Nth Penguin Blogging

We're doing a lot of cool things, and have a lot of things to say. Here we have combined several of our employee and corporate blogs in one place. Subscribe to any or all of them with your favorite feed reader to keep up on events at Nth Penguin.

Advanced Query API (in javascript!)

We're seeing a lot of downloads of our current WW.DataServices version. Those people are enjoying a tool that automatically builds their back ends for them, including a SOAP Web Service layer. That's just the beginning though. This upcoming release (soon, I promise), has much more. In this post I just want to briefly describe the Query API, which is a series of new web methods in the...

Running a Zero-Infrastructure Company, Part 2e: Social Networking at the Shop

Dice.com, ZyQuest, Local Universities, LinkedIn and Social NetworksWhat would a consulting business be without staff, and quick ramp up times to boot? When we were suddenly faced with needing to expand our capacity from 3 people to 7, we tried Dice.com (which got us nowhere) and our good friends at ZyQuest. We needed people that were very hard to find. ZyQuest delivered. John Moss (you can't have...

Running a Zero-Infrastructure Company, Part 2d: Webstuff of our Shop

Browsers: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and ChromeWe're a web-application development firm, so we have to stay up on the latest browser challenges. That being said, we could fill many, many, MANY more blog posts about reasons for and against different browsers. Or you could just Google for this info. If you're not in the web-app business, just pick one and stick with it. Pick the one that...

Running a Zero-Infrastructure Company, Part 2c: Not-so-Hardware of our Shop

EFax & VocalocityWe did manage to avoid a fax machine, sort of. Instead, we setup a multi-purpose scanner/fax/printer and EFax. The scanner software from HP allows us to scan direct to a PC hard drive over the network. We can then 'fax' that to anywhere, and receive faxes to our inbox to avoid printing them out. We only use it for signatures.Vocalocity is still a new endeavor for us – when they...

Running a Zero-Infrastructure Company, Part 2b: Collaboration for our Shop

Collaborating without Microsoft Office: GoToMeeting, OpenOffice, Google Apps and MS Office 2007 (okay, you're not really getting away)Sharing information and communicating down the long-hallway posed a significant challenge. It could have been very expensive – except that as a startup we drink the Fruity Frugalistic Kool-Aid™ every day.GoToMeeting – our choice for sharing screens and...

The Adaptable Client

Darwin noted that it was not the strongest species to survive, but the most adaptable. This proves true in nature as it does in the software arena. Software, for the most part, becomes isolated on a single client after an invasive installation process. Having the application solely based on a single system leads to many inherent issues with data that is collaborative in nature, such as a...

Components vs. Widgets (or: Contextual Agnosticism)

When demonstrating our widget platform (WebWidgetry(tm) and MashupStudio(tm)), one of the first things most people ask me is, "what do you guys view as the definition of 'widget'?" In another post of mine (Widgets are Applications without Boundaries), I offer a couple of very quick and dirty rules to answer that question. Here I will dive (however briefly) into one of those qualifiers while...

Widgets are Applications without Boundaries

There is a line between what is a widget and what is not a widget. That line, however, is not drawn in the sand - that is, it depends on who you ask. Some people will say that a widget is a little piece of code that you can embed in your website and nothing more (a novelty at best), or that can be virally propagated, or is a read-only view into some combination of interesting data. To me (and my...

20 Steps to Mashing, Testing, Selling & Supporting a Widget

Back in June of 2007, as we prepared for our first public appearance as Nth Penguin for the Wisconsin Oracle Application Server Users Group in Fond du Lac, WI, I wrote up a short list describing how I see building a widget in Mashup Studio. At the time, it didn't seem appropriate for an Oracle users group demo. Eastern Wisconsin was busy learning about SOA. The idea of collaborative...

Silverlight About to Gain Some Ground

Obviously, it has been a long time since I have written a blog post. Life is busy. New company, new kid on the way, and some other excuses... ANYWAY, I'm back in the saddle again. For my first "returning to blogging" post here I just want to comment on the announcement from NBC (covered on ZDNet here). This is some pretty big news as far as a marketing story. I'm sure plenty of MS haters have...

Gartner's Predictions Predict Exactly What We've Been Doing... Uncanny!

Today, via my Google Alert, via ZDNet (http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6560), Gartner has published a list of what they view as the top 10 strategic technologies for 2008. #7 is "Web Platforms"... and I think they're right on the money. Especially since we'll be launching our Complete Web Platform in 2008! The article has this poignant quote: Longer term, however, Web platforms will be the model...

WebWidgetry(tm)'s New Blogging Platform

The team at Nth Penguin, LLC, of which I am a part, and whom collectively owns the WebWidgetry(tm) and MashupStudio(tm) vision, also owns quite a few premium domains that as mentioned in this post will be utilized for various pieces of our platform. Today, I'd like to point you towards what will be our new main blogging site: WidgetsAndMashups.com. There are only two posts up there right now, but...

Oracle Presentation Recap

So, last week Friday we took part in an Oracle User Group meeting, in which we presented our vision for the complete web platform (i.e. WebWidgetry(tm) and MashupStudio(tm)). The response was very interesting. It became apparent to us that the canonical enterprise today is still struggling quite a bit with where to find the value in many of the "Web2.0" concepts and tools. For a lot of people,...

Presenting WebWidgetry at an Oracle User Group

Tomorrow (or today depending on what time I actually get this posted tonight) we will be giving a presentation of our web platform vision at an Oracle User Group meeting. We were invited by a Senior Solution Architect within Oracle, with an aim at eliciting insight from their customers on what they would like to see in such a platform. This will be both an education in market research and public...