Andre’s Blog

There was a good piece on BarCamp in Canada over at itBusiness.ca that Grant Buckly wrote a couple weeks ago.  I especially like the title;-)

BarCamps aim to erase the line between presenters and audience. Some require that every attendee come prepared to give a presentation. Some events are less strict about this rule than others, but the ethic of all un-conference events is participation. “It’s not really just about attending, it’s about participating,” says Andre Charland, president of Nitobi.com in Vancouver and an organizer of BarCamp Vancouver, which is scheduled to take place in conjunction with BarCamp Earth in late August.

I was quoted in it a couple times. Neat to see canada having a strong emerging tech scene with all this Web 2.0 madness going on down south.  Get ready for BarCampVancouver next week!  120 signed up, it should be a great time!

Technorati Tags: barcamp, barcampearth, barcampvancouver, media, itbusiness, quote, andrecharland, grantbuckley

Andre Charland, Dave Johnson and Alexei White discuss Ajax Components,
Software Documentation and open source frameworks. There's also a
good discussion on where the real value comes from in a software
component.

MP3 File

Dave’s talk on debugging Ajax has been accepted for AjaxWorld. Check it out.

AJAX Debugging and Quality Assurance
— Building high performance and robust AJAX applications is challenging at best, particularly without proper quality assurance and testing techniques. Dave will discuss how to set up a test framework, methodology, and build process that works reliably and automates much of the tedious manual effort associated with browser based development.

He will present this session at the AJAXWorld Conference & Expo, October 2-4, 2006, in Santa Clara, California.

Technorati Tags: ajax, testing, qa, programming, session, ajaxworld, performance, optimization, debugging

I’m going be giving a talk about blogging as a marketing tool at next year’s Massive Technology Show.

While “blogs” (short for “web logs”) are often associated with personal commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news, many businesses are learning how blogging can improve their bottom line.

Explore a new ways for your business to use blogging to improve marketing efforts and create better customer relationships.

More on the Massive site.

Massive is the largest technology of it’s kind in Canada with over 4000 attendees.  Lindsay Smith and the team do a great job, I’d recommend checking it out for sure.

Technorati Tags: blog, bloggin, strategy, marketing, massive, massive2007, speaking

My old buddy Bill is getting ready to launch Workspace, and is running a pretty cool contest for a free membership, all you have to is submit photos of the crazy places you work from. 

Here’s my entry;-)

More on Workspace:

WorkSpace is a freshly renovated Gastown loft providing a collective of small business and independent professionals with a facility that they wouldn’t be able to afford on their own.  Inspired by the trend of working in Café’s, the space is funky, professional and inexpensive.  Rather than asking our customers to sign a lease, they join the space as members.

Very cool biz idea, I really could’ve used this when we were starting out. And still might;-)

Technorati Tags: workspace, photos, office, smallbusiness

Dave and I discuss JavaScript programming techniques and patterns such as inheritance, multiple inheritance, observer patterns and more. We also touch on the nonesense around Ajax security risks. Mentions also of BarCamp Vancouver and we're hiring at Nitobi! Until next week on the same bat channel at the same bat time:)

MP3 File

Dave and Andre discuss the new Nitobi name and brand, WebVisions 2006, Ajax Patterns with Michael Mahemoff, Geoweb with Ajax and GIS, Ajaxworld and the 3 pillars of Ajax.

MP3 File

Michael Mahemoff is starting a series of podcasts to go along with the content’s of his new book Ajax Design Patterns. 

I was a guest on episode one where we talked about 9 patterns of Ajax widgets:

• Slider
• Progress Indicator
• Drilldown
• Data Grid
• Rich Text Editor
• Suggestion
• Live Search
• Live Command-Line
• Live Form

Dave joined Michael for episode 2 where they discussed ten patterns of Ajax Architecture:

• Drag-And-Drop
• Sprite
• Popup
• Malleable Content
• Microlink
• Portlet
• Status Area
• Update Control
• Virtual Workspace

Michael has a very deep knowledge of these patterns and keeps the listening interesting.  IMHO.  Can’t wait to podcast with Michael again. You can get  all of Michae’s podcasts here:

Technorati Tags: ajax, patterns, podcast, usability, widgets, components, ajaxdesignpatterns

Site Map Dave put together this cool little demo for the talk I gave at GeoWeb last Thursday.

We wanted to show closer integration of the desktop and the browser environments.  So we used a list of addresses (actually lat/long coordinates) in Excel, copied and pasted the list into the nitobi grid which was mashed-up with up with Google Maps.  It was pretty slick, I’m not sure if I emphasized in my talk how important this type of workflow is going to be in the future.  Users should have to make a cognitive switch between the desktop and web environment (IMO).  If you I can see the data let me get copy it, paste it, drag it, drop it or move through it with the keyboard.  Come on!  I want arrow keys, tabbing, I want to send email by hitting ctrl+enter like I can on the desktop, these are not hard to implement they just take some thought and care from the application designer.

Click here for the screencast.

Dave will have a more technical follow up post to this soon.  Likely he’ll include geo-coding for addresses and such too, since most people probably don’t think in lat/long coordinates or have lists of those kicking around;-)  This coming from the usability evangelist that I am…

Technorati Tags: ajax, gis, map, geoweb, mashup, nitobit, nitobigird, googlemap, ux, ui, usability

After 6 years of enduring a less than marketable name which I shall not mention, we’re now the Nitobi.  I’m extremely excited and passionate about the name, the logo but most of all the slogan “built for people”.  We’re truly making progress in creating a more usable web.

Dave and Alexei have comments about where the name from. 

The response for the community has been great, everyone likes it.  Thanks for the public compliments Boris and Dave.

Technorati Tags: nitobi, eba, branding, communication, marketing, ajax