The other day I was surfing around for a Java API when I came upon an interesting paper written by Donald Gordon - a former(?) student of Victoria University of Wellington. Donald wrote the paper as partial requirements for graduating Computer Science with honours.

A Framework for Lightweight Web-based Visual Applications [pdf] takes an interesting approach to the development of rich internet applications. Like the Java Server Faces specification, it controls very complex, dynamic user interfaces entirely on the server. In theory this reduces the complexity providing multibrowser support, and does not require the user to download or install any plugins. By eliminating the need for plugins, you eliminate having to worry about plugin versioning issues or programming API limitations that authors of applications written in Flash or Java Applets have to consider.

Sadly, all I could find is this paper. I haven’t found any other documentation, nor have I been able to find any downloadable implementations or even examples. I think that technology like this has great potential. I hope to see more of it soon.

The serverside.com has a good webinar about the EJB roadmap, and how it relates to Hibernate.

The talk is given by Gavin King of Hibernate and JBoss - obviously eminent in the area. It has lots of great info, but Gavin is a um, ah - um, aaaaaaaa - ahem; a disappointingly bad speaker - not that I’m any good.

Just a warning if you’re going to watch the webcast.

Open Source News
It’s raining code (Hallelujah?) - why open source is good for CIOs.
On a related note - Sun VP of technology Jonathan Swartz recently blasted the GPL. Slashdot has a good discussion regarding Jonathan’s point of view.

New Sites of Interest
O’Reilly launched Code Zoo a neat, new code repository/search engine.

Asynchronous browser communication
Using XML and JavaScript. It’s the same technology makes Gmail so slick - AJAX + Struts online how-to tutorial < drool />
Pure Java Servlet implementation example without Struts.

Rapid Web Development/Prototyping
Lately there has been a some talk about Rapid Web App development/prototyping using Ruby and Rails - Ruby+Rails vs Java+Spring+Hibernate analysis test - the results are all red.

Web Design
Javascript events in Flash - now for Mac

Web Statistics
The problem: many web stats programs use cookies to identify returning users but a large number of people regularly delete their cookies. Want a ‘better’ way? use flash to track return visitors

Content Management
CMS interoperability - talks about the lack of standard, and a little on the direction the community is going.

One the lighter side…
Sur-real life Rocky Balboa. It’s amazing what some people will get away with because they look crazy.

A quick how-to on writing

Applying mathematics to sports - How to determine the true NBA MVP?
- The true MVP is the player that adds most value to their team in the category that has the most meaning - Wins.