Okay. I’m going to do something a bit unsual today. I’ve been in love with AJAX ever since I came across it two years ago, simply because (in my opinion) it makes the web more fun to play with.

The D-tech Blog team unanimously decided to introduce a new category to the blog, exclusively dedicated to AJAX and Adobe AIR® applications. YIPEE!!

I saw this really cool post at NetTuts+ on 20 really amazing AJAX effects and after checking them out, I was really impressed. Though most aren’t really AJAX, they still provide quite amazing functionality.

Let me quickly run you through my top 5 out of the lot. Enjoy;

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1. Image Menu

Image Menu 2.2 is a really impressive script which creates a horizontal menu using a couple of images. Each time you move your mouse over any image, it reveals more of that image. This amazing JavaScript resource was developed by Samuel Birch

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2. Image Flow

Image Flow an unobtrusive and “user friendly” JavaScript image gallery script featuring a scroll-bar which allows users seamlessly browse through the images. It kinda reminds me of what the guys over at XING used for their Guided Tour (which leaves me open-mouthed each time I must add).

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3. Search Field CSS/JS

SearchField is a simple light-weight Auto-Suggest script which guides the user by providing hints to assist them find what they are looking for as they type. It’s actually one of my personal favourites because of the ease of configuration.

Actually, I am a bit biased in favour of this because I found it just about the same time I was battling with a similar thing on one of my projects

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4. jQuery checkbox

jQuery checkbox adds a little flair to checkbox fields in forms. It adds a toggle button very similar to that of the iPhone interface, giving a very distinctive on or off. It’s great for usability, and the dynamic skin can be turned on or off, on the fly.

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5. Control Tabs

Last but by no means least, Control Tabs is a “sweet script” that gives many different ways to configure tabs on a page. It attaches/creates a tabbed interface from an unordered list of links/anchors that point to any elements on your page that have an id attribute.

Since it attaches these behaviors to HTML that already has semantic meaning, it will degrade gracefully for browsers that do not support JavaScript, and is search engine friendly. It attaches in one line of code for simple use cases, but is highly customizable and can be used in a variety of edge cases.

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Quite amazing, I’m sure you’d agree.

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In what is probably the “biggest” news in the month of April, Facebook has officially opened up its activity stream to developers through the launch of the new
Facebook Open Stream API.

So what’s the big deal?

Apparently, the new API would allow developers build applications which would enable users “read and interact with their stream”. According to Ethan Beard, Facebook’s director of platform marketing, “the entire feed will be available through a single API call”- meaning a developer could recreate the entire Facebook home page if he wanted to or take parts of the feed and remix it to make something more interesting.

The move is in line with Facebook’s  “steps toward greater openness” as it looks to bolster its efforts in this regards. In a post on the Facebook developers blog, it said- “we believe users must have full control and choice and that’s exactly how we’ve designed Facebook Platform and the Open Stream API”.

One can only imagine the numerous possibilities this platform provides- quite endless really. But of course, there are certain limitations. According to Erick Schonfeld, Facebook still only allows developers to cache data for 24 hours, so an application such as a search engine for instance would only be able to return search results for a day.

I however felt uncomfortable with one particular statement in the post covering this new development on the Facebook blog;

“…With these new methods, you can access the stream on behalf of a user and then filter, remix, and display the stream back to that user however you choose, wherever you choose, in the manner most relevant for the user experience.”

Maybe I don’t get the full import of this statement, but shouldn’t this raise some security (not to mention privacy) concerns. Whatever be the case, this surely provides the network a perfect opportunity to provide a richer user experience for its 200 million users.

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Facebook’s redesign has come under intense fire from a large section of its 175 million users. The new design has been described as being complicated, less practical, hard to use, etc. Some have even referred to the new design as “a cheap replica of twitter”, with others going as far as calling it ”completely stupid”.

What is more, several New Facebook haters’ groups have emerged, such as “1,000 000 + to bring back old facebook” , “10,000,000 AGAINST THE NEW FACEBOOK, CHANGE IT BACK!“, and “MILLIONS AGAINST FACEBOOK’s NEW LAYOUT & TERMS OF SERVICE”, having memberships of 436,635, 493,545, and 2,680,309 respectively.

Additionally, results from a Facebook app which allows users to vote on the new design show an increasing number of people opposed to the new design. According to Jason Lee Miller, 94% of almost a million votes turned out to be against the design.

Facebook had earlier reverted its terms of service due to opposition from its users, we’d just have to wait and see if this repeats itself. It’s also worth noting that a couple of people have reportedly deactivated their Facebook accounts because of the new design;

“I deactivated my account when they first redesigned Facebook, not only because I didn’t like the new layout but also because users hadn’t been asked their opinion before they made that layout which was definitely not user-friendly… It’s a shame, Facebook was rather cool.”

“I deactivated my facebook account, giving myself a well-needed break. Hopefully, when I activate it again in a month or so, they will have gotten their act together. Somehow, I doubt this will happen.”

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After reviewing Global IT Trends For 2009, it became quite evident that despite the global economic down turn, the future of the IT industry still remains extremely bright. As a matter of fact, forecasts from industry leaders project that IT specialist would be pivotal to the success of businesses this Year.

According to the Baseline magazine;

… Many of the hottest roles and skills address issues specific to survival, such as productivity, efficiency and process improvement. Most relevant are those experts who can use technology to help drive profit ….. quoting David Foote- chief research officer for Foote Partners.

This, no doubt, is in line with the increasing interest in the adaptation and use of Social Media for market development, not to mention the increase in the deployment and use of Web 2.0 applications, Web/Video conferencing, and Telepresence systems.

Below is an excerpt from a chart in a report by ‘David White, JISC funded ‘SPIRE’ project 2007’, representing trends in Web 2.0 usage;

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Though the current job market is brutal, it is quite evident that some IT specializations remain in high demand. According to Foote, Executives are interested in keeping their customers, getting new customers, making acquisitions and anything to keep the revenue channel going.

Here is a list of “hot” IT jobs for 2009 à la The Baseline Mag;

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Brace Yourself ……..

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• Business intelligence Experts
  BI experts can help organizations “In a lot of decisions having to do with how the customer base is changing, market differentiation, pricing and services.” Foote says

• Resiliency Services Professionals
  while many larger enterprises may be slimming down, some of their already mature business continuity practices, resiliency services are big in the mid-market. Many of these jobs will be through outsource services firms.

• Vendor Procurement Specialists
  “It’s pretty clear that in this next year, companies are going to be renegotiating contracts like crazy,” Foote says. A savvy vendor procurement specialist is critical to getting the upper hand in these negotiations.

• Outsourcing and Vendor Managers
  Slightly different than a procurement specialist, vendor and outsourcing managers are project management specialists who act as liaisons and enforce SLAs once the ink dries on the contract.

• Enterprise Architects
  Forrester Research voted this one as “Very Hot” last August in an internal survery of analysts. Since the economy tanked, the role’s importance has grown as IT is called to automate and streamline processes and infrastructure.

• ITIL Managers
  Governance and standardization are keys to getting automation efforts off the ground in an orderly fashion, and companies will be paying a premium for ITIL and business process experts in 2009.

• Virtualization Gurus
  HR gurus with the job site Dice.com are reporting that even though IT job listings went down 12 percent last year, virtualization postings went up 37 percent.

• Security Architects
  IT security is staffing up, and some of the highest demand is for architects who can understand the complexities of various IT ecosystems and emerging risks from technology like virtualization.

• AJAX Developers
  Businesses will continue to leverage Web 2.o technology to differentiate themselves, so it’s clear that AJAX and XML skills remain in high demand.

• Storage Directors
  Another hot role per Forrester, this one is critical as organizations hope to coordinate for better storage utilization rates, slimming down on hardware purchase costs in the process.

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The Mobile industry is not left out! According to a report titled “Mobile Internet 2010,”- there are more than 4 billion wireless subscribers globally and many of these will be using their handset as the main Internet terminal.

In order for that potential to be achieved however, the report said carriers need to boost their networks, and handsets makers need to do a better job of incorporating Web services into a phone’s user interface.

It goes without saying that Mobile application developers would also be in huge demand this year.We just have to wait and see how it all unfolds.

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2008 saw a number of significant changes in IT trends globally, the most distinctive being the rise of social media in 2008. Chris Crum of Web Pro News takes a look at the Year in Social Media. It is quite obvious that there was a lot of activity in the world of social media.

There were also quite a number of changes in SEO trends in 2008, most notably Google’s Custom Search, and toolbar update, which saw a number of websites lose and gain PR.

As far as global IT trends for 2009 are concerned, there have been a number of predictions, especially on the growth in “Tech Spending”. Quoting the Wall Street Journal blog;

“Businesses and other organizations in the U.S. will spend $573 billion on computer software, hardware and services next year, just 1.6% more than they spent in 2008, according to new data out Tuesday from Forrester Research Inc. In contrast, U.S. tech spending grew 4.1% in 2008 and 7% in 2007. Earlier this year, Forrester predicted U.S. tech spending would grow 6.1% in 2009.

The results are based on several factors, including real gross domestic product growth and how technology is valued by businesses, says Andrew Bartels, an analyst at Forrester.

Despite forecasts that show real GDP declining, tech spending will grow slightly because “businesses have become more dependent on technology”

As the baseline mag puts it ;

“.. enterprises with a forward-thinking approach and a solid grasp of technology trends will have a distinct competitive advantage. The following technologies trends in areas like SaaS, virtualization and project portfolio management, among others, are likely to shape IT and business in the coming year, and they can give your company the advantage it needs to do business in this challenging economic environment.”

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Expected global IT trends for 2009

• Saas- Software as a Service
  Cloud computing environments will contribute to the expansion of SaaS into areas beyond ERP, CRM and HR management systems. Rob DeSisto, analyst for Gartner, says organizations increasingly see the benefits of moving large-scale software expenses from the capital budget to the operating budget.

• Document management and E-discovery
  Systems that retain, manage and retreive documents and data quickly and seamlessly will continue to rise in 2009.”Today, anything electronic is discoverable as any part of litigation,” Forrester analyst Kyle McNabb points out. “Developing rules and procedures is essential, and it is going to receive a lot more attention in the coming year.” Not surprisingly, the focus is rapidly moving beyond ERP and enterprise systems and into the broader realm of all documents and communications.

• Virtualization
  was a huge trend over the past 2 years, and will continue to expand in storage, desktop and data center technologies in 2009.According to industry estimates, 50 to 60 percent of all servers are now virtualized. The goal is to reduce server inefficiencies and lower costs. It is now moving into the realm of SMBs, and is also extending into storage and onto the desktop, says Moosa Matariyeh, enterprise storage specialist for CDW.

• Energy efficient Data Centers
  Data-center hardware in conjunction with virtualized systems, will continue to reduce power needs with more green componentry and infrastructure.Chip and PC manufacturers are moving toward more energy-efficient components including improved memory and resource management, but the big action in 2009 will be in the areas of virtualization and storage. Businesses are quickly recognizing that they have little margin for error, and energy costs are now a huge variable, says Anil Desai, an independent IT consultant.

• Security, Risk and Compliance
  Expect risk and compliance to be automated in intrusion, detection, authentication, patch management and security analytics.

• Enterprise mobility
  Being secure and synchronized to live data while on a host of pocket computing devices will continue to expand and improve in 2009.

• Social Networking
  “the champion of 2008″- Social Networking will continue to expand in customer relationships with brands and corporate team building efforts as ways to help the bottom line.Organizations are increasingly looking to next-generation social networking tools to conduct sophisticated business intelligence and analytics. In many cases, they are mining data and looking for trends and patterns, such as which salesperson has the relationships to pull off a deal or which customers seem to have the biggest influence with others online.

• Web 2.0
  Applications built-on Web technologies will continue to prosper and proliferate in new and more cost-efficient ways in 2009.

  Some organizations are now exploring Twitter or Facebook-like applications that allow individuals to push information out and create a simpler, organic communications structure. Others are using Web 2.0 tools to handle everything from asset management to business intelligence and analytics. Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media. says “We are seeing the Internet become a preferred platform for app development.”

• Project and Portfolio Management
  Robust Portfolio management systems that offer collaboration tools, business-process rules support, advanced reporting capabilities and governance tools will expand in 2009.
  
  PPM is evolving and bringing greater order to business-level decision making. Applications such as Daptiv PPM and Primavera are providing tools to mesh diverse workgroups, such as finance, marketing, human resources and IT–all while viewing groups of initiatives, conducting detailed analysis on them, and understanding underlying relationships across organizational roles and teams.

• Web and Video Conferencing
  Bigger pipes and converged data and voice networks will help spur more, cheaper video conferencing and use of video for connecting with new and existing customers.Collaboration tools are poised to go mainstream and further change the way business is conducted. According to the Boston-based research firm Aberdeen Group, 63 percent of companies say they will be using videoconferencing and so-called telepresence systems (essentially, a form of videoconferencing with high-quality images and audio) by the end of 2010.

There you have it. The future looks bright enough.

Seems the global recession played out differently for the IT industry. African firms and businesses will have to prepare themselves to meet these global IT trends, as the results would no doubt be a more productive year for business.

In an earlier post on this blog, we discussed the challenges facing the use of IT infrastructure in some parts of Africa. Recent studies have shown a slight improvement, but we aren’t there yet.

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In an earlier post, I commented on “Cloud Computing” and its expected changes to the way we …. errr ….. compute? As I began to try to imagine what the future of computing would be like, especially in Africa- specifically West Africa- one troubling issue that comes to mind is the low rate of Internet usage within the sub region.

As I pondered further, I was quickly reminded of an article I had written for Darrel Technologies, on web trends in Ghana, where I had placed the estimated number of Internet users (users here refering to people with “steady” internet access at the time) in the country at about 609,800 in Sept. 2007. I also went on on to talk about the increase in actual web surfers.

The reality of the whole issue quickly dawned on me- the number of “Internet Users” in Ghana is actually less than 5% of the country’s 22 million plus population.

According to the Ghana News Agency- Mr. Eric Akumiah, General Secretary, Internet Society, Ghana places Internet usage in the country at a mere 2.7%. Mr Akumiah seemed to blame the issue on “some policies (Government no doubt)”, and called on government to recognize the importance of a multi-stakeholder model of decision making especially on Internet Policy Development.

He went on further to say;

“To achieve an increased usage there was the need to ensure that human capacities in that area were preserved, including the ability to connect, innovate, communicate and share information.”

“We also encourage the government to create maximum benefit through networking to draw on the insight and expertise of all stakeholders, especially those from the internet technical community, to conceive and implement an internet-friendly policy framework”

With all due respect to Mr Akumiah, I totally disagree.

It’s all well and good to talk about the issues raised, but as good as Government policies and the likes may sound, i think there are more pertinent issues as to the spate of low Internet Usage in Ghana, and this i believe, cuts across the entire West African sub region.

Just so I have something else to blog about later, I will mention only one, and the most relevant of all in my opinion- Affordablility

Simply put, Internet Access is still too expensive in Ghana and West Africa as a whole. Most people would rather use the Internet cafe’s than subscribe to any of the ISP’s, solely becuase of the cost of Internet access.

Ghana Telecom’s Broadband 4U service which is amongst the cheapest in the country costs within the range of $45 – $280 per month for speeds of between 128Kbps to 1Mbps. Technically speaking, this really isn’t Broadband, but DSL => which costs at most $12.99 per month, in the US, with speeds of up to 1.2Mbps.

Actual Broadband in some countries costs no more than $45 per month, and
provides the user with speeds of up to 10Mbps.

You may want to Read This- if you haven’t already done so- to fully understand the following;

With the next generation of Operating Systems based on Cloud Computing, and in light of all the issues mentioned above, I can’t help but ask the question- Is Africa really ready to “Take To The Clouds“?

There has been a lot of talk about “Cloud Computing” lately, leaving one to wonder what all the fuss is about. Microsoft and Google seem to be leading the race to the clouds- so to speak.

But what exactly is cloud computing anyway?

“The Cloud” is simply a metaphor for the Internet (based on how it is depicted in computer network diagrams) and is an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it conceals. Cloud computing is Internet-based (“cloud”) development and use of computer technology (“computing”).

It is a style of computing in which IT-related capabilities are provided “as a service”, allowing users to access technology-enabled services from the Internet (“in the cloud”) without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them.

Cloud computing incorporates the Software As A Service (Saa s) technology which allows users access software modules directly from a server. That is to say-as Wikipedia puts it- that the application is hosted as a service provided to customers across the internet.

By eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer’s own computer, SaaS alleviates the customer’s burden of software maintenance, ongoing operation, and support. Conversely, customers relinquish control over software versions or changing requirements; moreover, costs to use the service become a continuous expense, rather than a single expense at time of purchase.

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Another thing which has been in the news lately is Microsoft’s Software Plus Service (S + S) which is also built around the whole cloud concept. Google and Microsoft have a slightly different approach to cloud computing. According to Pam Baker;

“On the one hand, Google’s approach to cloud computing is to put all software and services in the cloud, which is then merely retrieved by a dumb client via browser (think Google Docs, Google Apps). Microsoft, on the other hand, has a hybrid approach to the all-or-nothing scenario in that it retains computing power and software on the device itself, with data rumbling around in the cloud. The Microsoft approach is to seamlessly balance the roles of both to fit any given job at hand. Hence, the Software Plus Service (S+S) name as opposed to Software as a Service (SaaS), where software resides in the cloud.”

Microsoft’s approach seems to make more sense because if “everything” were to reside in the cloud, one would be forced to work with a limited version of the software. Just as Lewis Shepherd, CTO of Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments puts it-

“The problem is that if everything is solely on the device it’s hard to share in real-time on the Web, but if everything is in the cloud, you are forced to work with lightweight versions of the software.”

For this reason no doubt, Microsoft plans to provide two seperate software versions- a high-powered loadable software coupled with lighter browser versions to provide maximum computing power whilst still maintaining flexibility.

So basically, while MS surface uses tremendous computing power, it is drawing data from the web. Sort of like a physical front-end and web back-end kind of thing. It is believed that this would provide richer options for the user.

Windows 7, a.k.a “Windows Cloud” should be unvieled in a couple of weeks.

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