November 9th, 2007
During the past two weeks I've given three presentations on Tamarin and ECMAScript 4. I've gotten a ton of great feedback, criticism, and commentary - all of which has been very helpful.
» Tamarin and ECMAScript 4
Here's a quick re-cap of how the talks went:
There were some very smart questions asked by the audience here - and some pressing concerns. Although, the theme of "being concerned" was a large one throughout the conference (this was right about the time of the white paper release and ensuing blog kerfuffle). That being said, of those that attended my talks, I was able to help alleviate most of their initial doubts (such as towards backwards compatibility, the new type system, or the complexity of the language). It was pretty easy to spot conference attendees who did not attend my talk as those questions were raised again during the ensuing panel discussions. I generally found that those who were at the talk were able to get up to speed pretty quickly; understanding most of the changes and being excited about when they could start to test them.
This was a really unique speaking situation for me - talking to a large room of ActionScript developers about the future of their language. I only have a cursory knowledge of ActionScript so I was able to gloss over some of the details of ES4 (since they already have type annotations, classes, and packages). That being said, I got some really fantastic questions. Considering that these developers have already been using a large subset of ECMAScript 4 for close to 1.5 years it was great to hear the sort of concerns that they had.
Overwhelmingly, of the developers and Adobe employees that I talked to, everyone seems to love the new changes that were introduced in ActionScript 3 - and they're all looking forward to the ECMAScript 4-based updates. It's interesting to see where the ActionScript community has gone, as it's a good indicator of where the JavaScript community will lead once JavaScript 2 is out the door.
This talk was the most fun, out of the three. I was primarily presenting to members of Shibuya.JS (the only JavaScript user group in the world) and they were very excited and asked lots of good, hard, questions. Probably their biggest concern was over the "expressiveness" of the language and if that would be maintained into the next version.
Members of Shibuya.JS streamed the talk that I gave to them over ustream - you can find recorded copies below:
» The Future of JavaScript (Video)
» The Future of JavaScript - Lightning Talks and Q&A (Video)
After the talks a number of us went out for dinner and it was great fun. We talked JavaScript, jQuery, and ECMAScript for many hours - frequently just writing code on paper to talk to each other (JavaScript being the universal language).
I hope I can make it back to Tokyo soon (Gen has a longer recap of my trip up) and be able to visit Shibuya.JS as well.
Seeing them in action has given me a serious itch to start up a Boston.JS group.
Tags: javascript, conferences, travel, tokyo, ecmascript, mozilla
15 Comments on 'ECMAScript 4 Speaking Tour'
August 5th, 2005
This past Monday I was contacted by the creators of of the EVDO Coverage Google Map Hack (mentioned on Slashdot) to do a Google Map hack for them. We fast-tracked all this week and just launched the alpha this morning.
The web site is called Zazzah Courier Exchange. The service is trying to match businesses who have courier needs with people who are already travelling. I used some Google Maps hacks to pull this all together. Be aware, this whole service is still very rough around the edges - we're hoping to release a Beta in the upcoming weeks. Below is the press release, for those interested.
Cheap Ticket Hunters and Rush Shipping Addicts Team Up at ZAZZAH.com
SAN DIEGO, Aug. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Inspired by his school age days as a globetrotting, free airfare hoarding international courier, Robert Kim created http://ZAZZAH.com . Until today, you were at the mercy of shipping companies' pricing and scheduling if you need to move a package. If you want to travel at a discounted price, you were relegated to cattle herd seating or redeye standby.
http://ZAZZAH.com marks the end of both of these issues. http://ZAZZAH.com is the first and only website that allows Travelers and Shippers to openly meet and make shipping deals with each other.
http://ZAZZAH.com basically democratizes the process of package shipping and delivery. Taking advantage of the fact that Travelers are always looking for a great flight deal and Shippers always need to get "it" there yesterday, http://ZAZZAH.com is the new internet logistics cupid.
As a Traveler, you can go to http://ZAZZAH.com and quickly enter your points of origin and destination with corresponding times. If there are multiple legs of your journey, you simply keep adding legs. Each origin and destination entry creates a line that starts with an airplane icon and ends at your destination.
If while adding your points, you see a ribbon tied package icon that matches your itinerary, simply click on the package icon and see who is shipping what. Double clicking on the package icon reveals the desperate shipper's email address. So, you can immediately start negotiating what its worth to carry the package for that Shipper.
If you don't already have a trip planned, you can simply check http://ZAZZAH.com to see how high a Shipper is bidding to get a package from point a to point b. If you are located at point a and have an interest in visiting point b, simply contact the Shipper and make the deal. Robert Kim with http://ZAZZAH.com remembers personally hand carrying an official document from NYC to Mexico City with a plane ticket that was totally paid for by the Shipper. The last minute plane ticket was $1800.
If you are a Shipper urgently needing to ship your letter or parcel immediately, simply check http://ZAZZAH.com for Travelers going your way. You'll find them at the airplane icons. If you don't see an airplane icon that matches your shipping needs, simply enter your shipping itinerary and solicit footloose wanderlusting Travelers to do your bidding.
Actually, you'll be doing the bidding. A max dollar amount you are willing to pay to move your parcel is required. But don't worry, there are likely to be many willing Travelers who will compete for your business.
http://ZAZZAH.com recommends several security measures for smart earth surfing. If you are uncomfortable publishing your email address, simply get a new yahoo.com or gmail email address. Shippers are requested to leave their packages open and unsealed for the willing Traveler to inspect. Travelers who have eBay id's can use this as a credibility reference. Shippers are advised to take photo copies of the Traveler's driver's license and thumbprint.
Shippers are encouraged to ONLY pick up packages from corporate office lobbies with accompanying official Purchase Orders. Like any public bulletin board or newspaper personals section, discretion and prudence will ensure the highest potential win-win-fun factor.
http://ZAZZAH.com was invented and created by http://evdo-coverage.com. http://evdo-coverage.com specializes in web applications development. Their Team of engineers and programmers include Cisco, Dot Net, Design Experts and Brilliant Geniuses at RIT. They invite you to "Crush Your Cubicle(SM)" by creating the web application of your dreams ... for More Information, Contact Robert Kim at 310 862 4250
Tags: maps, google, airplane, travel, courier, zazzah, ajax
54 Comments on 'Zazzah Courier Exchange'
June 23rd, 2005
43 Places is a new service from The Robot Co-Op (the makers of 43 Things). I received an inital invitation from Josh around the beginning of June and I immediately began playing with it. My first instinct was to blog about this new service, however they mentioned in their invitation, expressly, not to:
At this point, we'd appreciate if you'd help us keep our project "secret". We want to finish off some of the last bugs and get a bit more feedback about the site before we are ready to talk about it to the whole world.
I found this phrase to be really interesting, it's essentially saying "You're in a private alpha and we don't want you leaking our secrets - but we're not going to make you sign an NDA, because we're not lame like that." I think that this is something that other web application developers can learn from. The software (at that time) was still rather buggy, but as the days progressed, bugs dissapeared and new features sprang up in their place.
The basic premise for this site (which will come as no surprise to users of 43 Things) is that you can take a location and mark it as being Visited, or that you Want to Visit It. In addition to this, you can blog about your travels, tag locations, find other people how've visited similar places, coordinate travel plans, encourage people to visit places, and even provide travel recommendations. Just about everything mentioned was also a feature (albeit, renamed) in 43 Things, so it was a pretty smooth transition. So, if you're curious as to what this service 'feels like' and have never used 43 Things, I recommend that you do so now - that's about as close as you're going to get, until they open the beta more.
Now, in 43 Things, if you wanted to find a goal to complete, you'd have to search for it -
this goes the same for 43 Places and locations. Now, because you're going to be using the search feature of the site so frequently, it's essential that it performs well - and it does. The 'search' is broken down into two different aspects.
The first method of search, and the one everyone will notice once visiting the site, is a representation of the earth, done in Flash. You can click this little widget to navigate into the map, gaining more detail (such as States, Provinces, etc.). Once you click a State/Province/Country you are taking to the corresponding page - where you are presented with a number of Flickr pictures and any blog posts that people have made. From here you can mark this place as having been visited, or that you want to visit it.
The second method of search is through the physical search text field at the top of the page - and it's surprisingly good. Typing in 'Rochester', for example, brings up two locations:
1. United States > New York > Rochester
2. United Kingdom > England > Kent > Rochester upon Medway
and typing 'New' brings up quite a few more:
1. Australia/Oceania > New Zealand
2. United States > New York > New York
3. United States > New York/ NY
...
16. United States > Connecticut > New Haven
This particular search has many more results, but if you look at results 2 and 3, it definitely becomes confusing. My interpretation is that 2 represents New York City and 3 represents New York, the state. However, for number 3, the use of New York/NY doesn't help to ease the confusion.
One of the aspects that worried/confused me at first (and still does, a little bit) is the fact that someone can say (for example) "I've been to Italy", where someone else says "I've been to Rome" or even "I've been to the Vatican". Now, at first this bothered me because a person who has been to Rome has also been to Italy, albeit not all of Italy (so that distinction can be made). But then I got to using it more, and saw what other people were doing - they were adding specific tourist attractions, mueseums, restaurants, venues, etc. I am really intrigued by this use of the service.
Now, I'll be honest, I simply don't care for travelling as much as some people - which discouraged me from using 43 Places, at first. BUT one thing that I do enjoy is eating at really nice restaurants. A lot. So, one thing that I've started to do is mark down all the restaurants that I've been to - and possibly even write a mini-review using their blogging system. Their service is almost completely capable of running a food column web site (And with a good API, which I assume will be trivial to port over from 43 Things, this could happen with very little effort). The one downfall is that you can specify a specific location, but there's no area to enter an address or GPS coordinates - which could be rather important.
Additionally, something that the Robot Co-Op should consider is tying together the Venues from Upcoming.org such that you can mark them as having been visited (that could provide the users with some non-political locations for them to visit). Upcoming events are already listed in the Metros (which is a smart move, and borrowed from 43 Things).
This service is very sharp and has improved nicely over the course of the past month. I'm looking forward to its full release and seeing people really start to take over. I'll be sure to let everyone know when I get some invites, which should be soon. In the meantime, feel free to look at some of the screenshots that I've taken.
Tags: 43places, 43things, robotcoop, web, ajax, travel, review
23 Comments on '43 Places Review'
