IBM has announced its next generation WebSphere Portal, which includes comprehensive Web 2.0 tools and targeted customizations, known as business accelerators, that speed the deployment of common portal solutions while maintaining the flexibility desired by customers. Also available later this month is IBM Portlet for Google Gadgets that helps extend the value of Internet services to business environments and needs.

Anyway, I think this is a pretty slick idea. A company new to the whole 'Web 2.0' thing can simply go to Intel, get their shiny 'Web 2.0' box, and get off the ground. At least that's the partyline. The key to Web 2.0 isn't the technology enabling it, its the people using it. If your organization isn't full of people comitted to using blogs, wikis, RSS, and social networking - the appliance isn't going to help. On the other hand, if your organization is full of people clamouring for new Web 2.0/social networking stuff and they want a private, enterprise-class Web2.0 style social network without all the crap and detritis you find with MySpace - then this little appliance might be the way to go.

DRM is sometimes called an enabling technology, in that it is supposed to enable new business models. But it is really a disabling technology. As DRM fails, there have been suggestions that the name be changed to something that includes the word enabling; give it a better image; something more right than rights.

The Real-World Java Seminar is a one-day event that's packed with technical presentations delivered by the Java industry experts. Attending this event will allow you to take a fresh look at the architecture of the projects you're working on now and can serve as a roadmap for your further development as a Java professional. The largest Java developer event on the East Coast, Real-World Java Seminar will offer sponsorship and exhibit opportunities to the leading Java technology companies. Additional information on sponsorship and exhibit opportunities can be obtained by e-mail at events(at) sys-con.com or by phone at 201 802-3021.

'We have eliminated the current barrier to semantic application development,' said Ralph Hodgson, co-founder of TopQuadrant. 'Until now organizations wanting to experience the benefits of semantic technology had to first build their own infrastructure for semantic applications. This is not a trivial task and requires deep expertise in semantic technology, which most companies do not have today. With the introduction of TopBraid Ensemble and TopBraid Live, organizations can focus on creating semantic applications that meet their specific needs without having to build and maintain a development and deployment environment themselves.'

Nexaweb Technologies, provider of the leading standards-based platform for building and deploying Enterprise Web 2.0 (EW2.0) applications, today announced it has been selected for the fifth annual SD TIMES 100 -- a list of the companies and organizations that demonstrated the greatest innovation and leadership in the software development industry in 2006 as selected by IT trade newspaper SD Times. Nexaweb won in the Web Development category for its technology agnostic approach to Enterprise Web 2.0 application development and deployment.

Today I'm speaking with Ben Forta, the technical evangelist for Adobe. The first thing I have to ask you is - the acquisition has happened, Adobe is now controlling ColdFusion and has taken over everything that Macromedia was doing, and this is my first chance to really speak with you since that happened - what is going on in the ColdFusion world? How has the acquisition gone for the ColdFusion team and yourself and what's in store for us in the near future?

The editors and writers at Shiny Media, a UK-based blogging network, announced the award at their annual Shiny Awards 2007 in London. Together with editors of the UK's leading gadget websites, techdigest.tv and shinyshiny.tv, and with input from a guest panel made up of The Guardian, The Sun, InStyle and Q magazine gadget gurus, they selected winning products in ten different categories, including Wag Gadget of the Year, Smartphone of the Year, and the category in which Vox won, Best Web 2.0 Innovation.

Room 2.0 features a landing page and portal a hotel guest automatically accesses when hooking up to the hotel network. From there, he can easily navigate a range of customized services, which are available on top of unlimited data downloads and priority bandwidth. The ?Stay in touch? service module allows guests to make unlimited long-distance phone calls, while the ?Explore? service module features location-based information about points of interest in the hotel?s surroundings. To help guests fully ?Enjoy? their stay, Room 2.0 enables them to download their home newspaper (more than 350 publications available) and to listen to one of their preferred radio stations (among a choice of 8,000). Finally, the ?Streamline your Journey? service module brings real-time flight information to the fingertips of the traveler. All services are available through an advertising-free web interface and included in the premium package.

Newfangled Web Factory's Web Smart Newsletter titled Advertising 2.0, delves into the ways in which new web technologies are disrupting the traditional adverting process. Picking up on the 'Long Tail' concept made popular by Chris Anderson's book (www.thelongtail.com) Advertising 2.0 demonstrates how the rapid expansion of content coupled with the global accessibility of information is eating away at the margins of the traditional advertising agency's media placement revenue model.

Nexaweb Technologies, Inc., provider of the leading standards-based platform for building and deploying Enterprise Web 2.0 (EW2.0) applications, and BlueNote Networks, the leading provider of Business Communications Platforms for delivering real-time interactive communications as services in a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) environment, today announced a partnership to market integrated Enterprise Web 2.0 (EW2.0) and IP Telephony functionality.

Nexaweb Technologies, Inc., provider of theleading standards-based platform for building and deploying Enterprise Web2.0 (EW2.0) applications, today announced its support for the OpenAjax Hub,a set of criteria that will ensure the development of an industry standardof Ajax technologies, products and applications. In addition, Nexawebreceived an OpenAjax interoperability certificate, representing itscommitment to defining and achieving industry support for OpenAjaxconformance.

Nexaweb® Technologies, Inc., provider ofthe leading standards-based platform for building and deploying EnterpriseWeb 2.0 applications, today announced its participation at the 'PracticalSOA for Government' event, April 26 in Washington, DC. In addition tosponsoring this one-day intensive event, Nexaweb will demonstrate howgovernment agencies of all sizes can increase productivity and lower totalcost of ownership (TCO) by leveraging Enterprise Web 2.0 solutions tosuccessfully extend Service-Oriented Applications (SOAs) to end-users.

Unlike application wikis which require technology-savvy users and do not address workflow or data storage in a database, the IBM Developer Engagement Service is designed to appeal to the average business user. It requires no elaborate instructions, cumbersome download or installation of any new software, enabling users to focus on the problem at hand. A typical user has limited experience using software 'wizards,' documents, spreadsheets and forms, and knows how to create items in a 'canvas' and later rearrange them using basic drag and drop functions.

I've been busy working on our Web 2.0 release so didn't have time to update my laptop until now. I was generally happy with my Ubuntu breezy 64bit install, I had the JDK on there, Java worked in firefox 32bit, I could remotely display my screen to a projector and my broadcom wireless card even worked with ndiswrapper. Now I had a few days to spare I decided to upgrade my system. I didn't get off to a good start going from breezy to dapper lost some of the packages I had. I then went from dapper to edgy but then my wireless would not work with ndiswrapper (kernel module had DMA allocation issues). Even the new bcm firmware cutter utility would freeze the OS and I had to remove the module from the module list.

Nexaweb Technologies, provider of standards-based platform for building and deploying Enterprise Web 2.0 (EW2.0) applications, announced at JavaOne a new set of product features designed to help Java, J2EE, Flash, Swing, Struts, JSF, and SWT software developers quickly and easily build next-generation Ajax and Composite applications.

Yes, you read the title correctly: 'Scorpio,' the highly anticipated eighth major release of ColdFusion is coming soon to a town near you. Even before the release of the highly successful ColdFusion MX 7 two years ago, the ColdFusion team was already hard at work scheming, experimenting, planning, building, creating...and the result is 'Scorpio.'

'If you are building mashups, the need for not only the right data is important, but having the highest quality data available is necessary to delivery on the promise of Web2.0,' said Bob Brauer, CEO and President of StrikeIron. 'StrikeIron's focus is on delivering the highest quality data through our Web Services Marketplace. We've partnered with powerhouses in the industry such as D&B, Zacks, and IDExec to distribute the best possible data to all of our customers.'

Powered by the same world class platform that drives Fiorano?s other middleware solutions, the SMB package offers a generous palette of standards based service components and data adapters required to build powerful business workflows. Relying on over a decade of experience serving as Operations Manager in the SMB market and most recently as Enterprise Architect for 2 leading financial services SMB?s, Warren Hampton V.P. of Product Management at Fiorano Software, carefully crafted Fiorano SOA 2007 SMB to meet the exacting needs of the target audience, the company says.

One of my favorite bloggers, Paul Graham, has published an essay called 'Microsoft is dead '. He starts, 'A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead', and then explains why he thinks so. I do not think Microsoft is dead, but...

EMC Corporation , the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today announced the newest versions of its e-mail and file system archiving software to further simplify management of crucial electronically stored information (ESI) to meet internal and external governance requirements. EMC(R) EmailXtender(R) 4.8 software gives customers a new, flexible approach to e-mail archiving, enabling administrators to easily monitor archive operational efficiency. The new EMC DiskXtender(R) 6.2 for Windows file system archiving software enables customers to easily search single or multiple file systems, making electronic discovery more accurate, fast and affordable.

A couple of weeks ago I stopped by at our publisher's offices (SYS-CON Media) and they showed me our Flex book with the correct cover, but all pages were blank. Yesterday, I've got an email from them with the words, 'Yakov your book is ready, stop by and pick it up'. The guys from production department are really nice, so they've attached this video just to show me that the book is really really finally super-duper ready. Check this out (the video file is large though).

CRMforGoogle gives a business, large or small, the ability to communicate with clients, prospects and partners effectively and easily. The Application is feature rich, giving users the ability to automate client follow up, manage tasks, share schedules and manage projects all in Google's easy-to-use interface already in use by thousands of businesses.

AJAX is flying high and AJAX toolkits are certainly of big help. However, I do hear from people in the community complain about the size of various Ajax toolkits. A lot of AJAX toolkits requires hundreds of kilobytes of download, sometime even over megabytes. Dylan Schiemann from Dojo Foundation/SitePen wrote a fairly good blog entry in response to clarify questions related to download size and performance etc.

Since our last issue, several events have transpired that have significant impact for ColdFusion developers. I have been keeping my eye on several trends and have been evaluating whether or not they deserve focus in ColdFusion Developer's Journal. I've begun blogging about these trends and about my observations and ideas regarding these trends and the future of CFDJ.

Since Web 2.0 kicked off scarcely a day goes by without a headline targeting mashups and their enablers, AJAX and Web Services, as the next hot Web technologies. Mashups are Web sites that integrate a variety of services (e.g., news feeds, weather reports, maps, and traffic conditions) in new and interesting ways. Just take a look at Zillow.com, which provides instant home valuations plotted as thumbtacks on a map (Figure 1), or HousingMaps.com, which marks listings from craigslist.org as captions on a map, and you'll get a clear picture of the power behind converging data sources.

Andi Gutmans, who leads the PHP Collaboration Project and Zend product strategy and has been a leading contributor to PHP since 1997 and spearheaded the object-oriented improvements for PHP 5, explained at AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 East how PHP is a cornerstone technology in developing AJAX-enabled Web sites.

MB Technologies, the creators of AJAX-based Bindows software, announced the release of InfiView, the first development platform for creating interactive and dynamic graphical AJAX applications during AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 East, in New York City. InfiView advances the move toward web-based software by enabling developers to build infinite-sized Web 2.0 mind maps, network topologies, organization charts, LDAP tools and technical diagrams.

The new Dynamic Toolbar DTX is the first toolbar technology based on AJAX that takes advantage of the endless possibilities of the Rich Internet Application and Web 2.0. 'The new Dynamic Toolbar DTX improves the user experience by providing a higher level of interaction with users. The toolbar can now extend browser functionalities beyond our imagination with the Rich Internet Application. It revolutionizes the way you think about a toolbar,' says Patrice Carrenard, CEO of Visicom Media Inc. The Dynamic Toolbar DTX provides a new framework to go beyond the limits of standard toolbars. Components can be built to create rich and advanced interfaces or widgets, or even full-blown applications.

AJAXWorld is a great conference that hundrends of people gathered here at RooseVelt Hotel in NYC. You can see and hear the excitement around this new paradigm of computing. But once in while, there are things that are quite amusing. Java vs. Microsoft WPF: It was great to catch up with Richard Monson-Haefel here at AJAXWorld Conference & Expo. Richard is one of the leading analysts that I have a lot of respect for. Richard told me that Douglas Crockford mentioned in his morning keynote session that Ajax, Flash and WPF are three leading technologies for client applications. When someone asked him about Java, Douglas said ?Java is a little too late?. This makes people scratch their heads: Java has been on the client side for more than ten years. WPF is not even here yet. And you are saying ?Java is a little too late??

Designed to support the delivery of integrated suites of OpenLaszlo RIAs, Laszlo Webtop offers a consistent user experience that is accessible from any web-enabled computer. The wide-ranging appeal of Laszlo Webtop makes it ideal for internal or consumer-facing corporate deployments, varying from financial dashboards to consumer communications consoles to enriched enterprise portals.

AJAXWorld Conference -- Kapow Technologies and Proto Software have announced that they are partnering to deliver 'Mashups that Matter' to the financial services community. Kapow Technologies adds an API to services ranging from legacy apps to web-based social media. Using Proto to process, analyze, and present intelligence from these services gives users a system no 'off-the-shelf' package can match. Together, Proto and Kapow Technologies bring Enterprise 2.0 to the trading floor in a way that reduces costs and increases profits.

In my previous article, 'Enterprise Mashup Services: Real-World SOA or Web 2.0 Novelties?' (JDJ Vol. 11, Issue 12), I discussed how a Java-to-AJAX library such as Direct Web Remoting (DWR) can bridge the gap between mashup services implemented with JavaScript and business services written in Java, allowing developers to blend corporate services with external services such as Google Maps. The problem with this approach is that it relies on AJAX as an integration point, which entails a fragile development platform as well as the need to maintain browser-specific code due to idiosyncrasies in browser support for JavaScript - the primary technology behind AJAX. In addition, JavaScript lacks a standardized approach for componentizing code, making applications written in it difficult to consolidate and reuse. The solution to these shortcomings is to pair AJAX with a component framework. JavaServer Faces (JSF) provides this foundation and eliminates the complexities of JavaScript - besides providing rich integration with the Java EE platform.

Kevin Hakman of TIBCO GI, Charles Fiesel of Roundarch, Jouk Pleiter of Backbase, and Danny Kolke of Etelos joined Conference Chair and Moderator Jeremy Geelan in a lunchtime discussion panel here at AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 East devoted to the current state of the AJAX, Rich Internet Application, and Web 2.0 market.

Attendees at AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 East will be able to experience a live demo of Laszlo Webtop, a new framework from Laszlo Systems for delivering multiple applications inside an advanced framework and window management system. The demo will be given next week (March 20) by Robb Beal, Principal Systems Engineer at Laszlo.

NexawebTechnologies, Inc., provider of the leading standards-based platform forbuilding and deploying Enterprise Web 2.0 (EW2.0) applications, todayannounced its participation at the AJAXWorld Conference & Expo, March19-21, 2007 at the Roosevelt Hotel in NYC. For the second straight year as a Gold Sponsor, Nexaweb will serve as the industry leader of Enterprise Web2.0 applications with its participation in discussions on service-or ientedcomputing, integrated AJAX and Java architectures as well as new,innovative open-source initiatives.

Rumor has it that Google is interested in ThinkFree, the HaanSoft-owned, ad-supported, Java-based, very Microsoft-like, Microsoft-compatible online office suite. It sent its YouTube acquisition folks in to talk to the Korean concern lately. At least that's what HaanSoft's CEO has been telling the Korea Times.

In order to describe itself as an 'open source' company, need a company merely be 'a company that will help you make the switch to open source in your company' - or does it have to be one that lets users feely download, compile, and use the software in question? Where is the dividing line? How open is 'open'? At Enterprise Open Source Magazine we contacted a range of FOSS luminaries for their take on the issue.

Years before 'mashup' was used as a Web term, Kapow Technologies had been providing Global 2000 companies with enterprise-class technology that uses a unique and flexible Web-based approach to building composite services and applications. Any application component with a web interface can be quickly and easily repurposed using the Kapow Mashup Server, including Web-based content, data or business logic.

At the Gartner Application Integration and Web Services Conference today, Kapow Technologies (http://www. kapowtech.com/), the leading provider of mashup solutions for the enterprise, today unveiled openkapow, the industry's first software service and developer community designed to accelerate mashup adoption and industry best practices in mashup design.