Emakina Blog

The new transaction platform Tunz.com has started this week and gives a free 5 euros credit to the first 1.000 subscribers. Among the cool features offered by this service, let’s point out the TunzMe pay button. If you’re a blogger, this widget enables your readers to easily send you a money gift.

Tunz.com has been co-founded by Internet pioneers like Jean Zurstrassen, Grégoire de Streel or Brice Le Blévennec (President of Emakina).

We created a nice viral game to celebrate the first year of the “state of happiness” campaign by Center Parcs. Your challenge is to blow out a candle with your mouse… or with your own breath if you plug a microphone in your computer. Check out and play:

- Blaas de kaar uit
- Soufflez la bougie
- Pusten die Kerze aus

A post from Johnny Degreef, Web Solution Architect.

A few weeks ago, our Java team attended JavaPolis 2006. It’s one of the biggest European conferences for Java developers (more than 2.800 attendees and 100+ speakers this year).

The thing that hit me most this year is how few Java code that we’ve seen. It’s a fact now that Java is merging more and more with other technologies and programming languages. To name but a few hot ones: Ajax, Flex, Ruby, JSON, Python, REST…

There were also sessions about the never ending story, called SOA. I guess by now, everybody understands that SOA is nothing more then a buzzword that sales guys like to use just because it’s fancy… In practice, however, SOA architectures based on web services can not be ignored.

Some things that really scared me are these upcoming technologies like REST and COMET. REST (Representational State Transfer) seems a good idea, but I’m sure that security departments will think differently on this since it can expose your complete business logic by means of simple HTTP GET requests. COMET is a technology that allows to push information from a server to a browser. The idea is nice, but I consider it as a violent rape of TCP/IP! Even with some upcoming ARP (Asynchronous Request Processing) web servers like Grizzly and Glassfish that are designed specifically for this purpose, I still have an awkward feeling about this. But probably, I’m the only one thinking this way since the upcoming Servlet 3.0 specification will also be based on this.

This makes me come back to Flex that out-of-the box supports to push data to the browser. Let me assure you, I like the idea of Flex very much. I’m convinced that our front-ends are evolving to this technology. But what about the infrastructural aspects of Flex? Can a complete Flex application have the same simultaneous load then a traditional web application running on a simple Apache 1.3? What’s the impact on the web server stack?

What’s new under the sun for Java? Well, of course, there is the final Java SE6 released a few weeks ago. And since Java is open sourced with a GPLv2 license there is the OpenJDK equivalent. New in Java SE6 are a web service client stack, native XML data binding, scripting support (Mozilla rhino engine), SQLXML, Diagnosability, Desktop API enhancements, annotation tool support and finally, no more JVM tuning flags! The Java SE6 JVM is auto-tuning. For the upcoming Java SE7 there will be a new archiving structure more flexible then jar packages, support for dynamic languages, easier Swing development, Asynchronous IO and Javadoc improvements. Java SE7 will also come with new Java language modifications. Hot topic here are ‘closures’ that can control abstraction (less code).

Finally, I want to conclude on what we need to focus more and more in our daily work:

- Profiling: more important then ever before. All web application should be verified with a profiling tool. Most memory leaks still have their origin in written source code. Besides this, profiling of CPU, memory and IO are needed as well.

- Flow of changes: the final goal of software development is to have a stable outcome. We need to stabilize our releases as much as possible. The usage of a source code control system is not sufficient since it doesn’t cover any application life cycle. An interesting design pattern to tackle this is the “tofu scale”, invented by Perforce.com.

- Automatic testing: Besides Agile development, there is also Test Driven Development (TDD) where all development is concentrated by unit and acceptance tests. To automate testing of web applications, have a look at Selenium, a Firefox plugin.

Emakina wishes you all the best for 2007. May this new year bring you joy, happiness and prosperity. Looking for a funny and distinctive way of saying “happy new year”? Try our VidCards module to send a video message to your friends, relatives and colleagues.

Telemak, our partner for video streaming, is doing great. Last week, CEO and founder Christophe Lenaerts unveiled an ambitious strategic plan to export his company abroad and significantly increase both turnover and human resources within three years. Last year, Telemak was our “streaming provider” for one of the most exciting projects Emakina achieved so far: Chance Encounter, a website to promote a new fragrance from fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier. The highest point was a virtual encounter between two famous artists, Chinese movie director Zhang Yimou (House of Flying Daggers) and Russian violonist Maxim Vengerov. Thanks to Telemak’s expertise, millions of viewers followed this event at the same time worldwide . Missed the party? Check out the archives on the website.

Our 6th Academy will be held next week on Wednesday 8th November. Topic of the day: the communication value of your Intranet. Since 2003, we have successfully deployed many communication portals for the STIB/MIVB and its 6.500 employees. It’s time to share our expertise through real live cases and proven best practices. Representatives from STIB/MIVB will explain their own experience with the SAP Portal NetWeaver platform. We will also present TeamWeaver, our SAP-certified solution that significantly improves the content management in the NetWeaver environment.

During this Emakina Academy, you will learn :

- How to improve your company communication through portal usage;
- How to increase traffic on your communication portal;
- How to implement the key factors of success to ensure users’ adoption.

Want to join us? Subscribe for free on Emakina Academy website.

Want to become a Pay&Goer? You can now order your SIM card directly on the Pay&Go Generation website. Nothing very special at first sight but, in the backstage, a lot of work to add a new layer of integration between the existing processes at Proximus and the logistic provider delivering the SIM card in the end-user’s postbox. Small project but very interesting e-business example.

This Monday in Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique, Brice Le Blévennec, President of Emakina, is asked how he sees the Internet in ten years. Check out the article here and don’t hesitate to give your own opinion in the comments below.

Emakina Academy 5 is open now for registration ! During this fifth session, our WebTrends experts will explain how web analytics can significantly improve your website ROI and better profile your target group. In the second part, our partner Extenseo will show the power of Search Engine Optimization and Keyword Buying to attract qualified audience through Google & friends. If you’re not interested in knowing your consumer, don’t come.

Emakina will be part of the exhibitors at the next edition of SAP TechEd that will be held on October 18-20 in Amsterdam. We will present TeamWeaver, our content management add-on for the NetWeaver environment. More details about this event on SAP TechEd website.

Our fourth Emakina Academy will be held on 13th September. This time, we’ll talk about Ajax, a new framework that lets you build more flexible, dynamic interfaces, and that boldly goes where no web-based application has gone before. Our Strategic Cell will explain how AJAX can improve the user experience and, ultimately, the ROI of your Internet business.

Interested? Apply now!

There is a danger that i-mode may run up against the same obstacles as WAP, but we can learn some excellent lessons from this.

Frost & Sullivan estime qu’en 2006, l’Europe occidentale
comptera 31,4 millions d’abonnés i-mode. Les services i-mode
européens seront basés sur certains volets du modèle business
et la technologie mise au point par DoCoMo pour le marché
japonais. C’est le contenu, dont un ‘contenu viral’ tels que le
service de messagerie, qui sera déterminant pour l’acceptation
de l’i-mode sur le Vieux Continent. Mais un marketing mieux
adapté et de meilleurs services et applications y contribueront
également. En outre, de nouveaux équipements à interface
graphique conviviale et écran couleur devraient stimuler
l’utilisation. Quoi qu’il en soit, la croissance sera nettement
plus progressive qu’au Japon, affirme encore Frost & Sullivan
qui relève d’ailleurs que les réseaux de la 2e et, finalement,
de la 3e génération offriront les meilleures possibilités pour
un retour considérable tant pour les fournisseurs de contenu,
les opérateurs que les prestataires de services.