During the American Revolution, many important political discussions took place in the inns and taverns of Philadelphia, including the founding of the Marine Corps.

A committee of the Continental Congress met at Tun Tavern to draft a resolution calling for two battalions of Marines able to fight for independence at sea and on shore.

The resolution was approved on November 10, 1775, officially forming the Continental Marines.

technorati tags: Birthday, Marines

The one feature I think that will ultimately kill the iPhone is the Android SDK.  You can download the Android SDK for Windows, Mac, and Linux and you can also just install it into your existing Eclipse IDE.  Just having this available to all Eclipse developers is HUGE.  This means you can start playing immediately without owning a specific OS/Computer - like a Mac.

This is a consistent mistake Apple makes over and over and it just shocks me, now Google is taking advantage of it.  Don’t get me wrong I think Apple makes great products but the entire “we need control” mentality just exhausts everyone.  If the Android devices end up being better hardware than the iPhone then I don’t see how iPhone will be able to compete.  I know there is a lot of talk about the iPhone becoming more open and moving to other carriers but I think it just may be too little too late - maybe.  Android is around the corner Apple - get moving!

technorati tags: Android, eclipse, iPhone

I think of compilers and tools like this as a point in time technology.  It will be great in the beginning but in the end the developer will rarely “compile” the web application and possibly just edit the output directly - or rewrite it from scratch.  The problem I see is the steep learning curve so the latter part of that  statement may be a while.

I relate things like this to MFC, MFC was great for C/C++ developers but once you learned what MFC did under the covers for the most part many just went around MFC and removed the bloat.

So if Google and the open source community do this right, GWT may stay around for quite a while.  If it ends up creating “bloaded” applications then I think in the end it will not survive.

Lastly, it looks like this approach is gaining popularity.  From the comments there were a couple of open source projects and even a commercial project Vaadin that essentially do the same thing.

technorati tags: Compilers, GWT

I always find it interesting who are the top referrers for Balfes.net.  It looks like most of my hits are from Planet Eclipse, DZone (which is new to me), and Planet Lotus but I also find it interesting how many readers access the feed directly from Google Reader.

technorati tags: hits, referrer

10 things Google has taught us

1.) Passion wins

2.) Focus is required

3.) Vision is required too

4.) A team culture is vital

5.) Treat engineers as kings

6.) Treat customers like a king

7.) Every company is a frenemy

8.) Don’t ignore the human factor

9.) There are no certitudes

10.) “Life is long but time is short.”

I am pretty sure all young companies preach this kind of atmosphere and behavior.  The trick is to continue it once you are a big company.  It sounds like Google has done just that.

technorati tags: Culture, Google, Software Development

You can check out the GWT API Reference guide to get a better feel for what kinds of UI are possible out of the box.  There is also a basic widget library available for immediate use and if you are not satisfied with those you can always create your own custom widgets.  What I really think has been done well (although I am not an internationalization expert) are the  different techniques you can use for internationalization.  Debugging is a huge bonus, you can now easily develop and debug your JavaScript applications right within Eclipse by debugging your application using the regular debugger.  The compiler’s generated output is simply a few JavaScript and HTML files, along with other public resources (css, images, etc…).   All you need to do to deploy your application is to put these resources on your web server[2].

So why is GWT so cool?  The key I believe is in attracting Java developers but also for the JavaScript optimizations it does for you in the JavaScript output.  You get obfuscated JavaScript files that are optimized for all of the major browsers - something you would have to first know how to do and then usually have to do it by hand.  You can also completely extend the GWT SDK with your own additions!  Creating custom services, UI controls, and extensions for your own products and developers.  Lastly, GWT is completely open source.  You can contribute to it or use it by adhering to the Apache 2.0 license model.

I am sure we will be hearing more of GWT and I would like to hear other opinions on this approach to Web 2.0 development.

technorati tags: GWT, java, web

E4 - the Next Generation of the Eclipse Platform (Part I)

E4 - the Next Generation of the Eclipse Platform (Part II)

technorati tags: E4, eclipse, java

How to extend the right click text selection menu in a Notes Document

Adding right click options to your Notes 8 mail box entries with Eclipse

technorati tags: Document, extensions, Notes, selection

You can create named ranges under the Create menu item:

You then use the dialog to define/edit the named ranges:

Once you create the named range it will then be available in the Composite Application Editor tooling as an entry in the drop down menu from the component toolbar:

As you can see from the wiki article you can use various methods to reference cells but I would stick to named ranges:

Fields are essentially absolute or named cell ranges. The container supports the following formats:

• $<Column>$<Row> - E.g. $A$1
• $<Column>$<Row>:$<Column>$<Row> - E.g. $A$1:$B$10
• !<Sheet name>$<Column>$<Row> - E.g. !MySheet$A$1
• !<Sheet name>$<Column>$<Row>:$<Column>$<Row> - E.g. !MySheet$A$1:$B$10
• #<Named range> - E.g. #MyRange

technorati tags: Best Practice, Named Ranges, Spreadsheet, Symphony