
• As other countries (e.g. China and India) gather their own Patent portfolio, the attitude to Patents and Copyright, instead of one way traffic, will become more balanced - for example the US Cogress was ready to forcibly licence an anti-anthrax drug from a German Company post 9-11. Expect
  

A good forum for expressing your views on Patents is Digitial Rights Ireland.

If you're looking for a good Charity to support ...

... you could do worse than the township challenge, a project where two jumbos full of Irish Builders fly out to build houses in the South African townships (and you wondered where they went on holidays).

Disguised in the middle of all these builders is Oisin O'Murchu Software Trainer turned wheelbarrow pusher. How long will it be before he is found out? Click here for more information.

Struts and Ajax - new Java.Net Article

Some of you may already have read the Ajax article (after all , the link is probably what brought you here!).

If you haven't, check it out!

Metro , Herald AM and the Irish Jobs Market

Both Metro and the Herald AM free newspapers launched this week and now you can't leave a Dart station in Dublin without getting offered both. For the Record, I'm a Metro man myself , having used it (unsucessfully) to try and learn Flemish / Dutch while in Brussels.

The word has it that both were ready to launch, and held back several times while waiting (a) for the legal action to finish and (b) to see what it each other did.

It makes you wonder about the (good) flexibility of the Irish Jobs Market. Here , in an era of 'full' employment these guys can launch at the drop of a hat (less than 48hrs notice) and still have hundreds of people out on the street to do the distribution. Given that it's unlikely they had the distribution guys on a retainer , shows that the Irish Jobs Market is definately more Boston than Berlin .

Tech Camp - Lego Draw

Probably the first of many posts about Tech Camp

A very good meeting in Dublin , loads of ideas from the people present.

Interesting though that the first blog I do about it is a piece of software call L(ego) Draw - no more boring Powerpoint presentations for me - Lego figures all the way!