Swirl Connect: location-based mobile social software

We have quietly released Swirl Connect, software for your mobile phone that helps you stay connected with your friends and their latest activity, as well find new people and places, whether you’re mobile or at home on your PC.

The current release is slightly hobbled, as $$$$ is tight, and we had to turn off the messaging features, but there’s still plenty to do and see. Here are a few features:

• Find your friends and get alerted to their latest activity
• Explore nearby places of interest
• View and share photos, notes, and places on your PC or mobile phone
• Mobile instant message or group message with your friends
• Meet new people while you’re on the move
• Get location-based alerts
• Interact with both PC and mobile users in real time

Try it out! It’s free, supports popular Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, and Motorola phones (with plenty more coming), and is a lot of fun.

Signs are Mounting

Everyone has been pointing out the web 2.0 bubble recently. Not that I agree that there can even be such a thing as a web 2.0 bubble. But I was amused to find an invitation in my work e-mail box to a cutting edge seminar.

You have to realize that I work in an old company — not only have we been around for a long time, but in any reduction in force, only the young talent gets cut, leaving the organization very top heavy. It’s like a technologist’s convalescent home. There is mandatory nap time after lunch in all branches.

So to get an invitation from one of our internal groups with this as the headline: “You’re Invited: Web 2.0 - The Internet Becomes Disruptive Again,” well, it just got me all a titter. “A new world is emerging,” it continues.

It reminds me of something one of my former employers used to say: “Say, you heard that Bob Prince died?” Bob Prince passed away well before my time, which was his point exactly.

A Collection of Ajax / DHTML Toolkits

I’ve just started using another Ajax framework in a current project I’m working on. This one is known as SACK, the Simple AJAX Code-Kit. Its usage is very similar to zXml, but is better encapsulated, so it generally requires fewer lines of code on my part to accomplish the same thing, though with the corollary that some flexibility is lost.

It’s not an effects library, and doesn’t do many of the nifty things that other Ajax libraries do. It’s only intended to manage the details of connecting to a server, checking the response, and then forwarding execution back to you.

SACK is available via Twilight Universe, though it seems that things are being rearranged a bit at the moment.

All of these Ajax libraries are getting hard to track, so here is a list of several of the libraries that I use:

• Simple AJAX Code-Kit (SACK): see above
• zXml: similar to SACK; general purpose connection library
• AdvancedAJAX: add request batching, caching, connection retries, and more control via events to SACK or zXml and this is what you get. It’s more than twice the size at 17KB, but the extra features are handy. For example, you can use the events to display and clear a progress indicator, add messages, etc. You can do the same with the other libraries, as well, but AdvancedAJAX builds the support into the script.
• moo.fx: not strictly an Ajax library, but rather a lightweight, general-purpose JavaScript library. It’s handy, and when I get around to announcing the last project I was working on (Amazon OnTheGo widget porting to Java ME), you can check out two effects created with moo.fx: smooth scrolling pages, and an accordion-like effect.
• Google Web Toolkit (GWT): This has been in my “Review” folder for quite some time, but I have never used it. According to Google, you can write a client application in Java, and then use the GWT to convert it to JavaScript and HTML that is cross-browser compatible. There’s a learning curve on this one.
• Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI): Not strictly Ajax, but a wealth of tools for DOM scripting, events, animations, drag and drop, Ajax connections, sliders, calendars, tooltips, panels, dialogs, auto-complete, treeview. Yes, there’s a lot of good stuff here.
• Prototype: the one library to rule them all. What doesn’t run on Prototype?
• Rico: the usual Ajax functions, plus drag and drop, animation effects, accordions, and LiveGrid.
• script.aculo.us: you can make some killer effects with this library, and it also includes a slider, auto-complete, drag and drop, and sortable lists (drag and drop variations).
• The X Library: another all-purpose library, but like Prototype, X is very mature and stable, and is of substantial assistance when working with the DOM or the browser event model.
• MochiKit: seems to be gaining in popularity, but I have never used it myself.
• dojo: an extensive widget-based framework. Dojo is heavy enough to be considered a full web development framework, and it has some seriously nifty containers and UI controls.

This list is not intended to be comprehensive; it’s just an overview of what I use, or have bookmarked in my browser for investigation.

Tags: JavaScript, web applications, web 2.0, Ajax

Insecurity Assessment: Daily WTF

Friday’s Daily WTF offers an amusing and altogether terrifying look at the inept coding on a large brokerage firm’s web site — the same site that controlled things like statement access, wire transfers, and trading. Check out these gems:

ViewStatement.jsp - Responsible for
displaying electronic versions of the monthly statements, this page was
always called with a single querystring parameter: StatementId. And
because StatementIds were sequential … you can pretty much see where
that went.

TransferFunds.jsp - This page would
initiate an ACH transfer between the brokerage company and the users
stored bank account numbers. Only certain users were authorized for
this page, but a sophisticated hacker might be able to figure out that
setting the “canUseACH” cookie token from “N” to “Y” might do the trick.

All of these goodies and more via The Daily WTF.

———————————————

Update:

And while we’re at it, let’s take a look at a very web 2.0 method of link-tracking:

When a user clicks a hyperlink, the followLink() Javascript function is executed and the following occurs:

• a translucent layer (DIV) is placed over the entire page, causing it to appear “grayed out”
• a “please wait” layer is placed on top of that, with an animated pendulum swinging back and forth
• the XmlHttpRequest object is used to call the “GetHyperlink” web service which
• opens a connection to the database server to
• log the request in the RequestedHyperlinks table and
• retrieves the URL from the Hyperlinks table
• returns it to the client script, which then
• sets the window.location property to the URL retrieved, which causes
• the user to be redirected to the appropriate page

This is why when I hear “Web 2.0″ I hear “kiss of death.”

moo.fx: Super lightweight JavaScript library

I toyed around with moo.fx over the weekend, and I’m pretty impressed with what it can do, or more accurately, what it can help you do. It’s billed as an “easy to use, fast, cross-browser, standards compliant” library, and that it is. You can get up-to-speed on all things moo in about an hour, and it weighs in at a minuscule 3KB, though you really need to use it along with prototype.lite.js.

Moo.fx makes it easy to control the height, width, and opacity of elements (in any combination) with its base controls. Another common use for moo.fx is the groovy accordion effect popularized by the Rico library, or the smooth scrolling effect if you’re using the 6KB moo.fx.pack.

Moo.fx will not replace other effects libraries, but it’s a small and reliable, and makes it a snap to add some basic effects to your pages with little effort. You’ll soon find yourself becoming close friends with the methods toggle and hide. And it even works for those who still insist on using Safari.

http://moofx.mad4milk.net/

I’ll be continuing to use moo.fx over the next few weeks, so look for some sample code / helper functions then.

Tags: JavaScript, moo.fx, web applications, web 2.0

bpwidgets.com Site Completed

The enthusiast site for bluepulse widgets has finally launched. This is a personal project that I’ve been working on for the past few weeks.

The intent of the site is to give developers a forum for showcasing their widgets, help foster the development community the folks at Bluepulse have created, and help bluepulse users find and use the best widgets the bluepulse platform has to offer.

Not sure what bluepulse is? Check out some previous posts (1 | 2), or head to bluepulse.com for details. And of course, head to www.bpwidgets.com to check out the web site.

Tags: mobile application, mobile development, web 2.0, web 2.0 sucks, bluepulse, widgets, Java, web application

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Isolatr: Web 2.0 Parody

I suppose it’s a sign of the times when the web 2.0 parodies seem to be executed better than actual business ventures. Viva Isolatr!

Visit Isolatr