The Enterprise OSGi spec is here ...

Enterprise OSGi spec rolls out at EclipseCon

At EclipseCon in Santa Clara, Calif., the OSGi Alliance announced approval of its long-brewing OSGi Enterprise Specification (Release 4, Version 4.2). This release of the OSGi bundled component standard is targeted at a broad group of Java application server developers. Greater modularity and increased component re-use are main OSGi goals.

WSO2 Gadget Server and WSO2 Mashup Server .next

The WSO2 Mashup Server, still the only true Free and Open Source Mashup platform in the industry will see its 2.1.0 release alongside Carbon 3.0.0 - Irridium. Highlights for this release include ...

• Carbon 3.0.0 - Irridium as base platform
• Hierarchical mashup deployment (mashups deployed under user work spaces)
• New HTTP client Host Object to retrieve any resource over the internet, supplementing the Screen Scraper and WSRequest Host Objects and
  
• numerous fixes and improvements as suggested by users in our forums 
  

We are almost there with version 1.1.0 release of the WSO2 Gadget Server and Nuwan, a key member of my team has done a nice round up of the latest features and improvements we've done for this release. To highlight ...

• We are powered by Carbon 3.0.0 - Irridium
• Latest stable revision of Apache Shindig
• Pub/Sub and i18n for Gadgets and
• HTTP mode portal (in case you haven't noticed we ran the portal on HTTPS in previous releases, which was not a must, since Gadgets themselves come from HTTP sources.)

I'm also working on an article explaining inter Gadget communication with pub/sub that I hope to publish in the WSO2 Oxygen Tank right in time for the release.

We are at the beta testing stages of the release cycle and are hoping to announce the final release within the next couple of weeks.

The funnel is dead. It's time for Conversational Marketing

Conversational Marketing

View more presentations from Arto Joensuu.

This came via Annie Infinite. One of the marketers in my social network.

Add Gadgets to your blog

Step 1: Go to layout settings in your blogger.com blog and click "Add a Gadget".




Step 2: Click "Add your own" and type the gadget URL as http://gsdemo.wso2.org/registry/resource/system/gadgets/soa.xml

(This gadget is hosted in the WSO2 Gadget Server demo instance at http://gsdemo.wso2.org)




Step 3: Change gadget settings if required and click "Save".



Step 4: Save your layout. Now the latest posts from the SOA Platform Blog will be visible in your blog. And the beauty of this particular gadget is that your viewers can read the SOA Platform Blog's posts without leaving your blog :)

The Biz School Chronicles :: Hierarchy of Social Community Needs

Read the original article here.

Forrester analyst Nigel Fenwick makes a nice connection between Abraham Maslow's classical theory on the Human Hierarchy of Needs and the needs and aspirations of those who participate in today's on-line communities. At a glance the mapping looks like ....



The author recommends that those who develop/host such communities keep these motivational factors in mind and facilitate achieving them via;

• Offering a mechanism for easy communication (e.g. micro-blogging).
• Helping members to connect through rich profiles and profile search with friending.
• Encouraging support by providing not only Q&A but also the ability to vote and reward contributions
• Providing the ability to share ideas and to comment and add insight such as through virtual whiteboards, photos, video or a wiki-type content platform.

Good read!

Bill Gates No Longer World's Richest Man

India, China make mark on Forbes rich list / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Eight Indians made Forbes magazine’s latest list of the top 100 billionaires, and two – energy tycoon Mukesh Ambani and steel mogul Lakshmi Mittal – sit in the top 5. Mr. Ambani is now the fourth richest person in the world, and the richest person in the Asia-Pacific region.

THE NEW DORK - Entrepreneur State of Mind (Jay-Z ft Alicia Keys Spoof)

Nice lyrics!!

Google Buzz: revolution, evolution, or devolution?

HBRs Umair Haque takes an in depth look at Google Buzz. Quite frankly, after a few days as a user and the amount of privacy issues encountered with the lack of anything breathtakingly new, I have to agree.

Google Buzz and the Five Principles of Designing For Meaning - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review

Tomorrow's products and services have to be designed not just for mere consumption, but "designed for meaning": they must yield lasting, shared, meaningful economic gains — or else. Or else we continue our voyage into a no-future future. That's the big picture that tomorrow's radical innovators must redraw. I think Google Buzz is actually really, really cool — it's just not yet a meaningful service. It lives in the shadow of yesterday's big picture, instead of redrawing it. Redrawing the big picture of prosperity, by going from Great to Good: that's today's fundamental challenge.

Haiti Is a Marketing Lesson

Haiti Is a Marketing Lesson - Dan Pallotta - Harvard Business Review

"The reason people are giving so much money to Haiti is simple: They are hearing about it. They are seeing and reading about the catastrophe over and over again on the front page, in prime time, and in viral web appeals 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is not a singular occurrence: Every so often, for brief moments, disasters trigger the deluge of media for humanity as is enjoyed every day by the likes of Budweiser, BMW, and the iPod. If it had to be paid for, the media that is currently publicizing Haiti would cost many tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars. But alas, we would never let humanitarian organizations spend that kind of money on advertising, despite the fact that it might bring in many times more dollars than it costs."

Interesting read, considering the fact that even for-profit marketers seem to ignore these fundamentals sometimes.

Latest Releases of WSO2 Mashup and Gadget Servers

We announced the releases of WSO2 Mashup Server version 2.0.2 and WSO2 Gadget Server version 1.0.1 yesterday. These releases as usual include improvements and fixes and in case of the Mashup Server, a new Host Object in addition to the collection already available. So make sure you have a look at the brand new HttpClient Host Object once you download 2.0.2.

I'm really happy about the traction WSO2 Gadget Server is gaining since its initial release in December 2009. It not only fulfils the last mile of our SOA platform story by providing a presentation layer, but also uses the Google Gadgets Specification to make this presentation layer SOA centric and interoperable with other portals such as iGoogle. And the most encouraging part? The users get it. That is a great feeling.

Our next major set of releases will come in March 2010, code named Iridium and will have some major enhancements and features. We are also doing a great amount of work targeting the Cloud. The WSO2 Gadget Server will soon be available as a Service, with Mashup Server to follow.