Romsys bought by New Frontier Holding

Romsys is a major System Integrator in Romanian Market and SAP partner. In 2006 reported 25.8 mil Eur as a sales figure (20% less than 2005). Main customers are gaz and energy distribution companies like EON Gaz Romania, Distrigaz Sud, Hidroelectrica, Electrica Dobrogea, banks: ING, BRD, UniCredit, etc... Also, Romsys is one of the main IT suppliers for the military sector... Marius Cojan has now about 25% of the companies shares and he said that the main focus will be on the middle and large companies. Besides this transaction, this year there were many investments fonds that got a bigger or smaller pack from the local software companies' shares.

Horia Negulescu - senior country manager at Epicor Software Romania gives up his position for managing events

I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Negulescu at a meeting. As almost always he came there directly from the airport and he seemed to have experience in doing such things: airport - business meeting - other meetings at his office / work - back on the plain and so on...

This kind of life really affects your family life. You are almost never around....

So after 11 years with Epicor he declared for Business Standard:

Fiecare are nevoie, din timp in timp, de o schimbare. Eu am simtit aceasta nevoie dupa 11 ani. Am mai multe planuri, dar toate la timpul lor. Deocamdata, vreau sa aloc un Pic mai mult timp familiei si celor doi copii ai mei

and the translation (hopefully accurate):

Every man needs from the to time a change. I felt this need after 11 years. I have many plans, but every things has its time. For now, I want to dedicate more time for my family and my two children...

I wish all the best for his new path... His place was taken by.... Diana Lungulescu (ex: sales and marketing manager) ... This came as a suprize for me... Congratulations for her new position at Epicor! Another thing I found interesting in the article was the fact that the main players in Romanian Business Software market are: SAP, Oracle, Siveco and Wizrom... I understand SAP, Oracle has some large clients, but Siveco? (maybe the contracts with the government got this position for them) and Wizrom ?!?! I don't quite understand this...

About London and Copenhagen

I was saying in my previous posts that I will come back with details about Convergence 2007 at Copenhagen and about couple of days in London, but never took the time to write about it, and now things are not so fresh in my memory. What remained about Copenhagen: - Dynamics AX is a powerful business solutions suite; it's impressive the work it's done for developing the platform for building solutions, building solutions and making them work together; also migrating from a version to another it's a challenge - I got to see how the software should show you the perspective of your business (dashboards, KPI, action not only reaction) - Windows Server 2008 is overrated; I am annoyed that it's built on the same platform as Vista, has stuff fixed and no public SP released yet (file copying issues) - Copenhagen it's a great city to work in; clean, less traffic, bicycles, nice peoples, healthy way of life - it's an expensive city compared to Rome, Paris, Madrid, even London in some aspects - the underground it's great, you can have a front-window seat About London I classified London as a great place to work/have your office. It's not a city to spend your holidays and you should take a trip for 2 weeks once, and that's it... So: - great place to work - very nice parks - crowded underground at some hours of the day - weather is not friendly - the sky is amazing when it's clear, very nice blue - quite an expensive city It's a good idea to work in London during the week (and stay there) and live in France (where you spent your weekends); work week should have at most 4 days :). I hope I'll have the change to visit Switzerland soon...

5 reasons for delaying a blog post

I sometimes ignore the fact that blogging means communication. It's a way to expose your thoughts, things you've achieved - brag :), narrate or just post articles...  
Interact with your 2 visitors (one of them got there by mistake mistyping a keyword while searching on Google). On my business related blog that's in Romanian (this supposed to be a personal blog and I hope it makes sense at least in Engrish) I have about a dozen drafts, and for some of them I've spent like hours composing/processing images for tutorials, criticism, sharing visions about how things should be, complaining about stuff (time, software, weather, mood, whatever)... So, you take a break and start to write a blog post... Then you realize that is gonna take you a lot more than 11 minutes to write it so you postpone it... If you don't publish it on the same day, you ain't gonna publish it...  

1. Estimate too less time to write a blog post  

2. You get interrupted Interruption leads to postponing / saving as a draft which will seat there for a long time.. There are some periods of time when you are overwhelmed with your daily tasks, projects, work and so on, so you don't take 5 minutes off to say how you feel... Looking back at some of my blog posts I remember how things were than; so that blog post is like a window to past.  

3. Overwhelmed with things to do, ignore blog posting Have you ever taken a picture with your phone/camera and said: "This is for my blog..." and never actually publish it; things happened: you don't have an usb cable at-hand, transferred the pictures to another computer. Time passes and you never post that on your blog... If it's important to you, then do it asap. So 4 is:  

4. Delayed action I don't have anything interesting to say... Well, there are no bloggers that write 100% high quality articles... And second, who cares? Your public/audience? It's a blog and the expect from you to say things. So I would say that this is:  


5. Lack of interest There are many other reasons that can be similar to the ones above, but for me these are the main reasons for not writing a blog post. In the last 3 months I had a really hard time... Overwhelmed with work, got sick couple of times, had to go to Copenhagen for a week and delayed some projects, now I somehow back on a rescheduled plan... But I am tired and so I am not as productive as I can be and my moral isn't so great. It's a good thing I have found my limits, but not very happy about finding them in the way I did... So, this years goes towards and end and 2008 is coming up fast... Hopefully what I've achieved in the last months will count for a 2007 balance, for me and my company. Will get back on that later...

London - Day One

I was intending some kind of live blogging from Convergence 2007, but I didn't catch up with it. I wrote memos for the sessions I went to and after that went out in have something to eat and some (4 people - 26 pints - I don't quite know the right measure for .5 liters glass) danish beer. I will write about each day and the session I thought were interesting later and postdate them. This morning I had breakfast, packed and went to the Copenhagen airport to get my SAS flight to London. The flight took about 2 hours... In Copenhagen weather is cold (3-9 ^o Celsius) and I had thick clothes on me and I had to run to get to my boarding gate because I arrived a bit late. It was not a confortable thing to do. From the airport I used the underground to get to Picadilly Circus (22 stations), got the wrong ticket (zone 6, and I had to get to zone 1), but i could get it refunded and in Picadilly got the right one. Cloudy weather, but it's not so cold as in Copenhagen. Now I am pretty tired and I'm having some coffe (no sturbucks near, but it's a good coffe); also I checked my email and wrote this blog post. So, stay tuned; as soon as I have some time, I will write about some really nifty things like the new Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Dynamics AX 5 and 6, Enterprise Portal and so on...

Convergence 2007 Day 1

Monday, we arrived about noon in Copenhagen. Wanted to take the train/metro to the hotel, but the system was down... We searched for a taxi. A verry interesting thing is that most taxi are Mercedes (E-Klasse, C), later we saw a Crysler 300C and a VW Passat. The charge is between 10 and 15 kr (1 eur is 7.3/7.4 kr). We paid 12.5 kr per km. Was about 30 euros to get to the hotel. The conference is held at Bella Center, which is quite close to the airport. The first day is Partners Day, so I had no access. We got to the hotel; one room for non-smoking wasn't ready yet, so got only one room and we said we will come back later to get the other one when is ready. After more than a half day on the road, went to get someting to eat. A nice restaurant close to hotel (in Vesterport) was the chosen place. Had some chineese soup (chicken, mushroom, sweat and spicy) and I had some salmon steak with patatoes. Really good, but the lunch got to be quite expensive (about 25 euro). And of course drunk Tuborg. Went back to the hotel, got the other room and went for a walk in Copenhagen... First we went by metro to Bella Center. Surprizes in Copenhagen: - when you take the metro, you get the tickets, but you are not forced to use them; you can get in without any restrictions; from time to time there are some check-ins; - the front of the metro has no "driver", it's glass and you can have quite a view staying in the front; - lots of people on bicycle; youngs, middle age, older people, all on bicycles; - there is no traffic, verry few cars (found out later that the cars are very expensive: 2-4 times more than in other countries - VW Touareg is about 1.5 mil kr ~ 200.000 euro); - everyone speaks English; better or worse, no matter the age everybody understands and speaks English; It's an amazing city. Anyway, got to Bella Center, registered, got a nifty bag and marketing materials, a pen from a partner and a notebook (paper notebook :D). Walked in Copenhagen, almost got to the Little Mermaid, but got there when the area was closing, so we were turned around; got home around 21, and went to sleep. Pictures taken will be posted later...

Convergence 2007 Copenhagen, Denmark

2007 Convergence it is held in Copenhagen Denmark. More details can be found on Conference Website - Convergence 2007. Details about what you can find at the conference are posted at Inside Convergence section. For 3 days there will be General Sessions, Chat & Talks, Presentasions, Networking (registered users can search other participants for establishing meetings - your own facebook/myspace sort of thingy) and others. Besides Dynamics AX and Microsoft CRM 4 I'm interested in the new version of GP (there is some workflow feature in it so that's nice and has a nice Vista like look) and I still have no clue what C5 does... So, meet me there :). PS: From Friday to Monday next week I should be in London to see my niece...

Oracle XE and PHP 5 on Windows

Even though most PHP applications use MySQL / SQLite / Postgres for database driven applications sometimes you need to integrate information from an Oracle database and you need PHP to do the talking. Oracle XE helped and encouraged developers to write applications using Oracle. So, there are several ways to connect to an Oracle:

• using odbc
• oci8 extension available for both PHP 4 and PHP 5
• PDO (pdo_oci)

I will present some basic configuration for accesing Oracle [XE] database using OCI extension and PDO. PHP using OCI8 to access Oracle XE database First of all make sure the server (Oracle instance) is running and you have a valid user/password combination. Also make sure, the user is not locked. In php.ini uncomment:

extension=php_oci8.dll

Note: make sure extension_path is set correctly. php_oci8.dll depends on oci.dll. You can find oci.dll in oracle bin folder (something like \oraclexe\app\oracle\product\10.2.0\server\BIN). Copy oci.dll in %WINDIR%\system32. Now restart apache web server. Sample connection script:

$ora_conn =  oci_connect('hr','****','xe');
$sql = "SELECT * FROM EMPLOYEE";

$statement = oci_parse ($ora_conn, $sql);
oci_execute ($statement);
while ($row = oci_fetch_assoc($statement)) {
print_r($row);
}
oci_free_statement($statement);

And that's about it. PHP using PDO to access Oracle XE database Uncomment in php.ini the following lines:

extension=php_pdo.dll
;...
extension=php_pdo_oci.dll

Also, see above note referring to oci.dll. Restart Apache web server. Sample script using PDO:

try {
    $dbh = new PDO('oci:host=localhost;dbname=xe', 'hr', '*****');
    $rs = $dbh->query('SELECT * from EMPLOYEES WHERE ROWNUM<10');
    
    if($rs) {
        foreach ($rs as $row) {
            print_r($row);
        }
    } 

    $dbh = null;
    
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    print 'Error!: ' . $e->getMessage();
    die();
}
}

Aptana IDE - Adobe AIR support

Aptana recently released a plugin to support Adobe AIR development. Aptana IDE + Adobe^® AIR^™ is beta for now. The plugin is very usefull for HTML/Javascript development using Adobe Integrated Runtime. How to Install Aptana provides an update tool for plugins, so installations it's easy. More details can be found watching the screencast: Aptana: Introduction to Adobe AIR Good luck developing Adobe AIR applications! PS: You can win the trip of a lifetime! All you need to do is develop and submit an application. More details cand be found on Adobe website: Airderby

Installing Adobe AIR on Windows Vista

1. Download Adobe AIR SDK from Adobe labs

2. Extract the archive to a designated folder, in our case E:\AIR. (I am using 7-zip

3. You need to set PATH environment variable to your Adobe AIR bin folder (E:\AIR\bin). To do that, right click on "My Computer" and click on Properties:

4. Click on Advanced system settings and then on the new window click on Environment Variables:

Select "PATH" and click Edit...
Then, type: ;E:\AIR\bin

5. Press Ctrl + R and type cmd. Then type: adt. If a meessage like:

Too few arguments.
usage:
adt -package ...

comes up, then Adobe AIR is installed on your system.

6. Now, to really run something on AIR. Open on your browser: Adobe AIR sample applications.
.


Download Fresh, which is an rss reader built using HTML/javascript/ajax & co and unzip it to E:\AIR\samples\Fresh.
The contents of the folder should look something like this:



Now open a console (if you closed the previous one) and type: e: (go to drive E: or whatever drive you used to unzip Adobe AIR sdk) and then type: cd E:\AIR\samples\Fresh.
Now type: adl application.xml:


And now we have Fresh running on AIR:



Enjoy!

iPhoneDevCamp

First iPhoneDevCamp will take place between 6-8 July:

PhoneDevCamp is an upcoming gathering, inspired by BarCamp, SuperHappyDevHouse, and MacHack, to develop web-based applications and optimize web sites for iPhone. It is a non-commercial event, organized by volunteers, with attendance free to all. By the completion of the weekend event, a number of iPhone-ready web applications and web sites will be launched to the public. The event will be held at the San Francisco offices of Adobe, and out-of-town guests are welcome.

Attendees will include web designers, developers, testers, and iPhone owners, all working together over the weekend to improve the web experience for iPhone. Development projects will include both solo and team efforts. While some attendees will wish to work solo during the event, we encourage attendees to team up, based on expertise, to work in ad-hoc project development teams. All attendees should be prepared to work on a development project during the event. You do not need to own an iPhone to attend (although, a large number of iPhones at the event will make the development and testing process much easier).

Attendees will be able to:

• Create new web applications for iPhone.
• Optimize existing web applications for iPhone.
• Migrate Dashboard Widgets to web-based widgets for iPhone.
• Test and optimize web sites for iPhone.

The event is being held the week following the public release of iPhone, to allow prospective attendees some time to acquire an iPhone. This also allows early-acquirers the opportunity to do some experimentation before attending the event.

iPhoneDevCamp is not affiliated with Apple, Inc.

More details at: iPhoneDevCamp

iPhone SDK - Safari, iPhone Apps = Web 2.0

Steve Jobs announced that:

revolutionary iPhone™ will run applications created with Web 2.0 Internet standards when it begins shipping on June 29. Developers can create Web 2.0 applications which look and behave just like the applications built into iPhone, and which can seamlessly access iPhone’s services, including making a phone call, sending an email and displaying a location in Google Maps. Third-party applications created using Web 2.0 standards can extend iPhone’s capabilities without compromising its reliability or security.

Source: iPhone to Support Third-Party Web 2.0 Applications It's a very nice approach and a bold move. Basicly, now he have affordable internet access on mobile phones, so why not use that... I can't wait for iPhone to be available in Romania, too... Meanwhile you can track a list of iPhone applications: iphoneapplicationlist.com

Open-VPN on Windows Vista

Because I got a new laptop (Notebook Toshiba Satellite A100-599 Centrino Duo T7200, 2.0GHz, 1GB, 160GB, VISTA) with Windows Vista preinstalled, and I needed to use Open-VPN, I started searching for some info about how to use it. Download and install: Open-VPN GUI. Put your configs to C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config. Add:

route-method exe
route-delay 2

to your *.ovpn file (client.ovpn) Run as Administrator (right click) C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\bin\openvpn-gui.exe. (If you don't run it with admin privileges, the TAP adapter won't work) And that's it..

North Korea and nuclear tests

I don't post this kind of stuff, but I couldn't help it. I was reading on Google News this headline:

U.N. asks North Korea to cancel nuclear test

Source: Seattle Times The reaction: Oh no! Not now!

Japan's newly elected Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday that the tests could come as early as this weekend. U.S. spy satellites have detected sustained activity at a suspected underground test site in the north. Abe will travel to Beijing on Sunday and Seoul, South Korea, on Monday to press for support in corralling North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

So, BigBrother is watching...

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a device would be detonated about 6,500 feet inside a mine near the border with China in the north of the country. North Korea has timed its military exercises to coincide with significant dates: it launched missiles July 4, despite international warnings. Monday is North Korea Workers' Party Day. [...] The Security Council statement said that a test would not bring Pyongyang closer to its goals. Rather it would "bring universal condemnation by the international community," the statement said. "The Security Council urges the DPRK not to undertake such a test and to refrain from any action that might aggravate tension," the statement added, using the acronym for the country's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Chief U.S. delegate John Bolton said that the council takes the threat seriously, and the United States is prepared to push for international economic sanctions. "If they do test it, it will be a very different world the day after," he said before the meeting. "There would be another nuclear power. This would be proof positive of North Korea having a weapon." [...] Russian diplomats said they were "very concerned" about the possibility of a test.

Ok, US will take actions, and use UN also for their goal... So, after Afganistan, I was expecting a move on Iran, and leave DPRK alone, for some time... but it seems they are acting on 2 fronts: Middle East

LONDON — The United States and five other major powers agreed Friday to take the next step toward imposing sanctions on Iran for failing to comply with a U.N. resolution to prevent it from subverting its nuclear energy program to develop a nuclear weapon, according to U.S. and European officials. Source: chron.com

and DPRK (above quotes) ... One wrong step from any of these countries and war is closer than ever. What is the really scary thing is that nuclear weapons are at stake. In Afganistan the situation was different, war for oil, US gets a better position on world oil market, and a place at OPEC table. And God help us when someone will push the trigger.

MySQL Front discontinued

I was surprised to see on Mysql-Front website this announcement:

MySQL-Front has been discontinued since MySQL AB forced us to remove this program from the market. Thanks a lot for all your help! Your MySQL-Front Team We hope the humanity will learn to work together instead of fighting another senseless...

Getting curious about this started to search on google... Lenz Grimmer clarified this for me:

Clarification: MySQL AB did not force the removal of MySQLFront Our web team informed me that we received a few comments from users about MySQL AB supposedly shutting down the development of the MySQLFront utility. I'’d just like to clarify that this was not the case at all we merely asked the developers to stop violating our trade mark as outlined in our Trade Mark Policy. As I wrote some time ago, our trade marks are a very important asset to us as a company and we need to take action, if our marks are being violated. We did not ask or force them to stop the development or to remove the program from the market completely– this was their very own decision. In fact, we actually encouraged them from the beginning of our discussion to continue the development of the product under a different name. The problem appeared resolved as the project was renamed to SQLFront and the old web site pointed to the new location - we regret that the developers decided to shut down the entire project shortly afterwards. We encourage and support every application that broadens the MySQL Ecosystem. Why would we want to completely shut off applications that support us?

Lenz Grimmer works MySQL AB as a member of the community relations team. The MYSQL AB Trademark policy provides the information related to authorized use of MySQL AB marks. The "problem" is caused by the usage of MySQL as a part of a commercial product name, that is not developed by MySQL. I still don't understand why they shut down the project and communicated that kind of message... Lack of funds and they found a way to close it and blame someone else? /Later edit MySQL Front development continues at Sourceforge under a new name HeidiSQL

Marketing on blogs

A Romanian online gift shop launched 2 days ago a campaign named “Blog this!” The main idea is to write an article on your blog which follows the rules: - the article must contain a link to Christmas Gifts category - the article must not look like and advertisement, but cannot be strongly negative nor defaming - after you publish the article send them an email with the link - the publisher must have at least 10 articles in his blog It’s a win-win situation. The problem is that one side wins more, other side less, exponentially less… This type of advertising can be included in the broadly defined guerrilla marketing, with some viral parts, also similar with a stealth campaign, buzz marketing & co (use of social networking – blogs, the prize – I doubt the actually paid for the ads they are offering, maybe it’s a joint-venture campaign )… The goal is obvious: achieve a better visibility for a category, create a buzz, get inboud links (from >100 blogs, with the condition to be indexed by google), increase number of visitors on the website, basicly promote the store using "word-of-mouth" and buzz. The effect: - in 2 days they got 27 winners ( and all the good or bad content and inbound links) - some good “Gossip” and buzz from Radu Ionescu, Zoso, Tudor Mateescu, Blogoree Blog and others It is nice to analyze the effect of the campaign in January 2007, maybe they will publish some figures… or not. At leat check google to see how many inbound links they got and from where, and position in google for some keywords (Christmas gifts :D ), number of visitors, referrals. What can I say more? it’s a campaign, and from the figures point of view I believe it is a profitable one. Moral and profit are not in the same league.

Adobe buys InterAKT

Adobe recently acquired the technology assets of InterAKT, maker of extensions for Macromedia® Dreamweaver® from Adobe. The acquisition further strengthens Adobe’s position as a leading provider of web design and development tools. For additional information, please read the F.A.Q. page on our website.

And the 1st question in FAQ:

Why did Adobe acquire InterAKT? A: Adobe acquired InterAKT to enhance existing product lines, including Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe Flex. The new development center will also provide Adobe with greater access to and expertise in the Eastern European market.

Anyway, Macromedia should have done that before, but, I don't think they studied the market that well. Most InterAKT client were not from Romania... And InterAKT extensions for Dreamweaver are popular in central/western Europe and USA. As the announcement states, the direction will be continuing the production line for Dreamweaver extensions, migrate existing products to Adobe technology (myfeedz will use Flex)

We expect that most current InterAKT employees will remain with Adobe following the integration.

:) We will see about that... InterAKT had 32 employees So basicly as I see it: - Adobe work style will be implemented - personnel migration is inevitable, the company will grow, but some employees will leave (foreced or by thieir own decision) - primary focus: dreamweaver extensions and improve Adobe Flex, or just build components for Adobe Flex. - MX Kollection is renamed to Kollection, and they cannot "kill" the product, because of its customers, so I think it will be refactored to use Flex, sell it in the future. They should be able to "catch" some projects with the government, because until now, MCTI website was the only website developed by a company that knows what is doing, and not made by some kid at 7th hand... Updates will be available after I find more information.

GWT Beta Version 1.1

Well, Google Web Toolkit beta version 1.1 has been released. On July 21st they said that the next release will have:

• Localization Easily localize strings and formatted messages
• XML classes An XML library based on the W3C DOM
• JSON classes JSON is moving into gwt-user.jar, and it's much faster than the sample in 1.0.21
• FileUpload widget The much-requested file upload widget
• FormPanel widget Easily submit traditional HTML forms from GWT apps
• RPC optimizations Speed improvements and a more compact wire format
• JUnit enhancements Unit tests are much, much faster than in 1.0.21, and you can now test asynchronous things like RPCs and timers

Also, annouced that Maven is used for the building process. More features in current release:

• Automatic resource injection Modules can contain references to external JavaScript and CSS files, causing them to be automatically loaded when the module itself is loaded.
• gwt-servlet.jar Deploy this jar to add RPC to your servlet-based webapps without having to manually crack open gwt-user.jar to remove the servlet API classes.
• Javadoc-style API documentation By popular demand :-)
• An automatic mechanism to stop the browser from caching the .nocache.html file for your module.

I'm still waiting for a large scale app, built with GWT.

Phalanger - PHP Compiler for .NET

The original description is:

The Phalanger is a complex solution giving web-application developers the ability to benefit from both the ease-of-use and effectiveness of the PHP language and the power and richness of the .NET platform. This solution enables developers to painlessly deploy and run existing PHP code on an ASP.NET web server and develop cross-platform extensions to such code taking profit from the best from both sides. Compatible with PHP 5.0, the object model in Phalanger enables to combine PHP objects with the .NET ones. It is possible to use a class written in PHP from a .NET application or even to import a .NET class (written for example in C# or Visual Basic .NET) into PHP scripts provided that this class respects the PHP object model implemented in the Phalanger. The Phalanger is the only existing PHP compiler which produces .NET Framework MSIL bytecode.

Some benchmarks were posted on the website with Phalanger 1.0 Beta 3, PHP 4.3.11, and PHP 5.0.4 with and without Zend Optimizer, and some php based popular apps: Nuke and phpBB compared. The tests were done on a Windows machine. Anyway, looking at the benchmarks Roadsend seems interesting too. The idea is that PHP for .NET is a viable solution, and compiled php is an improvment.

Creole Trac - Ticket spam

Well, spammers get better, after blog spamming, trac is vulnerable. Creole is using trac for development, and while browsing through tickets, found this: Public comments and new tickets seem to be suppresed now for anonymus users. Example: Ticket: MSSQL driver errors Edgewall is working on a spam filter, which will be released with 0.10 Milestone Until then, disable anonymus content or you can try experimental spam filter. A quick fix could be:

DELETE FROM ticket_change WHERE author = "spammer_name";
--update  ticket version and milestone, which is altered
UPDATE ticket SET version = '', milestone = '' WHERE version = 'HEAD' AND milestone = 'MILESTONE_NAME';