Since the beginning of the Web, what you see in your browser window depended on what you clicked on on or entered. It’s all been end-user driven – although the choices of what they can click on are predefined by the Web site designer. This is what they call ‘pull’ technology because the information on the screen is pulled from a Web server. But there are times when it would be useful to have push technology – particularly to mobile phones.
Push technology could keep you informed about the latest football scores and results. It could give you the latest news from international sport events. It could give you stock prices, and highlight rising or plummeting shares. It could tell you when a Web site you follow is updated. There are lots of potential reasons for organizations to want to use push technology.
You may have thought that AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) made the Web seem a bit more responsive – but it was still client initiated. Another technique that’s sometimes used is called ‘long-polling’. A client requests information from the server, but if the server does not have anything to send when the poll is received, it holds the request open and waits for response information to become available (instead of sending an empty response). The server then sends an HTTP/S response. Of course, each HTTP request means that headers and cookie data are transferred to the server. If large amount of data are sent, this can lead to increased latency.
Another technique is called streaming, which uses a persistent HTTP connection between the server and client. The browser remains in ‘loading’ mode after the initial page load. Then, from time-to-time, the server sends small bits of JavaScript to update the page. There can be problems with browsers timing out with this technique.
What if it were possible to have a full-duplex communication channel that operates through a single socket over the Web? That’s where HTML5 WebSockets comes in – it makes it possible to have real-time, full-duplex, bidirectional, event-driven Web applications.
How it works is that during their initial handshake, the client and server upgrade from the standard HTTP protocol to the WebSockets protocol. Once established, WebSocket data frames (text and binary frames) can be sent in both directions between the client and the server in full-duplex mode. The data has a two-byte frame. Text frames start with a 0x00 byte, end with a 0xFF byte, and contain UTF-8 data in between. They also use a terminator. Binary frames use a length prefix. There is no polling involved.
Enthusiasts say that WebSockets can make your applications run faster, be more efficient, and more scalable. WebSockets started life as a feature of the HTML5 spec known as TCPConnection. Currently, WebSockets are specified in two places: the Web Sockets API is maintained by HTML5 editor Ian Hickson, while the Web Socket protocol is edited by Ian Fette.
So, if it’s so great, why isn’t it everywhere, why don’t we come across it being used all over the place? Well, it works with Firefox; it works with Chrome; it works with Safari and Opera; and it works with Internet Explorer 10 and above. And that’s pretty much the hold up. Many organizations are still running older version of Explorer – Version 8 in many cases. And figures suggest that just under a quarter of users use Internet Explorer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Wikimedia_.28April_2009_to_April_2013.29), so why would any company cut itself off from a quarter of its potential clients?
The very fact that there have been workarounds, shows that there is a business need for push technology. WebSockets provides a solution to the problem of how to implement push technology. The fly-in-ointment at the moment is that a popular browser (from a well-known manufacturer of games consoles) doesn’t support it. As more-and-more companies upgrade to IE10 and above, the likelihood is that we will see much more push technology in use, and WebSockets will be the way to implement it.
Showing posts with label Web. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Web. Show all posts
Sunday, 1 December 2013
Sunday, 4 August 2013
Do I need an app?
This is the question I hear from many organizations these days. Whether they’re selling a product or whether they’re offering a service or even just as a way of getting ahead of the competition, they all ask whether they need an app for smartphones and tablet users. And although, at first glance, the answer would seem to be yes – it is 2013 after all – it’s important to drill down to find out exactly what each organization really wants.
So, let’s think about what question having an app is the answer to. For some organizations, it’s simply ticking the box saying people can download our app. But that begs the question about what are they going to use the app for, and, perhaps more importantly, will they ever use the app? We’ve all got apps that we excitedly downloaded and just sit there unused on our smartphones and tablets! And that isn’t good PR.
For other organizations, an app is a way of saving money. Think about it, if a client comes into your office and speaks to someone, let’s say that interaction costs £15. If they phone up, let’s say that costs £7.50, but if they do everything online, that costs, say £1. So an organization that moves its customers and potential customers online will save huge amounts of money. Having an app allows people to buy an item, book a visit, or whatever from their phone as easily as from a laptop.
For many people, online banking, online shopping, booking something, Facebooking, Tweeting, texting, etc are very familiar and, these days, second nature. People who aren’t quite so mobile-savvy are more likely to pick up a phone and ring than they are to use other alternatives such as choosing from a menu on their TV and trying to type a message using the TV remote control.
The next question for organizations to ask is whether they want to develop an app and continue with their Web site, or whether they want just a mobile Web site. People familiar with CS6 Dreamweaver will know that the software allows ‘fluid’ design, so users can create a style sheet that applies to smartphones, tablets, and standard Web pages. The same text appears on all three devices, but the layout adjusts – depending on how the designer wants it to look. One thing to bear in mind at this stage is that whether you choose an app or mobile Web site, users will expect a very high standard. And if their transaction doesn’t work first time, they will probably not bother trying again. So whatever a company chooses, they need to get it right.
If you do choose the app route, then your organization will need at least two of them – one for Android and one for Apple devices. And then you may want a Windows app, and a Blackberry app, and who knows how many other variants may be required.
Although an app designed for a device will probably be easier to use, using a mobile Web site means the look-and-feel will be the same on every device and will be available on every device (even the more obscure ones) immediately. This is called being platform agnostic. Another advantage of an app is that data could be browsed offline. But with the prevalence of wifi hot spots these days, that’s not such a big deal. Of course, regular users might be happy with an app, but a casual browser may not want to download an organization’s app for a single use. For the organization, they can push out information using the app, which they can’t with a Web site – unless people sign up for the e-newsletter.
A simple compromise is to build an app that takes people to a useful landing page on your mobile Web site. And make sure it works
So, let’s think about what question having an app is the answer to. For some organizations, it’s simply ticking the box saying people can download our app. But that begs the question about what are they going to use the app for, and, perhaps more importantly, will they ever use the app? We’ve all got apps that we excitedly downloaded and just sit there unused on our smartphones and tablets! And that isn’t good PR.
For other organizations, an app is a way of saving money. Think about it, if a client comes into your office and speaks to someone, let’s say that interaction costs £15. If they phone up, let’s say that costs £7.50, but if they do everything online, that costs, say £1. So an organization that moves its customers and potential customers online will save huge amounts of money. Having an app allows people to buy an item, book a visit, or whatever from their phone as easily as from a laptop.
For many people, online banking, online shopping, booking something, Facebooking, Tweeting, texting, etc are very familiar and, these days, second nature. People who aren’t quite so mobile-savvy are more likely to pick up a phone and ring than they are to use other alternatives such as choosing from a menu on their TV and trying to type a message using the TV remote control.
The next question for organizations to ask is whether they want to develop an app and continue with their Web site, or whether they want just a mobile Web site. People familiar with CS6 Dreamweaver will know that the software allows ‘fluid’ design, so users can create a style sheet that applies to smartphones, tablets, and standard Web pages. The same text appears on all three devices, but the layout adjusts – depending on how the designer wants it to look. One thing to bear in mind at this stage is that whether you choose an app or mobile Web site, users will expect a very high standard. And if their transaction doesn’t work first time, they will probably not bother trying again. So whatever a company chooses, they need to get it right.
If you do choose the app route, then your organization will need at least two of them – one for Android and one for Apple devices. And then you may want a Windows app, and a Blackberry app, and who knows how many other variants may be required.
Although an app designed for a device will probably be easier to use, using a mobile Web site means the look-and-feel will be the same on every device and will be available on every device (even the more obscure ones) immediately. This is called being platform agnostic. Another advantage of an app is that data could be browsed offline. But with the prevalence of wifi hot spots these days, that’s not such a big deal. Of course, regular users might be happy with an app, but a casual browser may not want to download an organization’s app for a single use. For the organization, they can push out information using the app, which they can’t with a Web site – unless people sign up for the e-newsletter.
A simple compromise is to build an app that takes people to a useful landing page on your mobile Web site. And make sure it works
Sunday, 19 February 2012
How to create an e-book
For those of you who’ve been living on Mars, an e-book is a book that you can read using an e-reader, such as a Kindle or using the Kindle app on your smartphone or tablet. And the great thing is that anyone can publish an e-book. You don’t need to find a publisher, you just need a computer. On the other hand, the really bad thing about it is that anyone can publish a book, no matter how little merit it my have!
Now, obviously, there must be technical standards, so that the e-book you create can be read on a standard device. But like everything in IT, there are more than enough standards. Amazon’s Kindle uses a version of mobi and calls it Kindle Format 8 (KF8). Apple has an iBook standard called EPUB for books available from its iTunes store. Barnes & Noble have their Nook standard. And there’s Kobo, Sony Reader, iRex Digital Reader, the iRiver Story, and probably lots of others - including simple PDFs. The majority of e-book formats are based on some kind of HTML (like a Web page).
So, how do you create an e-book? Step 1 is to write something! E-books generally work best with text rather than text and pictures. And it seems Word is fine as the source of the text. Once you’ve done that, you need to create a nice cover, a contents list, and all the other things that you find in the front of a book. It seems to work better if you insert a page break at the end of each partial page or blank page.
If you want to publish for the Kindle, Amazon has KindleGen software available. I must admit, I couldn’t get it to work on my laptop. I put the files in the right place, ran it on a command line, etc. Kindle Previewer software lets you see how the layout of the book will appear on a Kindle.
If you have InDesign 5 or above, you can export to EPUB (for iTunes) and there is also a Kindle plug-in available.
I used Mobipocket from www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/default.asp?Language=EN to convert my file. It didn’t like .docx, but was fine with .doc. However, I did lose lots of styling when I converted, so the document had to be reworked. As I said above, it’s not too clever with pictures and text boxes in a document. And that’s a problem with e-books at the moment. It’s important to keep your document as simple as possible. One other thing, the publisher edition of mobipocket protects the distribution of copyrighted content and includes Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, and text file import wizards.
There’s also a piece of software called Calibre, which is available from http://calibre-ebook.com/download, that can be used to convert from one e-book format to another.
There are online services, like Lulu (www.lulu.com/uk/publish/ebooks/?cid=nav_ebks) that can help you publish your e-book. You upload your file, then create a cover, describe your book, pick a price, and promote your book. This gives you a route to Apple’s iBookstore, as well as selling it on Lulu’s Marketplace. In terms of royalties, Apple takes 30 percent, and Lulu takes 20 percent of the remainder.
If you want to publish through Barnes & Noble you can use the online service PubIt! (http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/pubit_app/bn?t=pi_reg_home). Create an account then upload your e-book and cover art. Then PubIt! converts the digital files for viewing on Nook devices. And then you can sell it. Royalty rates range from 40 percent (for any book priced under $2.98 or over $10) to 65 percent (for any book priced between $2.99 and $9.99).
If you self publish to the Kindle, you earn the highest royalty rate if your book costs between $2.99 to $9.99 range. You get 70% of the price.
Using iTunes Connect gets your EPUB format book on the iBookstore shelves. There is an approval process, and you’ll need an iTunes account.
For $19.99 (and part of your royalty) you can use BookBrewer (http://bookbrewer.com/home), which lets you upload your cover, enter a description of your book, and copy and paste chapters. The e-book can then be sold through Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Where am I in my investigation into e-books? I’ve created a book in Word that’s full of pictures with wrap-around text and text boxes with coloured backgrounds and shadows. It doesn’t convert very well. On the other hand, I have exported it as PDF and copied it onto my Android tablet into the Kindle app folder, and I can read my book using the Kindle app. (Older versions of the app don’t read PDFs.) My next task is to see whether I can ‘play’ with the HTML and create web pages that look more like my original Word pages and then go through the process again to get a good looking mobi file. At the moment, my PDF book doesn’t show up with the correct cover in the Kindle app.
If anyone’s got any suggestions, I’ll be interested to hear them.
Now, obviously, there must be technical standards, so that the e-book you create can be read on a standard device. But like everything in IT, there are more than enough standards. Amazon’s Kindle uses a version of mobi and calls it Kindle Format 8 (KF8). Apple has an iBook standard called EPUB for books available from its iTunes store. Barnes & Noble have their Nook standard. And there’s Kobo, Sony Reader, iRex Digital Reader, the iRiver Story, and probably lots of others - including simple PDFs. The majority of e-book formats are based on some kind of HTML (like a Web page).
So, how do you create an e-book? Step 1 is to write something! E-books generally work best with text rather than text and pictures. And it seems Word is fine as the source of the text. Once you’ve done that, you need to create a nice cover, a contents list, and all the other things that you find in the front of a book. It seems to work better if you insert a page break at the end of each partial page or blank page.
If you want to publish for the Kindle, Amazon has KindleGen software available. I must admit, I couldn’t get it to work on my laptop. I put the files in the right place, ran it on a command line, etc. Kindle Previewer software lets you see how the layout of the book will appear on a Kindle.
If you have InDesign 5 or above, you can export to EPUB (for iTunes) and there is also a Kindle plug-in available.
I used Mobipocket from www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/default.asp?Language=EN to convert my file. It didn’t like .docx, but was fine with .doc. However, I did lose lots of styling when I converted, so the document had to be reworked. As I said above, it’s not too clever with pictures and text boxes in a document. And that’s a problem with e-books at the moment. It’s important to keep your document as simple as possible. One other thing, the publisher edition of mobipocket protects the distribution of copyrighted content and includes Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, and text file import wizards.
There’s also a piece of software called Calibre, which is available from http://calibre-ebook.com/download, that can be used to convert from one e-book format to another.
There are online services, like Lulu (www.lulu.com/uk/publish/ebooks/?cid=nav_ebks) that can help you publish your e-book. You upload your file, then create a cover, describe your book, pick a price, and promote your book. This gives you a route to Apple’s iBookstore, as well as selling it on Lulu’s Marketplace. In terms of royalties, Apple takes 30 percent, and Lulu takes 20 percent of the remainder.
If you want to publish through Barnes & Noble you can use the online service PubIt! (http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/pubit_app/bn?t=pi_reg_home). Create an account then upload your e-book and cover art. Then PubIt! converts the digital files for viewing on Nook devices. And then you can sell it. Royalty rates range from 40 percent (for any book priced under $2.98 or over $10) to 65 percent (for any book priced between $2.99 and $9.99).
If you self publish to the Kindle, you earn the highest royalty rate if your book costs between $2.99 to $9.99 range. You get 70% of the price.
Using iTunes Connect gets your EPUB format book on the iBookstore shelves. There is an approval process, and you’ll need an iTunes account.
For $19.99 (and part of your royalty) you can use BookBrewer (http://bookbrewer.com/home), which lets you upload your cover, enter a description of your book, and copy and paste chapters. The e-book can then be sold through Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Where am I in my investigation into e-books? I’ve created a book in Word that’s full of pictures with wrap-around text and text boxes with coloured backgrounds and shadows. It doesn’t convert very well. On the other hand, I have exported it as PDF and copied it onto my Android tablet into the Kindle app folder, and I can read my book using the Kindle app. (Older versions of the app don’t read PDFs.) My next task is to see whether I can ‘play’ with the HTML and create web pages that look more like my original Word pages and then go through the process again to get a good looking mobi file. At the moment, my PDF book doesn’t show up with the correct cover in the Kindle app.
If anyone’s got any suggestions, I’ll be interested to hear them.
Sunday, 11 September 2011
Get the size of all site collections for a Web application
Get the size of all site collections for a Web application
This week, Darren Pritchard, our SharePoint guru, lays out clearly exactly what needs to be done in order to find out the size of all site collections for a Web application in SharePoint 2007.
The first step is to create a batch file containing:
SET STSADM="c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\bin\STSADM.EXE"
%STSADM% -o enumsites -url SiteStats.txt
Pause
Pretty obviously, where it says, you need to change that to the name of the Web application that you need to produce the statistics for.
Next you need to copy the batch file to your Web front-end server and run it.
The output will be in a file called SiteStats.txt. Open the file and for each site collection you will see ‘StorageUsedMB=’ and a value. It’s the value that you’re interested in.
On a completely different topic: on Tuesday 13 September the Virtual CICS user group meets. Rocket Software’s Charles Jones will be discussing “CICS TS 4.2: Leveraging event processing and high-performance Java”. More details about how to register can be found on the user group Web site at fundi.com/virtualcics.
This week, Darren Pritchard, our SharePoint guru, lays out clearly exactly what needs to be done in order to find out the size of all site collections for a Web application in SharePoint 2007.
The first step is to create a batch file containing:
SET STSADM="c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\bin\STSADM.EXE"
%STSADM% -o enumsites -url
Pause
Pretty obviously, where it says
Next you need to copy the batch file to your Web front-end server and run it.
The output will be in a file called SiteStats.txt. Open the file and for each site collection you will see ‘StorageUsedMB=’ and a value. It’s the value that you’re interested in.
On a completely different topic: on Tuesday 13 September the Virtual CICS user group meets. Rocket Software’s Charles Jones will be discussing “CICS TS 4.2: Leveraging event processing and high-performance Java”. More details about how to register can be found on the user group Web site at fundi.com/virtualcics.
Sunday, 29 May 2011
Custom branding with SharePoint
Custom branding with SharePoint
For those of you working at new SharePoint 2007 sites, I have more of Darren Pritchard’s excellent beginner’s guides. This time he’s looking at custom branding.
There are a few different parts to custom branding a SharePoint Web application. You will need SharePoint Designer to create and change the pages. You will need to create a new master page and a CSS file to apply to the master page.
SharePoint Designer is a free application that is available from Microsoft at www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=baa3ad86-bfc1-4bd4-9812-d9e710d44f42&displaylang=en. SharePoint Designer allows you to open your SharePoint Web application to see and access all the component parts and elements of the application. You are able to navigate through the whole site, which will give you a better idea of how a SharePoint application is built. Be carefully not to change anything unless you know what it is – you could break the Web application if you remove or change the wrong thing!
SharePoint Designer also allows the pages and code to be edited, which is good news for someone new to SharePoint because everything is available within one location.
Let’s start with master pages. These are the templates that are applied to all pages on a SharePoint Web application. They are written in ASP.NET 2.0. When applying custom branding to a SharePoint Web application, this is where the majority of the development will be carried out.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are used to style the master page (just like on most Web pages). Within a SharePoint Web application, there is a ‘core.css’ file, which can be found in the ‘_styles’ folder. You won’t be able to navigate here without using SharePoint Designer. This is used by all of the master pages that come by default in a Web application. This file should not be changed. It is best practice to create a bespoke .css file and use this to override the core.css. This means that you will not affect the default master page styles that are used by other pages.
Content PlaceHolders Controls are regions of content on a master page that are predefined but customizable within SharePoint. So, for example, the PlaceHolder is in bold, which is housed within an HTML table:
<!-- Search Start--><table border="0" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width="100%" class="customcss.class" >
<tr>
<td>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderSearchArea" runat="server">
<SharePoint:DelegateControl runat="server" ControlId="SmallSearchInputBox"/>
</asp:ContentPlaceHolder>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- Search End -->
This is an example of a table that will contain the search placeholder shown below:
Any images that are referenced from within the master page must be able to be viewed by all users. Otherwise, users will be asked to log-in every time they refresh the page if the don’t have permission to the library where the image is stored.
I would suggest creating a folder for your master page within the ‘http://Your App/Style%20Library/images’ and locating all of the images there. This will use the standard image locations from the master pages, but keep them separate so that they can be identified easily during future development or maintenance.
When you’re ready to import branding into a Web application, you need to use the following guidelines.
To import a master page:
1 In SharePoint Designer open up your Web application
2 Navigate to http://your site/_catalogs/masterpage
3 Click File
4 Click Import
5 Add your master page here.
To import an image:
1 In SharePoint Designer open up your Web application
2 Navigate to http://your site/Images
3 Click File
4 Click Import
5 Add your image here.
To import a CSS file:
1 In SharePoint Designer open up your Web application
2 Navigate to http://your site/_styles
3 Click File
4 Click Import
5 Add your CSS file here.
Good luck with your modifying your branding.
Sunday, 17 October 2010
Mainframes and cloud computing
Picking up IT trade papers might make you think that the only real players in the cloud computing world were Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Microsoft, with its ‘mega data centre’ in Dublin has been enthusiastic about its Office Web Apps and Facebook integration. Its Windows Azure is an environment for development, service hosting, and service management based on the cloud. It’s designed to allow developers to compute, host, scale, store, and also manage the Web apps they create. Google is working with VMware to develop a new operating system for the cloud, and plans to push the Web as a platform for enterprise-standard software development. Google now has a version of the Google App Engine for enterprise users. Amazon has its Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) – a Web service providing resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make Web-scale computing easier for developers. So where does that leave the mainframe?
To answer that question, Vanson Bourne, a market research company based in the UK undertook a survey that has now been published and is called Mainframe – The Ultimate Cloud Platform? Vanson Bourne conducted more than 300 interviews during August 2010 among IT decision makers. The sample comprised respondents in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Benelux, Scandinavia, Russia, Poland, Turkey, and the Czech Republic.
The survey results were published by CA Technologies, who revealed that 79 percent of IT organisations believe the mainframe is an essential component of their cloud computing strategy. They also found that 74 percent of respondents believe that the mainframe will have a role in any cloud computing initiative, with 70 percent agreeing that cloud computing will sustain or extend the mainframe environment.
Interestingly, and quite independently, the 2011 Arcati Mainframe Yearbook has two questions about cloud computing in its user survey. If you haven’t completed a survey yet, you can, by going to www.arcati.com/usersurvey11.
According to CA’s Dayton Semerjian: “This survey provides indisputable evidence of the mainframe's agility to perform in new IT models such as cloud computing, and on-going durability as a critical data centre platform for decades to come”. Semerjian added: “CA Technologies is addressing these needs through its revolutionary mainframe management strategy, Mainframe 2.0”.
The survey also found that 82 percent of respondents stated that they intend to use the mainframe in the future either as much or more than today – which, sadly, implies that one in five sites are reducing their mainframe usage.
54 percent of respondents felt that the most pressing issues facing them in the next 12 months is an increased demand for training.
When asked why the mainframe is considered a valuable organisational asset, responses included reliability (55 percent), its position as an established technology (52 percent), platform cost-effectiveness (48 percent), and IT attitudes toward change (40 percent).
Linked to training is the problem of an increasingly ageing experienced workforce and a reduction in the number of experienced people available to work on mainframes. The study concluded that 44 percent of IT organisations are grappling with staffing issues created by the greying workforce and difficulty in hiring new staff, and they are concerned that these challenges will make the mainframe less viable in the future.
Sunday, 8 August 2010
Virtual IMS Connection user group - under threat
Virtual IMS Connection is a vendor-neutral, independently-operated, virtual user group for IMS (IBM's Information Management System) professionals. It can currently be found at www.virtualims.com. It was launched at the beginning of November 2007.
Virtual user group meetings take place every other month and a guest speaker gives a presentation relevant to the IMS user community. The user group meetings last a little over an hour in total. Participation in meetings is free to members. The Virtual IMS Connection user group is also free to join.
User group members also get a bi-monthly newsletter. You can see the flip-book version here and the PDF version here.
The Web site contains details of future meetings, information about IMS-related articles (published elsewhere on the Web) and events, a list of IMS tools (software - the listing is free to vendors) and services, a list of IMS consultants, and a job bank (with resumes - CVs - and job opportunities).
New IMS products and new versions of existing products are always included in the News page. There's a link to the IMS-L listserv, where IMS professionals can ask questions and share information.
Members can access PDF versions of presentations and PDF versions of newsletters.
The idea was to create a one-stop shop for IMS professionals, where individuals using IBM’s IMS hierarchical database and transaction processing systems could exchange information, learn new techniques, and advance their skills with the product.
Obviously, there are sponsorship opportunities available to vendors of IMS-related products to help fund this work. Vendors can place banner adverts, etc. However, since its inception, NEON Enterprise Software has provided Web hosting for the site, and funded the WebEx technology that we have used to make the regular webinars possible, as well as meeting other costs. This is now coming to an end, and the Virtual IMS Connection user group is looking for a new home.
If your organization might be able to help keep this important user group running, please contact me on trevor@itech-ed.com.
You can also find the user group on Twitter at twitter.com/VirtualIMS.
You can become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/#/pages/Virtual-IMS-Connection-user-group/282385116069.
Let's hope that the Virtual IMS Connection user group can continue to share ideas, information, and skills into the future.
Virtual user group meetings take place every other month and a guest speaker gives a presentation relevant to the IMS user community. The user group meetings last a little over an hour in total. Participation in meetings is free to members. The Virtual IMS Connection user group is also free to join.
User group members also get a bi-monthly newsletter. You can see the flip-book version here and the PDF version here.
The Web site contains details of future meetings, information about IMS-related articles (published elsewhere on the Web) and events, a list of IMS tools (software - the listing is free to vendors) and services, a list of IMS consultants, and a job bank (with resumes - CVs - and job opportunities).
New IMS products and new versions of existing products are always included in the News page. There's a link to the IMS-L listserv, where IMS professionals can ask questions and share information.
Members can access PDF versions of presentations and PDF versions of newsletters.
The idea was to create a one-stop shop for IMS professionals, where individuals using IBM’s IMS hierarchical database and transaction processing systems could exchange information, learn new techniques, and advance their skills with the product.
Obviously, there are sponsorship opportunities available to vendors of IMS-related products to help fund this work. Vendors can place banner adverts, etc. However, since its inception, NEON Enterprise Software has provided Web hosting for the site, and funded the WebEx technology that we have used to make the regular webinars possible, as well as meeting other costs. This is now coming to an end, and the Virtual IMS Connection user group is looking for a new home.
If your organization might be able to help keep this important user group running, please contact me on trevor@itech-ed.com.
You can also find the user group on Twitter at twitter.com/VirtualIMS.
You can become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/#/pages/Virtual-IMS-Connection-user-group/282385116069.
Let's hope that the Virtual IMS Connection user group can continue to share ideas, information, and skills into the future.
Sunday, 11 July 2010
Steganography
I’ve been variously involved in securing mainframe data over many years. I’ve looked at encryption of data, External Security Managers (ESMs), certificates, and public key encryption at various times. I’ve only recently become aware of steganography and how that can be used to send covert information in plain sight!
Steganography means concealed (the “stegano” bit) writing (the “graphy” bit), and there was a book about it written in 1499 by Johannes Trithemius – although not published until 1606. Trithemius was Abbot of Sponheim, but, even so, the Catholic Church banned the three volumes of his book (called Steganographia) for almost 300 years. So that must give you a clue as to how difficult it would be to control the use of hidden messages by ordinary people – you and I really!
Here’s an example – this week’s shopping list:
Allspice, lemon, banana, avocado, peanuts, strawberry, pomegranate, sweets, anchovies.
Allspice, lemon, banana, avocado, peanuts, strawberry, pomegranate, sweets, anchovies.
You’d look at that and think there’s nothing hidden in that list. Now look at it again:
Allspice, lemons, bananas, avocado, peanuts, strawberry, pomegranate, sweets, anchovies
Allspice, lemons, bananas, avocado, peanuts, strawberry, pomegranate, sweets, anchovies
It says LEAVE TOWN. Obviously more complicated messages could be included if I had a longer shopping list – but you get the idea.
But there’s an even better and more modern method of steganography – and that’s using images. You can hide messages in the least significant bit in an image. I have hidden a message in the photo below. Can you read it?
If you want to create your own hidden message, you can have a go at http://mozaiq.org/encrypt/. You can also read hidden messages by clicking on “tools” from the menu and “decrypt”.
The pixels in 24-bit images have their colour defined using three numbers. There’s one for red, one for green, and one for blue (RGB). Making a small change to a pixel alters its colour but not so much that the human eye will detect the change. These small changes can be combined to give the ASCII code for a letter – and those letters when put together give a word, a sentence, a complete hidden message. It would be completely plausible that the images in an innocent Web site could contain messages for banned organizations. Those pictures on the MI5 Web site could actually be coded messages to UK operatives (with Internet access) across the globe. But think how many other Web sites could contain coded messages – just who could those messages be for?
Almost any message that can be send – any picture, any digital message, any written or printed message – could contain a hidden message in it.
I’m not trying to make your paranoia worse, I just thought it might be worth checking those images, or reading every second character in a list (or third or fourth!), and making sure someone isn’t sending a message from your Web site that you don’t expect.
Sleep well!
Sunday, 16 May 2010
Microsoft, clouds, silver linings?
The big news of the week – even overshadowing IBM’s announcement of its latest five-year plan and market happiness at the news; even overshadowing the announcement of coalition government in the UK – was Microsoft’s launch of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010!
With Ray Ozzie (once king of Notes and Domino land) somewhere on the bridge of the supertanker, Microsoft has made a big deal of sharing documents – you can’t do that with OpenOffice – and cloud computing – you can’t do that with Google Docs – hang on a minute, oh yes you can do that with Google Docs, but you can’t do it so well with Microsoft Office originated documents!!
But what’s this about cloud computing and Microsoft?!?! Yes, Microsoft now brings you Office Web Apps. And what’s more, they will be offered free to the claimed 500 million users of Hotmail and Messenger. And rather cleverly – in terms of making this legacy Office product appealing to a more youthful audience – Microsoft has integrated Web Apps into Facebook – which you’ll remember it part owns – as Facebook Docs. This allows Facebook users to create and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents online. They can then share these files with their friends on Facebook, much like they would photos or videos.
On top of this, Microsoft is offering Office Live Workspace – free online document sharing (notice that word!) and storage. It says on the Web site that it stores up to 5GB online; works with Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint; and you can view, edit, share documents with password-protection.
Furthering the cloud idea is Microsoft Live SkyDrive, which (although not new) allows users to upload 25GBs of any type of file and then access it from any other computer they are on. Other products are available (as they say) including Amazon S3, Google Docs, and RackSpace Cloud Files. With SkyDrive, users drag-and-drop files onto the Web page. To make SkyDrive more usable, frequent users might like to download SkyDrive Simple Viewer for WebDAV from http://skydrivesimpleviewer.codeplex.com/, or SDExplorer from www.cloudstorageexplorer.com/.
To really get the best in an organization from sharing and collaboration, you also need to install the new SharePoint 2010.
One minor point, my beta copy of Office 2010 has seen the return of the File menu – well ribbon I suppose you’d call it – which disappeared in Office 2007. Other parts of the ribbon have been made more usable following customer feedback (or complaints as we’d call them!).
So, is Microsoft’s future cloudy? Will Google Docs now wither and die? Yes and no, are the answers in my opinion. Clearly, when you start looking at the nitty gritty detail, Microsoft has a way to go before it really offers cloud computing, but it’s moving in the right direction. Saying that, there are still millions of people who don’t need to share or collaborate on documents and who use only a tiny percentage of the facilities and features available in this venerable product. Certainly the Facebook Docs makes Office Web Apps seem cool and exciting for a new generation – the space that Google usually holds. I think fans of Google Docs will carry on as before. Large organizations (who haven’t got a mainframe and done proper computing!) will probably invest in SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 once the first service pack has come round and assuming the licence price is affordable. It’s certainly a good move for Microsoft.
Sunday, 9 May 2010
Web futures – they are among us
Rule number 1 of the Internet is, of course, that there are no rules – but if there were, it would be that the Internet is always changing and evolving. While some people have only just started to use style sheets and XHTML, others are pushing the envelope with CSS3 and HTML5. I want to have a quick look at what this all means.
There was a time when HTML5 seemed like something in the far future, but now Apple (purveyors of the unbelievable fascist iTunes and lots of really cool gadgets) claims that there’s no point worrying about the fact Adobe’s Flash doesn’t run on their iPhones because it will be sidelined when HTML5 is adopted. GoogleWave, the collaboration and communication software from Google, already uses HTML5.
In addition, many currently available browsers allow the clever new stuff in CSS3 and HTML5 to work already. Opera and Safari provide support. Firefox from Version 3.5 supports HTML5. And Explorer Version 8 does a bit, and the proposed Version 9 will do more.
CSS3 is simply the next generation of style sheets and it offers loads of clever stuff. The most exciting one – certainly for those of us who have developed Web sites using multiple images to achieve the same effect – is rounded corners. You can now have boxes with varying ‘roundnesses’ of corners (except in Explorer where they’re still square). You can specify a radius value and that affects how round the corners are. It also now becomes very easy to use borders.
The downside, at the moment, is that each piece of code needs to be repeated. Look at:
-moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #6c3;
-webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #6c3;
-box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #6c3;
The top line adds the shadow for Mozilla browsers (like Firefox). The second line issues the same commands for WebKit browsers (such as Safari and Chrome). The third line is for those browsers that already support the CSS3 standards (and that’s Firefox 3.1 and above and Safari 3 and above).
In addition to these tags, other, much longer, tags are available containing the word ‘Microsoft’ at the beginning. But this isn’t an anti-Microsoft rant (this week!), the excellent word-wrap tag is a Microsoft one.
There are lots of other clever CSS3 tricks in development too. You can create drop shadows, do impressively clever things with gradients, and make text become more transparent as you mouseover it. Have a look at http://css3generator.com/ and http://css3please.com/ for some excellent examples.
HTML5, as well as potentially making Flash (and Silverlight come to that) redundant, provides a way to make Web applications more easily available. It is much more than a simple mark-up syntax for documents. HTML5 now contains tags for things like navigation (nav), headers, footers, articles, and sections. Explorer is the only fly-in-the-ointment (as it were), which will come as a surprise to no-one. Explorer needs a bit of JavaScript in order for CSS to style the page. Something like document.createElement("nav"); is required for each of the new tags.
And the doctype to use at the top of your document is <!DOCTYPE html>. And handily – for those people who never quite got the hang of closing tags – you can just close with a ‘>’, you don’t need ‘ />’ as with XHTML.
HTML5 can offer developments in Web forms. There are video and audio APIs. There’s a drag-and-drop API with a draggable attribute. ‘History.pushState’ can be used with AJAX apps to give better back–button support. There’s also a 2D drawing API for scripting graphics using the new canvas element. In fact there’s loads of new good stuff with more being added all the time. And did I mention the Geolocation API? I should have – it definitely adds the “wow” factor.
Lots of people will be wanting to use the new APIs, and Web pages for people using appropriate browsers will be appearing more and more. Look out for it!
There was a time when HTML5 seemed like something in the far future, but now Apple (purveyors of the unbelievable fascist iTunes and lots of really cool gadgets) claims that there’s no point worrying about the fact Adobe’s Flash doesn’t run on their iPhones because it will be sidelined when HTML5 is adopted. GoogleWave, the collaboration and communication software from Google, already uses HTML5.
In addition, many currently available browsers allow the clever new stuff in CSS3 and HTML5 to work already. Opera and Safari provide support. Firefox from Version 3.5 supports HTML5. And Explorer Version 8 does a bit, and the proposed Version 9 will do more.
CSS3 is simply the next generation of style sheets and it offers loads of clever stuff. The most exciting one – certainly for those of us who have developed Web sites using multiple images to achieve the same effect – is rounded corners. You can now have boxes with varying ‘roundnesses’ of corners (except in Explorer where they’re still square). You can specify a radius value and that affects how round the corners are. It also now becomes very easy to use borders.
The downside, at the moment, is that each piece of code needs to be repeated. Look at:
-moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #6c3;
-webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #6c3;
-box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #6c3;
The top line adds the shadow for Mozilla browsers (like Firefox). The second line issues the same commands for WebKit browsers (such as Safari and Chrome). The third line is for those browsers that already support the CSS3 standards (and that’s Firefox 3.1 and above and Safari 3 and above).
In addition to these tags, other, much longer, tags are available containing the word ‘Microsoft’ at the beginning. But this isn’t an anti-Microsoft rant (this week!), the excellent word-wrap tag is a Microsoft one.
There are lots of other clever CSS3 tricks in development too. You can create drop shadows, do impressively clever things with gradients, and make text become more transparent as you mouseover it. Have a look at http://css3generator.com/ and http://css3please.com/ for some excellent examples.
HTML5, as well as potentially making Flash (and Silverlight come to that) redundant, provides a way to make Web applications more easily available. It is much more than a simple mark-up syntax for documents. HTML5 now contains tags for things like navigation (nav), headers, footers, articles, and sections. Explorer is the only fly-in-the-ointment (as it were), which will come as a surprise to no-one. Explorer needs a bit of JavaScript in order for CSS to style the page. Something like document.createElement("nav"); is required for each of the new tags.
And the doctype to use at the top of your document is <!DOCTYPE html>. And handily – for those people who never quite got the hang of closing tags – you can just close with a ‘>’, you don’t need ‘ />’ as with XHTML.
HTML5 can offer developments in Web forms. There are video and audio APIs. There’s a drag-and-drop API with a draggable attribute. ‘History.pushState’ can be used with AJAX apps to give better back–button support. There’s also a 2D drawing API for scripting graphics using the new canvas element. In fact there’s loads of new good stuff with more being added all the time. And did I mention the Geolocation API? I should have – it definitely adds the “wow” factor.
Lots of people will be wanting to use the new APIs, and Web pages for people using appropriate browsers will be appearing more and more. Look out for it!
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