Desktop Java faces off against AJAX

Mar 9, 2007
By: Paul Krill
Computerworld Hong Kong Daily

In a world where Web-based applications have dominated the discourse lately, does the desktop still matter?

Presenters at the appropriately named Desktop Matters conference in San Jose, Calif. on Thursday afternoon argued that it does. Billed as "The Conference for Java Desktop Application Developers," the event focuses mostly on Java technologies like Swing, which provides component technology for building Java desktop applications. The Spring Java Web framework and the NetBeans open-source platform for Java also are noted on the agenda.

But the opening keynote pitted desktop technologies including Swing against AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), the popular technique for building Web applications. Speakers included Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, who are cofounders of ajaxian.com and producers of the Desktop Matters conference.

They said desktop applications and Web applications are actually becoming more alike.

"We're kind of seeing the Web become more desktoppy and the desktop become more Webby," Almaer said.

Swing and AJAX are moving closer in such aspects as available effects and components support, the speakers argued. Also, hosted versions of desktop applications, such as Microsoft Office systems, are starting to appear. Meanwhile, AJAX applications are "cloning" desktop applications like Zoho Office, Galbraith said.

The speakers and audience members cited what they believe are numerous areas where desktop applications enjoy an advantage over Web applications: access to local storage, graphics performance, memory consumption, and the ability to keep sensitive data local.

"We've got a few customers out there who are used to having a desktop app," one audience member said. These customers will wonder what is going on if they are required to install a browser as part of an application upgrade, he said.

Presenters also said desktop Java is fast while AJAX is slow. But they noted better offline support is planned for AJAX via the Dojo Offline Toolkit .

Also at the event, Galbraith announced a project called Nimbus, which is intended to provide a more attractive look and feel for Swing applications. Developed by Sun, Nimbus is an open-source project hosted on Java.net . Graphically, Nimbus resembles Mac OS X and the Windows Vista Aero interface technology, said Galbraith.

"In general, it's just a much nicer look and feel," than has been available for Swing before, he said. Nimbus offers features like variable widget sizes for better use of screen space and nested split panes on the user interface.

A 1.0 beta release of Nimbus is planned for the JavaOne conference, being held in San Francisco beginning May 8. Nimbus may be included in the planned Java 7 release with Java 5 to provide baseline accommodations.

Another topic to be discussed at the Desktop Matters conference is SwingX, which provides open-source extensions to Swing, such as components and frameworks intended to make Swing easier to use, Galbraith said.

InfoWorld (US online)

How to deal with attrition from the buyer's angle?

Attrition - turnover of project staff

From a buyer, you could use at least 2 means to control:

1. Insist to build in SLA on contingencies upon reaching an attrition threadshold
2. Provide more training and career movement opportunities to staff of outsourcer

CW has more coverage.

Oh, Homeshoring!

Business week talks about homeshoring. I wonder if it is that easy to realize that. Yes, you have technologies. But still you have people. People is the most difficult part for managing outsourcing.

But still, I am interested to look at the development of this interesting trend.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2006/tc20061114_312924.htm

India only account for 59% of US outsourcing spendings

India - 59%
The Philippines - 9%
Canada - 8%
Brazil - 8%
Central and Eastern Europe - 7%
Mexico - 4%
China - 3%

Besides, Gartner estimates that total IT services growth is expected to grow from $18 billion in 2004 to $52 billion by 2007.

Merrill Lynch says IT spending will go up 4.2% in 2007

Here are some summary of Merrill Lynch's Predictions:

• Overall IT spending: UP 4.2%
• Consultants and SI spending: UP 4.6%
• Large scale IT outsourcing: UP 2.7%
• BPO: UP 2.1%
  

Nearshoring in 2007

Priya writes about the nearshoring trend in 07. It does highlight a trend that buyers of outsourcing services become more and more mature. Why do I say that?

From my experience, buyers often go through several stages of mentality (simply due to they learn along the way of outsourcing):

1. Hoping for a single supplier, one-stop services & hands-free mode of work
2. Struggling on its change management upon outsourcing, typically over staff motivation problems, gap of expectations on requirements & realizing the need of process redesign
3. Process improvement and lessons learnt
4. Use business objectives as the drivers for deciding outsourcing strategies

Nearshoring is a way of balancing the cost savings, in-house staff participation and ease of access to outsourcers.

Guy Kawasaki: 11 (it may be growing) ways of using LinkedIn

LinkedIn is hot these days. Find out how Guy talks about using it more effectively on his blog.

The "Leadership" that I perceived

Recently, I made a casual invitation to my friends on the discussion of "Top 3 Leadership Attributes". My friends are really good and enthusiastic. They gave me their answers quickly.

During this little exercise, I learnt 2 things:

1. Everybody expects differently from "leadership"
2. Surprisingly, we could apply a well known requirement management technique - pairwise comparison - to more scientifically evaluate our personal priorities.

Guess I don't need to talk about (1) as it's obvious.

For (2), my way on doing pairwise comparison is like this:

For the first step, I write down all the attributes that I think important for a leader, like the following:

• Adaptive to changes
• Appropriate use of talent
• Charismatic
• Clear and efficient communication
• Decisive
• Empathetic
• Forgiving
• Honest
• Influential
• Innovative
• Open-minded
• Persistent
• Positive thinking
• Problem solving
• Self-discipline
• Visionary

Then I do a pairwise comparison using a spreadsheet (it takes me about 20 minutes) and get the following:
(Here, I compare them one on one and give a score for each pair: 2 for the winner, 0 for the loser and 1 for each attribute if they tie.)

• (Score Attribute)
  
• 28 Visionary
• 27 Influential
• 27 Persistent
• 26 Positive thinking
• 24 Decisive
• 21 Innovative
• 19 Problem solving
• 16 Clear and efficient communication
• 15 Open-minded
• 13 Appropriate use of talent
• 10 Charismatic
• 9 Adaptive to changes
• 7 Forgiving
• 7 Honest
• 6 Empathetic
• 1 Self-discipline

So my answer is:

1. Visionary
2. Influential
3. Persistent

When applying back to requirement management, imagine if you have tens of requirement items (if too many, you may need to group them first and compare the groups) and if we would like your stakeholders to prioritize, give them a task (or most of the time, you need to work with them or interview them) to do this pairwise comparison. And you have strong justifications for the priorities yielded. Most of the time, with a not-too-emotional stakeholder, you will get a comfortable compromise among related parties.

Enjoy!