Which Superhero are you? Quiz

Checking my RSS Reader this morning I came across several of these so I figured before someone sent me some strange request or "tagged" me again I would just do it and be done with it.

 

Your results:
You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern 80% Spider-Man 65% Iron Man 60% The Flash 55% Robin 50% Superman 50% Catwoman 45% Wonder Woman 40% Supergirl 40% Batman 30% Hulk 25%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

 

Technorati tags: Fun, Superhero

 

Link to Which Superhero are you? Quiz

End of the Year time waster

The ultimate time waster to close out the year, The Challenge - nice turn based PRG fighting online game.

Just can't get enough of it.

 

Technorati tags: Games, Fun

 

Link to The Challenge - nice turn based PRG fighting online game. Play here!

Zend and Google mashup in PHP - Download Squad

Now being a PHP fan and all as well as a Web based alternative application fan this one was just screaming for me to read when I saw the headline in my reader.

The Zend PHP framework will now play nice with Google Data in a collaborative effort that puts the elves to shame.

Now I've not yet done much with GData or anything of late for that matter but on my list of to do's which is slowly building up is to try this out and see what I can see. Works perfectly as I've been wanting to give the Zend Framework a try as well together with my SAP NetWeaver system.

Imagine connecting your SAP NetWeaver system via your PHP based Intranet and your "Google for your Domain", Mark made a prediction recently so I'm curious to see how these develop further as we move into 2007.

Technorati tags: Web 2.0, Google, Zend, PHP, sdn blogger, SAP

 

Link to Zend and Google mashup in PHP - Download Squad

eirikso.com » Broadcast 2.0

Came across this great post the other day about a shift taking place in the world of media and broadcasting, happens to be something of great interest to me of late especially in the Enterprise world.

Thomas has been picking up on it as well lately, and has a great blog on it  well - the idea of the Enterprise world using this new media platform to do what it's been trying for years in other ways.

Let's see what 2007 brings - I have a feeling it will be interesting for SAP and web media!

 

Technorati tags: Media

 

Link to eirikso.com » Broadcast 2.0

5 Things you probably didn’t know about me.

So Thomas tagged me so here goes.

5 things you probably didn’t know about me.

1. I studied Psychology in University with a minor in Sociology all with the eye of a developer.

2. In high school I told my friends I would never learn German (that crappy guttural language) and would never need it

3. My favorite poet is E.E. Cummings

4. Years ago (many) I called PHP a language for wieners

5. My CD collection contains many "Big Band" and Classical pieces

I tag Dan McWeeney and Mark Crofton.

Meet my new secretary...

No no promotion or starting of a new company (did give that a thought though) but rather a nice cool new tool online for meeting scheduling.

It's called "TimeToMeet" and it sync's calendar's and allows people to schedule meetings or at least request meetings with you.

Want to schedule a meeting with me then go here.

Taking it Online

Each day I'm surprised by how many more people seem to be jumping in and testing out the idea of the "Online Computer", the idea that your computer is one that does not physical exist in the same room as you but rather spread around on services of your choice throughout the world and the net.

Just recently I came across 4 entries around this topic, one I wrote about awhile back and have been living the "Office 2.0" experiment now successfully since April of 2005. Sooner or later I'll even finish my book on it...

Anyway back to what I was saying.

• Evaluating Ajax Start Pages
  
• The Basics: Your Office on the Web
  
• Windows is on its way out
  
• 4 effective way to start your online web 2.0 apps
  

Now I've learned a thing or two since April and I've had my aggravations and my fits of frustration when things just didn't go exactly how I wanted them but in the end it was really no different than working with the desktop apps. I've still not convinced my company to switch but it's only a matter of time I think ;-) No really we in our team for those items we are connected with outside folks we have begun to experiment with several of the online applications to reduce the amount of emails and remove the frustration of "I didn't get that mail" or "my SPAM filter must have got it".

Now Anne takes apart the various desktops and her motivations for moving "online", very similiar to my own except it was two hard drive crashes and a complete lose of data.

But I’m committed to getting my life online. I’ve had two personal computing “accidents” in the last year. In March, my hard drive died when my PC was shipped from Hawaii to Colorado. Then I spilled coffee all over my laptop just a couple weeks ago–I’m still waiting on a replacement keyboard. I didn’t lose any critical data in either case, but I did have to start from near scratch in configuring my desktop computing in both cases.

Do hope she's back up and online, I'll have to share my "Quick Launch" with her or I'll have to hurry and finish it (just waiting on an answer to an email really) to make it even easier if she continues to use the Google homepage.

Now Ian over on Two Point Touch gives a really nice step by step for getting started as well - nice summary! Uses Zoho in his setup as well.

Then we have the folks over at My Uninstalled Life (never did return my email) who decided that starting the browser and clicking links was just not effective enough so they present another solution - quite nice but it depends on the browser too much for me so I still prefer my Quick Launch and simply type one URL http://www.google.com/ig, just one to remember and from there I am totally connected to everything ;-)

Then surprisingly I came across a post from Eirik, whose blog I actually read and subscribe too for all the cool photo and media stuff he does so I was kid of surprised to see this post from him it will be interesting to see what direction he goes I also went through a phase of pulling a removable HD in and out between various Linux flavors and Windows and other than "video editing" and "DVD making" software I never had a problem and since he's into that area way more than me I'll be watching to see what he posts next about it.

What do you use? What's your setup?

Locators

It seems that despite all the hoopla about privacy and all we are still finding stuff like this really cool. Anyone already doing cool things with this?

Ip-Adress (note the spelling) takes one part google maps and one part ip scanning and you have a script that will show you where your IP address, the address of friends, neighbors or the latest victim of your unrequited love is on a map. They also show you the isp that the address belongs to.

Which would be cool like a plazes lite, now to have a widget or something like that running that would then automatically log me into the closet VPN connection or even just point me in the direction of the closet restaurant based on my preferences would just be awesome!

Video and SAP or should I say welcome SDN TV

Many people might be aware that SAP has it's only little TV production team (one that happens to have offices all over the place) but how many people know SDN has one as well?

In fact we've taken to the next steps by now adding MP4 support to our "Blog/Podcast" system allowing now for Video Blogging to match to our other SDN TV content.

One of the reasons I am bringing this up is not just because I am an amateur video blogger but it's because I am an activist within our group for enhancing the video content and reach of the SDN TV. It's our portal to the outside world and as Thomas points out in his blog the other day it's something sorely missing.

The first steps were getting the SDN TV there and keeping it alive with content, Thomas might be able to help me get even more content (what do you say Thomas), then we managed to get the MP4 (so downloadable) the next step will be direct linking to the video and embedding of the video in our site as well as the possibility of outside sites. We are moving fast, could be faster but I think 2007 will be our reach to really break out and with I can only say that Channel 9 is cool but we will rock! OK big statement there but I'm ambitious what can I say...




Technorati tags: sdn blogger

Back to Zoho :-)

I've been out of the mix for awhile now just catching up after the SAP TechEd's and I still have a much needed blog to do about my demo of SAP and Zoho but finding the time has just been so horrible - in fact this came out and I totally missed it until just now when I logged into Zohowriter - the guys have been busy with creating multiple new cool things including an API which I simply must get into!

One of the things I like most about Zoho is how agile and flexible they are, they proved they can do it online and now they are taking it back to the desktop as well (widgets) and working towards offline (looks that way) working as well.

I've also great feelings about some things I've got working on with Zoho and my ABAP system lets just see how long it takes me to get them out into the open :-(

No worries Arvind and Hyther I've been out of things a bit lately but I'm still here and you will see more soon!

Spotback and Reddit

I've tried both Digg and Del.icio.us, as well as Stumble Upon and today I've been playing around more with Reddit and Spotback. I've started to realize one thing quite clearly amongst all of these maybe it's just me today or I am slow or something but wow I did this very same thing with email back in the day ;-)

Actually on a serious note out all of these I'm liking Spotback actually the most as it's a bit more all together but it doesn't seem to reach into the cirlces I read about - particuarly the SAP related ones - PHP and Web 2.0 stuff it has but it seems to be missing the Enterprise level stuff. Now Reddit does but I think it's because we give people a chance to submit to Reddit from SDN.



Reddit I have to admit has a "minimalist" interface which I like but won't let me submit multiple sites, says I am doing it to fast (protecting against SPAM I guess) but how I can import all my bookmarks if I want to switch over?

Simply could not resist - audio discussions!

I just could not resist it, had to give it a shot they are just starting out and I think they are targeting "teens" - OK I know they are as their creator, Dean Worth, says it in a comment over on Download Squad.

Now to use it, it's a 30 second sign up and a download of a tool they created (not a big fan of having to download something to record audio especially since Odeo.com has an inline tool but I can deal and I tried it.

I started one new conversation about SAP, SDN and BPX of course. You can go to it, subscribe to it or add it to iTunes. The idea is that a whole conversation from multiple people turns into a Podcast - so far there does not seem to be a lot of activity so you'll have to try it out and keep your eye on it to see how it takes off. I have a feeling that though they are targeting teens you might find a lot of us adults in there as well.

I also started a second conversation for all your Enterprisy Bloggers out there.

Finding your way to your own frontend...

It seems that James finally got around to blogging about something he saw. He talked a bit about it during one of the RedMonk Radio episodes but did not even scratch the service leaving me sitting ask "What the..." but finally he blogged it and will hopefully be sending over the "deets" from Andrew soon.

James saw a presentation from T-Mobile and how they developed (rather quickly) an app using Adobe Flex. Now I like Flex (I too can get down with Flex) and I'm hoping to add a "Flex" forum to SDN here in the near future (any Adobe guys want to help moderate?) and since I've been pushing the use of Scripting Languages his post is right up my alley in fact in more ways than one.

I'm not going to comment on SAP's UI strategy, Filip did that and Thomas just reminded everyone of that and raised a few more comments, nor will I comment on what Dan said about SAP's UI, not that I don't have an opinion it's just...

I really don't care what anyone's UI strategy is.

Give me a service, API or an RFC connection to their system and I will work the rest out myself. It's a given though that Corporate Identity in the enterprise world is a must and by that it usually refers for the most part to the text sizes, colors and fonts - in my experience not many companies lock down the individual components or layouts beyond the simple page layout.



How much time does a developer really need to spend working on a layout? Start your app development environment slap some components, connect to your services, do some logic and you are done -- OK I do have to agree with a comment from Den,

But to be perfectly blunt - if the UI sucks then is the user as effective as they might be? Of course thing need to get done, but it sure as heck helps if the user is getting some pleasure out of it instead of having to fight it.

However if you spend all your time building that "look and feel" into your app you'll never get it perfectly right and end up delaying your launch, if done correctly then someone else could spend time on the "look and feel" or better yet simply "apply" the proper "look and feel". Which is one reason I think SAP "does get it" not only do they give you a way of expanding their own software but they give you the platform and the means to do it as well. Some people will of course bring up the fact that SAP has too many ways of doing the same thing, for example SAP has two ways of working with ABAP in a web environment one (a favorite of mine) is BSP and the other is ABAP Web Dynpro. I did a video interview with the creators of BSP who also happen to be some of the brains behind ABAP Web Dynpro, you should really watch that and see the official stance on the use of the two languages. Does this mean that SAP made a mistake or can't decide on which way to work with? Not at all, so what does all this mean then? What is the core message being sent out...

• The backend must be stable, SAP has one of the most stable I've ever worked with
  
• The frontend is nice to have but not required
  
• Services, if you can't connect to it via SOA, RFC, API or whatever way matches your fancy is it worth it? I think the fact that SAP has devoted so many resources and time to building or services out (have you seen how many are available out of the box) says a lot.
  

With that in mind SAP has created one of the most flexible platforms to work with and to work on with little in terms of constraints. You don't have to be an ABAP guru anymore to work with SAP (knowing one does help though, and Rich is one of the best) you also don't have to know Java or ABAP to even get started, you simply have to have a working understanding of building an app and how the processes behind it all work. Case in point, Amsterdam, October of this year we had the SAP TechEd event. At this event were two individuals who had zero experience with SAP technologies, however within a few days of the event starting one of them had taken up the gauntlet thrown down by a SDN community member and started building a Ruby on Rails application connecting to a SAP backend system. We saw similar development taking place at the Las Vegas TechEd a month earlier.

Now back to James' post about Adobe Flex - "agile" is putting it lightly. He mentions , "You don't need SAP NetWeaver to usefully extend your SAP business applications." which is true if you look at SAP NetWeaver as the application server and not the entire platform. It's one of the coolest things about SAP and the NetWeaver platform, I can connect to it using Flex, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript (oh yes!), .NET, Java - I can spit out applications using any of those as well as using SAP's own BSP, Web Dynpro (Java or ABAP), Visual Composer, BPEL (that's new isn't it), ahh the list goes on and on. So have I ranted enough that everyone is now lost or do you start to see the pattern emerging? SAP isn't building a system that is locked down and closed and you can only use their tools to expand it - T-Mobile has shown that with this awesome demo, or from Matt or Ryan with their demos made during the week of TechEd with no prior SAP experience.

The Widget's starting to pop up all over SDN is another point, SAP has the platform and services and they give you the ability to use your own tool set to continue to expand and work - no need to stop what you are doing to get retrained you can just keep working. So that's the one extreme the other is the fact that SAP also does the hard stuff for you, they give tools like Visual Composer and Java and ABAP Web Dynpro so you can build the apps without having to worry about the layout, they do it for you if you want it - if not you have all the other options to work with.

Agile, flexibility, expandability, scalability these are terms you can't help but use when you begin working with the SAP NetWeaver platform it's all there it's like the Baskin & Robbins of the development world - just pick your flavor!



Technorati tags:

sdn blogger

Geek Cooking Episode 1

Click to Play

It's with pleasure, joy, pride, fear, and just about every other emotion you can think of that I've uploaded this video. Unless I get completely "boo'd" off the video blogging thing here this is Episode 1 of "Geek Cooking", now in the video I refer to the dish as "Monkey Bread" however when searching the net for the original recipe I found that "Monkey Bread" is something completely different so I refer to this now as "??? Bread", please ignore  the whole part of me calling it actually "Monkey Bread". If anyone does know the name  and original reciepe I would love to hear it.

Hope you enjoy it and I'm always open to suggestions, feedback and in this case requests :-) 

 

Ingredients:

2 Onions (chopped)

1 Yellow Bell Pepper (chopped)

1 Green Bell Pepper (chopped)

Paramesan Cheese

Chili Pepper (flakes)

Paprika powder

Garlic Powder

12 Hungry Jack biscuits

Mix it all together and add bacon (as much as you like broken into small pieces)

Add to lightly greased pan and bake until golden brown. 

Follow biscuit instructions for baking.