April 27, 2004
Enterprise Information Portals (EIP)
I have been interested in portals for a long time since the days when microsoft was offering their Digital Dashboard product that provided portal like functionality. Web portals now being called Enterprise Information Portals (EIP) are available everywhere and all major application platform providers have their own EIP software. EIPs started from their humble beginnings with web portals like myYahoo that allowed users to view a web page with multiple sections displaying content from around the web. This initial portal offering provided the beginnings of the capabilities that you see today in the large portal offerings like personalisation, layout management and the display of syndicated data feeds.
EIP capabilities have expanded since then with many additions anc capbilities. Now there are two flavours of EIPs, content mangement systems and portal frameworks. Content-based EIPs like Microsoft Sharepoint concentrate on providing portlets and a default configuration for storage, organisation and searching of data. EIP framework solutions like IBM WebSphere and BEA WebLogic have been developed to provide a basis so that the enterprise can customise and further develop their portal installation to better meet their needs. Most framework based EIP solutions also provide content management type solutions.
An area of portal development that has not been fully explored is the concept of building complete applications using the portal framework. I will explore this concept further in a future entry.
Links:
Microsoft and the Portal, Article from Line56.com
IBM WebSphere Portal Server
Plumtree Enterprise Information Portal
BEA WebLogic Portal
Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server
Apache Jetspeed
April 20, 2004
Cool stuff for mac fans
Over the last couple of days there have been a few very interesting updates to hardware and software that any mac fan will like. These include:
New Apple Powerbook G4 laptops
Apple has speed bumped all their powerbooks, added more video memory, expanded the amount of memory allowed (up to 2gig) and you can now purchase a 15“ version with a backlit keyboard (previously only available on the 17” model).
New versions of the Apple iBook laptops
Updated versions with faster processor speeds.
New Version of Konfabulator
New version of Konfabulator released which contains an updated Javascript engine, speed improvements, animated GIF support, bug fixes and better support for Exposé. Konfabulator is a cool little program that allows you to run mini applications to do anything from display the weather to display RSS feeds.
April 16, 2004
PQI Intelligent Stick
Nowadays everyone has one of those USB thumb drives that allow files to be stored on a little solid state memory stick with a USB connector on the end. Most of these drives are very small but not that small. One of the biggest problems when using these thumbdrives is that they do not esily fit in the USB port next to other devices that are also plugged in, especially when using a laptop where the USB ports are very close together. This is where the PQI Intelligent Stick is great because of its tiny tiny tiny size.
When I first saw the Intelligent stick on the Internet I thought that it was small. THen I purchased one and had it in my hot little hands and was even more amazed at exact how small it was, it is extremely small. It will fit by itself in most USB ports without any problems but it also comes with an adapter that makes the stick have the same connector as normal USB devices. The reason for the adapter is that the stick is actually only half the thickness of normal USB connectors! Along with the adapter the stick also comes with a credit card sized holder that can hold two Intelligent sticks.
The sticks are available in mutliple sizes arranging from 128Mb all the way to 1Gb and come in USB 1.0 and USB 2.0 versions. I bought the 256Mb USB 2.0 version. There is also a very small light not normally visible that lights up when the stick is in use. I have no gripes with this product other than the credit card type holder does not hold the sticks very tight and I would be worried that it will fall out of the holder. I also would recommend that the manufacturers actually alter the holder to add a hole to the holder so that it could be attached to a neck chain or other cord.
Rating: 10/10
April 15, 2004
OPML and MoveableType
I have a number of blogs set up at work with another blog used as an index page to all the other blogs. On this index blog I have also set up a link to an automatically generated OPML file. OPML is used to define multiple RSS feeds that can be loaded into an RSS applications. This allows the easy import of multiple RSS feeds. Below is a MoveableType template for creating an OPML file that contains the RSS feeds for all the blogs in the current instance of MoveableType.
<!--OPML generated by Egon Kuster using MoveableType-->
<opml version=“1.0”>
- <head>
<title>c2dweblogs.opml</title>
<dateCreated>Thu, 15 Apr 2004 17:46:39 GMT</dateCreated>
<dateModified>Thu, 15 Apr 2004 17:46:39 GMT</dateModified>
</head>
<body>
<MTBlogs><outline text=“<MTBlogName>” description=“<MTBlogDescription>” htmlUrl=“<MTBlogURL>” title=“<MTBlogName>” type=“rss” version=“RSS” xmlUrl=“<MTBlogURL>index.rdf” />
</MTBlogs>
</body>
To use create a new template and name the file with a .opml extension. Then copy and paste the above XML into the details section of the template. Save the template and rebuild the site. You will also need to create a link to this file so users can download it. Hey presto you now have an automatically generated OPML file for use within RSS applications to subscribe to all blogs on your site.
