Perusing the Internets, I found a couple opinions of its definition. Generally, they fall into one of two categories:

• Of or relating to the software created for an enterprise. Otherwise known as, an organization’s software.
• Bloated, excessive, unnecessary – in all meaning of the words.

The former is basically saying enterprise software is just software. The latter is just annoying.

Unless you are lazy, you would probably not find these definitions representative of your career.

Without getting into too much flowery marketing mumbo jumbo, there needs to be another answer. Here is mine:

Software architected to support the breath and depth of its users needs while producing a minimalistic footprint on its own and neighboring systems. This system should not only be easily created but, more importantly, well maintained.

Well that is the definition I have come up with today. This might change over time but will a good start.

I am curious what you all think.

I have not found a good way to copy and paste on this phone, so you will need to do your own searching today.

WebSockets are a new-ish way for web clients and servers to communicate. This is bi-directional though. Unlike the typical AJAX (client to server) method used today.

PJUG was your typical nerd-alert affair but free pizza and knowledge of new techologies for people more smarter than I was worth it.

This phone warms the hands nicely!

This domain actually uses it for its email purposes. Although, I would be reluctant to use it for business use.

Yale, yes that Yale, recently decided not us switch to Google Apps. The reasoning, lack of control particularly when data crosses political boarders, is one of my major dislikes of these type of services.

I did not understand how the author of this article thought flying in another country’s airspace was still governed under US law. Silly.

Yet another reason why we need an OpenData standard.

After taking this test (hoping I passed), I had a question. Why is this process manual? In today’s world of data aggregation, we still manually obtain Census data. Really? I would imagine there are data feeds out there to get the ball rolling in the automation realm of this process.

Private industry should be conducting the Census and selling it to the Department of Commerce with wicked audits. In its ten-year Census off season, it could, for example, generate much of the data for the Department of Labor and Statistics.

Anybody out there agree? Disagree?

The last purchase you made on Amazon was saved and reused to better predict what you might (or will) purchase next. Facebook knows who you are, your age, what you enjoy, who your friends are, what they like to do, who you hang out with most often. Each of the Facebook Apps you have installed can see these characteristics too. Your emails, phone calls, location – this list goes on – can be logged by many organizations.

Heck even this site has some of these controls. Its analytics system will collect when you came to the site and how you got here. It does not know that you are Bob, but it does know any generic information a marketer might want to know. Added a comment becomes worse. Assuming you do not lie, your name, email, web address, and location are forever stored.

My point is not that this is good or bad. Rather, it exists. I would like to stay neutral on the accumulation of such data.

Instead, I would like to promote a new web standard called OpenData. For those of you who are not knee deep in how the web is created, there are many ‘open’ standards. OpenID and OpenSocial to name some, but the list could continue.

A quick search on the Internets will not produce the ‘open data’ I am referencing. Open Data is more commonly referred to as making some information open to the public – patents, legislation, etc – without restriction.

My goal is different. I would like a standard to help me as a consumer of these data collecting services to control the information they know about me. Once the OpenData standards and structure are in place, I could use a third-party app to control (add, modify, delete) the amount or types of data these services know about me.

At a technical level, this would be a non-trivial process. Even getting around a companies data backup policy could be a huge bottleneck since in many cases this data is not easily accessible. Auditing (internal or external) procedures would also limit the ability for a company to remove, say, purchasing records.

Either way, the world would probably benefit from this type of standard.

Thoughts?

Instead Google has two goals:

• Put pressure on other browsers to produce more efficient, standardized features.
• Incorporate it with Chrome OS and (hopefully) Android devices.

Today we are seeing some of the results from the former. IE9 produced JavaScript benchmark results compared to other major browsers. The graph below shows the results.

If comparing IE8/IE9 or Opera 10.1/10.5 are indications, this goal is producing some nice results. This not only makes my job creating web apps easier, it also will produce new challenges to make more fancy apps. Additionally surfing the web will just be better.

Now if only we could kill IE6.

Full Title: Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler
ISBN: 978-0-201-48567-7
Get it cheap.

Summary:

As people change code – changes to realize short-term goals or changes made without a full comprehension of the design of the code – the code loses its structure… Refactoring is rather like tidying up the code.

As this quote explains, refactoring code is necessary. A single feature may disregard high level architecture. The sales department may set a deadline rushing implementation while ignoring long-term development issues. For these reasons, we occasionally (or continuously) clean our code.

This book was kind enough to outline a couple dozen quick refactoring types (name this, move that, etc). When these tips are combined, they create a more solid code base.

What I thought: My career has put me in a position where I have seen many types of projects. Good architecture, bad architecture, good architecture with bad code, etc. In all cases, an occasional clean-up is helpful. I enjoyed this book because it put the examples out there for ‘Spring Clean’ partaking. There were a couple of ‘well duh’ instances, but a nice reference indeed.

Good enough to make the migration to my desk at work.

For the last seven years I have been managing this domain. For the first six or so, my buddy hosted the site and mail for me. About two years I started to use Gmail to read my mail. Gmail was not hosting it, so essentially it was fancy interface. Other users on the domain were still using the provided mail interface. Six months ago, I moved my domain to professional hosting, including converting mail to Google Apps.

This worked just fine for the first couple months. I still forwarded my mail to my Gmail account and the rest of the users had everything Google Apps provides.

This brings me to my problem. In a few cases, some mail was incorrectly marked as spam and not forwarded for me to read. Quite frustrating.

Obviously, anything marked as spam will not be forwarded. Two solve this I created two filters.

The Gmail filters allow you to put some unpublished ‘tokens’ to refine your search. This like ‘in:’, ‘is:’, and ‘before:’ will work.

The main filter will move anything marked as spam into a new label. Add these entries:

‘Has the words:’ -> ‘is:spam’
‘Apply the label:’ -> ‘Spammy’ (spam is reserved)
Select ‘Never send it to spam’

Normally, spam will be deleted after 30 days. The previous filter will stop this from happening. We also need a filter to get rid of these occasionally.

‘Has the words: -> ‘label:spammy AND before:2009/12/31′
Select ‘Delete it’ and ‘Apply filter to XYZ conversations below’.

This last filter will not work naturally and thus needs to be run occasionally. Sorry. On some frequency the date will need to be update and rerun. Should take two minutes.

Doing these steps will forward all the ’spammy’ messages to the second account when it had be stopped at the source. Since I started this, no messages have been incorrectly marked as spam.

I thought I would brainstorm some areas of the former. The hope will be to narrow where gaps exist in the market.

For starters, what are the web needs of the typical business? They probably fall into these categories:

• Informative Website
• Productivity
• Products/Service
• Infrastructure
• Integration

I think I will step through each of these. I am pulling this from memory, so nothing formal at this stage.

Informative Website

Any business has some form of an informative website. They range from Berkshire Hathaway’s 1994-style site to very complex.

From the software side, this lower market seems tapped. A general CMS will meet the needs for anybody. Everybody and their brother does web skinning and CMS customization for basic informative sites. Additionally, I would call these websites not web apps so not interested. The middle market seems tapped as well. There are software packages to assist these slightly more advanced sites. Think of Wordpress for blogging or DotNetNuke for advanced features. So how about the high end (enterprise) market? Image a CMS behind an online newspaper, magazine, or advanced forum.

I think I will leave that question open for now.

Productivity

You might also call this collaboration. Consider email, chat options, word processing, etc as examples of this section. Google Apps and Office Live, among many others, may not make this area full, but it will make it very competitive.

Entering this section is going to vastly competitive. Highly niche products and services may succeed.

Products/Service

Custom development obviously fits into this category. Many organizations will build these in-house (Google). Others outsource (eBay – rumored, do not quote me). There are options for many custom development firms. I am more curious in making a tool in a specific market to make these sites easier. Ning did this with social networks – supposedly. Additionally, coming up with a fresh idea would be fun.

Options are definitely available.

Infrastructure

Some may also call this the company intranet or portal. I am going to group these into a single category. A company may have a project management system, ERP, document management system, hr/payroll processing, and many many more. There are a myriad of options here. Some systems combine all these processes. Some industries have off the shelf tools to aid those companies. Higher Education has Banner. Construction has Viewpoint.

More research is needed in this area.

Integration

Integration is a rather ambiguous category. I am going to call it anything that either combines two or more of the above categories or converts a legacy system into a new system.

I would say this market is very open if you know integrating X with Y does not have competition. Finding X and Y will be the challenge.

Some final thoughts…

It may seem there are some availabilities in the market. The high end versions of an Informational Website will need more research. I think I will stay out of the Productivity section – too much competition. I love products, so Products/Services is not out of line. This area requires an idea. Infrastructure, similar to Productivity, is a huge market with many competitors. More research will need to be done here too. I am not going to remove Integration from any list either.

And now, I read and talk to people and, well, research. Anybody have any thoughts?