Chrome + IE Tab smokes IE9? What have you found?

This week I am having to get to grips with an environment where Internet Explorer is a requirement. The same environment also uses Lotus Notes. For a Mac user this can be challenging but I have made quite a bit of progress setting up a configuration that works effectively.

I managed to obtain a copy of Lotus Notes 8.5 Beta. I did try to upgrade to the latest version of the Mac Client but the IBM web site steadfastly refuses to accept my address information. When you select the country it automatically submits the page - before you have had time to fill in the remaining data such as Zipcode - which is required. Consequently you end up in an infinite loop. All this in order to download a TRIAL copy of Lotus Notes 8.5.2 client. It is no wonder Lotus Notes is not that popular. You can't easily get your hands on a trial copy.

The next challenge was to use Internet Explorer on my Mountain Lion copy of Mac OS X. Now, I have had a copy of VMware Fusion v 3.1 but that will not run on Mountain Lion. Fortunately VMware have released VMware Fusion 5 with both Windows 8 and Mountain Lion support. I managed to find a discount code that let me acquire a copy of Fusion 5 for close to the upgrade price. That coupled with a copy of Windows 7 and I was ready to get going.

VMWare Fusion with the Unity interface is very nice and pretty responsive on my MacBook Air. After purchasing Windows 7 Professional and downloading the 64-bit version I was able to launch Windows 7 via VMware Fusion 5. I then upgraded from IE 8 to IE 9 and also installed a complimentary copy of McAfee Anti-virus. 

I also took the plunge and purchased a Windows copy of 1Password from Agilebits. This is my "Must Have" password manager. It works across just about every platform. It also works in conjunction with DropBox so after downloading and installing Dropbox and firing up 1Password I had my passwords readily available.

The only other components I then needed were: Flash and Adobe Reader since Windows, unlike the Mac doesn't handle PDF files without an add-in. 

With all this up and running I was able to fire up IE9 and access these IE-only sites. I was also having to access a confluence wiki via an Extranet connection. Updating the wiki turned out to be very slow, even over a fast network connection. However, when I downloaded Adobe Flash Player I had inadvertently left the "Download Google Chrome" pick active. I therefore had Google Chrome installed in my Windows Virtual Machine. 

In an effort to make editing the wiki more efficient I tried Chrome. However, I needed to be able to seamlessly switch between the Confluence Wiki pages and other web pages where IE was a requirement. I therefore downloaded and activated the IE Tab Add-in for Google Chrome. This has turned out to be a great solution. Chrome has a better User Interface than IE9 and the combination of Windows Chrome with IE Tab seems to be much faster and more responsive than IE9. 

What has your experience been with IE9? For me, switching to Chrome + IE Tab has seen the "Reloading Web Page" errors disappear and running Windows Chrome using Unity under VMware Fusion makes the browser seem almost like the native OS X Chrome browser. 

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Baltimore Tech Breakfast - Meet Baltimore's CIO @christonjes #bmoretechb

This morning is the Baltimore Tech Breakfast (#bmoretechb). This is the largest regular technology meetup in the Baltimore area. Kudos to Ron Schmelzer of Bizelo for keeping this meetup growing. This month we have a packed house of nearly 200 people.

Here is the Agenda for the morning:

Agenda for August 2012 BTB:

8:00 - 8:10 - Get yer Bagels & Coffee and chit-chat

8:10 - 8:15 - Introductions, Sponsors, Announcements - Ronald Schmelzer

8:15 - 8:25 - MindGrub's Mobile Games - Todd Marks

8:25 - 8:35 - SurveySnap - Ryan Sears

8:35 - 8:40 - 30 Second Lightning "Shout Outs"

8:40 - 8:50 - Baltimore City CIO - Chris Tonjes

8:50 - 9:00 - RenterResume - Joshua Hines

9:00 - 9:05 - 30 Second Lightning "Shout Outs"

9:05 - 9:15 - KnotFriends (Update!) - Tony Bagdon

9:15 - 9:25 - Parking Panda (Update!) - Nick Miller

9:25 - 9:30 - 30 Second Lightning "Shout Outs" & Last Words

It is great to meet so many friends from around the Baltimore Area. People like the OpenRange Video team who record the event. The Dinnertime.com team who are currently in stealth mode. Eli The Computer Guy.

Todd Marks - Mindgrub Mobile Games

Gaming is one of the divisions that has grown quickly.

Realized that first person shooters were going to go mobile. They have brought together Social, Location and Mobile.

TAG is a game of tagging your friends using your iPhone. Augmented Reality first person shooter.

Also produced Zac & Haley Scuba Adventures produced for Shark Week on Discovery Kids. 

Gaming is big in Baltimore area. Local colleges have gaming tracks in college. This brought the industry here. Mobile gaming is really expanding quickly.

Income is not coming from games. Partnering is essential for promotion. You need more marketing dollars than development dollars to get traction. 

Survey-Snap - Ryan Sears

Targeted for Architects, engineers and facility managers. 

Survey-Snap is Creating Building Surveys on mobile devices. Taking an analog data collection process to the digital tablet.

Neat ability to add pins to the drawing and add comments and notes to the tags.

Annotation, sketches, audio and video can be added and tagged to a picture or drawing.

Presenting this material is a challenge for architects and building managers. Survey-snap makes the process easy by creating a PDF with all the pictures and annotations laid out.

This is a Software as a Service offering. Currently in beta.

The software can work in other verticals: Event planners, Insurance adjusters. 

Feedback suggests over 100 vertical applications.

The system is modular and will provide a marketplace for these vertical applications.

The system will support offline use. There will also be a data export option.

Baltimore CIO - Chris Tonjes

Chris is 37 days in to his new job.  

Things to improve:

1. The city's phone system

re-focusing the stakeholders. 

2. Emergency Communications 

Old with many single points of failure.

3. 911- Computer aided dispatch

Advancing the project. Two phases. Phase 1 in 6 months.

4. 311 - CRM System

Funding to replace it but want's to do something more modern, lightweight and open.

5. Data Center updates

Two very old centers. Antiquated. Still using IBM mainframe with VM and tape. Legacy applications bring in over $1B per year. 

From strategic perspectives in an interesting position: An opportunity to rebuild an IT department. 

New financial models. Hiring opportunities with probably 50 openings.

Pushing to move very quickly. This is a CIO that uses Google Docs and Dropbox.

Promoting OpenData.

Having a pro-active CIO and a forward thinking IT department being constructed this makes Baltimore a potentially great place to grow a technology company.

What does the CIO need from the tech community?

- "A little bit of patience". Need some breathing room to mitigate some existing conditions. 

- Give input - send email. Input is welcomed.

RenterResu.me - Joshua Hines

Renting made simple. The Match.com of renting.

Provides a dashboard for Landlords.

Allows renters to setup their profiles. 

Renters pay a one-time fee of $35. Pay once instead of for each rental application. 

Background checks are performed. Eviction database check. Criminal history.

Fee is good for 30 days. Renewals at a lower fee.

Launching in Q1 of 2013.

Also have enterprise solutions for property managers.

KnotFriends (Update!) - Tony Bagdon

A tie swapping service.

$14.95 for three ties. They take a cut on each transaction. No cost to sender. Receiver/Buyer pays.

I have suggested to them that they should do a themed tie groupon style deal. This would be great at various times of year such as St Patricks Day, Christmas etc.

Parking Panda (Update!) - Nick Miller

Parking Panda is growing quickly. A great mobile app. The iphone app was built by Mindgrub.

Reserve a parking space. AirBnB model allows people to rent private parking spaces. They also work with parking sites to maximize their yield. This gives drivers a discount on parking.

Parking Panda is providing the parking for the Baltimore Grand Prix.

Expanded to Washington DC and launching in San Francisco and Philadelphia.

SEO is important. People Google Where to park.

The platform is built on the Microsoft stack.

Other Notes:

Distilled Intelligence. A venue for startups.

http://distilledintelligence.com

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Apple could throw AT&T a real curveball with Facetime if they wanted to. #NetNeutrality

AT&T have been putting themselves through some real contortions to argue that their limiting of Facetime access on their cellular network to those people that sign up for their new mobile share plans. Arstechnica's Nate Anderson has a good assessment of AT&T's position here:  http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/att-have-you-no-shame/

What is interesting is how AT&T justifies their position in relation to Net Neutrality by arguing that subscribers can download alternative apps for video calls.

So if Apple wanted to throw AT&T a curveball they only have to do one thing. They take Facetime for iOS, pull it out of the core iOS application set and make it a separate downloadable App on the App Store. By AT&T's rules Facetime would be the playing on the same level Playing field as Skype and other video calling apps in the App Store. 

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#health2stat q and a

The VA took 3 years to grow from 1 guy providing social media support to the level of activity they have today.

5 central staff and representatives in every center across the country.

Birth control

A year talking to target audiences taught them that birth control sucks.

Humor is a powerful tool to open up the conversation. Especially with men.

VA HRA

How was hRA model connected to the representation of health risk age. The health risk age is compelling. Connecting the hRA to this was an obvious step. It motivates people to change.

Sleepchamps

Moving from 20 question paper questionnaire and by putting them on a smartphone they can be completed at home in real time As events occur.

I think patents might appreciate lullaby lyrics and tunes in the Zansors sleepChamp app. That could be a useful resource for parents.

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#health2stat

I am at the Barking Dog for Health2Stat organized by Aquilent.

Health2con.com got a mention for the San Francisco conference in October. If people decide to go they should plan to arrive early to take part in healthca.mp/SFBay on Friday 5th October.

First speaker: Mary Arrnstead

Talking about NITAAC and the NIH government-wide contracts for both products and services.

CIO-SP3 IT services and solutions

Also small business 54 vendors
131 small business vendors

ECS III IT products vehicle This has 42 approved vendors

Second speaker: ranjit Das from Zansors

sleepChamp for kids.

Empower kids sleep.

Licensed from university of Michigan.

Measuring sleep quality for kids.

Sleep medicine
Data Analytics
Information architecture
Intelligent design
Lean business development
Social media engagement

Sleep champ deals with:

Sleep disorders
Sleepiness
Growth/body weight
Behavior and cognition Evidence based medicine is transformed from a paper based collection to smartphones

Parents consider the smartphone a mobile command center.

Speaker three: Konstantin Von Schmidt-Pauli

Talking about A VA healthy vet portal application that is in early stages of development. Deals with 508 compliant health risk assessment.

So the VA is building the hRA from the ground up but it looks very like a Traitwise survey.

Speaker four: Lawrence Swaider

7 out of 10 pregnancies are unplanned.

The research to the failure showed that the time of publications totally failed with the wrong tone.

Put the information in a infect that young women understood

The method explorer is a platform that can be used on multiple sites. It demystifies contraceptive methods.

"create once use everywhere"

The ad council has donated print,tv and radio ads- a $2m value.

Speaker five: Lauren Bailey VA and digital communication

22M veterans but the VA reaches less than half.

Now have 75 twitter feeds, blogs and Facebook.

Reaching vets where they are.

Facebook and twitter have been effective.

The more you talk with folks the more they tend to come back.

Lauren manages VAntage Point blog

Vets meet up on facebook. Connect with team members. They are going where the veterans are.

Twitter is used to communicate with industry partners.

Flickr has been incredibly effective. Also on YouTube. Lots of video communications are internal. YouTube is used to spread the word by publishing these videos.

The team don't seek to control communication but rather to make it easy for community managers to use the channels.

Still working to measure reach and impact.

Hard to channel questions to the right people quickly.

Governance is not about control. It is about making it easy and sharing resources.

Now for the Q & A...

Mark Scrimshire
B: http://ekive.blogspot.com
....Sent from my iPhone

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Twitter is raising the drawbridge and becoming an island. Bad move.

Recently Twitter disconnected Instagram so that users are no longer able to discover their friends on Twitter. Yesterday Tumblr became the next victim as Twitter works down the chain of developers that have connected to it. LinkedIn has already become a victim and the betting is that Flipboard will be next.

This is coupled with recent changes in the developer rules that insist on Twitter content being displayed "as is." See this article from TechCrunch: Twitter Handcuffs Client Apps with New API Changes - by Anthony Ha

I am wondering how long it will be before Wordpress plug-ins that display a twitter stream in the context of a web page are forbidden by Twitter. Those plug-ins would seem to be out of compliance because Wordpress blog pages have comments. As I understand it that is a no-no.

If Twitter follows a strategy to drive consumption of Twitter content on twitter.com then they will devalue the Twitter ecosystem and drive many people away to other services. One of the huge values of Twitter is that we can pull content that is relevant and mash it up with other content. 

Twitter is like electricity. The value isn't in the power station at the center of the grid. The value is in the electricity that flows to millions of devices where it enables all manner of things to happen. 

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Digital imaging breakthrough for Cholesterol testing #HIT #MHealth

This is really cool news:

http://in.news.yahoo.com/indian-scientists-develop-photographic-test-cholesterol-determination-083100895.html

Indian scientists have been able to use digital images of the back of people's hands to match to cholesterol levels. This is a non-invasive procedure that opens up the possibility of Cholesterol level self testing without the need for a specialized testing kits.

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Containing costs for Medicare via Competitive Bidding - a pipe dream? a couple of must read articles via @thcbstaff

The Health Care Blog and Mother Jones have two "must read" posts on containing Medicare costs.

The proposal to use Competitive Bidding - will it work. This is what private companies have resorted to for the last 15 years and been rewarded with costs that have risen even faster than Medicare.

Check out these articles:

Paul Ryan and the Problem With Competitive Bidding

Here’s a Question to Ask Romney or Ryan by Aaron Carroll, MD

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Affordable Care Act, Unleashing the Innovator and Entrepreneur

This is a post I have been thinking about writing for a long while. It is also a very hard post to write because this has been a very personal journey.

Back in the early days of HealthCa.mp, in 2008-09, there was a lot of speculation about whether the Affordable Care Act would be passed in to law. In 2012 the focus has been on the build up to the Supreme Court decision regarding the ACA. During those periods of uncertainty I often reflected on the need for HealthCa.mp if HealthCare was going to be "fixed." All I needed to do though was to listen to the participants who took part in each HealthCa.mp we held. The vibrant discussions, the diversity of views, the range of problems people faced, both in the medical and the patient community. It was abundantly clear that the status quo was not good enough with well over 15% of the US Population going without any health care coverage and for those with health care coverage the costs were rising at a dramatic pace with no sign of easing. 

The concept of people being able to keep the health coverage they were happy with is a quaint idea that has no real basis in reality. In a health care insurance world dominated by employer plans keeping your insurance depends upon keeping your job. In this day and age that is at best a crap shoot for many.  For those with secure jobs the idea of keeping the insurance you are happy with is still a mis-nomer when many employers shop around for the cheapest quote every couple of years and in order to contain costs they adjust the content of the health plan. In this day and age the only real solution is for individuals and families to purchase their own insurance. 

Eighteen months ago I left the safe and certain world of an employer provided health plan. For a period I was able to continue my existing health plan but when that ran out a switch to COBRA was out of the question. Without the employer subsidy a 10-fold increase in cost to maintain the same plan, with no stable income was simply un-realistic. So, probably like many others who lost their jobs in the recession, I found myself flying without a health care parachute. it is a frightening prospect I can tell you. You see, one of my jobs is as a part-time ski-instructor. It doesn't pay much but the rewards of teaching a new generation of skiers is immeasurable. Fortunately, while working as an instructor I was covered by Workman's Compensation if an accident was to happen. But practicing my skills on my own time was out of the question. It was too dangerous. One collision with an out of control skier or snow boarder and you could be facing a trip off the mountain to the emergency room where costs sky-rocket quickly.

Annual Preventative Physical Exams to get an early detection of problems - forget it. 

During this 18 months I have continued to take part in efforts to drive change in Health Care. Putting on HealthCamps, taking part in conferences and doing development work here and there. It has been an incredibly rewarding journey. But it got me thinking.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship is one aspect of the Affordable Care Act that has been given very little attention and it deserves some promotion. 

The ACA and the work of the dedicated teams at HHS, CMS and ONC are making big behind the scenes changes in Health Care. New payment methods are emerging that have enormous potential to change quality of outcomes in Health Care and bring costs under control.

The liberation of health data is improving transparency. This is an essential part of creating a more even playing field in the market place.

The establishment of Health Insurance Exchanges will also enable individuals and small companies to find affordable health plans. Plans that include preventative care.

I believe that the employer-based health plan model is a drag on the economic growth. Why do I say this?

The USA is an innovator economy. One built on entrepreneurship. However, as the cost of health care continues to spiral upwards the employer-based health plan acts as a discouragement to innovators and entrepreneurs to step out on their own and build their own companies for fear of losing health coverage for their families. 

I believe that in the next few years we will see more individuals taking control of their health insurance coverage. They, and not their employers, will control the relationship with both their insurer and their care team. Employers may still contribute to the care of their employees, but it is increasingly likely to be via Health Savings Accounts rather than by directly negotiating insurance deals. We will see this initially in the small business space but it may well spread in to the mid-size employer market and Employer-lnas may become the domain of only the largest employers.

One of the effects of this evolution may be to unleash a new wave of entrepreneurs to try their hand at building their own companies. Not only will they find providing health care for their employees to be a simpler process but they won't feel shackled to an employer-controlled health plan.

So this past 18 months has been a fascinating journey. HealthCa.mp is still relevant because there is so much to do in order to improve health care but we are only in the first early phases of a transformation.

It is an essential transformation. Health Care costs can't continue to grow as a percentage of the overall economy. It kills our competitiveness. Ultimately each of us has to become active in managing our health and vitality. Taking personal responsibility for our health and our health insurance will ultimately allow us to once again grow the economy, by eliminating one very significant barrier to entrepreneurship. 

I would love to get other's views on this topic. Why not join me at a HealthCa.mp.

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HealthCamp Autumn Season approaching fast with #HCBOS #HCKC #HCSFBay check out http://healthca.mp/calendar

We are less than four weeks away from a busy HealthCamp Autumn season. We have 3 events coming  up:

• HealthCa.mp/Boston on Friday September 14th at the Microsoft NERD Campus in Cambridge, MA
• HealthCa.mp/KansasCity on Sunday September 23rd as part of the Partnership With Patients Summit in Kansas City, MO
• HealthCa.mp/SFBay on Friday October 5th as Part of San Francisco Health Innovation Week at the Kaiser Permanente Innovation Center in San Leandro, CA.

There are still sponsorship opportunities available at each of these events. Participant tickets are also available. So hurry and sign up for the most exciting Health Care Un-Conference series.

It is exciting to be hitting the East Coast, Mid-West and West Coast in quick succession. HealthCamp provides an opportunity for Patients, Patient Advocates, Health Care Professionals and any passionate about transforming our Health Care system to come together to share ideas and create a community of like-minded do-ers.

I hope you will join us. Don't delay - sign up today!

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If you can understand the instruction at the top of the page do you need that interpreter?

Mark Scrimshire
B: http://ekive.blogspot.com
....Sent from my iPhone

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Projects in the Cloud in a cloudless auditorium of a communications company.

I am in the Annapolis Junction area of Maryland, near the NSA, and in a classic situation that is reminiscent of attending many health care conferences. I am in the auditorium of a communications company. There is no Wi-Fi available and cell and 4G coverage inside the building is bad.  

This is a lunch meeting of the Baltimore Chapter of the Project Management Institute: PMIBaltimore.org.

The topic is Project Management on Cloud-based projects. It will be interesting to see how projects are seen to differ when dealing with the cloud. My guess is that the major change aspect is probably the reduction in the amount of physical equipment needing to be provisioned and an increase in vendor management since services are more likely to be virtual.

There is a lot happening in the cloud arena. everything is getting virtualized. 

"Cloud Computing - What a Project Manager Needs to Know" - Dr. Patrick Allen - Johns Hopkins University

Cloud - A different mental paradigm.

Two types of Cloud: 

and we don't mean:

- Public 

- Private

1. Computing as a service (Utility Cloud and Virtual Machines - VMs)

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Platforms as a Service (PaaS)

Software as a Service (SaaS)

2. Data-focused cloud (runs on Virtual Machines)

Data Storage Cloud - eg. Hadoop cloud (Amazon S3)

Be clear about what type of cloud you are talking about. Essential to avoid conclusion.

Amazon is the best example of a Compute Service. AWS - EC2. Rackspace OpenStack.

Pay for use. but you can pre-pay for a better price.

Compute clouds are great for surge-type activities. spin up machines to compute then power down.

Side Channel attacks - When the hardware in the cloud is infected and can break in to the VM running on the infected machine.

For a side-channel attack the perpetrator has to break out of the VM and infect the base hardware. 

Amazon claim to have solved the side channel attack problem.

Questions to ask:

1. Cost of data stored

2. Cost for VMs used

3. How secure or private is the data

4. Security and privacy guarantees

5. Will PII (personally identifiable information) be protected

6. Can you use cloud for Continuity of Operations Plans

7. Can you store classified data in the cloud (maybe if properly secured, government accredited and private)

8. Are you planning to use a third party service. (you can build your own cloud)

9. Where is your computing (is it US Only - export controls)

10. Get a cyber-security risk assessment. 

Also (not mentioned) - Cost for bandwidth used and data transfers. Also ask about what counts as a Data Transfer. For example AWS won't charge for some data moved around within a region but will charge for transfers in and out of a region.

Data-focused Clouds:

Huge data - Petabytes or larger.

HDFS - Hadoop File System. Not-relational

Relational Databases: Think rows and columns

Accumulo and HBase present structured relational databases delivered via HDFS.

Hadoop is more popular than sector file management system.

Enables automatic parallelization of queries. 

Handles storing, location, replication and processing of your data.

Enables easier identification of patterns across the data. Using Map-Reduce.

Map-Reduce - Good for:

Huge data sets

Disparate datasources

unsure about what data queries will be done.

Summarizing independent processes.

Map-Reduce not good for:

- Relational databases are adequate for the task

- Well defined queries.

What drives you to use the cloud capabilities:

- Unstructured data in large quantities

- Surge events are common

Learn what is possible with Map-Reduce and the cloud capabilities.

Why build your own cloud?

- Security, privacy or proprietary needs not met by existing cloud services.

- Ongoing maintenance costs.

Interesting suggestion (not verbalized) that you want a message queue to handle, arbitrate and allocate processing requests.

Message queuing can be used to scale resources up and down.

General Cloud Questions:

- Will you know where your cloud is physically located.

- Amazon AWS uses regions but are not more specific.

- Who gets access (US or Foreign Nationals)

- How is data ingested?

- How is data stored?

- How is data secured at rest?

- How is data deleted?

- Can you test your data has been deleted or hidden?

- Can you keep your data separated from others?

- Frequency of Hardware upgrades

- Proven VMs?

- Who has done a risk assessment?

Observations:

- Cloud is here to stay

- More projects will involve the cloud

- Need to understand strengths and weaknesses of the cloud

- Learn about cloud capabilities

FedRAMP is a new standardized approach to security assessment, authorization and security monitoring for cloud-prodcuts and services.

Good for low risk government projects. Not for High security applications.

Map-Reduce programs are more complicated if the data is not clean. 

Look at cleaning data on load to simplify queries.

Licensing in the Cloud. Manufacturers (software) have not really setup licenses for cloud services.

Best advice is to consider Open Source  and pay for support.

Security Issues - VMs may be more secure than Shared Hosting. In Shared Hosting the Feds can confiscate a server in a hosting facility. If the server is a shared host then other customers can be impacted.

Service Level Guarantees - What is reasonable? It depends. Worth looking at Service Level Agreements.

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Great news! #BlueButton to go automatic

I have said since BlueButton arrived on the scene that it needed to evolve from a snapshot to a stream.

Well here we go: http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/onc-aims-put-blue-button-automatic

See my Slideshare from October 2011 around slide 10 I mention the need to evolve from a snapshot to a secure stream. 

http://www.slideshare.net/ekivemark/quantified-self-plus-rainbow-button-initiative-equals-quantified-community

Hopefully some type of secure RSS stream will emerge as a standard.

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A great analysis of the #Olympics 100 meters event through the ages from the @NYTimes

Check out the great video and analysis that the New York Times has done that put's Usain Bolt's gold medal win in to perspective over the history of the modern Olympics.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/05/sports/olympics/the-100-meter-dash-one-race-every-medalist-ever.html

As a swimmer I love the analysis of the 100-meter Freestyle event. The progress that has been made in the history of the Modern Olympics is even more striking:  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/01/sports/olympics/racing-against-history.html

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It's Summer and unusual to see so many ties in1 place - @knotfriends party

It is the knotfriends.com launch party. Bring a tie, swap a tie. It is fun to see so many ties in one place given that it is not wall street or the city of London and it is mid summer after all!

Mark Scrimshire
B: http://ekive.blogspot.com
....Sent from my iPhone

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Which tie to wear to @knotfriends party tonight?

Mark Scrimshire
B: http://ekive.blogspot.com
....Sent from my iPhone

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#Openflame from @firejacknet - A means to a robust end

In previous blog posts (here and here) I have documented the process for getting the Openflame platform running on Mac OS X. This can be accomplished because the platform uses industry standard open source components such as:

• Tomcat
• Memcached
• Maven
• MySQL

But running Openflame on this stack is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. Openflame provides a rapid development environment that produces web applications that run using robust, open source web technologies. So let's put together a sample application and learn more about how Openflame works.

In order to get to work on the platform I take the following steps:

- Launch MySQLWorkbench and startup the MySQL Server. I could also have gone in to System Preferences and used the MySQL Preference Pane.

- Open the Terminal and check the setting for OPF_ENV_PATH.

- Launch Tomcat using /Developer/Tomcat/bin/startup.sh

You can check the progress of Tomcat and the deployment of Openflame by checking the catalina.out log. In my installation that can be found in:

/Developer/Tomcat/logs/.

Openflame is a complex platform so it may take a few minutes to loa but once Tomcat is loaded pointing your Web Browser to Localhost:8080 should return this:

Clicking on the Manager App button should return information that includes the Openflame application:

With openflame started we can launch the application:

http://localhost:8080/openflame

You should see this:

Use the Admin userid and password to access the Openflame platform.

When logged in you should see a screen that looks like this:

We have a working Openflame installation and we can get to work creating business solutions!

The first step is to secure the application by changing the default admin password. 

Go to the Directory Tab and select the admin user. 

Double click the admin user and set and confirm a new password and press "Save"

With the admin password changed we can now get to work and create our first application.

Hello World

To create an application we need to construct some basic building blocks. The first is the Root Domain.

Let's add a new Root Domain. 

Click on the Domain Tab.

Click on the Add Root Domain icon.

I then fill in the root domain form with: 

Name: helloworld.com (this has to be in lowercase)

and, optionally, a brief description.

Click the blue "Save" button.

The next step is to create a package. The package is the application we will build. 

Select the helloworld.com root domain in the sidebar. Then click on "Add Package"

I use the name "hello" and check that the Context Path is set to match as "/hello"

Click the blue "Save" button.

The package context path is the url we will browse to on the server. i.e. localhost:8080/hello

Next step is to add a "Domain." This is different from the root domain. 

Domains are where we start thinking about the data we want to handle in our application. 

For this example I am going to create a very simple address book, which I will call "contacts".

I add a brief description and a naming prefix of "contact".

I am also going to create a database called "messages".

I am now going to add an Entity to the Domain. Select "contacts" in the sidebar.

Add "Category". Note the Capitalization.

Click "Save".

I repeated this process for two other Entities: "Organizations" and "People".

By now I think you are getting the idea. 

The Openflame 1.3 documentation has the steps for building a sample app documented here:

https://firejack.atlassian.net/wiki/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=589845

The example application is a movie database. There have been some changes between version 1.3 and 1.4 but you can still easily follow the process.

I find it easier to think in pictures when I am understanding a system so I prepared this schematic which depicts the major elements of an Openflame solution.

When you have built a solution using Openflame the next step is to:

• Create a system component
• Create a database within the system component
• Generate the code for the Solution

You should be aware that the code generation process can take up to 30 minutes. The Openflame platform is busy building a fully documented project, which is deposited in to Maven and building the databases in MySQL and preparing a WAR file and supporting configuration files to allow the application to run on Tomcat.

While the code is being generated you may see an application pop up in your OS X dock. The application is org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.

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Configuring Openflame on Mac OS X

In an earlier blog I went through the installation of Memcache, MySQL, Maven and Tomcat. These are the open source building blocks on which the Openflame platform is built. Openflame is an enterprise-strength, scalable development platform from Columbia, MD innovator FireJack Technologies. 

I have delayed following up on the installation of Openflame because I have moved my MacBook to Mountain Lion. Now that the OS is largely running smoothly (Other than a few niggles with Safari and Address Book) I am turning back to getting the upcoming 1.4 release of Openflame running.

First step - Launch Memcached:

/usr/local/bin/memcached -d -p 11211

MySQL is easy since I installed the System Preferences Add-in. Just launch System Preferences, choose the MySQL preference pane and click the button to startup MySQL.

I had downloaded and installed Openflame 1.4 in to /Developer/openflame1.4 and setup a symbolic link so that /Developer/openflame points to the 1.4 release directory.

I then copied the openflame.war file from the webapps sub-directory to the webapps sub-directory in the Tomcat installation. I had installed Tomcat in /Developer/apache-tomcat-7.0.29 and had a symbolic link to the installation from /Developer/Tomcat

The next step is to configure the two configuration files. There are two files:

• environment.xml
• environment.properties

FireJack provides two sample files for this:

• environment.example.xml
• environment.properties.example

More on the settings for these in a moment.

I went through a number of iterations to get the openflame.war file to successfully deploy. After receiving some great support from one of the Developers at FireJack.net  I was able to successfully get OpenFlame running. This is what I had to do to get the 1.4 beta version of Openflame running:

One point to note is that the 1.4 version of Openflame makes a change to the properties files to encrypt the content.  I believe that one of my initial implementation attempts failed because there was no Openflame database to upgrade. First we will start by reviewing the environment files:

The first step is to gather all the settings and accounts you have used to configure Memcached, Maven, Tomcat and MySQL. You will need them to configure the environment files.

environment.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<environments>
    <environment>
        <system name="opf-local" path="net.firejack">
            <packages>
                <package>net.firejack.openflame</package>
            </packages>
            <port>8080</port>

            <protocol>HTTP</protocol>

            <serverName>localhost</serverName>
        </system>

Specify the port, protocol and serverName to match your machine. If you are running locally this would be localhost on port 8080. The default for Tomcat.

        <databases>
            <database name="db" path="net.firejack.opf-local">
                <password>{account_password}</password>
                <port>3306</port>
                <rdbms>MySQL</rdbms>
                <protocol>JDBC</protocol>
                <serverName>localhost</serverName>
                <urlPath>opf_main</urlPath>
                <username>{admin_Account}</username>
            </database>
        </databases>

This is where you create the connection to MySQL. The default port is 3306. I used the root account for this test but you could specify an alternative name. Just make sure you give it the necessary admin level permissions in order to create and manage the Openflame schema.

Replace {account_password} with the password used by the admin account.

The serverName should match the setting you applied in the previous section - unless you are connecting to a MySQL instance on another machine.

Replace {admin_Account} with the administrator account you are using on MySQL. The default will be root.

        <servers>
            <server name="server" path="net.firejack.opf-local">
                <port>8080</port>
                <protocol>HTTP</protocol>
                <serverName>localhost</serverName>
            </server>
        </servers>

Port, protocol and serverName should match the settings used in the earlier system section. I am using Localhost and the default 8080 port for Tomcat.

        <filestores>
            <filestore name="base" path="net.firejack.opf-local">
                <port>8080</port>
                <serverDirectory>{Absolute_File_Reference}/openflame/base/filestore</serverDirectory>
                <serverName>localhost</serverName>
            </filestore>
            <filestore name="config" path="net.firejack.opf-local">
                <port>8080</port>
                <serverDirectory>{Absolute_File_Reference}/openflame/base/filestore</serverDirectory>
                <serverName>localhost</serverName>
            </filestore>
            <filestore name="content" path="net.firejack.opf-local">
                <port>8080</port>
                <serverDirectory>{Absolute_File_Reference}/openflame/base/filestore</serverDirectory>
                <serverName>localhost</serverName>
            </filestore>
        </filestores>

The filestores need to be referenced by an absolute file/folder reference. I pointed the filestore to a Developer area under my user account

{Absolute_File_Reference} = /Users/{OSX_Account_Name}/Developer

The Base, Config and Content database filestores all point to the same location.

        <directories>
            <directory name="accounts" path="net.firejack.opf-local">
                <directoryType>DATABASE</directoryType>
                <serverName>localhost</serverName>
                <status>ACTIVE</status>
                <urlPath>/openflame</urlPath>
            </directory>
        </directories>
    </environment>
</environments>

environment.properties.

# Admin user login and password

app.admin.email={My_Email_Address}

app.admin.name=admin

app.admin.password=111111

#Memcached

memcached.url=localhost

memcached.port=11211

memcached.cache.size=10

#Master Openflame URL

#opf.master.url=[OPF_MASTER_URL]

The app.admin.name and app.admin.password were set to the openflame defaults. They can be changed in the platform once Tomcat has deployed and launched the openflame.war file.

The memcached information is taken from the install. In this case I am running it on localhost on the default port of 11211.

The critical Environment variable before launching Tomcat is OPF_ENV_PATH. I made sure this was set to the /Developer/openflame where the environment files were located.

You should then be able to copy the openflame.war file in to the /Developer/Tomcat/webapps folder and launch Tomcat. 

The deployment process may take up to 15 minutes since there is a lot of code to deploy, databases to build etc. But once it has deployed you should just be able to go to Openflame via localhost:8080/openflame.

If you have problems with a new deployment try these steps:

The following notes are for a new installation and NOT for an upgrade!

If the new deployment fails check these things:

• Drop the openflame schema. I used MySQLWorkbench to do this. 
• Check that the MySQL Admin account you use has full rights to create and manipulate schemas and tables.
• Check that the openflame folder does NOT have an openflame.properties file. I had an unencrypted version that was a result of another installation experiment. Openflame 1.4 requires an encrypted file
• Have you defined the OPF_ENV_PATH setting and pointed it to the location of the openflame environment files. For me this was /Developer/openflame.

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Mac #OSX Safari 6 and AddressBook- Problems are lurking. Can't wait for update!

Last week I upgraded to Safari 6 and then on the launch of Mountain Lion updated my OS. Most things have gone smoothly but there are some annoyances.

Safari 6 with Google Docs and Facebook via https

There is a problem that impacts the use of Google Docs in Safari 6. The best example is how you load a Google Spreadsheet but you can't edit any cells. There are various threads in the Apple Support Community Forums on this subject. Another problem is the speed with which Facebook loads. 

The Google Docs and Facebook problems are probably connected. They relate to how Safari 6 is accessing secure web pages. I went in to Facebook and changed my security settings so that they don't force the use of https:// secure browsing. When I headed back to the Facebook home page the page loaded blazingly fast.  This obviously doesn't solve the problem with Google Docs which uses a secure page but at least it points to the area where Apple need to fix Safari. Hopefully we can see an update come quickly from Apple to solve this issue. In the meantime you can use Chrome which doesn't exhibit the same problems on Mountain Lion. 

If you are using Safari 6 but haven't upgraded to Mountain Lion then you are probably experiencing this sluggish browsing behavior. The problem is with Safari 6 and not with Mountain Lion.

Bonfire for JIRA from Atlassian

Another area I have seen a problem with Safari 6 is with Bonfire from Atlassian. Their browser extension works fine on Chrome under Mountain Lion but again Safari 6 on either version of OS X has a problem. For those not familiar with Bonfire it is a browser extension that is used to document software bugs. The way it works is to open a sidebar and collect a snapshot of the current browser page. The problem with Safari 6 is that the browser extension opens a new tab instead of updating the existing page and it doesn't capture the screenshot. This effectively makes the extension unusable in Safari 6. Hopefully Atlassian will release a patch that will solve this behavior now that Safari 6 is officially available.

Addressbook and Contact Pictures

Addressbook, or should I say Contacts, is an app I use multiple times every day on Mac OS X. In Mountain Lion Apple has tweaked the interface making it easier to deal with groups. However there are some areas where the application has taken steps back in usability. One small area is with the formatting of phone numbers. Under Lion you had an option to choose the format for your phone numbers. I had mine set to +1.234.567.8901. In Mountain Lion the option to format numbers has been removed  and all numbers default to +1 (234) 567-8901 or (234) 567-8901. I am assuming that this is related to the International and Regional setting for the system as a whole but there is no information shown about phone numbers in the Language & Text section of System Preferences.

The more retrograde step in Contacts is how Contact Pictures are handled. One of the really slick features of AddressBook under Lion was how you could drag a picture from your browser in to the Contact Picture area of AddressBook while editing a contact record and the picture would be set as the Contact's picture. In Contacts this is now a frustrating multi-step process.

When editing a Contact record you have to double click the "Edit" link in the Contact Picture. This pops up a grid of pictures. There are three options: 

- Defaults

- Recents

- Camera

Defaults is a standard set of icons. The same icons you would see when selecting a default icon for your account in Users and Groups. Camera fires up your web cam to allow you to take a picture. To add a picture grabbed from your web browser or from finder you need to click on Recents. This gives you a grid of recent pictures. Now click on the little pen icon beneath the grid. This takes you in to edit whichever picture you have selected. Now drop the picture you want from your browser, or from finder, and click done. 

This is a major step backward in usability. What was a one step task has now become a six-step task. 

There is a lot to like in Mountain Liion but the 10.8.1 patch can't come soon enough. I am hoping Apple will address these weaknesses. 

Posted via email from ekivemark: pre-blogspot