Now Kids can hack with Google Blockly

Google has released a completely visual programming language that lets you build software without typing a single character.

Now available on Google Code — the company’s site for hosting open source software — the new language is called Google Blockly, and it’s reminiscent of Scratch, a platform developed at MIT that seeks to turn even young children into programmers.

Like Scratch, Blockly lets you build applications by piecing together small graphical objects in much the same way you’d piece together Legos. Each visual object is also a code object — a variable or a counter or an “if-then” statement or the like — and as you piece them to together, you create simple functions. And as you piece the functions together, you create entire applications — say, a game where you guide a tiny figurine through a maze.

“Users can drag blocks together to build an application,” reads the description on Google’s site. “No typing required.”

Neil Fraser, one of the Googlers behind the project, wasn’t immediately available for comment.

The project is part of a much larger effort to bring programming skills to, well, everyone. In the summer of 2010, Google announced a similar platform known as App Inventor, and this year, an outfit called Codecademy has made headlines as it seeks educate a whole new world of programmers over the web. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is among those using the service — or at least that’s what he says.

App Inventor was the brainchild of the MIT computer science and engineering professor Hal Abelson, who was on sabbatical at Google at the time. The platform was actually an outgrowth of Scratch, which Abelson had worked on at MIT. It was billed as a tool that would allow even the greenest of techies to build applications for the company’s Android mobile operating system, but its life at Google was short. When Abelson returned to MIT the following summer, he essentially took the platform with him.

At the University of California at Berkeley, researchers are offering their own port of Scratch, known as Snap.

It’s unclear how Blockly relates to Scratch or App Inventor. But with the Google name behind it, it had already sparked at least a temporary flurry of interest. at Hacker News — the online hangout for Silicon Valley developers — a post about the platform has received over 100 comments over the past day, and some include programs built with the platform.

From Google’s site, you can translate Blockly applications into existing languages, including Javascript; Dart, Google new take on Javascript, and Python. And there’s a “Hebrew and Arabic” programming mode where you piece together the objects from right to left, rather than left to right.

So, Google Blocky is a little like a Pixar movie. It’s for kids. But it’s also for adults. And it had a nice sense of humor.

HPCC Systems From LexisNexis Named "Cool Vendor" by Leading Analyst Firm

HPCC Systems(R) from LexisNexis(R) Risk Solutions, announced that it is has been named as a "Cool Vendor" in the April 2012 Gartner report: "Cool Vendors in Information Infrastructure and Big Data, 2012," authored by Merv Adrian, Donald Feinberg and W. Roy Schulte. HPCC Systems is an open-source, enterprise-proven Big Data analytics processing platform to manage, sort, link, join and analyze billions of records for enterprise customers who need to process large volumes of data in critical 24/7 environments. It evolved from the need of LexisNexis to manage its own big data challenges.

Gartner, the world's leading information technology research and advisory company defines a cool vendor as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are innovative, impactful, and intriguing.

The HPCC Systems platform is a disruptive approach to complex big data problems and represents more than a decade of internal research and development, in the big data analytics field. HPCC Systems is a testament of the success of the open source model, and provides the open source community with proven, state of the art technology in the field of big data analytics, for the years to come," said Flavio Villanustre, Vice President, Products and Infrastructure for HPCC Systems at LexisNexis.

"We are thrilled to have HPCC Systems named in Gartner's Cool New Vendor report. HPCC Systems represents a vision close to the hearts of many of us in LexisNexis Risk Solutions: to provide real value back to the open source community for big data, in return for all that the open source community has given us over the years," said Villanustre.

Gamification is used by New Open-Source CRM app

The backers of a new open-source CRM (customer relationship management) application called Zurmo are hoping to stand out in a crowded field via the use of gamification, the notion of applying game-like design principles in an effort to make users engage more closely with a product.

Now in beta, Zurmo is written in PHP and made available under the GPLv3 open-source license. A release candidate is slated for availability in July, with a "general audience" release scheduled for September.

Its core CRM features cover contact management, deal tracking and activity management, while the gamification elements include the use of points and badges that users receive based on the actions they take, both in terms of sheer use as well as "business-related milestones," such as garnering a certain number of sales leads.

As users build up these points, they can achieve higher levels. The best performers jockey for space on a "leaderboard" inside the application, with the idea being to spur competition.

"We made the decision to go with gamification about six months ago,"said Zurmo's community manager, Stafford McKay. "We could either continue on and do the normal enterprise functionality like everybody else, or do something different."
The problem is that the CRM industry "has failed in terms of user adoption," McKay added. "Truly, end users do not use the [systems]. We've got to fix this. What is the point of creating an application nobody's going to use?"

Gamification is still a nascent field, "but we see it as really interesting and very possible in terms of motivating users," McKay said.

The company is seeking contributors to the open-source project. Right now, five internal developers and about eight committed external contributors are involved.
Zurmo is using test-driven development practices to create the software, which makes the process slower but avoids buggy code.

It would probably be possible to reach general availability earlier than September but Zurmo wants to make sure the initial release has "a nice baseline of functionality," said co-founder Ray Stoeckicht.

Gamification is a key philosophical focus of the product but not the only one, he said. In addition, Zurmo intends to deliver a "pure" open-source product, with all features available for download at no charge, rather than offering more basic editions at no cost and charging more for additional functionality, as is often done, he said.

Zurmo's backers have previous experience in running an open-source CRM business. Stoeckicht and McKay both work for Intelestream, a firm that offers consulting and services for SugarCRM and its own Intelecrm application, which is a fork of the SugarCRM community edition code. Zurmo's lead architect and co-founder, Jason Green, was an early SugarCRM employee and founded Intelestream, where he serves as CEO.

Intelestream and Zurmo are completely separate companies, and Zurmo has its own codebase, according to McKay.
Zurmo hasn't made final decisions on how it will make money off the software, but will probably look toward support and customization services, as well as building out a channel model, Stoeckicht said.

Hosting is available for the software from Zurmo and a few partners, but right now most deployments are on-premises, he said. In terms of customers, Zurmo is targeting small and medium-sized businesses.

Zurmo's success or failure may rest on how it executes the gamification components.
"Gamification is most effective when it employs rewards in exchange for actions," said analyst Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research. "Sometimes the reward isn't pay, it's personal pride," he added. "Really good gamification mechanisms take advantage of non-monetary rewards."

For example, reaching a certain point threshold might earn a user a dinner with the boss or a preferred parking space, Wang said. "It's something that's valuable to them. That's what motivates people."

Kaltura Video Platform selected by Ovation

Multi-Platform Cable Network Launches a TV Everywhere Program via Kaltura to Deliver Compelling Content to More Than 51 Million Homes

Ovation, the only US multi-platform network dedicated to art, artists and all forms of artistic storytelling, announced today that it has selected Kaltura, ( www.kaltura.com ), developer of the world's first open source online video platform, for full video management and distribution of its content.

Ovation broadcasts in SD and HD, both linearly and on-demand to more than 51 million homes across the country through cable operators, DIRECTV, Dish, Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse, and through its website and online video channels, including YouTube.

Kaltura will now manage the distribution of Ovation content across all of these platforms with a one-click system, as well as provide analytics to help identify which programs are performing better than others.

"As we began to evolve our video distribution strategy, we needed a flexible framework to accommodate the various use cases that we already had in place. Kaltura's open platform and innovative team ultimately offered the most flexible and future-proofed solution," said Chad Gutstein, COO, Ovation. "We're now working on a wide range of streamlined solutions, including authentication and ad serving integration for TV Everywhere, a custom workflow with Avid to enhance editing and publication, and a B2B distribution network."

Ovation will deploy Kaltura's video solutions to manage the entire lifecycle of its rich-media content online -- from editing to ingestion, transcoding, publishing and distribution across a wide range of networks and devices. Kaltura will also be the backbone to Ovation's new TV Everywhere program that will help reach new and existing Ovation fans through new devices, including smartphones, tablets and connected TVs.

"We are delighted to be Ovation's partner of choice," said Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura Chairman and CEO. "Ovation is a great example of a forward-looking company that harnesses the power of the Web and platforms like Kaltura to maximize reach, viewership, and revenue."

New Wakanda Beta released by 4D

Unique Stack of Integrated Technologies Programmable With JavaScript Provides Simplified Development for Web and Mobile App Developers

O'Reilly Fluent Conference -- 4D, a leading provider of open source integrated application development solutions, today announced Wakanda Beta 2, the newest beta version of its popular Wakanda JavaScript development platform. With Wakanda, developers have a first-ever full stack JavaScript development platform for Web and mobile business applications. The new Wakanda foundation relies on best-of-breed technology -- Web and mobile applications, a development studio, client framework, NoSQL database, server and model-driven architecture. The company will offer both an Open Source community and commercial version of Wakanda. Web applications developed with Wakanda are easily deployed on the Cloud.

Developers can use Wakanda to program the entire application stack with JavaScript and its Model Driven Architecture (MDA) assures high levels of re-use and decreases in maintenance costs. Both the user interface (UI) and the data model of the application are designed with a powerful WYSIWYG designer from Wakanda Studio, and the Wakanda client framework and GUI designer leverage the full power of HTML5 and CSS3. The NoSQL object datastore natively speaks REST/HTTP and server-side JavaScript (SSJS). Unlike with SQL databases, there is no need to use an ORM layer. There is no hidden SQL generation. Wakanda natively understands the business logic.

Built on 25 years of business application experience and with the support of an active developer community, Wakanda's new development environment can be extended with third-party widgets, libraries and server modules. In addition, Wakanda's open source environment supports developers in adding connectors to their preferred databases. The entire Wakanda solution supports full industry standard compliance, including JSON, REST/HTTP, W3C, and CommonJS.

"With this newest version of Wakanda we are providing one open, complete solution for all Web and mobile business application development," said Laurent Ribardiere, Wakanda CTO and creator. "Developers no longer need to learn, integrate and maintain different technologies in different languages -- Wakanda delivers a cohesive JavaScript stack instead of disparate technologies. With Wakanda, developers can program their entire application with JavaScript from end-to-end."

Wakanda Offers Powerful JavaScript Programming Features In addition to providing end-to-end JavaScript programming, Wakanda leverages existing libraries and third party solutions on both client and server, and is cloud-ready. A complete list of individual features of Wakanda Studio, Wakanda Server and Wakanda Framework grouped by functional areas of the platform can be found at http://www.wakanda.org/features/ and includes touch for mobile development, pure multi-threaded JavaScript, NoSQL Object Datastore and many other new features.

In an IDC White Paper, Al Hilwa, Program Director, Application Development Software for IDC found, "Wakanda is a well-designed end-to-end application platform that comes complete with a graphical development environment catering to modern developer requirements... The application development approach supported by Wakanda abstracts much of the complexity in developing enterprise applications rapidly and productively." (IDC White Paper, sponsored by 4D, Inc., Wakanda: Blending Traditional Developer Productivity with Modern Web Architecture and Standards, October 2011)

Availability and Pricing Wakanda production release will be available in June in both community and commercial versions. The community version of Wakanda will be free. Monthly subscriptions for commercial licenses and developer support will start at $35 per month for one developer and will include a royalty-free unlimited deployment right.

Open Source middleware a modular deployment model given by OSGi

The OSGi framework supports many modular open source projects, including Apache ServiceMix among others. James Strachan is the creator of the Groovy programming language and a founding member of three Apache projects- Camel, Active MQ and ServiceMix. In this video interview, taken at CamelOne 2012 in Boston, Strachan explains how OSGi has helped these projects and others achieve a more modular deployment model.

ServiceMix 4 was the time when we moved to OSGi and that was three, maybe four years ago, but what we did initially was, we re-implemented ServiceMix to use OSGi under the covers. We re-implemented the JVI deployment model on top of OSGi so everything was backwards compatible, but it meant that you could just deploy bundles or Spring XMLs or a number of other different artifacts and it all just worked.

But what we found is that when we'd done that, we'd actually built this reusable kernel. For a while, we actually called it the ServiceMix Kernel, which is really a generic OSGi container framework sort of thing that made it easy to build any type of application server or container. Then we started to realize that it didn't have anything to do with ESBs anymore.

This kernel is actually really cool; it has SSH support and a really awesome shell, as well as a really easy way of upgrading and downgrading itself. So that got factored out and became Apache Karafe. Karafe, like a carafe of wine, because it's a container of nice things – Karafe with a K, though, to emphasize that it's a kernel and to make it easier to find in a Google search.

ServiceMix is based on Karafe. It's a Karafe distribution which has all of the integration components predefined. As soon as you boot up ServiceMix it knows how to install Camel CFX for Web services, Active MQ for messaging, and so on. Increasingly, we are seeing more and more things that are just Karafe distributions. For example, Fuse MQ is a distribution of Karafe, which has ActiveMQ inside. Fuse Fabric is sort of the next project in the evolution. That comes with a sort of OSGi container -a carafe [if you will]- but that has some provisioning stuff inside.

We started really talking about Fuse Fabric last year. The interesting thing about Fuse Fabric is that we initially started off writing services – a message broker, an ESB, an integration framework and so forth, eventually an OSGi kernel. We were writing all these different middleware pieces, and we gradually started decoupling them and making them simpler and more powerful and more reusable and removing dependencies to make them simpler and lighter weight. So we started writing big things and then we started forming them into smaller and smaller pieces that were easier to plug and play together in different ways.

Then we realized that now that we had a lot of pieces, some of our customers were struggling to put the pieces together into useful shapes. They had a hundred machines; they wanted ten message brokers, five ESBs and a hundred Camel routes. Fuse Fabric was the first time we took a top down approach. How do we take a big system with hundreds of machines and fit all the pieces into the JVMs?

With Fuse Fabric we sort of flipped everything on its head. We started with an integration platform of Java processes and had to figure out how to use all the pieces we have – Camel, Active MQ, CFX, and others.

Under the covers, it's implementing jars, bundles, all of the above. Well the current incarnation of Fuse Fabric is using Apache Karafe containers under the covers. So Fuse Fabric has its own implementation if you wanted a really light container – and basically Fabric provisions deployment units that work inside Karafe.

One of the really great things about OSGi is it's an extensible container so anyone can define a deployment unit. It's not like servlets where you have a well-defined WAR, and WAR is it. Anybody can write a deployer for OSGi. So Fabric can deploy a new deployer to deploy a new artifact. Basically you can deploy anything – JARs, WARs, EARs, bundles – anything.

Fedora 17 is now Available for Download

The Fedora Project has officially released version 17 of its leading-edge Linux distribution, adding the latest update to the OpenStack cloud computing platform, JBoss Application Server 7 and oVirt, a virtualisation management tool.

Available now, Fedora 17 is a free-to-download Linux distribution sponsored by Red Hat, where many cutting-edge technologies are given a shake-down before future inclusion into Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
OpenStack was first included in Fedora 16, but the new version updates this to the latest "Essex" build of the open-source cloud platform, which introduced the Dashboard user portal and OpenStack Identity authentication service as stable core modules.

Fedora 17 debuts oVirt, an open-source project designed to manage virtualised infrastructure, and focused on the KVM hypervisor that is integrated with the Linux kernel.

Also new in this version is JBoss Application Server 7, the latest release of the Java-based application server software, now owned by Red Hat.

On the desktop front, Fedora 17 comes with the Gnome 3.4 user interface, which features new search capabilities, improved themes and enhancements to the Documents and Contacts applications.

"The addition of projects such as oVirt and JBoss Application Server 7, enhancements in OpenStack and continued support for fresh releases of desktop environments demonstrate the Fedora Project's commitment to deliver rich features and capabilities," said Fedora project leader Robyn Bergeron.

Fedora is offered with no official technical support, with users relying on community forums to find a solution to any problems. The platform is a rapidly evolving one, with new releases roughly every six months.