Testing GWT Designer

Google announced today on the GWT blog the availability of GWT Designer among other things coming from the Instantiations acquisition. I couldn't help trying it, of course, so I installed the Eclipse plugin and tried to add a DialogBox into an existing project of mine. The plugin created the skeleton code for the new class but when I clicked on the design tab to see the graphical editor, Eclipse crashed miserably. It just disappeared from my screen with nothing written in the log (how typical). I tried updating everything related to Eclipse and test again with no luck. I then tried to create a new project from the beginning with the same results. Google search didn't help either. Tomorrow I 'll try it on the office computer and see what happens.

Nodify made it to No 5 in the utility category!

Nodify is our entry in the Node Knockout coding contest. It is a Web-based IDE for writing nodeJS applications in Javascript. Initialy, it was meant to be only for server-side apps that implemented a REST-like API but during the 48-hour contest, we decided that it is better for now to have a more general approach.

The results came out yesterday and we are No 5 in the utility category!!! Apart from that, we had some very encouraging comments from the voters and that is even more satisfying than the ranking alone. Anyway, Panagiotis says it all in the video, you can check the project itself or download the code to play with. It is open-sourced under the MIT Lincence.

...and thanks to all that voted for us.

Nodify, a web-based IDE for node.js applications

Nodify is a web-based IDE for writing Javascript code using the node.js framework. It was created by our team during the node knockout coding contest in 48 hours. Check it out and if you like it, vote for it. Thank you

paper.li and twittertim.es

paper.li and twittertim.es are services that take links from your twitter stream and present them in a newspaper format. I have to admit that the first time I saw them, I couldn't find any possible use for me. Then, I thought that I don't follow my twitter stream very closely due to lack of time (no I don't click on every link that you post, sorry) and those services offer a decent way to have a quick but complete look on what happened in my stream for the last 24 hours. I don't intend to do a comparison here (how boring!) but I like twittertim.es because they show which friend shared each link and which friend of a friend which probably is a hint about their ranking algorithm. On the other hand, twittertim.es does not allow the creation of newspapers from hashtags, which is something that paper.li provides, so I use the latter to follow news about topics that interest me. A suggestion for both services is to allow the creation of newspapers from twitter searches (it would be really useful, guys).

And now let me go back to my studying for the node.js knockout contest.

Dear Vodafone

thank you for bringing me back to the era of 54k modems when a 5kbytes/sec download rate was reason to party. Next time you advertise your mobile internet service, please make sure that it is clear that you are joking. There are naive people like me that believe such advertisements and expect fast internet on their vacation. Because my vacation is the only time I need mobile internet and it is apparent now that you cannot provide it.

On Android VM performance as a success factor

Duncan's Journal (Android VM Performance is not a Factor)
VM performance will help but is not THE critical factor for Android 's success according to the author (I mostly agree).

GWT 2.1 milestone 1 with data presentation widgets

GWT 2.1 milestone 1 is available and it has business presentation widgets! More details here. I still use smartGWT for complicated widgets but now this may change.