> 1879 // Blog

The way is Shut

2007-03-24T13:21:00.001-03:00

Hi!, my blog has moved,

you can reach me at http://www.abigdoor.com/ , my new personal blog (only available in Spanish).

This was my first blog and for the last year and a half I have been writing here different sort of things. It really started at 2005 with no real expectations and no main goal at all. In the beginnings this blog was a place to leave the resumes for my university colleagues, and later maybe as a way to try this "blogging" activity, time goes by and it finally works to find a way to express myself. (A way of art maybe? like coding, painting etc…)

It has been a really great experience to blog in English, I have made a lot of friends around the world, but one lesson I have learned here is that blogging is a natural activity, you have to be very comfortable with your blogging, and you have to love it.

The thing here is that writing in English a couple of times per month is not part of my daily basis, and it’s not natural for a Spanish speaker living in Argentina. J

So, a couple of months ago I have started another blog, this time in a dot com environment and its from there where I will continue my journey, this time for my friends, co-workers, university colleagues, my students, and all the Spanish people around the world.

See you at Marketing Interactivo y Nuevos Medios!

Victor Rottenstein.

Are you looking for TV LCD 19 to shop ?, or maybe do you want a Mercedes AMG Coupe car to buy?

The Best Web Operations team

2007-02-09T00:18:00.000-03:00

Today i have a great conversation with one of my colleagues about the diferent options we have to create the best web operation team structure, the interesting thing here is that we haven't agreed so far, but this exercise helps a lot to understand how to improve our team.

The true here is that our team is working great, but the main goal behind this is to have the best solution for a every web operation team fully business oriented and with a strong teamwork spirit, all of these in a offshoring multicultural project. This exercise brings to us a lot of different issues to be solved like:

How to engage all resources with our uniqueness customers culture?
How to improve the customer brand knowledge for the internal resources?
How to promote and measure customer satisfaction with different scenarios?
How to align all employees with teamwork?

We will continue with our work, and i think the results will shows up quickly...we will see :)

Project Management communication tips for Offshoring projects

2007-01-28T20:52:00.000-03:00

Hi, I am a person, and if you are sitting there reading this post, its because you are probably a person too. Think about it for a second, you are reading something that maybe is relevant for you in some way, or maybe it isn't but you are taking a few seconds on it.

What about if I am a project Manager and you are my client?, I'm sure I have a lot of fresh news and information that you will be interested in, so its crystal clear that its my duty to keep you informed with the schedule updates, and the status of all deliverables of our project.

Offshoring projects
So, the thing here is going to be more complicated when you are at your office and you are the responsible for the project inside your company, so you are the face of the project for the whole company!, and I am sitting here with my project team members thousands kilometres away, across hundreds of mountains and rivers.
At this point I call this situation a project BLIND Execution. You have to wait for my updates and read my e-mails to understand the situation of your project, in this scenario i have been thinking in some key concepts to keep a good ongoing communication for you, as Project Manager, and it works, no matter the Project management methodology that you are using, it works, or at least it works for me.

Communication TIPS

Timeline visibility : keep your client updated with the whole picture, if there is a minimal gap in the timeline, communicate it as fast as you can. it will save future head pains.

Stay connected: don't let your client feel that you are lost. You could use, MSN, Skype, Cell phone, Nextel or whatever you like.

Checkpoints: you have to schedule conference calls with your client on a weekly basis, its a formal revision checkpoint with a previous predefined agenda. don't forget to send a formal document with the agreements after this meeting!

A Team: You have a team working with you, its your duty to get your client to know the team, otherwise, the client will not see your team efforts, and he could think that your resources are really ghosts.

Fullfill your oath: you are far away from your client, he needs to trust you, so this is really important if you want to get a success project done.You have to fullfill your commitment, and you have to get your timeline done in the dates you have said before. its not negotiable unless project scope changes.

Over communicate: always remember that its better to send an e-mail twice, rather than don't send anything. Think about all the data your client will need.

I hope this post helps you in your daily work, it works for me and my colleagues in the way to success for most cross country projects with different cultures involved.

How to learn SEO? (for spanish speakers)

2007-01-23T12:06:00.000-03:00

SEO (Search Engine optimization) its a kind of new discipline developed for the last years around the whole Search Engines Business. Over at Wikipedia we can read:

"Search engine optimization (SEO) as a subset of search engine marketing seeks to improve the number and quality of visitors to a web site from "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results"

I'm doing a research about SEO since september, learning deeply about this, so I suggest to read the new "ABigDoor, SEO y posicionamiento" (in spanish) blog daily to keep you updated and to involve yourself in the SEO world.

Thanks
Vic

A simple management concept

2007-01-18T22:02:00.000-03:00

The other day I was reading an interesting article (sadly I don`t remember where...) , and it shows a simple and powerful management concept. it says:

"if you have a task , and it takes less than 2 minutes, do it right now!"

Its an interesting point, because by default we always are doing these kind of To-Do lists that are increasing all the time, so maybe think about it for a second...I am sure you could reduce your To-Do list dramatically if you start doing the less-than-2-minutes tasks right now! :)

Thanks
Vic.

I am back (I have changed this title because this post has changed!)

2007-01-18T00:46:00.000-03:00

Hi!, I´m back, the thing is I am living busy days right now with a lot of work divided into several categories from Consulting, management issues and SEO..., but I have decided to continue blogging.
Besides that I have worked late at nights thinking about the new insite website, we will change it asap, we have to!

"Es muy cool"
By the way, the esmuycool blogging start-up its doing great. Not as my personal blog but as research experiment to understand several aspects of readers behaviour.And it has one full time blogger. We have received almost 1100 visits for the last month and 17 RSS daily readers.

What will you find on this 1879 blog?
So, in this blog you will find a few ideas directly delivered from my brain, and usually at night. The main topics will cover:

Interactive marketing and Web 2.0 in general.
SEO / SEM
Management related stories from the trenches

I hope to see you reading my blog :) , sadly I have disable comments because I´m not happy with Google comments administration. (But I´m trying to change this blog to Wordpress shortly), in the meantime i will be waiting for your e-mails as ussual

Thanks
Vic.

Happy new year!

2007-01-02T11:00:00.000-03:00

"We left behind a great 2006, now its time to say hello to a new year!: welcome 2007, i`ve be watching you... "

TOP 10 RUBY Sites: 2006 Edition

2006-12-23T19:56:00.000-03:00

Since we are arrive at the end of this year, this is the final 2006 edition of the “TOP 10 Ruby Sites”, the best ruby sites around the world. I think it’s very useful to start learning ruby.

1. Ruby Lang site
2. The pragmatic programmers book
3. Rails framework site
4. Ruby documentation Project
5. The Ruby page on wikipedia
6. Rails tutorial book
7. Radrails:Great Ruby IDE
8. Ruby Garden
9. The great poignant guide to Ruby
10. Hal Fulton`s Rubyhacker site

This ranking is made by the comments of people and friends who are visiting this blog reguraly, and with the google pagerank of these sites.You can submit your vote by e-mail or by a comment in this page.

About comments administration

2006-12-19T23:02:00.000-03:00

I think Blogger hasn't a right way to manage comments, I am a Blogger beta user but its the same for now. it has great changes on the interface but not in the administration features. So I'm planning to move this blog to Wordpress (not only for this reason of course), in the meantime I will disable comments, but as always : I will answer your questions and comments by e-mail as daily basis :)

See ya
Vic

4 steps to a multilingual blog in Blogger

2006-12-16T23:25:00.000-03:00

Since I have received a lot of e-mails asking about how to maintain a multilingual blog in Blogger, I will share the 4 steps that works for me, I use a little tricky process and Its something like this:

Write posts in the two selected languages in a text editor
I want to maintain the main page always in English, so I Write the Spanish post and assign an old date to it (more than 4 days.)
I post the English one with the current date. (and include a link to the translation post)
Since my account is configured to display the last 3 days at home, it works! The Spanish posts are archived and the main page is always in English.

It’s a lot of work, but it works for me since there no a appropriate solution from Blogger so far..., do you have any better solution? please share it with us! :)

Thanks

Vic.

My blogs metrics

2006-12-14T16:25:00.000-03:00

I`m a kind of new blogger, I started blogging on July 2006 and the reason I do this is because i like it, its funny, and its an intresting way to share knowledge with my friends, these are my blogs metrics for last month:

1879 (This weblog)

1000 uniques
1500 pageviews
30% of readers came from Google

Esmuycool (Spanish weblog )

This was this blog first month.

33 posts, 42 comments
1.386 uuniquess
2.810 pageviews.
32% came from Google, and 20 % came from other Blogs.

Thanks!
Vic

Electronic Arts: One step back...

2006-11-30T23:55:00.000-03:00

I have published an intresting article (in spanish) about a clear today`s example of poor unerstanding of the blogoshpere and the social movement, from a big advertiser (the Spain subsidiary of Electronic Arts)

Thanks
Vic

"Eventoblog" Spain

2006-11-20T10:14:00.000-03:00

Yesterday the Blog event at spain was over, you could find the excelent presentations at the EventoBlog site, its really intresting to see how far is the Spain blogoshpere vs. the Latin America blogs market.

Esmuycool - a Web 2.0 Startup.

2006-11-13T23:57:00.000-03:00

Today I have launched "es muy cool" , a Web 2.0 media start-up, this is a Blog for Spanish community and the project main objective is to create content about cool stuff.
The concept behind this idea is to make this site the “first” site in mind for the people in the spanish Latam when they think about cool stuff.
I’ am a blogger, id like to blog on my sites, and I like cool stuff and gadgets too, this project is the result of this two passions.

Thanks
Vic

TOP 10 RUBY Sites: November Edition

2006-11-12T10:59:00.000-03:00

This is the November 2006 edition of the “TOP 10 Ruby Sites”, the best ruby sites around the world. I think it’s very useful to start learning ruby.

1. Ruby Lang site
2. The pragmatic programmers book
3. Rails framework site
4. Ruby documentation Project
5. The Ruby page on wikipedia
6. Rails tutorial book
7. Radrails:Great Ruby IDE
8. Ruby Garden
9. The great poignant guide to Ruby
10. Hal Fulton`s Rubyhacker site

This ranking is made by the comments of people and friends who are visiting this page reguraly, and with the google pagerank of these sites.You can submit your vote by e-mail or by a comment in this page.

Advertisement: ReviewMe, a blogging media network

2006-11-10T23:53:00.000-03:00

Its funny to see how is changing the business model of the web itself, the Web 2.0 principles are changing the way of “traditional” interactive marketing itself.
“Traditional” I have said? Yes, because it’s like interactive marketing is an old definition nowadays.
Software is evolving in this way too, this industry has a mutated business model with a evolution of the first bubble ASP model (application service provider) making a real conversion to the “web as platform” model in all aspects.
So, in this Web 2.0 scenario, how do you imagine your product be to spread over the net? , NOO, forget a landing page with a nice brochure!, and think about it as the possibility of thousands talking about your product!, not only because they want, but because you have hired them! .
But, how? : Today a new 2.0 start-up emerged , its called reviewMe and its a media network site that interact between advertisers and bloggers, so you could just invest a small portion of your web campaign and let your bloggers hired by reviewMe to do your viral marketing job. One thing interesting here is that talking well about products is not mandatory for bloggers, since it’s a real review, nmmm… be careful with your brand positioning…
And of course, this is a Sponsored Post... : )

Thanks
Vic

A search engine for my wife

2006-11-08T22:21:00.000-03:00

Search engines technologies are growing really faster. A Silicon Valley start-up riya launched an image shopping-search called like.com. It’s an incredible image search that let you find the right product you want, mmmm…,
I really don’t know where all this big long-tail-booble will end; all I know is that we will see happier wife’s in this experience economy time. : )

Web 2.0 startup - DAY 2

2006-11-03T14:11:00.000-03:00

The first project scope change emerge quickly, since I have received a lot of e-mails yesterday, and there is no enough space in the project for to many people, lets change the business model, we will not build a web 2.0 Open source application, we are going to build a web 2.0 startup (with a real business model) instead.
So, this produced the first… Main objective update:

“To Build a web 2.0 start-up, collaboratively* and with a small investment"

The explanation:
“To build a Web 2.0 start-up”: A Web 2.0 startup online, tested and working.
“Collaboratively*”: made by the hands of many people around the world, they will be hired for this job.
“With a small investment”: No money invested on traditional e-marketing, no venture capital, already have a business plan .

Another research objective came up:

To measure the power of blog as a communication tool for project management.

DAY 2 Brief
Team so far: me, (Victor Rottenstein), as Project Manager.
% of the final product complete: 0%

Thanks!
Victor.

Web 2.0 start-up research challenge

2006-11-02T23:52:00.000-03:00

(see update for this post in the Web 2.0 startup DAY 2 post)

Today I’m starting a new lab experiment, a journey to the exposed world of buzz-words and social e-marketing strategies. I know I will face great peril in the far away lands of coders, wizards and designers, but I hope to see the end of the road with my head on.

The Main objective: To Build a web 2.0 start-up, collaboratively and without a cent.

The explanation:
“To build a Web 2.0 start-up”: A Web 2.0 application online, tested and working.
“Collaboratively”: made by the hands of many people around the world.
“Without a cent”: No money invested, no venture capital, only a few hours for each participant, and a lot of burgers on the way.

Research Objectives:

Research and test the e-marketing tools of web 2.0
Test and measure the extreme projects methodology.
Test and measure the power of XP software development methodology
Test and measure the Ruby language learning curve.
To see how long is required to get a critical mass using a Web 2.0 site without standards e-marketing advertising campaign.
Research about positioning, SEO and SEM
Measure the maintain effort needed for a standard web 2.0 application.

The Strategy: Use of the contacts network, the web 2.0 power, and to pray.

DAY 1
Team so far: me, (Victor Rottenstein), as Project Manager.
Do you want to join us?, its free!, its easy!, send me an e-mail and tell me what you can do to contribute with the project,.. And you almost in.

Thanks
Victor.

Marketing 2.0 Conference Photos

2006-10-31T23:20:00.000-03:00

As many people ask me , i will share a few pics i have from the conference from the Blogs panel.

This is a picture of a small sector of public waiting to lunch time : )
From Right to left: Mariano Amartino, Matias Attwell, Agustina Echague and Me.

And Mariano Focused on his great speach, you can find more information about this conference in the post about Marketing 2.0 blogs at uberbin site

Marketing 2.0 Conference

2006-10-26T21:56:00.000-03:00

The Marketing 2.0 conference organized by amdia was a big show yesterday (25/10/06) at NH hotel Buenos Aires with arround 500 participants from Argentina and Latin America.

The conference main idea was the marketing perspective of the web 2.0 with e-marketing professionals speakers from Argentina, and some great personalities from other countries like Emerson Calegaretti from Google Brazil, Greg Jonhson from MRM USA, and Ismael El-Qudsi from MSN Spain.
You will find all Speakers resumes at the marketing 2.0 conference site.
I have the honor to participate in the “Blogs” section at the conference, and It has Agustina Echague from Unilever, Matias Atwell from Terra Networks and Mariano Amartino ( MediaReload and Uberbin ) as Speakers.

Thanks.
Victor Rottenstein.
(1879 Blog)

About 1879 Blog future

2006-10-26T21:36:00.000-03:00

Finally I decided continue to blogging only in English, so say godbay to the Spanish section.
This weblog will be committed to my personal space, and I will be blogging about different stuff like: Web 2.0, interactive marketing, software design and coding.
Of course you will be able to find posts about Ruby, security and new media technologies too.

Thanks
Vic

"Dove" Ad with Photoshop

2006-10-19T23:51:00.000-03:00

It’s really amazing what Photoshop can do to help us, ugly monsters. In this case I’d like to show you an excellent ad as part as the real beauty campaign.

Blogs: Unclear benefits?

2006-10-18T23:43:00.000-03:00

There are a lot of blogs over the internet, technorati reports about 55 million blogs!, and this number was growing exponentially for the last 2 years.
So, in these days everybody knows what a weblog is, but it seems that not everybody could tell us the blog benefits as a marketing e-strategy tool.
A recently research performed by “the first European Survey on Weblogs in Public Relations and Communication Management” with almost 550 professionals in 33 countries shows up the real statistics :

The 31.3 % say that a definitely factor for not implementing blogs is that blogs have unclear benefits, followed by a 22.1% of no personnel capacity and a 13.8% of No budget.

I think it really reveal that the market has a lack of information about this technology as a e-marketing communication tool, yet is true that it hasn’t a direct ROI measure.

I will be back with this next week, and maybe we could share opinions about the blogs benefits as a marketing tool.

Thanks
Victor.
(> Back to home)

1879, a Multilanguage blog

2006-10-14T23:59:00.000-03:00

Victor has made the following announcement last week: “the 1879 Blog will be available in Spanish too and the reason is that after 3 months of active blogging I have received a lot of visits and comments from the Hispanic community around the world, mostly from USA and LATAM”.

There is no easy way to blog in 2 languages at same time, but after a little research I have developed an easy to implement process in order to have one blog in Blogger, with two languages at the same time.

3 reasons to choose Blogger beta

2006-10-14T02:25:00.000-03:00

( > Spanish version )
Blogger was a good and easy-to-use blogging platform for end users till now, but with the release of the new Blogger-beta they are moving into the next level.
Based on the Web 2.0 principles it provides a web based platform instead of free distributed software and it fixes a lot of usability problems I have found in the previous releases.
This new version has a user friendly interface, one important thing here is that the Blogger users don’t need to know how to code.
Finally I will describe the 3 main reasons of why Blogger-beta is the blogging platform for every end-user.

1 - look & feel wizard: you can choose your template, and it has a great tool to change every detail including, all colors, fonts, etc… , in addition, it lets you to modify or to upload your own template.

2 - Layout: a great Ajax-style screen that let you changes your information architecture quickly, it lets you to add and arrange all page elements easily.

3 - Labels: finally they have introduced this basic feature; this will let you to “tag” your content and to create categories for every post.

I have made a big research over the net and tested a lot of different blogging platforms, I think its clear now that Blogger has an advantage over its competitors for the end user blogging platform.

Thanks,
Victor Rottenstein

( > back to Home )

Blogs: Sin claros beneficios ?

2006-10-13T23:50:00.000-03:00

(>English version)
Existen muchísimos blogs en Internet, technorati reporta cerca de 55 Millones de blogs!, este numero vino creciendo exponencialmente por los últimos 2 años.
Por estos días creo que puedo afirmar que todos sabemos que es un blog, pero parece que no todos tenemos en claro los beneficios del Blog como herramienta de la estrategia de e-marketing.
Una reciente investigación realizada por la “primera encuesta Europea de weblogs en PR y Gestión de las comunicaciones” con cerca de 550 profesionales de 33 países mostró los siguientes números reales:
El 31.3% de los encuestados dijo que un factor definitivo para no implementar blogs es que no tiene claros beneficios, seguido de un 22.1% que dijo no tener capacidad de personal y un 13.8% que no tiene presupuesto.

Creo que esto realmente revela que existe una falta de información en el mercado sobre esta tecnología como una herramienta de comunicación para el e-marketing, si bien es verdad que no se puede establecer una medición directa del ROI.

Probablemente en los próximos días voy a retomar este tema para que compartamos opiniones acerca de los beneficios reales del Blog como herramienta de marketing.

Gracias
Vic.

(> Volver a la home)

TOP 10 RUBY Sites : October Edition

2006-10-08T00:17:00.000-03:00

This is the October 2006 edition of the “TOP 10 Ruby Sites”, the best ruby sites around the world. I think it’s very useful to start learning ruby.

1. Ruby Lang site
2. The pragmatic programmers book
3. The Ruby page on wikipedia
4. Rails framework site
5. Ruby documentation Project
6. Radrails:Great Ruby IDE
7. Rails tutorial book
8. The great poignant guide to Ruby
9. Victor Rottenstein blog : )
10. Ruby Garden

This ranking is made by the comments of people and friends who are visiting this page reguraly, and with the google pagerank of these sites.You can submit your vote by e-mail or by a comment in this page.

3 Razones para elegir Blogger Beta

2006-10-07T22:19:00.000-03:00

Hasta ahora Blogger era una plataforma fácil para bloguear orientada a usuarios finales, pero con el lanzamiento de Blogger BETA están pasando a otro nivel. Basados en los principios mismos de la WEB 2.0, provee una plataforma en vez de un software instalable, también soluciona muchos problemas de usabilidad de la versión anterior.

Esta nueva versión tiene una interfaz de usuario muy amigable y como algo significativo podemos destacar, que no hay que saber programar para poder utilizarlo.

Finalmente voy a describir 3 razones por la cuales creo que Blogger Beta es una excelente opción para bloging de usuario final.

1 - look & feel wizard: Puedes seleccionar tu templete, y tiene una excelente herramienta para cambiar todos los detalles, incluyendo colores, fuentes, etc.., adicionalmente deja modificar el templete y/o subir uno propio.

2 - Layout: Una gran pantalla al estilo Ajax que permite cambiar la arquitectura de la información rápidamente, creando y arrastrando elementos a demanda.

3 - Labels: Finalmente han incluido este feature básico que estábamos esperando, nos permite clasificar nuestro contenido en categorìas!

He realizado una extensa investigación en Internet y testeado varias alternativas como plataforma para bloguear. Creo que esta claro que Google tiene la ventaje sobre sus competidores con Blogger como plataforma para usuarios finales e independientes.

Gracias,
Victor Rottenstein

( > volver a la Home )

How to create a web 2.0 logo?

2006-09-27T12:34:00.000-03:00

It’s interesting to see how all 2.0 sites are aligned in the main design lines, today we can quickly understand if we are into a 2.0 site with nothing more than a few second of looking it.
A 2.0 site logo is a project itself, because it’s a unique endeavor and it requires understanding the main concepts of the culture behind this movement.
All 2.0 logos share common properties that you have to keep in mind at the time to create your site logo. There are great references at wikipedia page, but here you have the key concepts:

Key concepts

Usually the 2.0 logos are placed in a white background, but some of them have a color background with strength vivid colors or black.
They usually have an icon (created for the logo of course...) before the text.
If they have no icon, they may have 2 colors for the fonts. Like one word with blue, and other with green.
Frequently the logos are made with a Rounded face Font, the most used fonts are: VAG rounded, Arial rounded and Helvetica rounded.
Of course is essential to have the Wet floor effect and the beta slogan too.

I hope this could help you to create your 2.0 site logo.

The real interesting thing here is that we as humans are always trying to “tag” ourselves in a particular category to fit in a particular type of human group, could it be a social network or business group or whatever, think about it...

External Links:

The web 2.0 Logo
The logos of web 2.0 by Stephen Coles

Thanks,
Victor.

“Interactive advergaming”: The Marketing enhanced view of advergaming.

2006-09-18T23:55:00.000-03:00

Since last week I have received a lot of e-mails asking about the “interactive advergaming” benefits and also about the comparison between “I-ad” and a traditional advergaming campaign.

I will try to explain the main concept behind “i-ad”.
Like I said in my previous post, I-ad is a “derivation of advergaming that gives (to the sponsored company) the power to measure, analyze, and to understand in a real time way, what the clients are doing while they are playing into the computer based internet game”.

This is a simple fact, when you are talking about advergaming; you are talking about games (console, or computer game) that could have one of these:
1 - a explicit publicity inside
2 - an in-gaming referring to the sponsored brand
3 - a whole experience based on a e-marketing action enclosed by the sponsored brand.

So, what’s the difference with I-ad?
While a traditional advergaming campaign is an advertising mechanism, I have defined:

I-advergaming is a Marketing enhanced view of advergaming.

Hence, when you are thinking about “i-ad” you have a two way interactive relationship:
A user playing the game and a marketer, both of them in a real time relationship.

That’s the main difference, and that’s why I have defined “i-ad” as a derivation of advergaming. Thanks to all of you for the great support and all the e-mails, see you in the next post..

I-Advergaming definition

2006-09-09T23:40:00.000-03:00

Interactive Advergaming is a derivation of advergaming that gives (to the sponsored company) the power to measure, analyze, and to understand in a real time way, what the clients are doing while they are playing into the computer based internet game.
I-advergaming is a Marketing enhanced view of advergaming.

I-Ad not only reefers not the game itself, but to all e-marketing tools and actions developed to get a successful marketing campaign. The i-advergaming term was defined by Victor E. Rottenstein (yes, me..) in january 2006.

The first objective of a i-ad campaign is to increase the marketing campaign ROI gradually.

See more about this into these other posts:
i-advergaming explained
i-advergaming first ideas

Interactive Advergaming

2006-09-09T00:08:00.000-03:00

Advergaming “is the practice of using games, particularly computer games, to advertise or promote a product, organization or viewpoint”. What we have here is only a cold definition, we are talking about games, real computer or console games.

A few years ago the Internet began an exponential growth based on many new emerging technologies that made possible great bandwidth for users at a reasonable cost, and “browser” technologies like flash and Ajax.
So advergaming was moved from real world to the Internet for the last 5 years. Well I think this monster has mutated:

Long time ago, some of the top 500 companies invested a small piece of their marketing budget to get a “sponsored” game, Budweiser and 7up at the beginnings.
10 years have passed and today advergaming is a real fact with a 100 Millions U$S global market share and a 1.000 Millions U$S market share estimated for the 2010. We can see advergames everywhere, not only on the Internet, but in “real” games for PS, Gamecube, Xbox and computers. We could take “Winning eleven” (The best “Soccer” game ever) as an explicit example: It has a lot of advertises around the field.

Internet has provided the next step for advergaming and now we can clearly use it as a powerful marketing tool at a really low price. It has changed the marketing strategy itself, not only because the “advergame” benefits, but because this e-marketing enhanced model let you know what your clients are doing at real time, and yes, it works for you as a marketer, because it will show you a real time world of metrics that you have never seen before with your expensive offline marketing actions. That’s why I have defined this as:

Interactive Advergaming

Think about it for a second, why should I read your promotional e-mail? What in hell will force me to stay in your website for more than 30 seconds? Do you really think that users enjoy reading about your product benefits?
Well, I don’t have the answers because I don’t know how your e-marketing strategy is, but what I can tell you based on my experience is that your client will be happier if he spend the same time playing a little game that is telling the story of your product benefits in a non-invasive way.
And probably, if you have selected the right Agency to develop your advergame, it will be “viral” so your client will share and promote his experience (and your game) with his friends.
The EIAA (European Interactive Advertising Association) has a real fact: they say that a standard publicity campaign increases the buyer intention in 2% , while a advergaming campaign increases it around a 15%.

I-advergaming is not for all audiences, but you could think about it as a low cost way to involve your clients in your campaign story within a interactive way, with real time knowledge of their actions, and a deeper brand memory-retention .Of course don’t forget that this is only one of your marketing mix variables…

TOP 10 RUBY Sites : September Edition

2006-09-05T11:50:00.000-03:00

This is the September 2006 edition of the “TOP 10 Ruby Sites”, the best ruby sites around the world. I think it’s very useful to start learning ruby.

1. Ruby Lang site
2. The pragmatic programmers book
3. The great poignant guide to Ruby
4. The Ruby page on wikipedia
5. Rails framework site
6. Rails tutorial book
7. Radrails:Great Ruby IDE
8. Ruby documentation Project
9. Victor Rottenstein blog : )
10. Ruby Garden

This ranking is made by the comments of people and friends who are visiting this page reguraly.You can submit your vote by e-mail or by a comment in this page.

WebOs: a real web Operating System? (Part II)

2006-08-13T22:48:00.000-03:00

In the first article I have written a little introduction about WebOs, the next move on web based applications (at base level).
Well, so far there are many WebOs applications online and I could quickly understand that some of them are a solid long-term endeavour with a vast funding behind. The others are web (Ajax powered) experiments, APIs integrations and creative ideas of great programmers trying to show us what they can do for our future web based world.
Nowadays we can clearly see the first part of these applications lifecycle; they are emerging as experimental products.
Some of them are 100% “web 2.0” compliant, with the “beta” legend (and “alpha” too..) and a web 2.0 graphic design with all details included.
This is the list that I’m currently reviewing:

- eyeOs
- YouOs
- Twinklefish
- Orca
- DesktopTwo

And yes, as you can see it seems most of them are Web desktop-emulation applications, but not a real Operating System for the next wave.

TOP 10 RUBY SITES: August edition.

2006-08-05T14:07:00.000-03:00

This is the August edition of the “TOP 10 Ruby Sites”, the best ruby sites around the world.
I think it’s very useful to start learning ruby.

1. Ruby Lang site

2. The great poignant guide to Ruby

3. The pragmatic programmers book

4. Rails tutorial book

5. The Ruby page on wikipedia

6. Rails framework site

7. Ruby documentation Project

8. Victor Rottenstein blog : )

9. Great IDE

10. Ruby Garden

Beginning RubyOnRails: The view layer helpers

2006-08-02T21:05:00.000-03:00

One thing I’ve found great in the Rails framework API is that provides a lot of built-in classes and methods to help coding a page, and once you know a little about them, they are very useful.

An example of this is the ActionView::Helpers::DateHelper module, who provides date methods for the presentation layer, its very useful to accelerate the view construction.

One of my favourites is the date_select method that let you create a date combo-style drop down with many options, and it support the disabled property too!

So look at this example:

date_select ('one_object', 'the_method', :disabled => true)

Yep, and now you have a drop down combo box with endless dates in your page!, it really improves programmers coding speed, isnt it?

RubyOnRails howto: Create a simple XML view of a persisted object

2006-08-01T00:19:00.000-03:00

I like to share with you a simple and easy way to generate an XML output for a persisted object using a layout templete. I’ve found a similar implementation surfing the RubyOnRails site and it works too.
Supose you have a “documents” repository in your relational database and these documents have 3 fields: title, author and a description. What we want to do is to (generate) and show a XML file for every listed object.
So, First you have to add a new file in your application view folder describing your xml desired structure, this file act as the XML templete, I will name it esml.rxml:

xml.instruct! :xml, :version=>"1.0"
xml.instruct! :rss, :version=>"2.0"
xml.document {
xml.title("a",@document.title)
xml.author(@document.author.name)
xml.description(@document.body)
}

Next add a link to your XML document in your default “list” or “show” page (in the View folder of course):

link_to 'XML view of the document', :action => 'esml', :id => document

Then you have to create the action in your application controller .rb file (I have named it “esml”, I know! , I’m not very original…)

def esml
@document = Document.find(params[:id])
render :layout => false
end

Youre done!, that’s all you need to do , now click through the new link, you will find a fresh XML document for every document requested!...yep, is too easy, isn’t it?

Bye bye July!

2006-07-31T21:32:00.000-03:00

Well... this was the 2nd blogging week for me, it ends with more than 2100 visits and a lot of new friends around the world!, see you in the next post!

Thanks
Victor Rottenstein

Real world experiences: Programmers love writing tests… well, not in this town.

2006-07-30T02:04:00.000-03:00

The main idea behind unit testing is validate that every module or class is working properly; the procedure is to write test cases (yes, code it) for all methods so that whenever a change causes a regression, it can be quickly identified and fixed…
Well this sounds great! But sometimes it just doesn’t work too easy in a real web development scenario: real sites with billion pages views and with business requirement changing 5 times daily for only one coded class.

If we search for testing best practices we will quickly find the different testing types: Integration, Function, Unit, Acceptance and Regression.
Every web developer or web project manager knows that we should to apply some of these practices to get a successful project (in terms of QA, integration and functionality), and of course, we will need a combination of them to achieve our success, lets take an example to clarify this: we wont be happy with a bunch of classes working well separately (maybe programmers will be happy) because what we need is the whole puzzle finished (business requirements), if one piece is missed or its broken we (as Web Project Manager) will fail.

So, if you will face a real web project be prepared to apply and integrate many testing methods with an opened minded approach. You should know that the key will be to accept the change in a constantly changing environment, with or without unit testing.

Ruby decorator pattern

2006-07-28T23:38:00.000-03:00

Is any kind of ruby decorator pattern out-of-the-box there?
so far i didn't find any pure decorator pattern in ruby, instead of this all i have found is the ruby-way of decorating.

(Updated June 2006)
So.. times goes by ... and I found this implementation by Jason Arhart using module.

class Foo
def initialize(s)
@s = s
end
def to_s
@s
end
end

module SingleQuoted
def to_s
"'" + super + "'"
end
end

module DoubleQuoted
def to_s
'"' + super + '"'
end
end

foo = Foo.new('foo')
puts "#{foo.id} - #{foo}"
foo.extend(SingleQuoted)
puts "#{foo.id} - #{foo}"
foo.extend(DoubleQuoted)
puts "#{foo.id} - #{foo}"

WebOs: The web based Operating Systems (part I)

2006-07-28T00:24:00.000-03:00

I have made some research over the net for the last months and it seems that we are in the beginnings of the next phase on this new software paradigm that will brings to life new domain problems to be solved, but yes, all of them are far away to be solved right now.

The story begins decades ago where the webOs was a local research leaded by Berkley University, for the next couple of years a large research at Duke University was performed and then concluded with the basement for the “Operating System for wide-area applications”, and the arquitectural model.

Well, Times goes by and this idea has changed definitely with the power of ajax and the new “social networking thing”(web2.0? 3.0??) , so nowadays we can see many initiatives showing us great web applications with webOs architectural models in a yet young marketplace hence with a big bet and founds for whereas the information will be in the near future.
Last week I have begin reviewing available options as alpha or beta versions, so in the next days I will be publishing this articles as posts, stay tuned : )

Ruby Composite Pattern

2006-07-26T22:43:00.000-03:00

I have found this intresting implementation of the composite pattern based on the missing_method ruby structure...

class Quelindo
def method_missing(method_id, *args)
puts "Hee hola, no hay ningun metodo que se llame #{method_id}"
end
end

# implementemos esto para ver como va...
c=Quelindo.new
c.sarasa

class Leaf
def scale(factor)
end

def addChild(kid)
# do nothing or raise an exception
end

def getKid( index)
# do nothing or raise an exception
nil
end
end

class Composite
def initialize
@kids = []
end
def method_missing(method_id, *args)
@kids.each do kid
kid.send(method_id, *args)
end
end
def addChild( kid)
@kids <<>

# heee bueno esta es la implementacion
c = Composite.new
c.addChild("Hola")
c.addChild(Composite.new)
a = Leaf.new
c.addChild(a)
puts c.getChild(1)

Instalacion de Ruby

2006-07-26T22:31:00.000-03:00

Instalacion de Ruby en Windows
Para instalar el lenguaje Ruby + Ruby IDE + Server(Apache+Mysql) en windows
1 - Instalar el lenguaje Ruby (1.8.2) Bajar http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/4174/ruby182-15.exe
Ejecutar el exe y listo...
2 - descomprimir en C:\ruby
3 - Instalar el Framework Rails para windows (instantRails)Bajar http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/7972/InstantRails-1.0-final-win.zip
4 - Descomprimir, mover carpeta al c:\InstantRails-1.0(Ejecutar el InstantRails.exe para iniciar Apache + MySQL.)( Tener instalado JDK 1.4 En adelante..)
5 - Entrar a : http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/radrails/radrails-0.5.3-win32.zip?download>>Seleccionar el Mirror y bajar.
6-Extraer el zip
7 - Ejecutar "radrails" en la carpeta destino.

The Best Blog Re-launch!

2006-07-26T00:34:00.000-03:00

This blog have more than 500 visitors and 1000 page views from 35 countries in the first week!

I started this blog in 2005 only to post some articles for my friends and colleagues. When I was doing this blog re-launch a week ago I could never imagine such success.
I want to thanks all of you that read this page day by day, thanks for the comments and for the e-mails too. Special thanks to Leon, Kevin and Mathew.
Also I want to thanks to all visitors, from (they are ordered by the number of visits ):

United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Mexico, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, France, Sweden, Netherlands, Poland, Norway, Malaysia, Australia, India, Belgium, Austria, Israel, Bosnia, Hong Kong, Estonia, Italy, Argentina, Venezuela, New Zealand, China, Colombia, Thailand, Finland, Puerto Rico, Brazil, South Africa, Japan and Portugal.

I have to say it: Thank you!, and see you in the next post!
Thanks
Victor Rottenstein

5 steps to apply design patterns successfully

2006-07-25T12:02:00.000-03:00

Weeks ago I’ve published a composite pattern implementation in Ruby I’ve found surfing the net. Since that day many ideas are growing in my mind, so I went for a journey into the darkness of the deepest abstraction levels and finally I have arrived to this conclusion:

We could think in a pattern as:

“A set of rules which can be used to make or to generate things or parts of a
thing, especially if the things that are generated have enough in common for the
underlying pattern to be inferred or discerned, in which case the things are
said to exhibit the pattern”

Years ago when the great design patterns book was published “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software” the world could understand how to use a well-tested solutions instead of create a new solution for every daily problem.
But time goes by, new languages emerged and day by day a lot of programmers were trying to fit that tested solutions (patterns) in their preferred languages.
Some times they’re making a big complex solution only for this reason: they want to use a pattern because it’s a tested solution, but they forgot that this is a well tested DESIGN solution. What we have here is a pattern adaptation that has changed the design pattern structure itself (not only the code, but the design too), hence they maybe could solve the same problem at lower cost without applying that pattern.

So my recipe to designers/coders is:
1 - Prepare your class diagram, with the candidates almost selected.
2 - Read the pattern definition (not the intent only!)
2 - Learn how to use it.
3 - Apply them to your class diagram when it’s possible
4 - Before coding: search well-tested implementations in your selected language
5 - Finally, face the real trade-off: to be (a new pattern inventor) or not to be, when the coding begins.

I hope this recipe works for you since it works for me and my colleagues here, by the way: I’m anxious to read your comments! What is your thought on this?

TOP 10 Ruby Sites: July 2006

2006-07-22T15:41:00.000-03:00

These are my favourites sites I want to share with you ; I think it’s very useful to start learning ruby.

1. Ruby Lang site
2. The great poignant guide to Ruby
3. The pragmatic programmers book
4. Rails tutorial book
5. Ruby documentation Project
6. Ruby Garden
7. Rails framework site
8. Victor Rottenstein blog : )
9. Great IDE
10. Ruby Repository

Ruby for newbies (Part 1) : Encapsulation made easy

2006-07-21T01:00:00.000-03:00

You have to keep one important thing in mind before you develop a new class: it’s called Encapsulation.
Why? Well, it’s basically because in order to maintain your object consistency isn’t a good idea to allow the world to access your object instance variables directly. So if you know other programming languages, lets said Java for example, you would have to create your own methods for every attribute you create, getters and setters they said... (Yes you can do it automatically with eclipse or whatever)
Welcome to Ruby, a wonderful world that will let you focus in the solution domain instead on the complicated keywords. So, in this example I will show an Example class and we will ask it to speak one word.

class Person
attr_reader :name

As you can see, we first create this shortcut that will act as our accessor method (getter) to the real instance variable called name (you could add as many as you need!)

def initialize(therealname)
@name=therealname
end
end

Then, we just create the initialize method to setup the real name of our variable, and note the “@” at the beginning, yes that means this is our own instance variable.

puts Person.new("Vic").name

So, we execute our small class , and as we can see, because of the “puts” sentence : ) , we create a new Person, and we call it “Vic”, then we ask to our class (yes, public by default) method, to give us his name,“Vic”. Does anybody know an easy way to do it?

[Tag:ruby]

Web 2.0 Security (part I)

2006-07-18T23:36:00.000-03:00

In the previous article I have analyzed the web 2.0 lifecycle, now i will present an introduction to security...
If we take a look at our history books we could see technology is continuously developed because we (humans) have that strange feeling and hungry for knowledge always leading us to create new technologies.
One thing I have learned from the human history (for the last century for sure), is that when a new successful technology arrives, the massive uses of this creation began to grows exponentially over the world, and later (in some cases a lot of years later) security become an issue. (we could take many examples of it, like cars?, planes?)

Today we could see a lot of people fighting around the globe trying to tag this new fashion “web 2.0” definition, or even worst, some of them are thinking in the “3.0” scope and capabilities.

So, what about security? Is anyone there thinking in term of the security consequences of social networking? . I think we will have to make an extra-effort not only to improve user interfaces and the whole experience, but to enhance privacy and security too.
What do you think?

[Tag:security]

Type Object Pattern

2006-07-18T22:42:00.000-03:00

(updated version in spanish here)

Desacopla instancias de sus clases para que estas puedan ser implementadas como una instancia de una clase. Type Object permite crear nuevas clases dinámicamente en tiempo de ejecución porque estas son instancias, y también permite al sistema crear instancias de esas class-like instancias.
A veces una clase no solo requiere un numero desconocido de instancias, sino que tambien una cantidad desconocida de subclases, Un objecto puede crear nuevas instancias, pero usualmente no puede crear nuevas clases sin tener que recompilar.

Cuando usar este patron?
-Las instancias de una clase necesitan estar agrupadas para implementar el comportamiento o los atributos del grupo.
-La clase necesita una subclase por cada grupo para implementar los atributos/comportamientos del grupo.
-La clase requiere una gran cantidad de subclases y/o la variedad total de subclases que quizas se requieren se desconoce
-Se necesita poder crear nuevas agrupaciones en tiempo de ejecucion que quizas no se predijeron durante el diseño.
-Se necesita poder cambiar una subclase de un objeto despues de que se instancio sin tener que mutar a una nueva clase.
-Se necesita jerarquizar los grupos recursivamente de modo que ese grupo sea a su vez un item de otro grupo.

Object Design (Wirts-Brock/McKean) – Capitulo 2

2006-07-16T22:38:00.000-03:00

El Responsability-Driven es un metodo informal y la herramienta principal es el poder de abstracción. Responsabilidad describe que es lo que nuestro software debe hacer para cumplir su proposito.Vamos desde los requerimientos iniciales a las primeras descripciones y modelos, desde este punto a unas descripciones y modelos mas detallados de los objetos , de los objetos candidatos y los modelos detallados de sus responsabilidades, con patrones y collaboration.

Project definition and planning.
Aunque nuestro proyecto sea pequeño siempre debemos realizar la declaracion del projecto(statement) incluyendo un proposito, una vista general, la definición del alcance y los beneficions. El Project plan describe lo siguiente:
- Como se va a desarollar el soft.
- Los valores importantes para el proyecto y la gente involucrada.
- Los recursos y sus roles, los procesos y los ingresos esperados.
- Los entregables.
- Early description.
El analisis incluye la definición del sistema, la descripción y el analisis de las actividades de los objetos.Requerimientos del usuario, administrador, o cliente pueden ser:Uso, performance, configuración, autenticación, concurrencia, escalabilidad, seguridad, confiabilidad.
No importa cuanto trates, nunca vas a identificar todos los requerimientos.

Diseño.
En diseño construimos un modelo de cómo va a funcionar nuestro sistema. Dividiendo esta etapa en 2 subfases.
-Crear un diseño inicial
-Crear una solucion mas comprensiva.
Esta etapa se divide porque la mayoria de las aplicaciones son demasiado complejas para llegar a un correcto diseño la primera vez.

Viendo desde multiples perspectivas.
Cada sponsor de nuestro proyecto tiene distintas necesidades. Los diseñadores de objetos tenemos dos desafios:Interpretar correctamente los requerimientos y concerns (preocupaciones) de nuestros stakeholders.Presentar nuestro trabajo de diseño de modo que sea bien entendido por una basta audiencia.

Analisis description
Transformamos vagas ideas en especificaciones de lo que queremos construir.
Los errores en la especificación del producto son los mas costosos porque afectan a todas las siguientes actividades.Uno de nuestros objetivos es dejar en claro lo que es ambiguo.colectar y describir de manera uniforme de que es responsable nuestro software.Nos esforzamos por entender donde termina nuestro software, donde comienza el entorno y que funciones debe realizar.

Usage descriptions.
UML Define a un Actor como algo o alguien fuera del sistema que interactua con el. Estos tienden a estar agrupados en tres diferentes campos:
-Usuarios
-Administradores
-Proframadores externos y devices
Y tienen dos caracteristicas comunes:
-Son externos a la aplicación
-Ellos interactuan con nuestro sistema.

Se utilizan 3 formas de casos de uso: Textos simples narrativos, escenarios con pasos numerados y conversaciones que enfatizan el dialogo entre el usuario y el sistema.Las conversaciones describen la interaccion entre el usuario y el software como un dialogo.

Conceptual Objects
A medida que realizamos actividades de diseño mas detalladas, nuestros objetos van a ir teniendo caracteristicas mas relacionadas con computers y apareceran mas extraterrestres para los demas.Core del software:Nuestro soft necesita un núcleo solido. Esto puede entenderse de varias formas:Objetos, conceptos y procesos clave.Objetos que implementan algoritmos complejosInfraestructura tecnica.Objetos que administran tareas de la aplicaciónObjetos de interface de usuario.

CRC Cards
Las ideas principales sobre los objetos candidatos se guardan en CRC Cards.donde podemos definir datos acerca de nuestros objetos, como son chicas y no estan en la computadora se pueden ordenar fácilmente sobre una mesa y ver de distintas forma pero al mismo tiempo.

Object Design (Wirts-Brock/McKean) – Capitulo 3

2006-07-16T22:33:00.000-03:00

Las abstracciones que se elijen afectan en gran medida a todo el diseño.
Concebir objetos es una actividad altamente creativa.Encontrar buenos objetos quiere decir identificar abstracciones que son parte del dominio de la aplicación y su maquinaria de ejecución.Para inspirarse al momento de diseñar se puede utilizar el conocimiento del dominio de la aplicación, las nociones acerca de las necesidades de la maquinaria de la aplicación, las lecciones aprendidas y las experiencias del pasado.
Los primeros candidatos a encontrar deben representar cosas importantes, conceptos y mecanismos.Típicamente estos son inteligentes: hacen cosas.
Las abstracciones vienen luego cuando se entiende las relaciones con otros objetos.Primero identificar objetos que tienen roles claros, luego decidir que candidatos deben saber y hacer sus responsabilidades y con cuales deben trabajar (sus colaboradores),Cuando se realiza la transición de candidatos a clases e interfaces, se puede emplear herencia, abstracción, interfaces y colaborations para construir un buen y flexible diseño.Se sugiere tratar de contar una historia acerca del sistema para entenderlo rapidamente.

--Los candidatos generalmente representan:
-El trabajo que el sistema realiza.
-Cosas directamente afectadas por la aplicación o algo conectado a la misma
-Información que fluye a traves del sistema
-Actividades de toma de desiciones, control y coordinación.
-Estructuras y grupos de objetos.
-Representaciones de cosas del mundo real de las cuales la aplicación necesita tener info.

What`s in a Name?
-Elegir los nombres cuidadosamente.Cuando el nombre de un objeto es escuchado, los diseñadores infieren algo acerca de de sus roles y responsabilidades.
-Incluir solo las cosas mas importantes en un nombre.
-Elegir un nombre que no limite el comportamiento.
-Elegir un nombre que dure toda la vida del objeto.
-Elegir un nombre que se adapte al contexto del diseño actual.
-No sobrecargue los nombres
-Eliminar los conflictos en nombres utilizando adjetivos

Describing Candidates
Escribe la definición del objeto en una CRC Card.Agregar hechos especificos de la aplicación a la definición generica.Distinguir candidatos por como se comportan en la aplicaciónCharacterizing Candidates
Podemos caracterizar candidatos de acuerdo a sus:Habitos de trabajo
-Relaciones con otros
-Obligaciones Comunes
-Ubicación en la arquitectura de la aplicación
-Nivel de Abstracción.

Para explorar los habitos preguntamos:”que hace y como encaja?”.

Connecting Candidates
Por su limitado espacio, solo se puede contar con un resumen en las tarjetas CRC. Pero estas son mucho mas que un espacio compacto para guardar ideas de diseño. Son reales y tangibles. Se puede elegir una y hablar acerca de ella como el objeto en si mismo. Pero como se relacionan, que objetos hacen cosas similares? Una forma util de agrupar candidatos es la siguiente:
-Por la capa de aplicación
-Por casos de uso
-Por el role estereotipado
-Por el vecindario
-Por el nivel de abstracción
-Por el tema de la aplicación
-No hay una forma estándar de completar las CRC cards, se debe encontrar la mejor para uno mismo.

En conclusión, quedarse con un candidato cuando se puede:
-Ponerle un buen nombre
-Definirlo
-Estereotiparlo
-Ver que se puede usar para soportar un caso de uso en particular
-Ver que es un elemento importante de la arquitectura
-Asignarle una o dos responsabilidades iniciales
-Entender como los otros objetos lo ven
-Ver que es importante
-Diferenciarlo de los otros candidatos similares

Descartar un candidato cuando:
Tiene responsabilidades que se superponen con otros candidatos que gustan mas.
Parecen vagos
Parecen estar afuera de los limites del sistema
NO agregan valor
Parecen insignificantes, muy inteligentes o demasiado para lo que se necesita realizar

The web as I see it.

2006-07-16T12:38:00.000-03:00

Months ago Tim O`Reilly wrote an interesting article about the Web 2.0 principles and how this idea began.
Nowadays it seems that we are in a new kind of bubble, the “Bubble 2.0”. During the last months we have seen thousands of “web 2.0” sites growing up, all of them with a new collaborative and easy way to do our jobs, with Google at first place (they already bought writely), Microsoft has make his move with their OfficeLive web app. Every day there are new endeavors trying to catch up this new fresh wave, so today we can clearly see CRM or ERP 2.0 style apps online.
From my little point of view, I can imagine the “web 2.0 life-cycle” in 3 phases:

First phase: Back to the bubble
We are now in this phase, thousands of new easy and collaborative sites every day saying “hello beta world”, many of them are useful and they have an adequate initial investment to survive, the others, who probably will not survive in the long term, are programmers efforts to launch a new and enjoyable tool or web site.
Like always in our history this only could be possible with the right technology to do it. Not only today’s broadband connections but with great tools, programming languages and frameworks like, Ajax, Ruby, and Rails.

Second phase: Clone wars
People will begin to use these new applications, some of them for free; others with a license per user or maybe with another tricky and convenient business model for the web application Owner and the buyer too. We can see this today.
Some efforts without sufficient initial investment will fail, others will fail not only for this reason but because their sites will not fulfill the requirements needed for the “web 2.0 user” (b2b sector included.), and this will happen because we will have thousand applications online, and yes, we will have much more demanding users.
And finally the last group that will not survive will break down their actions falling to the black hole of forgotten web sites only because they will not have enough resources to face the big ones.
At the end of this phase we will see giant’s corporations with mutated business models, web 2.0 enhanced products, and a few starts up around the world claim themselves to be the clone wars survivors.

The final phase: the real online experience?
With this scenario around the world, the Internet user will change his life style definitely, productivity and collaboration will be on top of the edge, and the information value will be increased dramatically because all people and enterprises data will be online, (and yes, security will be an issue at this point for sure).
Maybe new software paradigms will be developed, and a new set of analysis patterns for this domain will created. So Technology will evolve and the day will come when our Personal Computers will transform in a high resolution screen with a little processor and a software core, the Operating Systems will be online with a new set of features and a linked view of our world. So, my question is, aren´t we going back to the “mainframe 2.0”?

Thanks.
Comments? > Victor.a.Rottenstein [at] gmail [dot] com

Enterprise Ruby

2006-07-16T12:00:00.000-03:00

Rails isn´t a Ruby Enterprise framework and this idea is cristal water form me. So, for the last 4 weeks I was doing a little research over the net but its seems that in our near future we won´t see any Ruby Enterprise framework or a SOA oriented solution.
Last week Martin fowler has published an intresting article in his blog about this.

Thanks
Vic.

[Tag:Ruby]