Tahoe-LAFS, a decentralized p2p file system in Python

While browsing through my "to-read" bookmarks I again stumbled upon Tahoe-LAFS, a decentralized peer-to-peer filesystem implemented in Python. This thing really looks promising, providing encrypted and (hopefully) secure storage of all your data across the web. Thaoe is not meant to be for the end-user (yet) really, but maybe there will be some nice addons to all the Dropbox clones out there which then finally could be used with end-to-end encryption. For non-geeks: This means that, if Thaoe is being used together with a service like Dropbox, nobody but you - not even by the Dropbox staff itself - can access your data anymore.

I'll have to play around with this a bit more in the next upcoming days. Let's see how it performs.

Oh, and here's the website in case you can't wait to get your hands on yourself: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs
 

ASCIIFlow - diagrams the 1337 style

Ever wondered how much time certain people spent creating cool-looking ASCII diagrams in all sorts of documentation and technical stuff? Well, wonder no more because there's now ASCIIFlow! Without any registration hassle and completely for free you finally can draw ASCII diagrams using a hip and responsive web 2.0 application.

Be sure to give it a try! http://www.asciiflow.com/

Paper.js Vs. Processing.js Vs. Raphael

Some while ago I toyed around with Raphael.js and was quite amazed by it -- today there's a nice article over at Smashing Magazine which compares the alternatives Paper.js and Processing.js to Raphael, check it out: Web-Drawing Throwdown: Paper.js Vs. Processing.js Vs. Raphael

AMPPS - Try online software with no remorse

Some of you maybe already heard of it or even have used it so far, but I just stumbled over AMPSS, a free package (or better: software stack) containing over 250 software appliances such as Wordpress, Joomla or (my favorite!) Tine 2.0 in a ready-to-go state using the well-known Apache, PHP, MySQL combination.

Don't use this for production systems of course, but AMPPS is compelling and very time-saving when you want/need to evaluate online system like the ones mentioned above. Give it a try!

Javascript compilation and obfuscation

As a C/C++ guy I'm used to some sort of type safety which Javascript unfortunately can't do out-of-the-box. To start a small new project of mine I was evaluating several mobile development frameworks (see my former post(s)) along with Javascript tools.

What most people (at least at the time of writing) do say is: Forget to try to obfuscate, hide and/or pseudo-encrypt your hardly-written Javascript code. If there's someone who wants to steal your code, then there will be way to do it, period.

But what's more about RTTI or type-safety in general? From former Javascript experiments I know that it's much more likely that some part of an application breaks because some object or variable is used in a different way it was meant to be.

To make it short: I still don't have the definite answer for it, but I found the Closure Compiler so far and it makes a rather good impression to me (besides some critism found on stackoverflow and others).

I really would love to get Javascript compiled (yes, I know, there's Google's Dart coming up!) ...maybe some Lint replacement(s) will help me out? Searching further ...

Mobile (Web) Frameworks in 2012

As I want to do some more development in the mobility sector (that is, for Android in the first place, iPhone comes later, maybe ...) I tried to get an overview of the current status of mobile (web) frameworks in beginning of 2012.

Well, as it sounds that easy -- it really isn't. This seems to be a hot topic all over the place since these frameworks all try (with diferent techniques though) to provide a common interface (API for the techies) to get your application on as much platforms as possible.

This of course also has its drawbacks: While you then can develop your application in pure HTML5 / CSS using regular JavaScript (plus jQuery etc) you cannot access native device feature like the camera or the accelerometer.

If you go for the hybrid approach, that is using a framework which transforms your web application into a native application on Android or iOS, then you finally have access to (some) of the device specific features.

In general (at least for me) it was very hard to get a comprehensive overview of all these frameworks, toolkits and so on since it seems that every day there will be a new one which declares itself being "the ultimate solution (tm)".

Personally I'll give PhoneGap a try which does the hybrid approach mentioned above. With that there are toolkits like Sencha Touch, The M Project or jQuery Mobile which can be used to build your actual application. This especially is nice if you want to provde regular desktop support (for Firefox, Chrome etc) using some node.js server as well. Another nice feature about PhoneGap is that you can write native plugins (for Android that would be in using Java using the Android SDK) which then can be called from the app's JavaScript code. MIT license, nice.

There's another framework called Appcelerator Titanium which does similar things, also for the old-school desktops.

Also consider reading some nice blog articles like Natives are restless, Developers guide to mobile frameworks or several articles over at interfacethis.com.

Oh, and when you need a HTML5 boilerplate, there's a nice template generator over at initializr.com, or, if you need a more mobile approach, take a look at html5boilerplate.com/mobile.

Other (maybe not so well-known) frameworks worth checking out:
http://www.winktoolkit.org/
http://www.knockoutjs.com
http://angularjs.org/
http://www.nimblekit.com/ (iPhone only)

Knockout.js

As I was reading up more of Ember.js (formerly Amber.js / SproutCore 2.0) I stumbled over Knoutout.js, yet another Javascript framework on the client side.
It also looks pretty nice in terms of writing speed and re-usage of certain modules.

Also, they've done a fantastic job for learning Knockout.js over at http://learn.knockoutjs.com/

By the way: Happy new year everyone! See you in 2012.

Web frameworks and presentations

While evaluating some web frameworks (like ExtJS, YUI, Sproutcore and others) the framework "Cappuccino" just does things a bit more weird (or just call it revolutionary if you want): It tries to hide all the funny HTML, CSS and JS bits from you by requiring to learn a new language called Objective-J. Not really what I want.

However, there's a really neat and useful application that already uses the Cappuccino framework: 280 Slides

With this you easily can create Powerpoint-like presentations just in your web browser and present plus export the slides into PPTX format. Did I mention that 280 Slides is free? Now I did.