Agylen

New Review of “Alfresco 3 Web Services”

Ugo Cei — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 17:44:11 +0000

The doQuent blog just published a new review of our book, “Alfresco 3 Web Services”. I will just quote the conclusions, but you might want to read the rest yourself:

Overall, I found the book to be a handy resource for anyone working with Alfresco or content management web services. If you know the specific things that you need to do it can be an excellent resource showing you how to do it. If you need to make choices before implementation, you may need to utilize additional resources. If you are new to Alfresco and content management, you may want to look at additional resources first.

The Model-View-Controller pattern and Configuring Web Scripts with Alfresco

Ugo Cei — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 08:56:12 +0000

Another article, excerpted from our book, Alfresco 3 Web Services, is available now on Packt’s website. Here is the introduction:

One way of looking at the Web Scripts framework is as a platform for implementing RESTful Web Services. Although, as we have seen, your service won’t actually be RESTful unless you follow the relevant guiding principles, Web Scripts technology alone does not make your services RESTful as if by magic.

Another way of looking at it is as an implementation of the Model-View-Controller, or MVC pattern. Model-View-Controller is a long-established pattern in Computer Science, often used when designing user-facing, data-oriented applications. MVC stipulates that users of the application send commands to it by invoking the controller component, which acts on some sort of data model, then selects an appropriate view for presenting the model to the users.

You can read the rest of the article online, here.

Open Source Enterprise Search European Tour

Ugo Cei — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 13:54:59 +0000

Sourcesense and Lucid Imagination are proud to announce the Open Source Enterprise Search European Tour during which, among other things, Lucid Imagination will present how LucidWorks Enterprise Delivers Enterprise Search:

“What’s needed for broader enterprise adoption of Solr? in addition to requirements like flexibility, scalability, cost savings, and transparency already met by Solr there are new demands for ease-of-use, accelerated developer productivity, integration, management, security, and enterprise-grade support. This talk will cover these emerging enterprise search requirements – and how the new LucidWorks Enterprise platform from Lucid Imagination meets these demands.”

Registration is free, but seats are limited, so register now!

I will probably be at the Rome event, October 28th, so I hope to see you all there!

An Introduction to Alfresco Web Scripts

Ugo Cei — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 14:50:34 +0000

A new excerpt from out book, Alfresco 3 Web Services, has just been published on Packt’s website.

Web Scripts allow you to develop entire web applications on Alfresco by using just a scripting language—JavaScript and a templating language—FreeMarker. They offer a lightweight framework for quickly developing even complex interfaces such as Alfresco Share and Web Studio.

Besides this, Web Scripts can be used to develop Web Services for giving external applications access to the features of the Alfresco repository. Your Web Services, implemented according to the principles of the REST architectural style, can be easily reused by disparate, heterogeneous systems.

You can read the rest of the article here.

We are above 100,000

Ugo Cei — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 20:17:37 +0000

For today, at least:

The Packt Open Source Awards

Ugo Cei — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:15:51 +0000

This is an announcement from my publisher:

The Open Source Awards is an annual online event held by Packt Publishing to distinguish excellence among Open Source projects.

Now in its fifth year, the Award, formerly known as the Open Source Content Management System (CMS) Award, is designed to encourage, support, recognize and reward not only CMSes but a wider range of Open Source projects.

There is still time, until September 17th, to nominate your favorite Open Source project in one or more of the following categories:

Open Source CMS
Hall of Fame CMS
Most Promising Open Source Project
Open Source E-Commerce Applications
Open Source JavaScript Libraries
Open Source Graphics Software

Head on to http://www.packtpub.com/open-source-awards-home/nominations to submit your nominations.

Alfresco 3 Web Services Book

Ugo Cei — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:56:26 +0000

If you were wondering why I wasn’t updating this blog very often (or at all) during the last few months, I have an excuse: I was too busy writing a book!

Finally, Alfresco 3 Web Services, Build Alfresco applications using Web Services, WebScripts and CMIS has been published and I just received my complimentary author copies. You can order it, either as a PDF or as a dead-tree version, from the publisher’s website, or from Amazon.com.

This is the book you need if you are considering developing applications that need to use the services of the Alfresco Open Source ECM system, and it covers everything, from SOAP-based Web Services, to Web Scripts and REST, to CMIS. If you want to get a sample of the book’s content, you can download a sample chapter (Chapter 5: Using the Alfresco Web Services from .NET ) freely.

I have a couple copies that I could sign and give away. I will have to think of something, like a contest, who knows?

I would also like to thank my co-author and colleague, Piergiorgio Lucidi, for accepting to join me in this crazy enterprise and working hard to make it finally see the light of day.

Blog is back

Ugo Cei — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:29:36 +0000

This is mostly a test post to verify that this blog actually works again. I’ve made the switch from hosting it on a dedicated Linux machine to wordpress.com and in the process messed up with the domain registration, got uninterested, was distracted by work, hobbies, and vacations. As a consequence, this website was unreachable for a while, but it should be back to normal now. Let me know if you notice anything out of the ordinary.

Incidentally, I would like to recommend my ex hosting provider, Bytemark, to anyone who might need dedicated Linux hosting. I switched to WordPress.com simply because I had abandoned some projects that required a full Linux server, and decided to keep only a blog, for the time being. Bytemark has always provided me with excellent reliability and outstanding support, so I wouldn’t have switched for any other reason.

Nikon D60 kit up for grabs

Ugo Cei — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:16:51 +0000

Update: The D60 has now been sold, and the 55-200mm will be sold soon.

I am breaking a long silence on this blog for a short announcement. Activity on the blog will resume as soon as I have made up my mind about the direction it should go. I am considering abandoning all geeky topics and turning it into a photo blog or portfolio site, but I have more pressing things to do at the moment.

In the meantime, due to my recent upgrade to a D90, I am selling my old D60 kit, with accessories.

This camera was bought in May, 2008 and is in near-perfect conditions. It has taken less than 10,000 photos, including most of those in my photostream.

It comes with the AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR kit lens, which is in near-perfect conditions as well.

I have the original packaging and all of the original accessories (battery, battery charger, lens caps, strap holder, cables, manuals, software, etc.).

I am adding the following bonus accessories to the pack:

1 extra, original Nikon EL-EN9 battery
1 2GB SanDisk Extreme III SDHC card
1 Nikon ML-L3 remote
1 Tiffen 52mm clear UV filter
1 Hama shoulder bag
1 mini tripod

The product is sold AS IS, with no warranties.

The price I am asking for the whole package is 350€/300£/450$ plus shipping. Payment via PayPal is appreciated.

In case anyone is interested, I might add a Nikkor AF-S DX VR 55-200mm f/4-5.6 G ED lens to the package.

Mail me if you need more information. More pictures here

Bullshit Graphs

Ugo Cei — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:22:14 +0000

This is bullshit. You can tell it is bullshit by the fact that there is no unit declared for the Y axis and there is no credible source for all the data that is shown in this graph.

This is bullshit too. for exactly the same reasons.

Actually, the second is even more bullshit than the first. It’s been drawn by Vic Gundotra of Google and what does it show at the top of the curve of browser innovation? Google Chrome, how strange!