news

16 September 2010

In a few short weeks in May of this year, and during a period when problems with personal privacy on Facebook were receiving a lot of media attention, a group of New York University computer science majors launched fundraising for a project on Kickstarter.com. Their goal was to finance start-up development of an open-source web application called Diaspora that will decentralize social networking.

Rather than all "friends" in a social network storing their information, photos, etc. on a huge server controlled by companies like Facebook and MySpace (who then mine our data, and "monetize" it, and who also claim rather broad license to use our content), Diaspora users will connect via a web of smaller servers that are either controlled by a user directly, or are provided as a hosting service by third parties. Diaspora will then utilize push technology so that friends with accounts on different servers will receive updates from each other. (Diaspora servers will be known as "seeds" in keeping with the Diaspora logo of a mature dandelion dispersing its seeds.)

The idea caught on so quickly that the NYU students' dream of raising $10,000 US between the April 24 announcement and the June 1 fundraising cut-off was exceeded beyond anyone's expectations. They hit the $10,000 mark in the first 12 days, and by June 1 had raised $200,641.84 from 6,479 backers. To date, it was the most successful Kickstarter campaign ever. The students moved out to the San Francisco area to work with supporting organizations and individuals who are contributing infrastructure, expert advice, and project management support.

Yesterday, the open source code for Diaspora was released and OS developers invited to participate. The project uses a git server for version control, and Google groups have been set up for general discussions and for developers.

The user-facing alpha release is due to drop some time in October.

Whether the Diaspora project will catch on with users — in the face of the convenience, popularity and external-site integration offered by Facebook — is an unknown as of now. It certainly has got its backers, and developers, and the media interested. "More will be revealed!"

NOTE: Adept Digital Evolution made a small financial contribution on Diaspora's Kickstarter page. We are strong advocates of the project, hope to see it succeed, and therefore make no claim of impartiality when writing about it!

Adept attended the Salsa conference in D.C. in June ... and what a conference it was! Read the guest blog about the conference by Ilyse Kazar on the Salsa website ...
 
"And what is Salsa?" It's a multi-faceted web application that interacts with the Democracy In Action (for NPOs) and Wired for Change (for election campaigns) databases. It is used to send email blasts, manage a supporters list, segment your list into Groups, run discussion lists, create Donation pages, and more. It is highly customizable, and has an API so that you can incorporate forms into your own web site.
 
As time allows we will be adding some tips and blog pieces about Salsa ... stay tuned!

21 August 2009

One more tidbit, a good one, gleaned from the Servoy forums:

"Servoy 5 wll include a plugin that allows a solution to be used as a RESTful webservice."

This will make it much easier to extend a Servoy application to handle calls for data from other applications.

17 August 2009

Hot off the wire from PRLog:

Aug 17, 2009 Thousand Oaks, CA -- Servoy, an award-winning platform provider for fast, flexible, and sexy SaaS hybrid solutions, today announced it has opened offices in Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Brazil to meet overwhelming demand for its leading SaaS (Software as a Service) hybrid platform – Servoy.

This is a major accomplishment in these times of economic contraction. The act of establishing a local presence in these new locations around the planet bodes very well for Servoy, and makes us at adept digital evolution feel more secure than ever that we have chosen the best rapid application development platform for our products and our clients.

13 August 2009

Beginning in March, Servoy has included in their monthly newsletter a "Servoy Labs Inside Scoop" section, offering a view into what Servoy engineers are working on (or just playing with) ... but without any promise that "you will see this in the next release."

Well, News Flash! In the August Servoy Newsletter we read that all the good stuff described in the newsletters will be included in Servoy 5! Here at -ade we want to start thinking ahead to what great new application features will become available when Servoy 5 is released, so we have gone back through past newsletters to compile this list.

ServoyWorld this year will be traveling to cities all over the planet! The format will be a one-day-long series of sessions given by Servoy personnel and guest presenters. And it's FREE!

Sessions will focus heavily on a preview of Servoy 5 with an early chance to learn how to use the new features.

See CEO Jan Aleman's blog for the itinerary and registration link.

10 August 2009

Good news for Servoy users' travel budgets: This October ServoyWorld just might be coming to a location near you.

In recognition of 2009 Realities, Servoy has decided to format this fifth annual ServoyWorld as a worldwide traveling roadshow. Details such as exact cities, dates, and the format of the events will be emerging over coming weeks and months, but we now know what countries are on the roster ...

On Saturday CEO Jan Aleman changed his facebook status to:

Preparing ServoyWorld on Tour. Holland-Spain-Brasil-Argentina-Uruguay-Chile-USA-Thailand-Singapore. October

July 1, 2009
adept digital evolution corp. is proud to announce our launch!

Known as -ade (pronounced "aid"), our role is to find and create solutions that meet your software needs, and to help you choose the best possible options within your budget. In other words, we will work off of what you can afford to spend, rather than telling you how much it will cost.

-ade consultants recommend, develop and support software and Web applications -- whenever possible ones that can be used from any computer in any location. We put together the tools you need to gather, manage, and share information. Our mission is to nurture and assist the technical evolution of your organization (or department or project) from the first brainstorming sessions through the final roll-out, and then support the results into the future in a long-term relationship.

We believe passionately that, when done right, computer technology has the power to move us all forward.
The digital future is bright!