Devunity is the first online social development platform with the focus on simplicity and productivity. As stated on its slogan, “for coders, by coders,” there had been an immediate palpable buzz about its vision, i.e. build a product around the developers.

Devunity is still in Alpha phase, and those developers who want to test the product out must register with them and wait for their invitation. In many instances, Devunity will help Web developers to solve problems in developing applications, especially about how they are interact with each other during the project development life cycle. Currently, this platform supports most of the popular programming languages, including php, python, perl, etc. Imagine you work with your other developers in a long distance, you can invite them online to this platform together in solving the coding problems, debug the code, or even invite some experts you know to solve your application’s current errors.

Meanwhile, Devunity supports the popular API platforms such as Google, Amazon, Flickr, and Facebook. In addition, you’re allow to import your existing code from your version tracking server or Google code account to this platform. Although this platform is built-in with features of tagging, categorization for the structure enhancement of your code, it won’t teach you to write code in a beautiful manner. You still need to write and rewrite the source code and you’ll learn better as day goes by. But with all the discussion, and collaboration you find in using this platform with your other developers, eventually you’ll learn how to program in a more logical, professional and organized way.

For users who found trouble in getting Python, get Postgre SQL, install subversion, and configure other softwares in order to have your Django application skeleton running, now you’ve Instant Django. It’s like InstantRails, you’ll find it helpful to get your application ready without all the step-by-step software installation and configuration. But, wait a moment, where is the InstantGrails (for Grails) and InstantMerb (for Merb Web framework)?

GigaSpaces, an infrastructure software solutions provider is launching an open source community site that called OpenSpaces today. This community site was founded with the ideas of open source that any developer can contribute to the OpenSpaces Framework, an open source framework built by Spring that run on top of the eXtreme Application Platform (XAP), a middleware platform developed by GigaSpaces. eXtreme Application Platform was aimed to solve the scalability of hardware problems and OpenSpaces Framework is on the other hand, a programming model providing Application Programming Interface (API) that allows developers to write high-performance applications in Plain Old Java Objects (POJOs), .Net, and C++ objects.

GigaSpaces intended to promote OpenSpaces as the dream land of developers by enable them to scale out of their applications in a simple way, and without any doubt, developers will develop the useful extensions, plugins, and etc. to this community. The value proposition of OpenSpaces lies in its:

- Smooth scaling up

- Developer Contest: a contest with $25,000 in total prizes and a $10,000 grand prize for developers that develop the most innovative applications with OpenSpaces Framework

Meanwhile, there are more than a dozen projects available on this OpenSpaces Framework.

Although Ruby on Rails is gaining momentum in Web development, it’s Python, an object-oriented programming language that enjoyed of being the winner of programming language throughout the year 2007. In fact, the Python programming language has been around since the beginning of 1990s, but only gained popularity among Web developers less than a decade. For me, it’s indeed a bit of surprise that TIOBE declares Python as the programming language of year 2007. To depict this, TIOBE has also prepared a graph that showed the dramatic growth of Python especially after the year 2004.

Meanwhile, a lot of Web developers are fascinated about the Django framework, a pretty clear “killer application” for the Python language and constantly driving people interest in this technology.

Source: available at http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index/Python.html, accessed January 11, 2008

To celebrate the 20-year history of Perl, this week the Perl dynamic language has a newest version that is Perl 5.10.0. This is the first major upgrade in more than five years that was released by perl5.porters. This version is not considered as a bug fix version but a new version with lot of features. No doubt, the Perl developers have planned for their next version, i.e. 5.12. But I hope they won’t take another few more years to develop it.

At the time Ruby on Rails released to the external developers, it has since then taken the programming world by storm. Its core is the meta programming, enabling developers to learn and code faster as so much of the codes has already been offered to the developers. However, it does not mean that PHP developers are all throwing away PHP language and take up Ruby.

It’s interesting to see PHP community, how they respond to this Web framework. Some of them has released their own designed Web frameworks that based on PHP. A typical example is Akelos, claimed as being a Ruby on Rails port to PHP. To promote this newly born PHP framework, Akelos also created a video “Creating a Blog in 20 Minutes using the Akelos PHP Framework” screencast on their Website.

What is the Perl developers respond to this Ruby on Rails? In the meantime, there is an established company, BBC of UK, a long time Perl user, has announced that they created their own internal-use Perl on Rails. Using this framework they have launched a new project called BBC programmes, as well as the proposed next-generation of iPlayer also built on this framework, according to BBC blog.

Dojo version 1.0, an open source JavaScript toolkit for Ajax development that can be used to build rich Web 2.0 applications has been released by The Dojo Foundation today. This latest release, version 1.0 is also available to be used from the AOL’s Content Delivery Network, which mean users that loading Dojo from this location of AOL do not need to download or install this version to their servers, however the use of script tag to load the Dojo is required, as stated on the Dojo’s latest blog entry.

Dojo is JavaScript based but supports Ajax, progressive enhancement, animations, as well as some high-quality widgets and extension modules. Since its first inception in 2004, Dojo has became a key part of products for some renown organizations such as AOL, BEA, IBM, and Sun Microsystems. It currently supports variety of browser types and versions that include Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera. The adoption of Dojo continues to grow and the most notable mashup maker that developed by IBM in using Dojo is QEDWiki.

This version of Dojo is comprised of three main technologies, Dojo Core, Dijit and DojoX. Dojo Core provides functionality to overcome the huge differences in performance between brands and vintages of browsers. Dijit is a collection of rich user interface controls and DojoX provides native vector graphics, charting, offline mode, Comet support, and many other extensions.

To download Dojo, you can visit the official Dojo home page.

Source: adapted from http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/awss.nsf/screenshots/05AD13271D1DD49C88257369006A5436/$FILE/imsk01.jpg, accessed 9 October 2007

IBM is begins to reinvent itself in the Web 2.0 sphere. I just recalled an expression that elephant can always dance. The two mashup tools that released by IBM today may appealed to some non-technical users that want to access Web information and company’s database for the purpose of mashup the information or data in order to build a decent Web application. What is mashup, it mean mix content from the host server with feeds from the API (application programming interface). As stated in the IBM’s alphaWorks site, the IBM Mashup Starter Kit contains two key technologies and they are critical for users looking to take advantage of the IBM solution for creating Web 2.0 initiatives. The aforesaid two technologies, one is the IBM Mashup Hub that served to stores information feeds, the lightweight components in developing Web applications. The other one is the updated version of QEDWiki tool, the visual front-end for accessing the information and developing the mashup. Nevertheless, to build this type of mashup by customize the aforesaid feeds, one must at least have some knowledge in PHP, the most popular programming language nowadays.

Currently, this mashup starter kit is available in preview mode, and it is slated for release in the first quarter of 2008. However, we should not expect the disruption that IBM brought to the market, as more and more software giants are releasing the tools that helped designers or non-programmers to develop Web applications without having to write code. Examples included Microsoft’s Popfly and Adobe’s Flex Builder.