Friday, January 04, 2008

eBay Flash/Flex widget contest!

This just in from Mike Potter: eBay is launching a Flash and Flex widget contest where developers can win one of five prizes of $10,000. The details are here.

and:

http://ebay.promotionexpert.com/widget_build_off_contest/

Bits and bytes:
-Contest starts on January 15th, and runs until Feb 22nd.
-Widget must be embeddable on a web page
-Widget must be built using Adobe Flash or Flex
-Widget swf file cannot exceed 200kb
-Widget must use eBay Shopping API only
-Developer’s brand must be within an area no larger than 3,000 square pixels
and at the bottom of the widget
- eBay shall have the right to market and distribute the winning Entries
through the eBay Affiliate Program without additional compensation to
Entrants for such usage.

Get Flex from Adobe labs now. Good luck.

LiveCycle ES: We're all in!!

LiveCycle ES had a great year in 2007 and every indication is that 2008 will be even better. 2007 marked the year Adobe is now recognized as a formidable enterprise software vendor. In poker terms, we're all in. Our customers are quickly realizing that the service oriented approach to integration (inherent in LiveCycle ES architecture) has many advantages, and have embraced it as their preferred solution for Enterprise 2.0. To clarify, Enterprise 2.0 is an adoption of the Web 2.0 design patterns and architectural patterns by large enterprises. The fact is that LiveCycle ES has now started being used by these enterprises who have decided to embrace the Web 2.0 patterns and required the services tier to power their new web applications and RIAs. Hey - don't just believe me, check out our customer list.


So why are Bruce Chizen (Adobe's past CEO) and I so happy in this picture? I can only speak for myself but after celebrating Adobe's 25th anniversary with a great performance by Skateboarders, BMX guys and other stunts, supplemented with food, drinks and a great performance by Smash Mouth, I am left with a realization that Adobe is just a really awesome company. Not only is it a great corporate culture, but from a business standpoint, all the years of careful architecture, planning and (most importantly) listening to what our customers need in their infrastructures has paid off. LiveCycle is growing. We now have a special developers license available and if you want a free DVD to try it out, contact me and I'll personally send it to you (dnickull at adobe dot com).

The guy on the right above, along with our current CEO Shantanu, deserve a lot of credit for fostering a vision to move Adobe from the desktop to the enterprise. Enterprises might want to pay attention to this direction to understand how to deliver Web 2.0 patterns to their customers.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

How cool is LiveCycle BAM ES?

LiveCycle Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) ES is so cool, rockers everywhere are wearing the shirts and singing about it!

Actually, this image is from our 25th Anniversary party last month in San Jose, CA. The band Smash Mouth played (including some Van Halen covers) and that is only part of why Adobe is the coolest company in the world to work for.

Nevertheless, BAM is really amazing. Many people who want SOA governance should really be looking at LiveCycle BAM. SOA brings business functionality (capabilities) and business clients (needs) together via services. Monitoring the state of business processes that use services is a very valuable part of any mature SOA infrastructure. It blows people away that Adobe has this SOA component dialed but we've had tons of smart guys like Arun, Alex, and Kumar all working hard on this stuff for years.

LiveCycle BAM administrators and process participants can quickly identify bottlenecks, check progress, and view other process information to provide a 360-degree view of a business transaction.

LiveCycle BAM ES includes three major components:

Performance dashboard

Provides continuous visibility into all of your critical business information through an easy-to-use interface for customizing metrics, setting alerts, and drilling down to detailed data.


BAM Workbench

Allows system administrators to quickly and easily set up data integration, analytic models, and end-user dashboards to present current corporate information, historical data, or aggregated views.

Analytics server

A streaming data store for continuous data integration, as well as engines for multidimensional analysis, dynamic modeling, business rules execution, and exception and alert reporting.

My German interview with "Die Welt" (The World)

http://www.welt.de/webwelt/article1496004/Wie_das_Web_2.0_die_Gesellschaft_veraendert.html

"In der "New Economy"-Zeit hat Duane Nickull zwei Internetfirmen an den Start gebracht und erfolgreich verkauft. Daneben war er war an der Entwicklung mehrer Internet-Standards beteiligt. Zudem verantwortete er die Electronic-Business-Strategie der Vereinten Nationen. Zuletzt trat er als Co-Autor der Buches Web 2.0. Design Patterns. A Vision of the New Internet Patterns and Models in Erscheinung, das Januar 2008 in Deutschland erscheint."