Author Archives: scottbw

PHP: The Pot Noodle of software development

Posted on September 20, 2012

PHP is, despite its huge popularity, one of only a handful of web programming tools I’ve never really used in anger. And thats because, basically, I’m a programming snob. I like Java (despite its annoyances), Ruby, Python, JavaScript and a … Continue reading →

Posted in development | 11 Comments

Working at OSS Watch, but not leaving CETIS

Posted on September 4, 2012

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve just started a new role as Service Manager at OSS Watch and have been asking whether I’ve left CETIS. Well, the situation is that I’m being seconded to Oxford to work at OSS … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Unhosted – building web apps without servers

Posted on August 29, 2012

For some reason I never came across this before, but it seems there is something of a movement (complete with manifesto) promoting client-side-only web apps. According to the Unhosted site: By “unhosted web apps” we mean browser-based apps with no server-side backend. Unlike … Continue reading →

Posted in apps, development, javascript, mashups, standards, widgets | 8 Comments

SPAWS: Lessons Learned So Far

Posted on August 28, 2012

The funded part of SPAWS is coming to a close, so its time for me to write about some of the things I’ve learned so far from working on this project. Is the LearningRegistry Node infrastructure suitable for sharing paradata … Continue reading →

Posted in apps, development, lessonslearnt, standards, widgets | Tagged , | 1 Comment

SPAWS: Sharing a comment between stores

Posted on August 23, 2012

I’ve finally gotten around to creating a quick demo of one of the use cases I wrote for SPAWS – sharing a comment. Its pretty simple really, although I didn’t want to use a “real” store for this one; so … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 2 Comments

Wookie adds support for signed widgets – thanks to Google Summer of Code

Posted on August 22, 2012

This year for the first time we had a Google Summer of Code project in Apache Wookie - Pushpalanka Jayawardhana took on the challenge of implementing the W3C XML Digital Signatures for Widgets specification, which describes how to sign and verify … Continue reading →

Posted in apps, google, widgets | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Realtime Web Competition Hots Up

Posted on August 8, 2012

Whether its live streaming of status updates, chatting live with friends, or playing games, there has been a significant trend for adding more real-time capabilities to the web, something that has been noticeable since the introduction of instant messaging and … Continue reading →

Posted in apps, javascript, jiscobs, standards | 1 Comment

SPAWS: Its all started coming together…

Posted on July 17, 2012

Another progress update on my mini project, which is about sharing paradata (user comments, stats etc) from web app stores using a distributed network store (for more info, check out this post). One of my big worries when I started … Continue reading →

Posted in apps, development, open education, widgets | Tagged | 2 Comments

Firefox OS Web Apps: Great concept, shame about the not-invented-here

Posted on July 3, 2012

The Mozilla Boot2Gecko (B2G) project just got a new name: Firefox OS. The idea is a mobile operating system that runs web apps rather than native apps, rather like WebOS.  Firefox OS has to provide some basic facilities for web … Continue reading →

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Rave, OpenSocial, and Edukapp in Utrecht

Posted on June 29, 2012

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Apache Rave Hackleton at SURFNet in Utrecht. This was also an opportunity to talk about the latest developments in OpenSocial, and also about open web app stores and Edukapp. As part of … Continue reading →

Posted in apps, mashups, widgets | Leave a comment