Greetings, all!

No sooner than we’ve recovered from the holidays, does the foreboding prospect of returning to work rear its ugly head. So whether it's for pain or pleasure, it's now time to dive into another issue of your favorite HotScripts Newsletter.

The term 'Web 2.0' is being doled out often these days and is leaving many of us with that 'deer in the headlights’ look. Don’t panic. Web 2.0 is simply the use of existing technologies in new and innovative ways to create rich web applications and enhanced user experiences. These technologies include, but are by no means limited to, blogs, tags, RSS, social bookmarking, and AJAX. The Web 2.0 philosophy focuses on active user participation.

The term itself is too amorphous, too pie-in-the-sky to have any real meaning to us. The best way to understand Web 2.0 is to explore its different applications. Dion Hinchcliffe makes this task easier for us with his compilation of the best Web 2.0 software of 2005. Enjoy!

- Ahmad Permessur
Newsletter Editor

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HotScripts Meets Troy Augustine

Stoddard Hill Capital, a group of private investors, recently acquired iNET Interactive, the parent company of HotScripts.com. Troy Augustine was named President and CEO of iNET Interactive just a few weeks ago, and he has gotten up to speed quickly in his new position. I managed to secure an interview with the great man himself; read on.

HotScripts: Troy, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your involvement with Stoddard Hill Capital?

Troy: I would describe myself as a lifelong entrepreneur. I started my career in the entrepreneurial business unit of a very large company, and I became addicted. Along the way, I've discovered that I am not the type of entrepreneur who will come up with the next great idea. I'm best at taking good ideas and turning them into realities. I founded Stoddard Hill Capital to utilize this strength. Stoddard Hill is a group of investors that looks for great companies that can be taken to the next level through the addition of management and capital.

HotScripts: You have an interesting past. What has been the best period of your career?

Troy: I was fortunate enough to have been in Silicon Valley at the beginning of the Internet boom. I don't think we'll see that same level of excitement and innovation again in our lifetime. During that time, I became the Vice President of Marketing for an Internet-based software company. We went from three guys and an idea, to 40 people, an award-winning product, and a portfolio of blue chip customers. It was intense, and it was fun. I am hopeful that we can relive some of that with iNET.

HotScripts: Considering your innovative marketing skills, how do you think you can further fuel iNET Interactive’s rapidly expanding properties?

Troy: iNET is starting from a great base. Many of our properties are the hands-down leaders in their categories. We want to continue to grow these leaders, we plan to extend these properties where it makes sense, and we want to continue to make strategic acquisitions to add to the network.

HotScripts: You've been appointed as the new President and CEO of the company; will you be managing day-to-day activities?

Troy: Yes. My sole focus is serving the communities, advertisers, employees, and partners of iNET Interactive as its President and CEO.

HotScripts: Do you have any new projects for iNET Interactive on the horizon?

Troy: We're currently working on improving the customer experience — both for our community members and for our advertisers. We're taking a fresh look at our helpdesk systems, our uptime monitoring systems, our billing system ... everything associated with the customer experience.

HotScripts: Do you plan to expand iNET Interactive's network of sites by acquiring new technology properties, or are you planning to explore other vertical markets?

Troy: Both, actually. Growth through acquisition is part of our overall plan. We are clearly interested in adding to our existing vertical markets of web development, Internet services, and hardware. At the same time, we are evaluating entry into new verticals, but still within the technology industry.

HotScripts: Please feel free to share with us any final comments, concerns, or important advice to iNET's community members.

Troy: I would like to reiterate that I am excited to be part of iNET Interactive, and I am excited about our future. I also want to clearly convey that iNET exists because of our communities. Without you, we wouldn't have a business. We won't forget that, and we look forward to serving you in the future.

Featured Scripts

JavaScript

JavaScript Meets Ruby by George Jempty of htmatters.net

JavaScript meets Ruby, in the context of Kiko, a new online calendar application. Specifically, Kiko has implemented a JavaScript port of Ruby on Rails' ActiveRecord subproject for implementing the ‘model’ facet of an MVC (model-view-controller) application. If record/model has you thinking data/database, you'd be correct; and if you're thinking AJAX so JavaScript can talk to the backend, you'd be correct again. See http://www.kiko.com/jsactiverecord/  for an abstract/tutorial and source code, a snippet of which is:

var me = types.user.create({email:"js.active.record@gmail.com", password:"pass"});

Note that it is not XML being passed but rather a JavaScript ‘object literal,’ or JSON. No wonder Kiko, though barely a month old and still in beta, is being held up as a shining showcase for cutting edge JavaScript technology.

XHTML

Autodiscovering RSS Feeds

Most RSS aggregators and browsers, like Firefox and Safari, support autodiscovery of RSS feeds on web sites. If you are providing an RSS or ATOM feed on your side, it is a good idea to implement autodiscovery to your HTML document by adding the following lines of code to your <head> tag:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS for DEVpapers” href="http://devpapers.com/rss.php">

If your feed is an ATOM feed, you will want to change the type to application/atom+xml. If you have multiple feeds for the URL, you can just specify multiple link tags.

While we are still on the subject of RSS, Microsoft announced that it will be using Firefox's RSS Feed Icon in Internet Explorer 7.0 — a small but significant step that will help to standardize the new icon. You can download the new icons from FeedIcons.com.

ColdFusion

Java Objects, ColdFusion Views by George Jempty of htmatters.net

The August 2005 issue of a prominent ColdFusion magazine wastes several pages on OO with ColdFusion. Let's face it, CFC's are about as object-oriented as PHP4; neither are enterprise-ready. For one, they both lack the ‘interface’ construct, an absolute must for genuinely robust, object-oriented architectures. There are other shortcomings as well, but interfaces provide an acid test as to developers' understanding of objects: if you don't grok interfaces, you shouldn't be leading an enterprise OO project. All is not lost for ColdFusion, however, its advantage over PHP4 being its Java foundation. Let Java do the OO ’heavy lifting,’ and then leverage the servlet API's getServletContext().getRequestDispatcher() functionality to subsequently forward both request and response to ColdFusion templates. OO with ColdFusion itself is not necessary to its continued survival; rather, it can provide the view component of MVC under Java.

Developer News

IBM Clears Path Between .NET, J2EE
New application claims to make it easy to make .NET apps run on J2EE.

PHP 5.1.2 and PHP 4.4.2 Released
Both address a fair number of bug fixes and security issues.

Adobe Releases New Mobile Flash
Macromedia Flash Lite 2 and Flash Player SDK 7 will allow building rich mobile applications.

.NET 2.0 vs. IBM WebSphere 6.0
New benchmark compares implementations of an application in .NET 2.0 and EJB.

Oracle and Sun Renew Partnership
Sun to distribute Oracle database, while database-maker signs a 10-year Java license.

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